Original subtitles

- All I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by.

All I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by.

All I ask is a tall ship and a star to sail her by.

Is that enough?

Can I keep this 'cause this is written by Richard.

I can frame this.

Hello princess.

[gentle music]

- I would describe the Kray twins or the Kray brothers.

There were three brothers as definitely gangsters,

not particularly brilliant criminals,

but gangsters who were able to rule their piece of turf

in East London with fear.

- Well, the Kray twins were a big name.

They had a name for violence who were violent criminals.

I don't think they were the most intelligent guys

at that game.

But they had a name, certainly,

and a lot of people feared them actually.

- The Kray twins were two very violent brothers

who were based in the east end of London.

- My mom, she was a lovely lady, really nice person.

And she was the Kray twin's first cousin.

But we all lived together in Valance Road

and we lived in with me Nan on the top floor.

We had, she had the bottom and so we was in and out.

We was in and out everywhere

because it was like a big family thing.

Most people ran there were our family

and people that we knew.

They were like family.

It was like a little village.

- Part, the only way I could describe it

was like a little palace, absolutely immaculate.

It's the only house I'd ever been in

that had these little lace curtains

that gathered in the middle, tied up with a bow,

a little pink bow, and then came out again,

probably quite popular in the east end,

but I hadn't seen them.

- Oh, it was just for, no one had a lot of money,

but my Nan kept everything spotless, clean,

and we had lots of family and lots of friends in.

So, yeah, it was good.

It was a great atmosphere.

- Well, from 15, all I wanted to be was a hairdresser.

I loved doing hair.

I loved bleaching hair, perming hair, cutting hair.

So I went and did a three year apprenticeship

down in Holloway Road at a hairdresser's.

And I absolutely loved it.

Hard work, but I loved it.

- [Interviewer] How did you meet the Kray family?

- I met them in 1961.

I'd got married, I'd only been married six months,

and I went to a little afternoon club

with my husband in City Road, Islington.

I saw this handsome man standing in the corner.

I thought, God, he's gorgeous.

Looks like Burt Lancaster.

And I said, who's that?

He said, oh, that's Charlie Kray.

I didn't know anything about the Krays.

I've never heard the name in Islington.

I married into a family of seven brothers,

all hard nuts I can assure you.

The Flanagan family, everybody knew them in Islington.

And they had a set of twins.

Their first born was a set of twins,

just like the Kray twins.

And they were absolutely identical as well.

But I'd never heard of the Krays.

Everybody kept to their own little patch.

And the Flanagans were North London.

And the Krays obviously were east.

So I got talking to Charlie Kray

and he said, I had this lovely long blonde hair at the time.

And he said, god, you've got gorgeous hair.

I said, I'm a hairdresser.

And he said, oh, do you do any private work?

I thought he was gonna ask me for a haircut.

And I said, I do,

but only on Thursday afternoons when I'm not at the salon.

And he said, you wouldn't go home and do my mother's hair.

And that intrigues you

'cause you think he's a gorgeous looking man.

Looks like he's got a few quid.

Why does he get his mother sent to a lovely salon.

I said, why doesn't your mother go to her hairdressers?

He said, she doesn't get any peace.

People asking her questions

and asking her favors all the time.

Well, I didn't know, of course, what he meant at the time.

And he said, I'll give you the directions.

It's Bethel Green Road.

I'd never heard of Bethel Green Road in my life.

So anyway, I mapped it out from Hyry Corner

and I arrived at Valance Road in August, 1961.

And the door opened.

This lovely little typical mum,

probably very much like my own mother,

blonde, beautiful smile.

Oh, hello, you are Maureen.

You are the hairdresser I knew you were coming.

Come in.

I said, oh, hello Mrs. Kray.

Don't call me Mrs. Kray.

Call me Violet.

And I knew from that moment on, we'd be friends.

And we were right to the very, very end.

- Oh, Violet was lovely.

She was like my other Nan 'cause my Nan.

And they were sisters.

They looked alike and they were so like each other.

They was really lovely.

She really lovely woman.

She was so, it is so sad when she died, it broke her up

when they went away, she was never the same again.

It just broke her.

And she had to travel all over the country,

get an ear there, and everywhere, wherever the prisons was.

Sometimes she'd take me and my brother with us

just for a bit of company getting there and back.

But it destroyed her.

- You went along a little hall from the front door

and straight into a kitchen.

And would you believe, I mean, in those days,

that's where you washed people's hair.

And I washed her hair over the kitchen sink, no sprays.

You did it with the saucepan, washed her hair,

put it back in a towel.

And then you started doing the rollers up

and you took your own hair dryer.

But there was a little upstairs,

which I didn't go to the first time of course,

there was an upstairs 'cause I saw the stairs.

And next to the kitchen was a little,

what I call a front room a little parlor

again, was immaculate with a little sofa

and two armchairs and a cabinet and a television.

But what intrigued me most in this kitchen

had a little fireplace with a shelf.

And I was looking, while she was, her hair was drying,

I was looking along this mantelpiece.

I saw all these pictures of boxers, these two boxers.

But you couldn't tell them apart.

They were absolutely identical.

And when I took her out the hair dryer,

I said, Violet, who are these people?

Sure, they're my boys.

They're my twins.

I said, well, how'd you tell 'em apart?

They're absolutely identical.

She said, I can tell 'em apart.

So I thought, well, that's a mother talking, isn't it?

And she had little trophies, what they'd won from boxing,

standing on a little glass cabinet,

which was typical in sixties and seventies in the corner.

And I'm looking at all these trophies that they'd won,

especially Reggie, who was the better box as she told me.

And then about quarter of an hour after

I'd combed all the hair out, used a gallon of lacer,

just sitting down, having a cup of tea.

And I heard the door and I heard her voice say, mum.

And she said, that's Reggie.

And I thought, wow, how on Earth would you know,

it's just a voice saying, mom.

She said, that's Reggie.

And in came this equally handsome guy,

but immaculately dressed again

and immediately started with 20 questions.

I thought I was on trial, obviously,

because I was a stranger.

I was a stranger in his mother's house alone with her.

He hadn't sent me, Ronnie hadn't told him.

Obviously Charlie had sent me, but not informed those two.

And it was like, where do you live?

Are you married?

Who you married to?

What'd you do for a living?

How old are you?

When I said I'd been married six months,

he said I was too young.

But then he sat down, he had a cup of tea

with the obligatory cigarette, which they chain smoked.

The two of them.

Ronnie, slightly worse.

I thought, God, all these questions,

but maybe in protection of the mother.

- Oh, it's very all close-knit.

You get a few that sort of say something about the twins.

But not many people did.

Most people sort of got on with them

and they helped some out quite a lot.

Like they'd give a bit of money.

People didn't have a lot of money,

they didn't like, they treat the kids and that,

and even this woman that they treated once,

and she went, I'm so glad they give me that money.

She went, 'cause I didn't have enough in the meter,

like in your gas or electric meter.

So they did kindness.

I think people appreciated that.

They appreciated they could do kind things,

they probably get that from the mother, not the father.

Reggie did say that in one of his books.

He said, I do take some responsibility for my mum dying

because she had a lot to do.

A woman of her age

shouldn't have been running around doing things,

and Ronnie idolized her, really loved her.

- [Interviewer] What was old Charlie like, the dad?

- [Kim] A horrible man.

Horrible, nasty person.

- The grave dad.

Well, I've got to say a miserable old git.

And anybody belonging to the family

who's alive now will tell you the same.

I never called him Charlie.

From the day I met him to the day he died,

I only called him Mr. Kray.

I had no sort of conversation or camaraderie with him.

He was miserable.

The twins certainly didn't like him.

And later as I got to be there a few weeks and weeks,

and he came in and went out again.

As soon as he saw me,

he didn't like anybody else to be there.

I got to know that he was quite violent to his wife.

- Well, he beat my aunt Violet.

He beat her many, many times when she was younger,

she was having a baby.

He kicked her in the stomach, she'd lost a little girl.

And I don't think you can ever forgive that sort of thing.

So she put up with it.

And then when the twins was older, he slapped

to her stomach when they was out

and her nose was bleeding.

Ronnie went in.

- She was crying.

Be he'd hit her a few times.

He didn't know because it was in the afternoon.

The very seldom the twins were in the afternoon.

Ronnie had come home with one of his headaches

and gone to bed.

And he heard his mother crying and screaming

and wallop, wallop.

And he jumped up, ran down the stairs,

and he got his father up by the neck.

And he'd give him such a punch.

And he said, if you ever touch her again.

- He went, I'll kill you.

And he didn't, he never laid a hand on her no more.

- And I definitely know that he meant that.

He said, and I'm gonna tell Reggie

exactly what you've done today.

And he will say the same.

And he never touched her again.

Never.

- He never, never laid an hand on no more.

But he still had mental crawl.

He still like walloped put hands on her up

and that sort of thing.

But he never hit her, never again didn't have the chance.

They was growing up then.

And they'd just kicked the shy out of him, to be honest.

[upbeat music]

- [Interviewer] What was Clubland London like in the 1960s?

- Wonderful.

Much better than, much much better than now.

I mean, as I got to know the Krays a little better,

the nights they took their mother out,

which was usually a Friday.

Took her to the Asta and the Colony.

They asked me to go with them.

I mean, it was probably to keep the mother a bit

of company as well at the table

'cause they were always hobnobbing around the tables.

But exciting, absolutely fabulous clubs

like with little gold guild chairs

and red plush seats, flock wallpaper as you know,

everybody had, all the pubs had it, all the clubs had it.

But we were treated like queens.

I mean, when we left Valance Road

and the cars were outside, at least four cars.

I walked with Mrs. Kray and I went to get in the first car,

but no, no, no, no.

They said, you are gonna go in the second car with Reggie.

'cause Ronnie always had to sit in the passenger seat

of the first car.

But they never traveled in the car together in case,

because obviously they thought they were gonna be attacked.

And two of them never traveled with their mother.

But the clubs were fabulous.

You were treated like with practically a bow

on the front door.

Everybody knew them.

Everybody knew Mrs. Kray and shook hands and showed us

to the best table.

- My Nan sugarcoated everything with them.

You know, they ain't my boys, they wouldn't do that.

But it's, yeah, yeah, but we just got used to it

being around it's, well, even when I lived at Braveway,

as we was always up there always up there.

- [Interviewer] Tell us about Francis Kray.

- Francis.

I met Francis probably about the third or fourth time

I was at Mrs. Kray's house.

- Oh, Francis was a lovely woman.

Really nice.

She was always in my mom and Nan's house.

She used to come and sit with us in my Nan's house

'cause it was quiet room in Nan's.

She didn't have the traffic of all the people that they used

to bring in that she was a lovely girl.

She really was.

She's really, I remember so well, so beautiful.

He thought the world of her

don't matter what she said or done to him,

he'd forgive her everything.

- Reggie had brought her in and sort of dumped her there

as usual and said, I won't be long.

And it was quite late afternoon,

I'd say five maybe up was five.

And she said, you will be, yes, I'll be coming back.

I won't be an hour.

And off they went dressed immaculately off to some meeting

before they went to a club.

He had no intentions of coming back.

But he'd left her with Mrs. Kray.

And then I said, oh, I'll sit here.

I haven't gotta go home yet.

I'll sit here for a couple of hours.

I thought she was extremely pretty, very well dressed,

but extremely nervous and very vulnerable.

I tried a conversation several times

and Violet used to shake her head

and say, you won't get any conversation out of her.

The only thing was that you notice

she was nervous and she had these little gloves on

and would wrap them around her fingers in nerves.

And she'd keep glancing at the clock

and saying, he is coming back.

Do you think, how long will he be?

I said, but he's only been gone for an hour Francis,

all she wanted was Reggie to come back and take her home.

But I'd have to leave at what, seven,

six or seven o'clock and go home.

I mean, I had a husband to go home to,

but Mrs. Kray told me the next week,

half past 10 at the night a knock come at the door.

And it was Albert Donahue or Ronnie Bender, somebody else

was sent to pick her up and take her home.

He never came back because by that time he was in a club

with Ronnie.

And the worst thing he could have said was,

I've gotta go home and pick up Francis and take her home.

She was on pills.

I knew that at the time.

But just for her nerves at the beginning,

just from the doctor prescribed, very, very nervous.

But long before she committed suicide,

she had tried twice before, once her father had saved her

in the flat.

And once her brother had saved her,

this is the handsome brother that was equally

as good looking as her.

He saved her.

But the third time, luck ran out

and the girl was gone.

- [Interviewer] Did the Kray's crimes

and subsequent sentences shock you?

- Well, we didn't know about the crimes at the time.

I didn't know that anything about Blind Beggars

and the killing of George Cornell.

I'd never been in the Blind Beggars in my life.

I went a couple of times to the grave Morris,

which was was one of their meeting places,

which was just a long, near enough to white chapel tube.

Went with them a couple of times with Mrs. Kray for a drink.

Terrible atmosphere.

The minute that Ronnie walked in the pub,

everything went quiet.

Everybody looked to think, god, what mood's he in tonight

'cause you dared laugh.

Men dared laugh around him because he'd turn,

he could turn and say, who are you laughing at?

Are you laughing at me?

And then that'd be violence.

They never wanted any violence in front

of their mother, of course.

So everybody behaved when their mother wasn't there.

That was a different can of fish.

- Nipper Reed had spent many, many months

amassing a huge amount of evidence against the Krays.

When eventually he was ready to strike,

he knocked down the doors of the Krays, their family,

their associates, and everyone was pulled in.

It didn't take long

before some of the associates started to talk.

[gentle music]

- No I didn't go to the trial.

My Nan and granddad did.

But no I didn't go.

I was too little really, you wouldn't

wanna take a kid there.

- I went to the old Bailey three times.

Once with the father and mother and once with Mrs. Kray

and other people.

Checker Berry took us another time, was a great friend.

Laurie O'Leary took us another time.

But that was a terrible thing to see those people

sitting in the dark on the day

that sticks in my mind is when the judge said

that's where the numbers,

because there were so many of them that they got fixated

with names and made mistakes and names.

So they would have to wear numbers,

and Ronnie tore it off his neck and threw it

across the court.

And he said, we are not cattle.

We won't wear numbers.

And so everybody else threw theirs on the floor.

And the day he went into the witness box

was the most terrible mistake.

I wish I'd had more influence.

I wish maybe Freddie Foreman who had influence

with him had said, don't go into the witness spots.

Because he shouted and screamed and really put himself down

as the villain that he was.

- They everyone was buying all the newspapers.

And that my mom had a book full of the cuttings,

with the cutting, which over the years disappeared,

- While the twins were being held for questioning,

they demanded that some certain members

of the firm took the flack for some

of the more serious crimes.

Well, that had the opposite effect.

And some of those people then were equited

for evidence against the twins,

which ultimately caused their downfall.

And the guilty verdicts that they both had.

- The day that they were given their sentence.

That did shock us.

It shocked everybody.

The the 30 years shocked everybody.

I'd just realized that I, the Richardsons

had been sentenced to 25 before them.

So I thought, well maybe they'll get the same.

Or maybe a doctor would be called

to assess Ronnie, which should have been.

Reggie was drunk on the night and grieving from a wife

that had just recently committed suicide.

So that was a mitigating circumstance

that was never, ever brought up in court.

- It broke Violet's heart.

Really did.

We couldn't believe it

'cause we thought they've done stuff before.

But this one, they were never gonna come out.

And I think they know that.

Nanny and Granddad Lee went, oh,

we will never see them boys again

'cause they was old, old people.

We'll never see 'em again.

They was gonna be inside.

- I've spoken to lawyers and solicitors since,

and they said, had it been today,

Ronnie Kray would've been assessed as what he was,

a paranoid schizophrenic.

He would've been assessed and sent straight to Broadmoor.

Reggie, as I say, is a different can of fish.

He wasn't insane, but he was under great stress.

And maybe that could have been a circumstance.

- [Interviewer] Why do you think the Krays

were given such hefty sentences?

- Oh, they just wanted them out the way

they messed with the establishment.

That's what we've always said.

They messed with them people, they'll have you.

- 30 years was a terrible sentence.

And Violet started crying.

And I said, what, don't cry, don't cry.

She went, well, 13 years is a long time.

I said, Violet, it's not 13 years.

She said, oh, what was it then?

I said, it's 30.

Oh.

And then she nearly collapsed.

She heard wrong.

And she thought the judge had said 13,

which would've been marvelous,

but we had no chance of 13 years.

- Oh, but Donahue, I think he was the one

because he was like super grass sort of thing.

But [indistinct] and all that, they didn't deserve

to go to prison.

They just caught up with people

who had sort of bad mental health problems.

Ronnie weren't thinking right, Reggie was drinking too much

and taking speed when Francis died

'cause he couldn't cope with the loss of her.

- I went with Violet several times.

I went to Durham, traveled all up to Durham.

We got a list from their uncle.

He was in a terrible state in Durham.

I think he'd had two fights already Ronnie,

can you imagine a Kray coming into a prison

and you've got the little upstarts in there.

Everybody thought to theirself,

well, I can fight Ronnie Kray.

What name would I have

if I suddenly had a terrible fight with Ronnie Kray

and put him into hospital or even worse.

So he was picked on a lot and he had those terrible fits

of depression.

No doctor was called to him for about a couple

of months until Violet really got onto this solicitor.

And we at last got doctor to go in

and put him under medication

'cause he went to Durham with no medication.

So he was in a terrible state.

But I visited him.

I visited Ronnie, Reggie and Charlie.

And of course the best visit was Charlie

because he'd come out with that wonderful smile.

- Well, when we was younger it was fine

'cause you'd run around with the other kids in there.

It was like a big playground.

As we got older, we sort of grew, we was teenagers then,

so we were like teenage.

So we didn't want to really go there all the time.

We didn't young people don't wanna sit

in a prison all the time, so visiting people.

So we trailed off a bit.

I mean, brother fell out with Reggie big time.

And once he'd fell out with someone, me brother,

he won't talk to him again.

So the visit stopped with Reggie.

But I carried on seeing Reggie because I loved him.

He was always nice to me.

He was very understanding.

He was more like a father figure,

he was like a father figure.

And he was always nice.

He was always pleasant,

entirely different to what Ronnie was.

- But I had the best visits.

I know this sounds unbelievable,

but I had the best visits at Broadmoor.

And when I say that to people,

oh, what fun we had at Broadmoor, they say,

how can you have fun at Broadmoor?

It's an asylum, it's a prison hospital

for the criminally insane.

But by that time, of course, he was lovely subdued

with medication.

He'd asked for all his suits to be made and bought in.

We got instructions to take silk shirts.

I took him silk ties.

He came out dressed, well, I don't know what to say.

Dressed exactly the same as he did on the outside,

going to a nightclub.

Absolutely immaculate had what he wanted.

I went with a man called Jack Lee,

who unfortunately passed away a few years ago.

But we went every month.

And on our way through the east end, we used

to buy smoked salmon bagels

'cause that was another order of Ronnie,

ties, hanky, silk underwear, silk socks,

unlike poor Reggie, of course,

who could only later on have track suits, t-shirts

and Reebok trainers.

And they had to be Reebok.

He'd heard from the young guys in there, obviously,

that that was the make at the time.

So we had to get him a Reebok track suit, Reebok t-shirt,

Reebok trainers, but could never dress like Ronnie Kray.

And the visits in Broadmoor was, were wonderful.

I never minded to go, although it was another journey

right to Crowthorne.

But we never stopped laughing.

- Could be a nightmare at the best of times.

Especially if Charlie was with us on visits

down in Maidstone Prison.

If him and Charlie had fallen out,

there was always an atmosphere of him and Charlie

were speaking on good terms.

Then it was a better visit for everybody.

So the first visits he had an aura about him.

Very short in height, Reggie.

But when he walked through,

he knew that there was someone of high importance

in Gangland.

- I was running a security company at the time

when I first met the Kray twins.

And security company was getting big.

I actually had my wife was an identical twin.

They were rappers and they'd done a song called,

"They Took the Rap" and it was a set

of twins doing a song about a set of twins.

And I was doing a little bit of work in London

in borderline criminality.

And they had heard of me and I'd obviously heard of them.

And they wanted to meet me because I had a record contract

for them to sign with a swing.

So that was the initial meeting, really.

And I went down to meet Reggie at Mate Stone.

He could obviously see the potential in being my friend.

I definitely got the potential

of being associated with the Krays.

And like everyone else, I was a very young man and in awe.

And they've done an awful,

anyone who makes their living from selling

their criminal past owes a lot to the Krays.

Everybody.

Yeah, everyone they made crime palatable

to the general public.

And I feel that I was very much a part of their legs

and arms while they was in there

in a lot of different areas, as was other people.

And it benefited me greatly to be associated with,

I was a Kray association.

And it benefited them financially

and gratefully that they were associated with me.

Yeah.

So it was a working amicable relationship between me

and them and me and anyone else that was working with them,

it made my army of men out and down the country

a little bit bigger.

And it made them an awful lot more powerful

and stronger having me on their side

as I truly believe I had the biggest firm around that era,

you know what I mean?

In that little space of time,

there weren't nothing bigger or better than mine.

And I suppose falsely it was looked upon

as I was working for them.

It wasn't really, but I didn't mind that little mix

being mistook, you know what I mean?

Done me favors and them favors.

So we went through our relationship like that,

I mean, I'd done things for them.

They've done a lot for me.

My reputation helped them

and their reputation definitely helped me.

That propelled me into the Dave Cook

that everyone knows and sees today.

- I got the call from Kate Kray,

actually to tell me Ronnie had died.

That was the first I knew early morning.

She was in a supermarket when it came over a radio

playing music, a news flash.

And she phoned me immediately.

And then later on that day, I got a call

from Reggie saying, I want you

to do the seating in the church

because you know everybody, it's no good an usher

seating people from the funeral parlor

because the usher knew nobody.

- I got a phone call from Reggie Kray saying,

someone's rung up the funeral parlor,

they was gonna desecrate the body and burn it down,

and would I sleep in the funeral parlor.

So I've got a few people around me

to sleep in the funeral parlor 24 hours a day

for the two weeks waiting for the funeral

to actually take place.

And in that time, it then dawned on everyone

how big a funeral it was actually going to be.

I don't think anyone at the beginning had any,

I genuinely believe this.

I don't think anyone at all

at the beginning of that funeral, actually at the beginning

of that week, thought that the funeral was gonna be so vast.

It just materialized in front of our eyes.

As the days went past, it was growing bigger.

They started, the cameramen started finding their places

outside the funeral parlor a week beforehand.

And the police was coming, it was gonna be vast.

And that propelled me into

organizing the biggest security job I've had,

for the most televised world publicized job anyone

would ever have in security.

And I genuinely believed at the time

this was gonna propel me into the major league

financially security and be a trampoline for me

to go into anything else after that,

and I took on board the 150 of

what I thought were the tastiest men I could had

in my phone book, I had the equivalent

of Mr. Newcastle, Mr. Liverpool, Mr. Glasgow, Mr. London,

I had the creme de la creme as you was there yourself, sir,

all under one umbrella of [indistinct].

I thought that was gonna propel me

into some kind of security stardom.

But it actually brought me to the attention

of the general public and of the authorities

that there was an army, an army of,

and it was their very first, as it was pointed out

to me in my next old Bailey court case,

the very first public showing

of organized crime in Great Britain

where one criminal organized every other criminal

in Great Britain to all be at the same place

at the same time, all in the same gang

celebrating the life of another criminal.

That was a very frightening thing

for the authorities, although I took it on board as well.

Get a load of me, at the time,

villains were supposed to be in dark alleys.

You'd collar up, no pictures, no comment, no,

and don't drive a nice car, you know, keep it low key.

That was what crime was supposed to be about at the time.

And I took it beyond that and showed off me and mine.

- I was told who was going to carry Ronnie

and therefore I said, well, okay, I will.

And he said, I've spoken to Dave Courtney

and he's got 150 guards outside on the path leading up

to the church door and St. Matthew's Row,

which is where the church is,

and all along Bethel Green Road.

I said, well, fine, that's fine.

It'll keep people away from maybe running at the cars.

They wanna take flowers off.

I mean, they do these silly things

when these sort of people die.

And then he said, and I've got 12 security guards,

six down each side of the church.

I said, no, you're not Reg.

He said, what?

I said, no, you're not.

I don't want any security guards in the church,

ushering people forward, pushing people back.

I will do the lot.

He said, Flan, you cannot handle 300 people.

I said, yes I can, because I want one guard,

very, very efficient and look immaculate.

The doors behind the wooden doors are glass

so I can see who's coming

and I'm gonna tell him to let 12 in at a time.

And I know where my book in my hand

where Reggie wants certain people placed.

And he said, we will have six then.

I said, Reg, please, no,

just gimme the one guy who you trust implicitly,

a very efficient security guard on the door.

And no one will come in those glass door

until I give him the nod.

And that's how it was done.

But I mean, a difficult day for me,

because you got all of a sudden who comes walking down

after I've seated the family.

And Reg came in handcuffs obviously,

but who walks down the aisle but Lenny McClain

with a friend of his, and he's walked down

and plunked himself in the third row.

Now what man is gonna say to Lenny McClain,

you can't sit there, but this is what I knew I could do.

I knew if he left it to me, I use my brain.

I went up to Lenny and I said, Lenny,

you can't sit there darling.

Get up.

He said, why?

I'm all right here Flan.

I went, no, we've got a special place for you.

He went, oh, are you expecting trouble?

See so I played to his vanity really.

I said, maybe Lenny, I want you in a special place.

Reggie's told me where to put you.

And I marched him back to the seventh row.

Him and his friends sat down like two lambs,

of course, five minutes later, who walks in?

Roy Shaw.

Now you can't sit Roy Shaw on the same side

of the church or anywhere near Lenny McClain,

but an usher or anybody else

wouldn't have known these things.

I knew these things I know the rivalry

and the feud they had.

So I see Roy Shaw on the other side of the church,

couple of rows back, and that's how I had to box clever

with certain people.

And I knew Reggie saw that.

- Different factions of different groups

that generally didn't get on,

they were shooting and killing each other in everyday life.

Northern, southern, Protestant, Catholic, black, white,

Indian, Pakistani, Hells Angel,

the whole mix was gonna be there.

But they was all there and they all

drew a truce because they was honoring the monarch

of the British underworld.

Yeah, Ronnie Kray had died.

- Oh, mega.

I mean the one with Violet, Violet's funeral

that was really loads of people hanging about outside

of flats just wanting to pay their respects.

And then when the twins with the funeral,

we went to all of them.

We had the one of Charlie, we had Ronnie

and Charlie and Reggie.

So we'd been to all of them and they're always packed.

The more funerals you went to,

the more more packed out it was.

I mean, you had to fight your way through to the undertakers

to get like to get sort of

say what thing he was in, you know?

But it's, no, it was amazing.

It was, I mean, people just showed out their support

to him, everything.

But I suppose that didn't do much good doing that.

- I did actually have a conversation with the chief

of police when I was doing my little cocky attitude.

And he said, and we was talking about

who's gonna do what with the security.

And he said, and I was doing what I'm not gonna put bibs on,

they're gonna know who my men are and blah blah.

And if you don't know who should be in the church

and who shouldn't, church only holds 200 people,

you're gonna be turning away people that should be in there

and who's gonna stand around the hole at the funeral,

who's gonna stand outside the cemetery,

who's gonna come in the church, who's allowed

in the funeral parlor, he's running.

He bury him.

And when Reggie gets out the funeral parlor

and goes to the actual funeral to see run him rest,

I'm gonna be looking after him.

And if you're looking after a president

walking from the curb to there, if someone jumps out

with a firearm, what are you supposed to do?

Just go like that in front of him or whatever.

You have to have a firearm to defend the president

so stupidly, which I could cut my tongue out,

I'd try to explain that to the chief of police

where he is going you and your little band of men,

I know you're gonna do the best you can,

but one thing we've got that you haven't got is firearms.

And not a fool.

Not a fool.

I actually, my artist that was, well, no,

the one thing you've got, we haven't got

is firearm certificates.

All got a gun.

If we're looking after our monarch,

we've gotta defend him in the way.

So saying that to the chief of police

actually ended the whole of Dave Courtney's career.

- The little old ladies that came to the three funerals.

The funny thing, I, they stand at the railings outside

and they wave to me and I go in the church

and I get 'em three funeral cards,

just the three ladies from the block of flats round

in Valance Road that knew them.

And I take them out to them and they say, oh, thank you.

And I did it to Ronnie, Charlie, Reggie,

and also Gary Kray, Charlie Kray's son.

So, I did the seating for the four Krays

and everything went smooth the whole way

to Chingford Cemetery.

When we got to Walthamstow,

we passed the Walthamstow dog track and we are in the car.

I'm in the third car with the family,

with Rita and Kim Pete.

And I looked up

and there were builders sitting on the roof

of Walham sewer dog track, obviously workers.

They took their helmets off and cheered

and sat there till the whole funeral went past.

I thought, these are builders,

probably never seen a Kray in their life,

but obviously heard about them.

And that's how the myth goes on.

- The association to the Krays then became the biggest bird.

I didn't know that at the time,

but within that same week, they went to every door

where I had a doorman and went,

you won't have a license for television

if you still employ Dave Courtney.

They went to the magazines that was writing for

and said, sack him as a journalist.

Went to every film director that would put me in the film

and said, you don't want to have him in the film

because criminally orientated film ain't going get on.

They banned my film from ever coming out.

You know, it affected my life greatly,

but I didn't realize it at the time.

The very next day, I'm now propelled in the stardom

as heir to the throne, celebrity gangster,

what is that word?

What does that mean?

Celebrity gangster, heir to the throne.

- [Interviewer] Charlie Kray wrote a book

about doing business with the mafia.

Do do you believe the Krays

had an involvement with the American mafia?

- Yes, definitely.

And it's been documented in films.

It's bumped up a little bit what happened.

But they did come over here

and they did meet in a city hotel.

I can't specifically say it was the Tower Hotel,

it may not have been, but it was a city hotel.

And both twins went.

But just previous to this, remember

that they'd bought George Raft over,

which was George Raft the film star played gangsters

and dressed immaculate.

He was known at the time as the smartest man in Hollywood.

And Ronnie Kray loved that

and I think copied a few of the cravats

and a few of the silk handkerchiefs.

That's why he was always buying them

and ordering them just stopped

by not wearing the spats on the shoes

that George Raft wore.

They brought George Raft over to the Colony Club,

and that was the intro into hoping

that the mafia could bring organized crime to London.

That's what Ronnie told me.

That's what Reggie told me.

And that's what Charlie told me.

- You're asking me whether I genuinely believed

that the Kray twins had mafia connections.

I genuinely believed that members of the mafia did come

to this country and they were entertained by the mafia

in the Kray twins' nightclub.

And they was looked after and wined and dined with ladies

and drink and whatever they had.

As I have been, as I have been in America

with the Gambinos, I've had them at my house,

I've been over to America.

I've wined and dined them,

but I'm not actually confessing

that I could call upon them

as one of my arms and legs to do anything for me.

I've associated with and met them

and the Kray twins are exactly the same.

They met them, I don't believe for one minute

that the actual mafia looked upon them

or wanted to actually join up with them two brothers

that just run that little bit of the east end.

Yeah, because just across the water, there's Freddy Foreman

who run that little bit with the Richardsons just over there

who run that little bit.

And there was the Nashs in North London

who run that little bit.

And there was the Kray twins who run that little bit.

You know, they would, I don't think for a second

that the mafia actually seriously thought

of anything joining up business wise with the Kray twins.

- They wanted to use the Krays to come over to England

and start a gambling business over here.

But from my opinion, it's my opinion,

the Krays were the wrong people to approach.

- They, on the other hand,

might have actually propelled their visit

and hopefully gained a lot of respect from everyone else,

letting everyone else think

that they was gonna do business with the mafia.

- They were violent criminals,

and I think there was plenty of people in London,

if they had have approached those people,

I think the mafia could have had an inroad in England.

Yeah, sure.

- So I can't speak about the other families in London

or in the UK but if it's our circle,

then the names which come up are of course Freddy Foreman

with the Philadelphia mob when he was out there on his toes

during the late seventies and eighties.

He had a good relationship with them.

They highly respect them even to this day.

So did the New York families,

Joe Powell, Sr.

It goes back many years.

They still speak highly of Joe, the elders in New York

who I've had lunch with,

and Will Pine, of course,

the twins, Reggie and Ronnie,

they are spoken highly off ones who knew Ronnie

or who met Ronnie when he was over there,

but above the twins,

it's mainly Freddie Foreman, Joe Powell Sr.

And Will Pine.

And I'm course, I'm sure that other families.

- As I did by being connected to the Kray twins.

Yeah.

And on the same thing as that,

I used the Kray twins to promote me.

And they used that visit from the mafia to promote them.

But whether it was a serious meeting of, shall we pair up

and do any business together,

I very, very, very much doubt it.

- And I said, oh, I've got to see him, I've got to see him.

Is he exactly like he's in films?

And he said, well come out Friday

because we are bringing our mother down there

to meet George Raft.

Oh, I thought, god, we dressed up Mrs. Kray and I,

we both had first dolls on and our hair piled up

and we really looked good

and off we went to the Colony Club.

And that's where I met George Raft.

And he was exactly how he is in films.

Not a tall man, quite a small man, but so elegant.

Oh my god, really, really.

And still had the spats on his shoes, which I commented on.

I said, that's what you wear in films.

And he said, I do and I love them.

And I said to Ronnie, Ronnie, you'll be wearing those.

He said, no I won't.

And that's it.

I like my shoes as they are.

No, I won't be wearing those.

So that's how I met George Raft.

But they bought, Judy Garland was singing at the Palladium

at the time and she was absolutely bankrupt

and they'd given her a six weeks time at the Palladium.

And the twins went, they were introduced to her backstage

and Ronnie said, you know that song that you sing?

And she said, well, it must be "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

He said, when you get changed, when you finish here,

we are gonna take you out to a couple of clubs.

She thought, well, all right.

She was with her husband, they got her in the car

and he said, Valance Road.

And they took her to Valance Road

and she thought, she must have thought, god, what's this?

He said, no, no, no, we're only gonna be here 10 minutes.

This is my mother's house.

They took her in and he said to Violet

'cause she told me, she said, look mom,

we bought you your favorite singer, Judy Garland.

And she said, that's not Judy Garland.

She said, she's too tiny 'cause by this time,

it was nearing the end of her life.

She was an alcoholic, she was drug addicted

and as I say, bankrupt.

And Ronnie said, oh, she'll prove it by singing the song.

And she sat there with Mrs. Kray

and held her hand and sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

Can you imagine the most famous singer in the world,

possibly alongside Frank Sinatra at the time,

is sitting in a little house in Valance Road

singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow".

The next night she was singing to thousands

of people at the London Palladium.

But that's the sort of person he was Ronnie,

he wanted everything.

And up until a certain point he could have everything.

- Yeah. I've never heard any mafia man say

that they was gonna be doing business with the Kray twins.

I've never heard no Americans run round and say that.

Not really.

Not anyone of any stature.

So, I'm on my thoughts on that.

Oh, it's not true.

- [Interviewer] Do you believe that the twins

had dealings with the mafia?

- Well, I think early on, I think they did early on,

because one of them come over to Violet

and I think Ronnie got him a dog or something.

God knows why buying him a dog.

But he had a dog, those bull terriers, he give him that.

And I dunno what happened to the dog,

but I think he left it, he left it.

He probably didn't want a dog to take it back there

with him, but, so he kept it, Ronnie, he kept it,

he was like used to feed it and this and that

and he really loved it.

And he used to say,

because they're not very attractive dogs.

And he used to say, I feel sorry for him.

And he went, yeah, he ain't nothing to look at.

He said, but it's a nice little dog.

[upbeat music]

- I think the Krays definitely had a link to the mafia,

but that link wasn't quite how some people

would lead you to believe.

[gentle music]

- [Interviewee] Well, before I start,

I just wanna make it clear

that you're not gonna show my face

because a lot of what I know is still,

I'm still on what you guys would call the firm.

- Okay, yeah, yeah.

Where it all begins is in 1960 when a new betting

and gaming act is passed, which came into force in 1961.

Before that, the only place that you could bet

was on a race course.

- [Interviewee] I spent a lot of time in London in the 1960s

with my father.

Of course there was gaming in London before we arrived,

but we knew how to do it properly.

We had a long history of it in The Bahamas, Vegas, Cuba,

and then London fell.

- You couldn't, there were no betting shops,

there were no casinos, there was nothing.

At the point that the act came into force,

it opened the whole of the gambling industry up

and allowed pretty much anybody to open a casino,

a betting shop.

The act itself was quite poorly worded.

And there were casinos opening at a rate

of something like 100 a week at one point.

But because it was poorly worded

and because it's largely a cash business,

it attracted a lot of undesirables

and organized crime soon kind of began

to get a foothold in the industry.

- [Interviewee] Things worked well in Cuba

for many years, but not anymore.

And my father moved to London in 1963

where he set up a school.

My father would only work with the best.

And he brought the Kray brothers across from,

to run the school.

Bobby and Freddy were from the same neighbor as my father.

They were really respected.

He knew for a gambling club to be successful,

the clientele had to trust that the games were strained.

That they may have been some very serious people involved,

but the games were always there.

- 1963 is the first time the Krays actually meet the mafia.

When Angelo Bruno, who was the boss

of the Philadelphia crime family, made a trip to London

to really see whether it was true

what he was being told about gaming

and the potential for his organization to have a cut of it.

Angelo Bruno went back to America

and very quickly dispatched a man called Dino Cellini

who was May Lansky's kind of right hand man.

- [Interviewee] Meyer and my father were close.

It wouldn't be unusual to see him two or three times a week.

- He took up residence at the Hilton in Park Lane

and went on to open a Croupier school.

Dino Cellini never described himself as a mafia man.

He wasn't a made man.

He hadn't gone through all of that.

He was a mathematician.

He was a specialist in gaming

and he'd worked for the mafia in Vegas.

He'd worked for them in Cuba

and he had made them an incredible amount of money.

When Dino opened the Croupier school,

he did it smack bang in the middle of the west end

in Hanover Square.

- [Interviewee] He knew what made a successful casino

and he understood the odds of the mechanics

and the math better than anyone I knew.

- By now, the invasion, if you want to call it that,

of the mafia into London was beginning.

They already had a hand in several casinos in the West End.

And Kirs in Mayfair was one, Hilton in Park Lane another,

there were another four or five that they had interests in.

The crowning jewel in this master plan

that was being devised by May Lansky

and Dino Cellini was the Dorchester Hotel.

They felt that that was the top hotel

in London at that time.

And to have a gaming floor in that hotel

would make it their flagship operation.

So the approach to Maxwell Joseph, the owner

and negotiations went well.

He agreed maybe as you would,

and it looked all dead set as if they were gonna have gaming

at the Dorchester Hotel.

But Sir Maxwell had a condition he wanted

to see the operation working first.

He didn't want to be the guinea pig.

He wanted to know that if he introduced the gaming,

that it was slick and it worked

and it wasn't gonna backfire on him.

So he spoke to the representatives from the mafia

and said, look, I'm all for it, but show me it works first.

And that's what the mafia then did.

Using the Victoria Sporting Club in Edgeware Road.

The mafia then started to put their plan into action.

The idea was not just to cater for London's wealthy society.

- [Interviewee] Oh, the jackets, yeah, yeah.

We'd run those in Vegas other places.

And London was no different groups of high rollers

who would spend big, I mean, we'd fly them in from the US

and they played exclusively at our club

before we could fly back again.

Those were serious players with serious money.

And by now we have interests in a few clubs in the West End.

- In the September of 1965,

the mob finally get their hands on the Colony Club,

which I guess is probably the most famous mafia linked club

in London.

Through a a series of deals they acquired the club

and began transforming it.

They knew they wanted a front man,

but they weren't sure who,

so initially they sat down with Billy Hill,

who was formally the gang boss of London, really,

and still held a lot of sway.

And so they sat him down and asked his advice,

and he said, look, you need an Englishman.

You need an Englishman to do the hosting.

But the mafia thought they knew better.

And so they called on their friend George Raft,

who was the famous Hollywood actor,

famous for playing gangsters,

but also famous for mixing with them and working with them.

And he'd done various jobs with them,

fronting casino operations in other parts of the world.

So he, to them, was the ideal candidate.

And almost overnight,

when he was installed at the Colony Club,

it was an overnight success.

People flocked there because George Raft was there.

So it was a calculated risk by the mafia.

But at this point, it did work.

- By the time they opened the Colony Club,

my father had a suite at the Dorchester where we lived,

and I was working with him too.

It was a great time to be a young man in London.

And once George arrived, the Colony really shook off

the famous photo of him outside the club

in front of the Rolls Royce was taken by father.

All the stars loved the Colony,

especially as George was there.

It was a big bang gun when they were filming

the "Dirty Johnson" in London.

The cast were there every night.

And I remember Charles Bronson and Kelly Al

is especially telling my father became great friends.

- At around this time a summit was called in Central London.

And it really read like a who's who

of the criminal underworld.

People who were attending were people like Angelo Bruno,

again, Dino Cellini, May Lansky himself flew in

as well as other representatives from countries

like Germany, Yugoslavia, Holland,

who were part of that mafia family.

And it was to decide how everything was gonna be distributed

and how the roots were gonna work for the money to go back

and all of the finer detail.

But the problem was the Met Police found out

about this meeting, and so it got moved

to a private house in South London.

It was Wimbledon, I believe.

And at that meeting were also some English criminals,

some English people who could help.

Not the Krays though.

- [Interviewee] I knew that in the early days in London,

some of our people met with some

of the local guys on the streets.

I wasn't present, but I was told the Kray brothers

were involved in a breach.

It was good business.

And everyone got on and there was an understanding

that there had to be no trouble in our establishment.

I know one evening when our understanding didn't quite

work out though, I think it was Ronnie who was arguing

with the man at the table close to the entrance

and one of our guys had to go over

and call the situation.

We didn't need the attention.

And they, yeah, they didn't come in much after that.

- Angelo Bruno felt initially when he first met them,

that they would be crucial to his plan,

try and get the local hoodlums on side.

But the mafia were realizing that the Krays

were really thugs.

They were good thugs but bad criminals.

They were shining an unwelcome light

on the mafia's operations at the Colony

and so they came to an agreement.

Angelo Bruno offered them 1,700 pounds every single week

to stay away from the Colony Club.

Towards the end of 1966, the government got wind

of what was going on.

There were discussions held between the Prime Minister

and his security advisors about the invasion

were the words that we used of undesirables

into London, and the concerns about what would happen

if they continued to spread their operations

throughout the country.

[gentle music]

In the January of 1967, at the other end of the country,

a man called Angus Sibert was found dead in the back

of his car in a small mining town.

Angus was a cash collector for a gaming company.

The company dealt in pinball machines, juke boxes,

one arm bandits and Angus had been murdered.

The police quite quickly arrested

and subsequently convicted two men,

and those men worked in the same company

that Angus worked for.

So this murder was linked to the gaming community.

I don't think it's any coincidence that within three weeks

of that murder happening, the government expelled

five mafia figures from the UK

and said, we don't want you here.

You are undesirable.

Go away.

One of those was Dino Cellini.

- [Interviewee] Oh, the end of things of London

began when they refused to let George

back into the country in early '67.

Then my father and a number of the associates were asked

to leave Oregon deport.

- George Raft he was on a holiday at the time, at his home,

was told, we're not gonna let you back into the UK

if you try and fly in.

So he was blocked too.

This made life really, really difficult

and totally scuppered the plans that May Lansky

and Dino Cellini had been working on.

- [Interviewee] But let me make one thing clear.

No one could have ordered my father on a plane

if he didn't want go, but he knew it was over

and it was time to move on.

- The government started to work on another gaming bill,

but one that would be stricter, one that would mean

that people who operated a casino

had to have certain credentials.

It made it very, very difficult

for anybody within organized crime to operate.

The deal with the Dorchester kind of limped on for a bit,

but as people started to learn about the changes in the law

and with Dino not being in the UK

and May Lansky not being able to fly in

it just died to death, it never happened.

But that's not quite the end of the story.

The Krays have one more meeting with the mafia.

In 1968, not long before the twins were arrested for murder,

Ronnie Kray flies with a companion to New York

to meet Angelo Bruno.

But unbeknown to Ronnie, he's trailed the entire time

by the FBI, who knows every movement and log it in a report.

When Ron came back, he was full of stories

of how the mafia had looked after him

and the respect that he'd commanded.

And, but the reality of it really was that Angelo Bruno

had palmed him off on some of his minions, really

to look after him.

Whether any meaningful business was conducted

during this visit, no one really knows

because within only a few weeks of him coming back

to the UK, everything went up for the Krays.

- I'm sure that there was a few Americans that did

come over here and say, oh, I've actually met

and spoke to the Gambinos myself.

I wouldn't actually dare actually go, I'm associated with,

and I've got mafia connections,

and I could call upon them to actually kill someone for me.

Or they wanted to ask to run Margaret South London as well.

Yeah, no, no disrespect whatsoever.

I hold them highly and greatly in what they did

with what they had and for where they was at that time.

You cannot compare it beyond words to compare to now,

but at the time, they was running their little bit

and running it quite well.

You know, I mean, my hat off to him,

but whether you are actually asking,

if you are asking me whether I genuinely believe

that they had a mafia connection

where the mafia was looking at them as equals

to ask what help or what they could do together.

I can't prove one way or the other,

but I very, very much doubt it knowing the mafia

and knowing the Krays as personally as well as I do.

Because on the other side of one river, the Thames,

there was Freddy Fullman,

so it was a completely different outfit.

They should have asked him.

That was more than likely to have happened.

But because they had the nightclub

and they was going get a load of me,

they did have the mafia there to entertain them.

And I'm sure the mafia came for the entertainment,

the free birds, the free booze,

everyone running around looking after 'em.

I'd do it, I'd do it.

I've been out to America.

I have been entertained by the Gambinos.

They've took me, I wouldn't dare say I'm connected.

- Yeah, a few years ago, I had to go over at the neighbors

with Italian friends of mine, and I met a couple

of families over there who were proper guys.

They were made people, you know,

I socialized with 'em on a couple of nights

and I met the family, very family orientated.

These guys didn't portray themselves as being gangsters.

They were very quiet, very sociable people.

And that's the difference with people like that

and the Kray twins, the Kray twins were unapproachable.

These people were approachable.

You could sit down, you could speak to them,

and that's the difference,

all the difference in the world actually.

- Yeah what they've done to Charlie Kray

was a very public, a very public

it should all, it's illegal almost what they've done,

how they baited him, how they played with him,

I mean, and it was just to really make sure

that no Kray ever ended up living happily ever after.

And it's only a myth that he was living happily ever after.

The man died with holes in his shoes,

one suit in his work and a Casio watch,

but if you believe the papers,

which is what they've got, the control of the media,

they can, and people are sheep.

They will make you believe anything they want to tell you.

And unless you've had it done about you,

you would never understand what that's like.

Unless it's been on the news

about something about you that ain't right.

You would never, and people are believing it.

You would not understand the power of the media.

You would not understand it.

And he's last name Kray got him two tenure sentences,

and the last one he got, I was actually a witness,

a character witness in Ronnie Kray, sorry,

Charlie Kray's life sentence.

I was his next door neighbor

for a year in a special unit at Bell Marsh.

And Charlie Kray would,

was an old man that had no financial resources whatsoever

that would go out of anyone that bought him a drink

and be, and say and do what anything you wanted him to be.

- I did meet Charlie a couple of times at events.

I'd as a youngster I'd watched the Krays film

with the Kemp Brothers, and it was totally sucked in by it.

And I loved the glamour and the suits

and the respect they commanded.

And it was a great film.

And so I'd written to Reg in prison

and I had had a letter back from Reg,

and that initially really began my proper interest

in the Krays.

And as part of that, I attended some of the events,

some of the parties in London that they used to hold

as fundraisers, charity, things to highlight the fact

that they'd been in prison for 30 years

and perhaps they ought to get a chance at parole.

And that's where I met Charlie.

He was there, all of them representing the twins.

My impression of him, I certainly didn't find him dangerous.

I found he was quite an old man by that point.

He was friendly.

He was smiling, he was happy

he was a pleasure to be in his company,

but I wasn't scared of being in his company.

He was just a gentle old man by then.

Maybe 30 years before then

it would've been a different story.

But I just get the impression that it is Charlie

that perhaps was the hardest done by

in the whole story, really.

He ended up having to clear up after his brothers.

And he really had no major involvement

in the big crimes, in the murders.

Yet he ended up serving a huge sentence for them.

And having that name, that meant

that he could never progress in life

when he'd served his sentence.

- Unfortunately for Charlie, he had a thing that if you said

there's a birthday party for a kid next week,

I want 12 crack clowns.

He said, I'll give you a number.

I can do it.

If you said you wanted to sing some pub Saturday night,

he could do it, right.

If you wanted something out of Harrods,

he could get discount.

He always said yes to everything and put people together,

but he was no villain, that was left to his brothers.

- And all anyone wanted to do with Charlie Kray

was talk about the Krays were a crime.

And if you went to him, could you this Charlie,

he go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll have a brandy,

I'll have a brandy.

Or could you get a pink combine harvester?

He go, I'll have a chat with the boys,

I'll have a chat with the boys.

Can you get me a gun course?

Will, could you get so and so shot course

will get me a brandy.

Can you get me a kid Charlie, Charlie?

He go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then that's it.

That really is it.

He would've said yes to anything.

Can you find a goldfish, Charlie,

you gotta have a chat with the boys.

Get me a brandy.

He'd go out and that's his

and some buckeye policeman saw that

and just used on it, that jumped on it

befriended him, done him the thing.

And in the end they're going, get me, just get me that.

Get me this, get me that.

And he couldn't do it.

And it wasn't his cup of tea.

He's no cocaine criminal mastermind.

He's got as much chance of that as I have

of growing a ponytail.

That's really not real.

It's a myth.

I feel sorry for the man.

He's a normal 14-year-old kid with a normal everyday life.

And his mum gave birth to Ronnie and Reggie Kray, fuck man.

I mean, he's been paying for that dearly.

And when it came to him going, will you get me that thing?

Will you get me that thing?

When they're handing him and buying his friendship

with presents and all that real, how would you call it?

Entrapment.

Entrapment.

Yeah.

They're doing that for him, to him,

I mean, in such a blatant way, in such a blatant way

to a little old man that they, once they've checked up on

and the arrested them and looked for his financial resources

or what he owns or what he don't own, he didn't own a car

or nothing, nothing.

They still went and just played on the Kray twin thing

and got away with it.

- No, he was never like that.

He was always one that got pulled in with him sort of thing.

I think he'd have rather been a businessman

own a club or something like that and get on with it.

But they wouldn't, it sort,

they dragged him back all the time,

even when they was inside do this, if he got outta prison,

they wanted him to do stuff for him.

He went like, I haven't even draw breath yet.

But no, definitely wasn't feeling Charlie.

He was a nice person.

He had his mother's personality, not the fathers at all.

- I never saw any, I never saw Charlie Kray

break the law once.

Never saw him activity wise, doing anything criminal.

I only saw him as a gentleman and as a businessman.

It's sad that he passed away in prison.

- I only, I saw him in Durham when he first got sentenced

to the 12 years.

He asked me would I come up.

There was a couple of things he wanted me to do.

And I was driven up there by a guy

that was really campaigning for his innocence

and to get him another trial called Les Martin.

And he drove me all the way to Durham,

or I was really so upset.

Gone was the lovely handsome Charlie Kray's

got this dreadful, this thing that you wear

when you are a category A,

it was like a sort of a bib, a horrible orange.

And I thought, I've gotta make sort of,

I've gotta make him laugh somehow.

And I said, what's that you've got on?

He said, oh, they're treating me like a baby.

Look Flan, I've got a bib on.

And I cuddled him and he bust out crying.

I mean, the only other time I see Charlie Kray cry

was when he buried his mother.

He was very close to his mother,

but unfortunately she favored the twins

and more so Ronnie, he was always left a little bit

in the background with them, with his mother.

Not that she didn't love him,

but she focused on the twins.

- [Interviewee] How did you and the family feel

when Charlie was arrested in these later years?

- Oh, it was terrible.

It was a fit up job.

Fit up job.

He had no connections to anything like that at all.

He was on his uppers.

He didn't have loads of money coming in.

And it's just, I don't believe it at all.

I don't, everyone you talk about,

they go, they stitched him up.

They just did.

They wanted to get rid of the other Krays.

So they banged him out in prison.

- As I say, always immaculate.

But this day in Durham,

he was in a terrible, terrible state.

I think a lot of it was shock.

Shock over the 12 years.

And he told me he thought he'd get six years

because he told me swore on his mother's life,

he wasn't involved.

We know that it was entrapment up north,

a birthday party people gave for him.

They gave him a gold lighter.

They bought him champagne.

I mean, why would they do this thing

if they weren't undercover police?

And that's how it happens.

- I think he was a villain in the old sense

of the word villain, but I don't think he was party

or in any agreement of the violence

and the murders and all of that that happened.

That just didn't seem to be Charlie.

Charlie was always broke in his old age.

He never had a great deal of money

because he couldn't earn a great deal

of money because of the name.

- And at the age he was, and as Ill as he was,

their choice of sell was on the fourth fucking floor.

Steven, if you've never been to prison,

you've gotta understand here that walk up and down

for breakfast and that walk up and down for dinner,

that walk up and down for tea, even if you are not ill

at 70 odd years old, that's a fucking job.

That's a task.

So they chose where to put him

and they put him four floors up that killed him.

And made sure that the last Kray died in prison.

So they won.

- That 12 year sentence was just, was disgraceful

because we all knew for Charlie Kray

to be told, and the newspaper to print,

he'd been involved with millions of pounds on a drug deal.

He's never seen a million pound.

He was always broke.

- I wasn't surprised at his sentence at all,

because he was a Kray.

And by that point they were notorious.

Reg had a lot of press recently.

Ronnie's funeral had been a massive spectacle.

They just wanted him away and out of the limelight.

And I think it was purely because of his surname

that he got such a huge sentence.

- And he, once, I think one of the things

that sticks in my mind, he said, meet me in Stringfellows

on Friday night Flan.

It was my own place to go on Friday night anyway.

And he was coming down and he came down with Bruce Reynolds.

There's two, two people to come to Stringfellows

and Peter Satin at his table.

And we were talking and talking and he said, Flan,

make me right here.

I'm just telling Peter Stringfellow,

we could have had anything.

We had the clubs, the snooker halls,

we had everything going.

We were earning money.

And what happened, my brother wanted

to start murdering people.

And he looked at that moment in time,

that was the story of Charlie Kray's life

all in one sentence.

He had everything.

He was charming.

He was the best front that you could have put in the door

of any club that anybody had.

If you'd have been standing at the door

of Stringfellows people would've flocked there

just to see him.

He was wonderful company.

But that's what he said.

My brothers threw that all away.

My brother wanted to murder people.

And that summed up Charlie Kray,

I always felt very, very sorry for him.

- Younger people were coming,

you don't realize they're gonna know.

But then they look at the films, they read the books.

So they sort of understand it, really, you know?

I mean, they are hero worships.

Even now, you'd think after all those years

they'd sort go down a bit, but you'd still get it now.

I mean, I get people online, I try to keep me eye on it

'cause I get a nutter on there.

I'm your cousin, this, that, and I go, here we go,

another loony.

So we just, I just, but yeah, there is a lot of people

like 'em, they're popular, but then there's people

that don't like them.

It's just the way it is.

You can't like everyone.

- [Interviewee] Final question, Maureen.

Are you surprised that the Kray's name

lives on to this year?

- No, I'm not.

And I think it'll live on long after us people here are gone

and on and on and on, because I've got five granddaughters

and they all know the Kray name.

So this myth will not end.

The story will go on and on and on.

They fascinate people.

I think it stems from being twins

and being quite fascinating and intriguing and terrorizing.

But people like violence, people like to go to the cinema

or watch violence on their television.

We all know this,

but maybe some young people look at this

and think, what a waste of 30 years when they had it all.

- Yeah, I think they've been turned into a myth.

I didn't know them about in their heyday,

so I can't speak about them in their sixties or fifties

or their early prison years.

Only from 95 onto after Charlie died in April, 2000,

and Reggie died October, 2000.

So it was only those years that I knew them well,

but I mean, yeah's like Jack the Ripper, isn't it?

He's still spoken about, even though he is a,

but the twins, yeah, it's strangely weird, isn't it?

That it's just that the, some people idolize them,

but really who you idolize two gentlemen

who end up spending more time in prison than they did

as free men with freedom.

So that's a sadness.

But Reggie would speak about that in Maidstone prison.

- Would you rather be loved or feared?

And with regards to the Krays they were feared,

but I don't think they were loved.

I think there was probably one person in the world

that loved them, that was Violet, their mother,

which is a sad thing.

But the guys who were nicked with 'em in 1968,

they should have never been doing any burden.

It was because of that stupidity that that had happened.

You know, my opinion, of course.

- No one on nothing is as big as a myth.

Not the Krays, not Al Capone, not Dave Courtney.

No one on nothing is as big as a myth.

The Kray twins were two very naughty little boys

in that road in Bethel Green.

Yeah.

When everyone in Bethel Green understood

and spoke English,

- I'm not really surprised that the myth lives on,

about the Krays.

I think my own experience as a kid watching the films

and the glamour, and you get sucked into it.

I can see how people are,

but I think as you get older and you learn more,

and I think as more things have come out about

what they were up to, I think then you look at it

in a more human way.

And it does surprise me sometimes that there are people

out there who have the Krays could do no wrong,

but they did.

They hurt and killed and maimed and they did a lot of damage

to a lot of people and families.

The argument of they never hurt their own

is a myth in itself.

So it does now we know so much more about the Krays

and their activities.

It does surprise me sometimes

that there are people out there who will defend them

and hold them up as heroes.

And the film's legend, Tom Hardy played a brilliant role

and it was a great film and it was a good looking film.

And so you can see people are sucked in all over again.

But I think the story of the Krays is a sad one

because all three of them died in prison.

All three of them died not free men.

And that's the moral of the story, isn't it?

I mean, crime doesn't pay.

- [Interviewee] Will we ever see [indistinct chatter].

- I think the culture of criminology

is completely different today.

It's drug orientated.

The people of my age, gangsters, there were different guys

all together, really.

And there's too many firms, too many European firms

in London now.

So I don't think you'll ever see the likes

of the Krays again.

- Now it was a different sort of thing than now.

I mean, you've seen the locks on my door,

and I, when you go, I'll lock them again

because you never know.

You never know what's gonna be like Randy, you know,

but it's, no, that's right really.

- I think it was a moment in time.

It would just come out of the war.

People were poor.

The world was a completely different place.

They were in the right place at the right time,

at the right age to capitalize on an opportunity

that they saw.

I don't think that opportunity's there now.

And I don't think, I mean, Bethel Green certainly

is a very different place now to what it was.

The whole of the East End is so now,

no, I don't think so at all.

- Who knows?

I mean, I say oh how to 'em, oh, how

to the whole reputation growing.

It ain't doing no harm.

It is myth only for us people that know my age

or the older one, it's a myth.

But so is King Arthur that's still going.

- We've got CCTV, we've got mobile phones,

we've got all sorts of other technological inventions

that mean that being a criminal, like the Krays

is just impossible.

So if that's the way of life

and the respect you want to command

and the glamour that you want in your life, then be prepared

to do some tough long jail sentences.

Because the Krays spent decades in prison.

- You can't beat a good story.

There's always gonna be room for a romantic baddie

in the world and as each generation have grown up

that are pirates, cowboys, knight in shining armor,

gangsters, James Cagney's, Robin hoods,

they're all romantic, bad, naughty boy figures of the past.

And the Kray twins are rightfully so

got their little bit in it.

Yeah, they've got their little wedge in there,

so all hell to 'em.

Yeah, hopefully when I die I'll have a little wedge myself.

- I don't think they should have been released.

No, not now.

Not now.

I know what I know at the time,

I did campaign for Reggie's release,

Ron was clearly poorly and not fit for release

and didn't really want to be released.

He was happy where he was.

But equally now we know a lot more about mental illness

and it's not as much of a stigma.

I think he was in the right place for him.

He definitely was much better there than he was

in conventional prison.

And Reg, I mean, there are a lot of things

that the prison service got wrong with Reg Kray.

You know, he died a horrible death that wasn't picked up.

The cancer wasn't picked up early enough.

He complained for many, many months of discomfort.

And he didn't get the doctor's appointments

he should have had, if he'd have come out

and been a free man and a healthy free man.

I don't think he would've posed a threat to society in terms

of whether he would've offended again

because he would've been in his sixties.

And I don't think

that would've been an option for him.

However, he would've toured all of the chat shows.

He'd have been on the front page of every newspaper.

And I think the authorities didn't want that.

And so for that reason, they would've kept him in.

[gentle music]

- I've bleeded on a little bit of on how much they hurt me,

But I've had a very good life and I cannot moan

at what they've stopped me doing by being connected to 'em

because I've had an awful lot happen to me

because I was connected to them in the first place.

And it would be wrong for me to say

I wouldn't do the Kray twin funeral

because half of my life is damned because of it.

I've had some bad bits happen.

But in reality, if I had to say no, I wouldn't change that.

I've had some wrong decisions where females are concerned.

I've made some wrong decisions where that,

which I think every man with a cock has.

Yeah.

In reality, no one wants to be at the top

of that gangster tree 'cause you don't run off

into the sunset and live happily there ever after.

You stay at the top there until someone puts an hole in you

or you get 30 years wrapped around you.

And the association of being one

of the Kray twin's henchmen don't help you in court.

And I suppose my association with the Kray twins long term,

it's hurting me now, but at the time, at the prime

of my life, it enhanced my life.

And I had a very, very good enviable life.

[gentle music]