Me and My Brothers

Charlie dedicated this book to his parents, who were forever in his thoughts

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Author’s Note

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Chapter Twenty-seven

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-nine

Chapter Thirty

A Personal View

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Author’s Note

The first edition of Me and My Brothers, which my company Everest Books published in 1975, made little impact. Charlie knew he had an interesting story to tell but was broke, and more eager to cash in on the notoriety of the Kray name than to write a no-holds-barred blockbuster.

Ronnie and Reggie hated the book. So did Charlie. Like many things done for the wrong reasons, it lacked emotion, conviction – and honesty. The murder of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie had destroyed Charlie’s life, but, in 1975, neither twin had admitted their roles in the killing, so family loyalty prevented him disclosing how or why.

In 1988, HarperCollins gave Charlie a second bite at the cherry – a chance to reveal what he didn’t, or couldn’t, say before. Then, when he was convicted on a drugs charge nine years later, Charlie was given an opportunity to further update his story.

For the 1997 edition, I would like to thank Melvyn Howe, courts’ correspondent of The Press Association, for offering help with the trial copy, and his then boss, Mike Parry, for supplying it.

For their help in ensuring that this final edition of Charlie’s life story is accurate, I must thank Charlie’s best friend Wilf Pine and his wife, Ros, Maureen Flanagan, Les Martin, Steve Wraith, Albert Chapman, Trish Ellis, of the Sunday Telegraph, Jonathan Goldberg QC, David Martin-Sperry and Ronnie Field.

I would also like to thank my dear friend Mike Harris for all the fact-checking research at the British Library – and, of course, my wife, Sue, for all the donkey work that goes into writing a book.

But special thanks must go to Dave Courtney, who was always there when I needed him. Thanks, Poppet.

Robin McGibbon

Bickley, Kent

March 2008

Prologue

My name is Kray. But I’m not a gangster; never was, never wanted to be.

And I don’t want a gangster’s funeral.

I don’t want to be remembered as a gangster, just because I had twin brothers, Ronnie and Reggie, who got a kick out of violence and a thrill out of murder.

I was never like the twins. And I don’t want people thinking I was. Even when I’m dead.

I could throw a punch, too, and have boxing trophies to prove it.

But I’d rather throw a party. That’s why people called me Champagne Charlie. And that’s how I’d like to be remembered.

I spent my life trying to distance myself from the twins’ way of life, and a gangster’s funeral would associate me with all they stood for. And that wouldn’t be right.

When my time comes, I want to be carried to the flat I shared with the woman I adored, then be buried the next day, with the minimum of fuss – and certainly no TV cameras – next to my lovely son who died tragically young.

Reggie will want to stage a showy spectacular, like the one he laid on for Ronnie that brought the East End to a standstill.

But I don’t want that and I’m sure that, despite the differences we’ve had all our lives, Reggie will respect my wishes.

Chapter One

The ringing of the phone brought me out of a deep sleep. Through half-closed eyes I squinted at my watch on the bedside table: 5.15 A.M. I took the phone from its cradle. ‘Hello,’ I muttered, husky from tiredness. An unfamiliar woman’s voice apologized for waking me, then spoke quietly in an abrupt, businesslike manner. I heard what she said, but I couldn’t take it in. Didn’t want to. I thought I must be still asleep. Numb with shock, I passed the phone to Diana, lying next to me. She listened for a few moments, thanked the caller, then stretched past me to put the phone down. She looked at me and shook her head, sadly. ‘I’m afraid it’s true, Charlie.’

In a daze, I got out of bed and shuffled, zombie-like, downstairs into the lounge. I took a bottle of Remy Martin from the cocktail cabinet and filled a long tumbler, then I gulped the brandy fast, again and again, until it was gone. Diana came into the room in her dressing gown. We stared at each other in shock. I went to say something but no words came out. And then she moved towards me and put her arms round me and I started to sob.

That morning at my home in South-East London was the worst moment of my life. Worse than the day I was jailed for ten years for a crime I didn’t commit. Worse than being charged with a murder I knew nothing about. But my tears that morning of 5 August 1982 were not only for myself; they were for my twin brothers, Ronnie and Reggie, too. And for our old man.

How on earth were they going to take it when I told them that the woman we all worshipped, the lovely lady we thought would live for ever, was dead?

She had gone into hospital just three days earlier. We all thought it was just a check-up for pneumonia: a week or two and she’d be out as fit as ever. I’d gone in to see her that day. She was the same old Mum, bright and cheerful, full of life. She wasn’t in two minutes and the nurses loved her. It was coming up to her birthday and she had all her cards by her bedside. She looked as good as gold.

Then she had the test she had gone in for and when I went in the next day she was hot and flustered. I’d never seen her like that before. She said she could never have anything like that again. I think the test embarrassed her, apart from the pain.

The next day she was lying there, her eyes closed. She wouldn’t open them; perhaps she couldn’t. Softly, I told her I was there. She didn’t answer. One of the old ladies in another bed, who had made friends with Mum, called me over and said there was something wrong: Mum hadn’t been at all well. I went back to Mum and spoke to her again and she answered me. She was hot. I put a damp cloth on her forehead. But she began to get delirious. I called a nurse who said Mum had pneumonia. I didn’t believe her; she had been all right the day before. But the nurse shook her head. Then she said the doctor wanted to see me.

He broke the news as gently as he could. Mum did have pneumonia. But she had cancer, too. Bad. He wanted to operate, but he needed to clear the pneumonia first.

Hearing the dreaded word ‘cancer’ knocked me bandy. I’d thought we’d get over the pneumonia, then take her away somewhere nice to get well again. She had many years to live yet. All her family lived on: she had a brother of 88, an aunt of 102. My mum was one of the fittest. She was going to live for ever.

I gave the doctor my phone number ‘in case of an emergency’. I didn’t expect it to come to anything. Then Diana and I left the hospital. I was in a daze.

Early the next morning, that phone call came. The cancer had taken my mum on her seventy-third birthday.

The brandy must have done me good. I didn’t feel it at the time, but it must have helped me pull myself together, helped me to be strong. I had no choice. There would be a lot to do, and with my brothers in prison and our father ill I was the only one to do it. To begin with, they each had to be told. But who first? As usual, I found myself in the middle. From the moment the twins were born, they had dominated the household and, eventually, my whole life. But on that August morning they came second. It would break him, I knew, but my old man had to be the first to know.

An hour or so later, at about seven o’clock, Diana and I arrived at Braithwaite House, my parents’ council flat in Bunhill Row, in the City of London.

‘What’s going on at this time in the morning?’ the old man wanted to know.

I’d decided there was no point in mucking about. I told him to sit down, then I took a deep breath and said, ‘Unfortunately, she’s just died.’

Almost before I’d got the words out he began to scream. I’d never seen him show so much emotion. It just knocked him over. He was very ill and after those first shock waves, he found it difficult to breathe. He kept panting, saying, ‘I can’t believe it. How can she die before me? I won’t be long. It’s just a matter of time. I’m waiting for it now.’

My old man, bless him, didn’t have to wait long to join his beloved Violet. That morning he lost the will to live and was dead eight months later.

I decided to tell Ronnie next. Wednesday was not a normal visiting day at Broadmoor, but I could be there in little over an hour if I was allowed to see him; the train –boat – taxi journey to Reggie on the Isle of Wight would take about five. Broadmoor’s director told me to come immediately and agreed to say nothing to Ron. But I wasn’t thinking straight when I asked Parkhurst to keep the news from Reggie until I got there the next day.

‘That’s not going to be easy, Charlie,’ said a prison officer I knew from previous visits. ‘He’s got his radio in his cell. We can’t take that away. Anyway, someone else will hear.’

I didn’t say anything. The thought hadn’t occurred to me.

‘Charlie,’ the welfare officer said, ‘if you can trust me…I’ve been with Reggie for years. I’ll take him somewhere quietly and tell him myself.’

I thought hard. I knew the officer quite well; I felt I could trust him. He was right. If Reggie heard on the radio…

‘Would you do that for me, please?’ I said.

Diana and I got to Broadmoor at about eleven o’clock. The authorities were very kind: they took us into the hospital wing, where visitors aren’t usually allowed. They had got a little room for us. A few moments later Ronnie came in, looking concerned. He said later he thought it was odd, us being in that room. When he sat down I looked at him and said gently, ‘Ron, our mother’s passed away.’

He just broke down, as I knew he would. He leaned forward, put his head in his hands and burst out crying. I’d had a bit of time to get over the shock, but Ronnie started me off again.

Finally he said in his quiet voice, ‘I thought you were going to say our father had died.’ Then a few moments later: ‘We expected that. But never in a million years, Mum. Why did it happen to her?’

The three of us sat there for about an hour, remembering how lovely she had been, and then I said I had to go; I had a lot to do. As we got up Ronnie said, ‘Could you ask them if I can stay here a bit? I want to be on my own.’

The nurses were very kind. ‘Don’t worry, Charlie,’ they said. ‘He won’t be disturbed. We’ll leave him.’

Ronnie stayed in that little room for four hours.

That afternoon the welfare officer at Parkhurst rang me to say he’d broken the news to Reggie.

‘How is he?’ I asked.

‘Better now,’ the officer said. ‘He broke down. But I told him you’ll be here tomorrow and he’s waiting to see you. He’ll feel better when you’re here.’

Someone else telling him was not the same as me, though. When Diana and I met him in a private room at the prison, Reggie broke his heart. And, of course, it started Di and me off again.

Tragedy always brings people closer together and I don’t think I’ve ever been closer to my brothers than those two days when we shared the same grief.

We didn’t want a circus. We wanted a funeral our Mum would have been proud of, a funeral people would remember. George English, an undertaker from Hoxton, had buried my grandparents and I knew he would do things the way we wanted. Ronnie and Reggie were given permission to attend the funeral at Chingford Mount in Essex. It would be the first time they had seen the outside world in fourteen years.

Crowds packed the streets from my mother’s flat through the East End. The media brought out many out of curiosity, I suppose, but hundreds came out of respect; not only for my mother, but for the family as a whole. The number of wreaths amazed us: they filled eight cars. So many friends were there: from people my mum had known all her life, to some she had met through her sons in recent years. Diana Dors was there with her husband, dear Alan Lake, and Andrew Ray, the actor.

And so, of course, were the police. I don’t know what they thought was going to happen, but for a couple of hours that afternoon of 24 August the village of Chingford looked like a setting for a war movie. Police on foot and on motorbikes lined the main street. A helicopter circled noisily overhead. There were even two officers in trees with walkie-talkies.

When we were all assembled in the tiny church of St John’s, Ronnie was brought in, then Reggie, each handcuffed to a giant policeman. The one escorting Reggie was no less than six feet seven! I had reserved the front row to the right of the nave for the twins, just in front of my old man, Diana, myself and Gary. But Ronnie was led to the front row on the left. He listened to the service for his dead mother out of sight and touch of his family. Reggie sat in front of us.

After the service, the twins were led out swiftly and taken to Chingford Mount police station. While their mother was being lowered into her grave, the twins sat in a room, surrounded by fifty coppers.

The old man was marvellous that day. He was desperately ill, but he managed to stand up in the church and at the graveside. He was very proud; if anyone tried to help him, he’d pull his arm away. He wanted to do things by himself, even though he wasn’t strong enough. How he managed to get through it all, I don’t know.

He was terribly upset by all the police fuss; he knew it was all unnecessary. I tried to convince him everything had gone well, that Mum would have been pleased, but he felt it was too much like a circus. As we left the graveside he said firmly, ‘If anything happens to me, I don’t want all this.’

The twins made sure that request was granted. When the old man went the following April each one decided independently not to go to the funeral. They wanted to, of course, but they didn’t want a repeat performance. At the time, officials at Broadmoor and Parkhurst rang me to say that permission would be given. I told them the twins wouldn’t be going and it threw them back a bit. They didn’t expect that.

But then they didn’t understand the twins. They still don’t. If anyone in authority had the slightest clue what my brothers are about, our mother’s funeral would have been handled differently and given the dignity and respect that she deserved and we all wanted.

How daft and unnecessary to separate the twins from each other and their family, and to handcuff them to strangers throughout the most harrowing ordeal of their lives. How irresponsible and wasteful to employ enough men to control a football match. And how crazy and insensitive to banish the twins from the graveside and guard them with fifty men in a police station while their mother was being buried.

The government and its servants were more concerned that August day with a massive, well-orchestrated propaganda exercise; a show of strength to the nation for reasons known only to themselves. I don’t know how much the whole business cost the taxpayer: £30,000 has been mentioned. But what I do know – and what the authorities themselves should have known if they truly believe in penal reform – is that Messrs Ronald and Reginald Kray could have been trusted to go to that funeral on their own. And to return afterwards.

They respected and adored their mother too much even to consider doing anything else.

Chapter Two

Respect was something Mum had always commanded. She had a wonderfully sunny attitude to life, always laughing, always happy. I never once heard her criticize anybody or complain. As a woman she was immensely popular: always upbeat and chatty, but never gossipy. As a mother she was unbeatable, simply the tops. And I have her to thank for giving me a wonderful, happy and secure childhood in an East End that suffered as much as anywhere from the Depression that bit in to Britain in the late twenties and thirties. Hungry children roamed around Hackney in rags, stealing food from barrows and shops. But I was always well fed and dressed in smart, clean clothes; one vivid memory is of being taken for a walk in a strikingly fashionable sailor suit and noticing other children with holes in their trousers.

Millions throughout the country were penniless, but my old man made sure there was always money in our home in Gorsuch Street, off Hackney Road. He was a dealer who called on houses buying up gold and silver – anything of value, in fact. ‘On the knocker’ it was called. And he was good at it. The job meant he was away from home a lot; when he wasn’t ‘on the knocker’ he was selling the goods on the street stalls that had been in his family for fifty years. And even when he was at home he went down the pub nearly every night, like most men at that time. It didn’t bother Mum; she seemed happy to stay at home looking after me and go out with him just once or twice a month.

The old man was sport-mad and was chuffed when I was picked to play football for Laburnum Street School. He always made sure I had the right gear, and when he came to watch I’m sure he took an extra pride in seeing that his kid was one of the best-dressed players on the pitch. Boxing was his passion, though, and when he wasn’t in the pub he would go to professional contests at nearby Hoxton Baths, or other venues. Sometimes, he would take me. I can remember sitting in the crowd in my sailor suit, entranced by the sight of giants thumping hell out of each other.

The old man’s father, who ran a stall in Hoxton, could handle himself. He was known as ‘Big’ Jimmy Kray and was afraid of nobody. I used to sit on his knee at home as he told me thrilling stories of famous boxers he had known, including Hoxton’s own hero, Ted ‘Kid’ Lewis, who became world lightweight champion. Often I’d go to bed, my six-year-old head filled both with these stories and with the real thing I’d seen with Dad, and I would dream of standing in a ring, the treasured Lonsdale belt round my middle, as the cheering crowd hailed me Champion of the World.

The brutality of East End life, where most disputes were settled with fists, rubbed off on the children: it was not uncommon for two tiny tearaways to slug it out with the venom of the fighters I’d seen in the ring. I was one of them. I didn’t get involved too often but I quickly learned how to handle myself. Mum didn’t approve of fighting, however, and wasn’t too impressed that I’d inherited Grandad’s natural boxing ability. Whenever I had a scrap at school I made sure I tidied myself up before going home.

In 1932, we moved to Stean Street, the other side of Kingsland Street. Just along from our new home was a stable yard, and the old man who looked after it let us kids play there. It was an exciting place and I spent a lot of time sitting on a wall, watching the man mucking out and grooming the horses when they came in after hauling the delivery carts. I would go home smelling of manure and with muddy shoes. Mum would tell me off, but in a nice way. She never screamed and yelled like other women in that street…

One day a year later, when I was seven, I was encouraged to go out and play and not come back until called. Curious, and not a little put out, I watched the house from my wall for most of the day. There was a lot of coming and going and then, in the early evening, I was told I could go in. I went up to my mum’s bedroom and there they were.

‘Where did they come from?’ I asked.

‘I bought them,’ my mum replied.

‘But, Mum,’ I said. ‘Why did you buy two?’

She laughed.

It was a little after eight o’clock on 24 October 1933. My twin brothers had arrived.

Suddenly my aunts May and Rose started coming round to the house more than usual. They adored the twins and begged Mum to let them take them for walks in their brand-new pram. Mum usually agreed and May and Rose would fuss over them like mother hens with their chicks. When Mum was busy I would take them out too, and, like my aunts, I would feel a surge of pride when neighbours stopped to lean over the pram, enthusing about how gorgeous they were. The twins, of course, lapped it up. It did not take long for them to expect to be the centre of attention all the time. And to show their displeasure when they weren’t.

The Kray family was already well known. Big Jimmy Kray, and Mum’s dad, Jimmy Lee, worked for themselves, and their independence was envied by less ambitious people who were forced to do what they were told.

Jimmy Lee was a legend in his own time. He had been a bare-knuckle fighter with the nickname ‘Cannonball’ and he later became a showman and entrepreneur. In an area where competition was tough he was an outstanding personality. He was teetotal, which meant he didn’t hit it off with the old man, but he was very fond of me and the twins. He loved entertaining us: his favourite trick involved a white-hot poker which he would lick without burning his tongue. He gave us a scientific explanation –something about the saliva making contact with the hot metal – but it went over our heads. To us it was just pure magic.

He’d always been an amazing athlete. Once, one of his sons – my Uncle Johnnie – drove a coach party forty-two miles to Southend for the day. As he was preparing to bring them back again, Grandfather Lee turned up – on his bike. He’d cycled there just for the fun of it and was eager to do the return journey, until Uncle Johnnie insisted he took the coach. Grandfather Lee was seventy-five years young at the time.

In those early thirties, the Kray family had a sort of local fame. And in their own way the beautifully dressed, scrubbed-clean twins, sitting up in their big double pram, beaming into the faces of all their admirers, were just as famous as their grandfathers.

I was thrust into the background but I didn’t resent my brothers. If anything I was pleased, because Mum was obviously overjoyed at having them. At night I shared the same upstairs room with them, because Mum’s brother and his family were living downstairs. But neither twin cried much at night and they never disturbed my sleep. When they were put in their cots I would stare at them, trying in vain to tell which was which. Sometimes they looked up at me in a strange, adult sort of way, and I’d have this weird feeling that they knew all about me and what was going on around them. Their dark eyes seemed to lack that childlike innocence. It was as if each boy knew more than he ought to.