Wannabe in My Gang? Read online

  WANNABE IN MY GANG?

  FROM THE KRAYS TO THE ESSEX BOYS

  BROUGHT TO YOU BY KeVkRaY

  Bernard O’Mahoney

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licenced or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Epub ISBN: 9781780570730

  Version 1.0

  www.mainstreampublishing.com

  Reprinted, 2006

  Copyright © Bernard O’Mahoney, 2004

  All rights reserved

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted

  First published in Great Britain in 2004 by

  MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY (EDINBURGH) LTD

  7 Albany Street

  Edinburgh EH1 3UG

  ISBN 1 84018 767 0

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Extracts from Stop the Ride by Dave Courtney, reproduced by permission of Virgin Books Ltd.

  © Dave Courtney, 1999, Virgin Books Ltd.

  Extracts from Inside the Firm by Tony Lambianou, reproduced by permission of John Blake Publishing.

  © Tony Lambrianou, 1991, 2002

  This book is dedicated to those who survived those years of madness, mayhem and murder:

  My good friend Gavin Spicer, who was always at my side; my good friend Martin Hall and family; Sue Woods; Steve ‘Nipper’ Ellis; Big Greg from Leytonstone; Ian from Barking; Jeff (stitch my head) Bulman; Larry Johnston; Mark Rothermel; Peter and Tony Simms; Chris Raal; Mark and Carol Shinnik; Roger Mellin; Dave (where’s my television) Thomkins; Steve Curtis and Nathan from Bristol; Liam the jogger from Basildon; Maurice (I’m so handsome) Golding; Paul Trehern; Chemical Bob and partner Mark. Special thanks to Martin Moore of Great Barr, Birmingham. Last, but not least, my partner Emma Turner, and my children, Adrian, Vinney and Karis.

  Those that have passed cannot change anything.

  www.bernardomahoney.com

  www.mesh-29.co.uk

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  1. About a Boy

  2. Looking After Your Own

  3. GangStars’ Paradise

  4. ‘I Read the News Today . . . Oh Boy’

  5. Conspiracy to Murder

  6. Debt and Destruction

  7. An Indecent Proposal

  8. Four Funerals and a Death Threat

  9. Murder and Mayhem

  10. Crossing the Thin Blue Line

  11. A Right Charlie

  12. Reunited at Last

  13. Pinky and Perky

  14. I’m a Celebrity? Get Out of Here!

  15. The Ride Breaks Down and the Jester is Unmasked

  Epilogue

  Reg Kray, ‘gang boss’:

  ‘There are no sex offenders or the like on my wing. We are the so-called hard men of the prison and we simply wouldn’t tolerate them. No one likes these monsters.’

  David Courtney, ‘gang boss’:

  ‘One thing that never fails to amaze me is some people’s capacity for self-delusion. I can understand trying to con someone else because you might get a reward, but conning yourself? One of the hardest things in life is to be honest with yourself; do that and you’re halfway there.’

  Leighton Frayne, ‘gang boss’:

  ‘I was stabbed very bad, through the lung, heart and spleen and seven other wounds. Pretty bad ones, but that’s life isn’t it?

  ‘I don’t like bullshit, I’m a man of my word.’

  Tony Lambrianou, ‘gang boss’:

  ‘I have regrets about my past, I must admit, but more important than anything else, I’m not ashamed of it. It’s important to me as a person that I can hold my head up, knowing that I didn’t point the finger at anybody, that I was with the twins and I fell with the twins.’

  John ‘Gaffer’ Rollinson:

  ‘All families are good families. I believe in the family structure; people look after each other. If I could have been born into a Mafia family, I would have loved it.

  ‘I was what I was. Basically, a violent, selfish, lazy, pig-headed thug, whose idea of domestic bliss was to say goodbye on a Friday evening and turn up again on Monday morning, smashed out of my skull, with a load of drunken mates in tow, waking up the kids.’

  Kate Howard (Kray):

  (1993) Ron Kray: ‘I don’t like your book. It’s too personal . . . no more books about us?’

  Kate: I smiled back. ‘No more books about us.’

  Ron: ‘Let’s forget about it.’

  Kate: ‘I couldn’t agree more.’

  (2003, from the official Kate ‘Kray’ website) ‘When Kate married gangster Ronnie Kray, he introduced her to some of the most feared and deadly criminals Britain has ever known. She persuaded them to open their hearts to her and talk about their crimes, their fears and their dreams. Kate is now an established author and has written three books on the Kray Twins and many more on what she knows best – tough guys.’

  INTRODUCTION

  I can hear them now in the pubs and clubs around Essex and London: calling me a hypocrite, swearing murderous revenge for showing them disrespect by casting doubt on their prowess.

  They will call me a hypocrite because I am a man who, like them, has broken the law, spent time in prison, intimidated, punched, kicked, cut and stabbed others to get what he wanted. They will want their revenge because nobody who thinks they have a reputation likes to hear the truth about themselves.

  So, I hear you ask, who are ‘they’?

  ‘They’ are the men who promote themselves as ‘the kings of the underworld’, the ‘hardest men in Britain’, or the ‘most evil men on the planet’.

  Fucking idiots . . .

  To be honest, I couldn’t care less what these people say or think because I am my own man and I say what I feel needs to be said. Throughout my life I have been at odds with people who have tried to impose their views or authority on me. I couldn’t see eye to eye with my father, school teachers, policemen, probation officers and later in life, prison officers. They didn’t seem to realise when they were shouting and screaming at me that I consider nothing more despicable than so-called respect based on fear. I loathed their attempts to intimidate me, make me do their will and agree with their twisted philosophy simply because they thought they could scare or overpower me. I am neither ashamed nor proud of the fact that I have been in trouble all of my life. I would be ashamed if I and those close to me had endured the years of misery it has caused for nothing.

  I don’t believe we have. Adversity has given us a bond nobody can break. It has also given me the will to try and prevent others from following the same path that I took.

  I wish somebody had been there to guide me before I embarked on this nightmare of a journey.

  Few in Essex will ever forget 1995 – I certainly won’t. Young people, fuelled initially by recreational drugs, embraced and danced at raves across the county. The Summer of Love, as the media called it, soon soured and gave way to the Winter of Discontent. My friends, their minds poisoned with Class ‘A’ drugs and ideas of gangland grandeur, began murdering one another. As well as the casualt
ies of an undeclared war, others on the fringes were suffering mental-health problems, imprisonment and death because of the drugs the combatants supplied.

  Five weeks before Christmas in 1995, an eighteen-year-old girl called Leah Betts died after taking a pill that had been supplied by my associates. Two weeks later, three of my friends had their brains blown out by an assassin as they sat in their Range Rover, parked down a quiet farm track. So much for the season of goodwill.

  The death of Leah Betts and the murder of my friends in such a short period of time had a profound effect on me. I knew my time had come, that I had to get out or I too would die an undignified death or be imprisoned. I realised I had to try and shed the criminal make-up I had worn since I was a boy.

  I did everything I could to break my criminal bonds. I distanced myself from my associates and I did the unthinkable; I assisted the police. I told myself that I was a reformed character but I soon found out that society never really wants to forgive, because people are not prepared to forget. Why should they, particularly when the debt you owe involves the deaths of others?

  Such debts can never really be settled.

  In 1996, Leah Betts’ father appeared on national television and called me a bastard, saying he held me responsible for the death of his daughter. The public naturally felt for a man who had lost somebody so young and many believed that I had indeed killed her. At school my children were taunted by other children who said that I was a murderer. Life for us all became impossible. In an effort to set the record straight, I wrote So this is Ecstasy?, telling the true story of the events which led up to Leah’s death.

  I have since written three other books. Essex Boys highlights the plight of Jack Whomes and Mick Steele, who were convicted of murdering my three friends as they sat in their car. I firmly believe that they are innocent and so felt it was a book that needed to be published. I then wrote Soldier of the Queen, an honest account of my time serving as a British soldier in my family’s native Ireland. Forget those SAS memoirs, this book tells the true story of what life was really like fighting an everyday war against the IRA. After a three-year legal battle at the High Court in London, I won the right to publish The Dream Solution, which tells the story of my involvement with sisters Lisa and Michelle Taylor who butchered 21-year-old bride Alison Shaughnessy and evaded justice.

  There is nothing wrong with anybody writing books that are factual and have something worthwhile to say, but I do think that during the last decade publishers and those in the media who serialise and review books have turned misery and murder into a form of light entertainment.

  When ‘gangster’ Dave Courtney wrote his biography (1999), he boasted about getting away with murder, living a life of luxury funded by crime and dealing in drugs. The book was serialised by a national newspaper who printed a photograph of one of Courtney’s young children holding a gun. This was an absolutely obscene episode and should have been condemned, but the newspaper concerned paid Courtney for the ‘privilege’ of promoting him as a successful criminal and showing the offensive photograph. I can now reveal that Courtney has never committed a murder; the book is based on his weird and disturbing fantasies.

  Sadly, Courtney is not the only one who has written a ‘true crime’ biography which is in fact bullshit. Several more are exposed in this book.

  Many young kids think that being a gang member is flash or something to aspire to. That is a disturbing enough thought, but when you consider that gun crime in the UK has risen by 35 per cent in the last few years, promoting such a lifestyle is criminal in itself.

  Lying fools like Courtney, to whom the media give oxygen, are not men of respect as they want others to think – they are despicable. They use their books to boast and brag to impressionable young kids about the heinous crimes they have committed, the lavish lifestyle they have enjoyed on the back of a life of crime and the ‘useful’ time they have spent in prison. I describe them as despicable because they are recommending a lifestyle to kids that they themselves have never experienced or had to endure.

  I have endured it and I can assure you if you’ve bought this book to read about the glamour of being a gangster, you’re going to be very disappointed.

  1

  ABOUT A BOY

  Johannesburg, South Africa, 20 September 1988

  As the car came hurtling down the street nobody could have imagined the devastation it was about to cause. The teenager at the wheel was under age, had no licence or insurance and had taken the car without the consent of the owner. Unaware of the approaching car, ten-year-old James Fallon, who had moved from Wolverhampton to South Africa with his parents, was walking across a zebra crossing with his BMX bike. By the time the driver saw James, it was too late. The vehicle struck the boy and dragged him along the road for 30 metres before tossing his body onto the pavement. Ironically, the accident took place close to a nurse’s house. By the time James’s body had come to rest he was unconscious and had turned blue. The nurse, having heard the collision, ran on to the street and gave James the kiss of life before calling the emergency services.

  When he arrived at the hospital, James underwent surgery for seven hours. A steel collar had to be put on his body in order to hold his head in place on his shoulders. James was put on a life-support machine, but nobody thought he would survive the night.

  An examination of James revealed that he was paralysed from the neck down. He was unable to breathe without the aid of a respirator and he was unable to swallow or speak. He could hear and see and, crucially, his comprehension was unimpaired. With the help of round-the-clock nursing care, James’s heartbroken parents began the slow process of bringing him back to life.

  Miraculously, he learned to communicate by eye movement and within six months was ready to return home to his parents. Not only did James continue to improve his communication skills but also managed to pass exams in maths, general knowledge, English and geography with the aid of videotapes. James’s terrible accident generated publicity locally, nationally and back home in England.

  On Friday, 20 January 1989, I was visiting my mother in Wolverhampton when I read the following article in the local evening newspaper, The Express and Star:

  UNCLE STARTS FUND TO HELP PARALYSED CRASH BOY, 10

  A Codsall man has launched an appeal fund for his nephew who ‘died’ twice and is now totally paralysed after a road accident in South Africa.

  Former Codsall boy James Fallon, aged ten, had his skull detached from his spine in the smash last September. Top surgeons from all over South Africa managed to save his life in a seven-hour operation, which has since featured in medical journals throughout the world. It was the first time it had been carried out in the country and only the fourth time it had been attempted anywhere.

  But now James cannot talk, breathe or swallow without the aid of life-support systems. He is still in Johannesburg General Hospital where he has been taught to use a computer, which allows him to communicate, by eye movement.

  ‘We are hoping he will be allowed home some time in May,’ said his uncle, Paul Nicholson of Wilkes Road, ‘but his parents will have to install very expensive equipment if he is to survive.’

  His parents, Elaine, 33, and Roger, 35, who also lived in Wilkes Road, emigrated to South Africa six years ago. The accident happened as James was going back to school for a concert recital. He was hit by a speeding car driven by an under age motorist. The 17-year-old driver, who had taken his father’s car without consent, was later fined £50.

  James was hurled more than 90 feet along the road and also suffered internal injuries and crushed legs. He stopped breathing once at the roadside and again in the hospital.

  ‘It was a miracle he survived, but now he is a prisoner in his own body,’ said Mr Nicholson. His parents need a lot of money to convert their home and he is starting an appeal in James’s name at Barclays Bank in Codsall.

  I knew all about being a prisoner and the thought of an innocent ten-year-old boy being trapped in hi
s own body really struck a chord with me. I had quite rightly been imprisoned on two occasions for wounding people. I also had convictions for robbery, violent disorder, breach of the peace, affray and assaulting police. Yet here was a ten-year-old boy, with his whole life before him, imprisoned in his own body and he had done nothing. I really felt for him.

  His mother, Elaine Fallon, used to live in the same street as me in Codsall, where I was brought up. Even though she had only lived 20 doors away, I had never really spoken to her. I did know Elaine’s elder brother, Paul, but only to say hello to. They were a close-knit family, good hard-working people who kept themselves to themselves. James would receive all the love and moral support he needed from them – of that I was certain. All the Fallon family required was financial support to pay for the specialist equipment that James needed. I decided I would ‘do my bit’ and try to raise a bit of money locally.

  At this time I was living in Basildon, Essex, with my partner Debra and our son Vinney. I didn’t fancy making endless trips up and down the motorway, so I settled for a one-off event. I decided that the quickest and most efficient way of raising money would be if I could get lots of items off famous or infamous people and hold an auction. I wrote about 150 letters to well-known people and bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Who, Paul McCartney, Madonna and Dire Straits. I also wrote to numerous football clubs including Arsenal, Manchester United and Wolverhampton Wanderers. In fact I wrote to everybody I could think of who had ever been ‘a somebody’. Amongst those ‘somebodies’, I included the infamous Kray twins.

  I asked the various people I wrote to if they would donate something of theirs that had been signed and which people would be prepared to pay money for. It didn’t matter if it was a book, an album, a T-shirt, a football, photo or item of clothing. The vast majority of people did send something: Dire Straits sent a gold disc, The Rolling Stones sent signed albums, as did The Who. Madonna donated a signed T-shirt and most football clubs sent signed footballs and photographs. Even Great Train Robbers Ronnie Biggs and Buster Edwards sent signed white £5 banknotes – the same type as they had stolen in their infamous heist.