Reggie Kray obituary

Hardman Reggie Kray, the younger of the 'Terrible Twins' will be buried with his brother in crime, Ronnie

By CNN.com writer, Dick Durham

LONDON, England (CNN) -- The black marble headstone over gangster Ronnie Kray's grave in Chingford Mount cemetery, a short horse-drawn hearse ride from London's East End, carries a one-word epitaph -- "Legend" -- in gold leaf.

Now his twin brother and fellow murderer, Reggie, who has died at the age of 66, will be laid in the earth beside him in Essex, England.

But it is highly unlikely the myths or legends surrounding the "Terrible Twins," as they were known, will be buried with them.

With their own Internet site offering for sale Kray T-shirts, beer tankards, flying jackets, key rings, cigarette lighters, even books of Reggie's "phylosophy (sic) and poems," the Kray industry will more likely grow than wither with their demise.

For the pair carefully allowed the falsehood to build that they kept their "manor" safe during their reign in the 1960s. No mugger, rapist or footpad would dare commit a crime in the working class area of Bethnal Green where the twins operated.

Another well-manicured image spun out by the violent villains was that they only ever "done their own," meaning in East End parlance that they "only" murdered other criminals, "only" harmed other thieves.

Although they were finally jailed for life in 1969 for the murders of criminal gang member George Cornell (shot dead with a bullet in the head at point blank range by Ronnie in the Blind Beggar Pub) and petty thief Jack "The Hat" McVitie (stabbed to death through the face and impaled on floorboards by Reggie in a colleague's East End flat) they terrorised ordinary folks as well.

Many East End pub landlords, bookmakers, café proprietors, and shopkeepers suffered the "benefit" of Kray protection, according to John Pearson, biographer of the twins, in his book "The Profession of Violence."

A Smithfield meat market porter, who even now would rather not be named, recalled to CNN.com an afternoon in the twins' club, the "Double R" in Bow Road, where he witnessed the Kray method of dealing with difficult customers.

"We were all at the bar enjoying a drink when a young bloke came in. He was about 19, something like that, and was obviously well drunk. He started mouthing off, shouting abuse and refused to quieten down.

"Suddenly we were surrounded by the Kray henchmen -- Reggie was there, too. We were politely shown to an upstairs room where we could carry on drinking, but as I went up the staircase I looked back. One of the guys was slashing the youngster across the thighs with a sword."

The late Canon Richard Hetherington, formerly vicar of St. James the Great Church in the Bethnal Green Road, knew the twins as youths growing up in the East End.

He believed the pair turned bad when they took up boxing and found they were quite good at it.

Instead of providing the cliched route out of a tough, poor, working-class area, boxing for the twins simply amplified the violence they were already beginning to enjoy.

While on holiday at a caravan park in Allhallows, Kent, the pair practiced their new found acumen by taking turns trying to knock out a tethered horse.

They went on to top the bill in local boxing clubs and first went to jail for assaulting a police officer.

After going AWOL (absent without leave) from their National Service assignments, they were imprisoned again, but by the age of 21, in 1954, they had established themselves in the London underworld.

In the mid-'60s, Ronnie flew to New York and met "Punchy" Illiano, a Mafia don.

The pair were hoping to get a Cosa Nostra endorsement to run London on the U.S. gangsters' behalf. But the Mafia were unimpressed.

They also went to Nigeria hoping to invest their ill-gotten gains in a housing estate and shopping centre, but nothing came of it.

By now they had a sort of dark glamour surrounding them and always dressed in sharp suits and were photographed, often in their own clubs, alongside boxers like Sonny Liston, Joe Louis, Henry Cooper and Billy Walker, film stars such as Judy Garland, George Raft and Diana Dors, and TV stars such as Barbara Windsor and Ronald Frazer.

The twins also posed for the camera of society lensman David Bailey.

Later they were to be depicted on the silver screen in "The Krays," a movie in which the New Romantics singers of UK band Spandau Ballet took the lead roles.

Ronnie, a homosexual, was befriended by the late Lord Boothby, and the late Labour MP Tom Driberg, the latter known to be gay, and the trio attended parties, according to writer Francis Wheen, where "rough but compliant East End lads were served up like so many canapes."

To return the favour Boothby took Ronnie into the inner sanctum of British power -- the pair dined at the House of Lords. He also took him to top gentlemen's club Whites in St. James, Pearson records in "Profession."

Reggie married Frances Shea in 1965 when she was 21 and he was 32. Two years later she took an overdose and killed herself. She shares the Kray burial plot with the twin's mother, Violet, and father, Charles.

Before the pair were jailed, they sprung another criminal, Frank "Mad Axeman" Mitchell, from Dartmoor jail as a publicity stunt to show the underworld what they could pull off.

But in hiding, Mitchell proved a liability and was shot dead by Kray henchman Freddie Foreman, who recently confessed to the killing on British TV.

Ronnie's psychotic personality eventually saw him moved from Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight to Broadmoor, the hospital for the criminally insane. It was here he died from a heart attack in 1995.

Older brother Ronnie Kray's plea for better conditions for Reggie

But in a rare letter, seen by CNN.com, to an outsider of the Kray "firm," Ronnie scrawled a plea on behalf of his twin for life in a less tough jail than Parkhurst.

The letter went to one of the few people Ronnie felt he could trust and, more important, to one of the only contacts he had who might be able to help -- Canon Richard Hetherington.

"Father, I hope Reg can go to Portsmouth, if and when I go to Broadmoor Hospital," Ronnie wrote, "as I am the one who was the BAD one out of the two of us and I want to see Reg get a chance in life. Father, would you phone the parson here, this is his phone number. It would make me very happy if you would. …"

Reggie was transferred from Parkhurst to other prisons, including Maidstone and finally Wayland Prison, Norwich, from where Home Secretary Jack Straw released him on compassionate grounds because he was diagnosed as being terminally ill with bladder cancer and wanted to spend his last days with his second wife, Roberta, 42.

His elder brother, Charlie Kray, died of cancer in Parkhurst in April 2000 while serving a 12-year sentence for drugs offences.

His own statement about his notorious twin brothers is used as an epitaph on a pro-Kray website: "Sure the twins killed people. Yeah, people who had families and that, and there's no justification. But they was in the twins orbit. What I'm saying is, it wasn't normal people the twins done."

The Krays are dead, but their legend is unlikely to Rest in Peace with them.

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