Wannabe in My Gang? Read online

  By now Reggie had let go of Jack who was sitting on the sofa asking ‘What have I done?’ Reggie told him ‘You know what you’ve done.’ The gun came out again. Again it just clicked. ‘They gave me a duff ’un,’ said Reggie.

  The next thing I saw was Reggie with a carving knife; it was happening so fast. Jack was in a bear hug and someone was shouting, ‘Do him, Reg, go on, Reg, do him.’ I saw the first stab go in and turned away. I walked out of the room. I couldn’t believe it was really happening. He got it three times with the knife but he must have been dead with the first one. The scene went quiet. I walked back into the room and I didn’t want to look but I had to. Then I saw the blood. I saw Reggie pointing the knife into Jack’s neck as if he was trying to find his jugular vein. The knife blade was arched and then it went straight through.

  I’ve seen some bad things in my time, men stabbed, near death, but this was worse. And I will never forget the smell.

  Death smells like something singeing, like hair and blood burning, a smell that never leaves you. When it was over, Reggie stood there for a second just looking. The knife was twisted to bits. Jack was on the floor in the middle of the room. His hat was a foot from him, crumpled up. Chris wandered back in with the gun we no longer needed. Suddenly everybody seemed to snap out of it. The two boys and the Mills brothers were running out of the room. Reggie Kray turned to me and said: ‘Get rid of that, Tony.’ And with that, he and his brother and Ronnie Hart had gone.

  Jack had been warned by myself and other members of the firm about his behaviour but had paid no attention. How far could the twins let it go when he was persistently challenging their power, constantly trying to undermine their authority?

  They could not allow it to happen. Men of their standing could not be seen to have someone like McVitie carrying on like that, particularly in the East End. Had I been in Reggie’s shoes I would certainly have done the same thing and the tragedy of it all is that so many suffered for something which the victim himself had decided to cause.

  Tony, clearly a leading member of the Kray firm, had decided he and his brother were going to murder McVitie if the Krays failed to do so. McVitie had done the Lambrianous no wrong, but as Tony said, McVitie knew they had lured him to a particularly unpleasant ‘meeting’ with the Krays and not a party as promised, and for that McVitie would not forgive them. Dramatic stuff, if true, but it isn’t – it’s fantasy, invented to bolster Lambrianou’s ego.

  In 1969 Tony Lambrianou had appealed against his murder conviction. In a full and frank statement he told the truth about what happened that night and afterwards in order to try and secure his freedom. Tony said:

  On 28 October, 1967 I met my brother Chris at about 7.30 p.m. and we went to various public houses to have a drink. We went to the Regency Club and upstairs Jack McVitie joined us. My younger brother Nicky was also at the club and he told me sometime after we had arrived that Reggie Kray was in the club. Sometime after midnight when we had gone downstairs to the lower bar, I decided to get some cigarettes from the machine near the office. I went upstairs and while there, Tony Barry came out of his office and walked back in again. He then re-emerged and asked me into his office. Ronnie Kray, Reggie Kray, Bender and Hart were there.

  The conversation was to this effect:

  RK: Is McVitie downstairs?

  TL: Yes, he’s drinking with us.

  Then something was said about getting him up to the office and then either Hart or Reggie said, ‘We’re going to do ’im.’

  I said, ‘What’s it all about?’, but I didn’t really get a reply.

  I was asked if I had a car and I said that I had. Hart told me to bring McVitie round to Carol’s and I said that there were others with me and he said that they could come also. But then there was a discussion as to whether the others could come. I also asked, ‘What had he done?’ Reggie just said that he was ‘a fucking cunt’ and then they just argued amongst themselves and I was standing in the doorway.

  Finally they said that there was a party going on round at Carol’s and Hart, I think said, ‘Bring him around. We’ll have a talk with him.’

  I went downstairs and invited the Mills brothers and McVitie to the party. This was not unusual, as normally when they had a party they would invite everyone around.

  We went to Carol Skinner’s in McVitie’s car and when we arrived I was the first one to go down the stairs. There was music playing. McVitie followed me. It was about 12.30 or so. I saw Whitehead and Bender coming out of the back. I was first into the room and Ronnie Kray was standing in front of the fireplace with his thumbs in the waistband of his trousers. Two youths were dancing. Ronnie shook hands with me and almost immediately Reggie jumped on McVitie’s back and put a gun at his head. It would not work. Ronnie hit him with a glass and cut his lip. McVitie protested. I cannot remember the words.

  The Mills brothers were by this time in the room, and Hart and Bender. I was terrified and I left the room. On the stairs my brother Chris was sitting weeping. We had an argument about it because we realised then what was happening. Chris started to go. Hart came out and I quietened Chris because of him then Ronnie Kray said, ‘What’s the matter with him?’, meaning Chris, and I said he was upset. The Mills brothers wanted to go but no one was allowed to leave.

  McVitie had come to the door of the room. He had his jacket off. Reggie hit him and pulled him back into the room. I was just outside; the door was ajar. Reggie had a knife at McVitie’s throat. Hart was holding McVitie, the knife would not penetrate. I was terrified. I ran again up the stairs, as I did so I met two children on the stairs and I pushed them into the bedroom.

  I stayed there what seemed like a long while but was probably only a moment or so. I came out of the room and started going down again. They were all going out. Bender was talking to Reggie who said ‘get rid of him’.

  I remember both Ronnie and Reggie’s arms were covered in blood. The Krays and Hart left. Bender persuaded me to go into the room. McVitie was lying under the window with his legs underneath him and with half his stomach hanging out. His head was almost severed and his eyes were open.

  Bender said: ‘It’s all over, it’s done.’ I could not believe it.

  Later, my brother Chris returned. He has described how he cleaned up and disposed of the body and it’s true. I never knew that this was going to happen to McVitie. I know we should have come to his assistance but I was terrified that without a weapon the same would be meted out to us too.

  I have never belonged to the Kray firm. I met them at the same time as my brother Christopher and only really started to see much of them about eight weeks prior to the murder of McVitie. This was primarily because I was also a member of the Regency Club and also drank in the same public house. I personally was never asked to do anything by them but I knew only too well their reputation.

  As regards the solicitors the same occurred to me as to my brother. We knew that false statements had been made to Sampsons [the Krays’ lawyers], by witnesses and it was more than our lives were worth to try and change solicitors. I told Ralph Hyams [the Krays’ solicitor] what had happened and he told me that the Krays would have to be told if I persisted. And so eventually I signed a statement for Sampsons that was quite untrue.

  I was in Brixton on remand with the Krays and when they found out that my brother had made a statement to Sampson’s that involved them, they constantly threatened me and my family. I was present at the joint conference in Brixton with my brother, the Krays, Bender and Ralph Hyams. Ronald Kray was almost apoplectic with rage over what my brother had said and we both realised that we had to support the Krays to stay alive. I never wanted to go into the witness box but such pressure was put upon me in the trial that I had to do that in the event.

  So much for the East End code of silence and Tony’s ‘decision’ to talk about the murder and his time as a ‘Kray boss’ for ‘the first time’ in his book.

  Chris Lambrianou had made a statement about the murder before the
trial, but as he says in the statement he made for his appeal, the Krays terrified him into retracting it.

  I made a statement in my own handwriting on three foolscap lined pages. This did not set out the account as I have put it down truthfully above but involved the Krays and told the essence of what happened. I gave it to Ralph Hyams and he read it and said that he would have to show it to the Krays. I told Hyams not to show it to the Krays but he said he would have to. Two days later Hyams came back and said that the twins had said that it was not to be used. I went on about it to Hyams and he kept reminding me that Tony was in Brixton with the Krays. He said that you have got to do it their way. The twins say that they weren’t there and you have got to help. He then told me that I had nothing to worry about because the twins had a lot of power. He altered the statement and I was told what to say.

  Just before the trial we all went to Brixton for a joint meeting with Hyams, the Krays, Bender and my brother Tony. Hyams told me again that the twins were very upset about my statement and inferred that this meant ‘angry’ with me. When I saw Ronnie he was livid with me and said ‘Are you fucking well putting us in it?’

  He was swearing and shouting and I quite honestly thought I was going to get done.

  Hyams was present during the whole outburst. Whatever I said always went back to the Krays. I knew that I could not change solicitors because the Krays had told me that I had got to think about my family. I knew that their power extended way beyond prison walls and I thought it was more than my life was worth to go against them.

  So much for ‘looking after your own’, as they preach in the East End. Here were two young men who had been duped into luring their friend to an unimaginable death and now they were being told they would have to protect the murderers and face life imprisonment themselves for something they had clearly not done. What sort of ‘man’ would allow himself and his own brother to serve life imprisonment because he was too scared to stand up to two bullies and tell the truth? Hard man? Man of honour? Weakling? Tony considers himself to be a hard man and a man of honour. He is ‘proud’ of the public image he has forged for himself. In his book he says of himself and his ‘bosses’:

  The twins went away with a lot of honour and a lot of dignity. They could have brought many other people down with them, but they chose not to. I took my punishment, whether I deserved it or not. I was there at the end and hopefully took it like a man. It wasn’t a question of my killing anybody. It was a question of ‘I was there’, and I knew there was going to be trouble of some sort.

  I saw what happened. Perhaps I didn’t like what I saw, but I kept my mouth shut and that’s why I got the sentence that I did.

  This from the ‘gang boss’ who ran upstairs and locked himself in a room with children. His brother hadn’t gone to fetch a gun to ‘finish McVitie off’, as he claims – he had sat on the stairs and wept whilst a man he had enjoyed a drink with that night was butchered in the next room.

  The Lambrianou brothers served 30 years in prison between the two of them. During that time their mother and father died. Tony says in his book, ‘I blamed myself, if I hadn’t have had this sentence, I would have spent more time with him. I felt that we let him down, because we should have been there towards the end of his life.’ He states that the death of his parents whilst he was inside is the biggest regret of his life.

  I doubt it. In his heart, the biggest regret in Lambrianou’s life must be not being man enough to stand up to the Krays and their threats and not making the statement to police he was only prepared to make behind the Krays’ backs. But if Tony had had the guts to do that, his ‘reputation’, his ‘name’, would have been in tatters. Instead, to promote his sham, he attacks better men than himself, other gang members who refused to be bullied by the Krays into serving time for crimes the Krays had committed themselves. Men like ‘Scotch Jack’ Dickson who later wrote a book called Murder Without Conviction, published in 1986. Tony says:

  A lot of it was untrue [presumably unlike his book]. This was a person who had came to London to put himself on the twins firm. Why didn’t he say in his book what he did to us – that he became a grass? If I saw him today, I’d spit on him. I wouldn’t hit him – he wouldn’t be worth it.

  I wouldn’t like anyone to harm him: it would be a sin. Let him live to a ripe old age, living with what he did, looking in the mirror and seeing what he is, every day. He’s a disgusting piece of work.

  This is Tony’s opinion of a man who made a statement and gave evidence against the Krays, written, of course, without the knowledge that his own statement would one day surface. Describing the trial and others who gave evidence, Tony is equally scathing.

  The worst damage of all was done by members and associates of the firm who gave evidence against us. It didn’t take the brains of Einstein to see that they were out to save their own skins and blame those in the dock for the violence that they had willingly participated in throughout their careers. That was the saddest, most sickening thing, to see people you’d had a cup of tea with, shared a fag with, standing up and showing that when the crunch came their so-called loyalty didn’t mean a thing. I think the twins were shocked and disappointed. Let’s get it right. We’d all done wrong but some of us didn’t try to worm our way out of it by blaming other people. If the grasses had got up there and told the truth we may not have liked it but we could have lived with it. If they had admitted their part and told it as it happened it may not have changed the course of the trial, but at least we would have gone down knowing the truth had been told, but when we heard them telling lie after lie there was no way we could accept that. God Almighty! It was unforgivable.

  The Krays destroyed the Lambrianou family and yet Tony still maintains that they were honourable and men of dignity in order to sustain his pathetic image as a gangster.

  Many would think him more of a man if he told the truth about the misery and heartache his brief encounter with the Krays had caused him and those he clearly loved. I wish I had heeded Geoff Allen’s advice at the boxing show and steered well clear of Lambrianou, because I now know why Geoff thought so little of the individual who calls himself a ‘Kray gang boss’.

  4

  ‘I READ THE NEWS TODAY . . . OH BOY’

  The telephone call from my brother Michael was frantic and to the point. ‘Mom’s collapsed,’ he said. ‘You had better come home quickly.’ It’s the news everybody dreads; your mind swarms with every conceivable possibility. I picked up my brother Paul in south London and tore up the motorway, torturing myself with dark thoughts. In my haste to leave, I realised that I hadn’t even bothered to ask Michael what had happened.

  My mother had, over the years, suffered some horrific injuries after falls. Once she fell down the stairs of her house, fracturing her skull. Mom was rushed to a neurosurgery unit where she underwent major brain surgery. None of us thought she would survive, but in less than two months my mother was up and about and had been discharged from hospital. My heart kept telling me Mom was strong and would be OK, whatever had happened, but my head was telling me she wasn’t getting any younger and a similar fall could prove fatal. However depressing my thoughts, nothing could have prepared me for the shocking news that greeted us upon our arrival. My elderly mother wasn’t being cared for in a hospital ward, nor was she lying on a trolley in a hospital corridor. My mother, a woman who had never broken the law in her life, had been locked up in a police cell.

  At 10 a.m. Mom had been in a public telephone box making a call when she had suffered an epileptic fit. In her inside coat pocket was a medical card advising people what to do should they find her suffering from epilepsy. A police car arrived on the scene.

  She was picked up off the floor, put into the back of the car and taken to the police station. When they arrived, my mother, who was incoherent, was put in front of the custody officer and the arresting officer told him that she had been found drunk and incapable.

  The custody officer ordered her detention and she
was put into a cell. When regular checks were made on her, it became apparent that she was ill, not drunk, and so a doctor was summoned. The doctor soon diagnosed my mother as having suffered from a fit and she was treated and released. When Michael told Paul and me what had happened, we went fucking berserk. Together we made our way to the police station and after identifying ourselves, were immediately arrested for the assault on Stuart Darley. A cynic may wonder if we had fallen for some sort of sinister ruse, but nobody could be that sick, could they?

  Paul and I were charged with assault and bailed to appear with Michael at Seisdon Magistrates Court the following week. We complained about the arrest of our mother, but red tape, excuses and bullshit encouraged her to ask my brother and me not to pursue the matter. Reluctantly we let it drop.

  The legal process is, at best, a fiasco and at times I wonder if it would be cost-effective to plead guilty at the earliest opportunity regardless of your innocence or guilt.