Gangland UK: The Inside Story of Britain's Most Evil Gangsters (7 page)

Marshall vanished after leaving his
£
250,000 home at Little Burstead, Essex, at about 10.00am on 15 May to meet ‘business contacts’. His car is believed to have crossed the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge into Kent at about
midday. He didn’t return home and failed to keep other appointments that day. He was reported missing that night by his wife, Toni, who would normally contact him regularly throughout the day.

Seven days after he vanished, on 22 May, his body was found in straw in the unlocked trunk of his Range Rover by a police officer at Round Hill. He had been shot twice in the head and chest execution-style. The only thing clear about the weapon was that it wasn’t a shotgun. The Range Rover’s keys, a grey Head sports bag, two mobile phones and a Patek Phillippe 18ct gold watch with a blue face were missing. However,
£
5,000 cash that he had taken with him the morning he disappeared was still in the vehicle.

Marshall had also been an accomplice of Pat Tate (see below).

Roff was shot dead outside his home in Bromley, Kent, in March 1977. A cold-blooded criminal, he and accomplice Jeremiah Parker held up a sub-post office at gunpoint in Evelyn Street, Deptford, in June 1987. The money the two men got from the raid, and many others like it, helped them start new lives on the Costa del Sol in the 1990s. They may have escaped British justice in their sunshine hideaway but they could not escape the violent retribution of other mobsters.

On a warm evening in 2006, Parker, 43, was enjoying a drink with friends at The Point bar in Nuevo Andalucia, Marbella, with a mainly British crowd. He was standing on the terrace when a hitman walked up and fired five bullets into him.

By this time, Roff had already met his maker. After one failed attempt on his life, which left him in a wheelchair, his past caught up with him outside his luxury home in Bromley, Kent. The 36-year-old was shot dead by two hooded executioners. The bullets hit his head and chest as he was moving from his Mercedes to his wheelchair.

Roff was widely believed to have been the man who shot dead Great Train Robber Charlie Wilson at his Marbella villa in 1990; it was also believed that his own murder was a revenge killing.

Roff was also the prime suspect for the January 1993 contract killing of 55-year-old property tycoon Robert Urquhart – a good friend of Noye – outside his Marylebone home when he was shot dead by a gunman who escaped on a motorcycle.

Hedley was murdered by alleged bandits on his yacht in Corfu in November 1996.

All were shot to death by shotgun blasts into their Range Rover along a farm lane in Rettendon, Essex, during the night of 6 December 1995. Engineer Michael Steele and mechanic Jack Whomes were convicted solely on the word of police supergrass Darren Nicholls. The case highlights police corruption and is presently under review by the Criminal Cases Review Commission.

While in jail at Swaleside, Noye had befriended Tate, a tattooed, muscle-bound, 18-stone drug-dealer from Essex, who acted as his protector. At Tate’s suggestion, Noye invested
£
30,000 on an Ecstasy shipment, making
a quick
£
70,000 profit. Police claim that Ecstasy from this part of the batch could be forensically linked to the death of teenager Leah Betts. The claim was another attempt to implicate Noye.

Leah was a schoolgirl from Latchingdon in Essex. She is notable for the extensive media coverage and moral panic that followed her death several days after her 18th birthday, during which she took an Ecstasy tablet, then collapsed four hours later into a coma, from which she did not recover. Subsequently, it was discovered that water intoxication was the cause of her death.

Wink was a gunsmith and dealer who put a pistol to his own head and squeezed the trigger in August 1994.

Whiting came unstuck when he was stabbed nine times and shot twice with a 9mm pistol in 1990. A car dealer, he went missing from his showroom in West Kingsdown in 1990. His body was later recovered from Rainham Marshes in Essex.

Dalligan was shot six times in the Old Kent Road in 1990.

Morgan was at the centre of one of Britain’s most enduring murder mysteries. In March 1987, private detective Daniel Morgan was found in the car park of the Golden Lion public house in Sydenham, south London,
with an axe embedded in his skull. Morgan’s business partner, with whom he had fallen out, was friendly with a number of police officers who have since been implicated in the killing. Allegations of police involvement were made at the inquest but, in spite of hundreds of statements, hours of covert surveillance and four investigations that identified several key suspects, no one has ever been charged.

The inquest, which took place in April 1986, and ended with a verdict of ‘unlawful killing’, heard allegations of involvement by Metropolitan Police officers, and allegations of attempts to cover up that involvement. It also heard that Jonathan Rees, Daniel Morgan’s business partner in their private detective company, Southern Investigations Ltd, had talked about having Daniel killed and arranging for police officers at Catford CID to be involved in the murder and its subsequent cover-up.

Morgan had enjoyed a number of careers, and he also ‘enjoyed’ a falling out with his business partners in the PI business. Things came to a head when Southern Investigations was asked to provide security for a car auction company in Charlton, south London. Though Morgan didn’t want the work, his partner, Jonathan Rees, took the job on, using some of his police contacts to moonlight while off duty.

On 18 March 1986, Rees was in charge of the night’s takings for the auction – some
£
18,000. He took the money to a local bank, but discovered that the night safe had been glued shut. Some say this was a most convenient state of affairs, one that demanded that Rees take the money home, where, as coincidence would have it, he was sprayed in the face with a ‘noxious liquid’.

As might be expected, no one was ever arrested for the robbery. Indeed, many – including the car auction company, which demanded the return of its money – today believe that the gluing-up of the night safe, and the attack on Rees, was a sham.

For his part, although he alleges he was a victim, Rees agreed to repay the money on the proviso that it came from the Southern Investigations company account. Morgan smelled a rat. He refused the offer, arguing, diplomatically, that the loss had been down to Rees alone.

Rees was now in a fix. Desperate to take control of the company and its finances, he tried on several occasions to have Morgan arrested for drink-driving, knowing that if he lost his licence he would have to give up working at the agency, but to no avail.

At the inquest, Kevin Lennon, the company’s bookkeeper, stated that Rees told him, ‘I’ve got the perfect solution for Daniel’s murder. My mates at Catford [CID] are going to arrange it… when he is gone, Sid Fillery will replace him.’ Fillery was, at that time, a serving DS, and a ‘friend’ of Kenny Noye.

In the hours following Morgan’s death, a murder inquiry was launched, headed by DS Douglas Campbell. One of the lead detectives assigned to the case was none other than DS Fillery.

In 2004, Roger Williams, MP for Brecon and Radnorshire, told the House of Commons that a full judicial inquiry was ‘the only way of obtaining a fresh and independent scrutiny of the murder and the circumstances in which successive investigations into it have come to nothing’.

Roger Williams told the House of Commons, ‘Not only was Sid Fillery among the officers, but he played a key role in the initial murder inquiry during the first four so-called ‘golden’ days before he was required to withdraw from the murder squad for reasons of personal involvement with the primary suspect, Jonathan Rees. During those four days, Fillery was given the opportunity to manage the first interview under caution with Rees, and to take possession of key incriminating files from the premises of Southern Investigations Ltd, including Daniel’s diary, which has never since been found.’

Rees, Fillery and two other police officers were subsequently arrested in connection with the murder, but no charges were ever brought. Fillery went on to take up joint ownership of Southern Investigations Ltd.

Francis was the ninth man linked to the Brinks Mat gold bullion heist to be murdered. He had survived a previous attempt on his life when he was shot at in a pub he owned in Kent in 1985. 18 years later, he was executed by a hooded gunman at 5.00am on 14 May 2003.

A career criminal, the 63-year-old, who had homes in Beckenham and Kent, was shot four times in the face, back, arm and finger as he opened his business in Lynton Road, Bermondsey. He was at the gates of his haulage company Signed, Sealed & Delivered, and was gunned down as he leant into his car to get a newspaper. His body was found slumped in the front seat with his legs hanging out of the front passenger door.

Francis was killed after he tried to collect a
£
70,000 debt from a business contact. After the shooting, it was
found that a CCTV camera at the yard had been repositioned so that it did not capture any footage of Francis’s death.

54-year-old Terence Conaghan from Glasgow, and John O’Fynn, 53, from Hoddesdon, Hertfordshire, were found guilty of murder. Harold Richardson, aged 59, of Towncourt Lane, Petts Wood, was found not guilty.

Francis, who had served a jail term in 1997, knew Richardson through a number of business deals. Richardson, in turn, knew O’Flynn in the same way, while O’Flynn had known Conaghan for a number of years.

A cigarette butt was found in a drain at the scene of the shooting. DNA linked it to O’Flynn. A pair of glasses were found on the ground, which were later found to have a one-in-a-billion DNA link to Terence Conaghan. A 9mm Luger bullet, of the same type used to kill Francis, was also found near the building. CCTV images also captured Conaghan trying to shift the CCTV camera with a broom while he stood on a table, but he had to climb on to the roof instead when he realised he could not stretch far enough to reach the camera. A footprint left on the table showed a similar pattern to a pair of Reebok trainers found at Conaghan’s home after his arrest.

A fortnight before his death, Francis called Richardson on 71 separate occasions; however, Richardson returned only five of the calls. The frustrated man’s attempts came to a head on 11 May 2003 – three days before his death. Mobile phone records also showed that Richardson was in contact with the two hitmen in the lead-up to the killing.

£
3 million of the original
£
26 million from the Brinks Mat robbery is still unnaccounted for.

I
met Ronnie Kray at Broadmoor Hospital in 1984, where he bought me a Diet Coke. Immaculately dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, black shoes, tie, and sporting a gold ring with ‘RK’ set with diamonds, he chatted to me for an hour at a table in the airy visitors’ room with its view of sweeping grounds leading down to the high perimeter wall.

It was autumn. While waiting for Ronnie to grant me an audience, I watched inmates with wheelbarrows, brooms and rakes sweeping up leaves into neat piles before a mischievous wind sent them scattering again, leaving me to ponder just for a moment on Broadmoor’s grim history.

Broadmoor was the country’s first purpose-built asylum for the criminally insane. Completed in 1863, it houses about 500 men and 120 women. Lying on the edge of the small town of Crowthorne, in an area of heathland known as Bracknell Forest, it is one of four maximum-security hospitals in the UK.

The ‘facility’, as our US friends call such places, was built under an Act of Parliament to reform the poor conditions in institutions such as Bethlehem Hospital, the original ‘Bedlam’. Its imposing classical Victorian architecture was the work of Major General Joshua Jebb, a military engineer who is said to have based the building on two other hospitals – Wakefield and Turkey’s Scutari Hospital, near Istanbul.

Joshua Jebb was no slacker. He participated in the Battle of Plattsburg in Canada during the War of 1812, and surveyed a route between the Ottawa River and Kingston where Lake Ontario flows into Saint Lawrence River.

Around 1876, Jebb was appointed Surveyor-General of Prisons, busying himself with the construction of prisons at Portland, Dartmoor, Pentonville, Chatham, Mountjoy in Dublin, and Portsmouth. He was awarded a KGB for his civil services on 25 March 1859.

Yet, even in retirement, he found time to consider the construction of embankments on the River Thames, and of communications between the embankment at Blackfriars Bridge and the Mansion House, and between Westminster Bridge and Millbank.

One of the most remarkable characters of his time, Jebb married twice and, aged 70, died on 26 June 1863, having enjoyed a passing acquaintance with a gentleman
we met earlier, Marriott Ogle Tarbotton, who followed him to the grave in 1887.

On meeting Ronnie Kray, it was extremely difficult for me even to begin to envisage that he was mentally disturbed, even less criminally insane. He didn’t provide any obvious outward signs to suggest as much, or talk about the rats and mice that were infesting his cell – as did Paul Beecham, another Broadmoor patient I had previously interviewed. Sentenced to life for slaughtering his parents, and subsequently released as ‘cured’, Paul went on to murder his wife and then fatally shoot himself. So much for successful reintegration back into the community

Unlike some of his contemporaries at Broadmoor, Ronnie was never regarded in the same demonic way as Peter Sutcliffe, for example, or Kenneth Erskine, ‘The Stockwell Strangler’, who, circa 1986, murdered 11 elderly people in their south London homes.

Ron was never even in the same league as the cannibalistic murderer Robert Maudsley, either. Dubbed ‘the English Hannibal Lecter’, in 1974, Maudsley killed a man who picked him up for sex after having been shown pictures of children he had sexually assaulted and abused. Maudsley was arrested and sent to Broadmoor.

In 1977, Maudsley and another inmate took a fellow patient, a paedophile, hostage and locked themselves in a cell with their captive, whom they tortured and killed. When guards eventually smashed their way into the cell, the hostage’s skull was found cracked open, a spoon wedged in his brain, and pieces missing. Maudsley claimed he had eaten some of the man’s brain, earning him such names as ‘Spoons’, ‘Cannibal’, ‘Brain-Eater’ and ‘Jaws’ (because of his crooked teeth).

Other patients at Broadmoor who displayed particularly extreme behaviour, way beyond that of Ronnie Kray, was David Copeland, who, in 1999, targeted ethnic minorities with explosive devices in Brixton and the East End, and planted another bomb which targeted the gay community in the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho; Ian Ball attempted to kidnap Princess Anne in 1974; and Graham Frederick Young earned his status as the thallium poisoner.

John Thomas Straffen was committed to Broadmoor in 1951 for killing two little girls. He escaped for a brief period in 1952 and murdered five-year-old Linda Bowyer. Straffen died in November 2007, having earned himself the distinction of becoming the UK’s
longest-serving
inmate.

Ian Brady, of course, was also incarcerated alongside Ronnie, as well as child rapist James Saunders. Nicknamed ‘The Wolfman’, he escaped for the second time in 1991 after sawing through a 1-inch steel bar in a shower room on the third floor of his wing, and running off, presumably howling into the night.

Meeting Ronnie was my one and only chance to find out why he had been considered suitably ‘insane’ to earn the maximum-security rating of Broadmoor. Of course, he had, or had had, an anti-social personality disorder of sorts, but even the medical staff at Broadmoor struggled hard to determine exactly what made up this ‘disorder’. Fumbling around, they labelled him ‘psychotic’ and a ‘sociopath’. The doctors say that Ronnie Kray had been a threat to society and, despite all the treatment they could offer, they were sure that he would re-offend should he be set free.

However, his conduct, while at Broadmoor, was
exemplary. While he may had some personality defects, there wasn’t a blot in his book, and never once did he lose his temper, threaten other patients or members of staff. Indeed, Ronnie Kray was the perfect gent. And it was this perfect gent that I met when he sat down next to me, clicked his fingers to a guard, and ordered that Diet Coke. Just as in a fine restaurant, the response was, ‘Certainly, Mr Kray.’

Hoxton was so far down the social scale it was even frowned upon by people from other deprived parts of East London. Traditionally, the only ways of escaping its poverty were either through boxing or crime – and often both.

Reggie and Ronnie Kray were born ten minutes apart late on 24 October 1933, at Stene Street, Hoxton. Their father, 26-year-old Charles David ‘Charlie’ Kray Sr, was a wardrobe dealer who persuaded people to sell him clothes, silver and gold for resale at a profit. He was a gambler and spendthrift who had little influence on the twins’ upbringing. He was a deserter during World War II, and on the run from the police for 12 years, and was therefore rarely at home.

The twins’ mother was 23-year-old Violet Lee. The couple already had a six-year-old son, also called Charlie, who was born in 1926. A sister, Violet, born in 1920, had died in infancy; the family’s heritage was a combination of Irish, Jewish and Romany descent, a mixed genetic cocktail indeed.

Throughout their childhood, Violet was the dominant figure in the twins’ lives. She doted on them, always taking care to treat them with scrupulous equality. She
herself had come from a very strict family upbringing. Violet’s teetotal father, John Lee, always insisted that his three daughters had to be in by 9.00pm every evening. And so, when she was just 17, she eloped to marry Charlie Kray, whereupon her father disowned her.

After giving birth to Charlie, the twins’ elder brother, Violet started to see her parents occasionally. But it was only after the arrival of the twins, who rapidly established themselves as his favourite grandchildren that she was allowed to visit her father’s house on a regular basis. The boys first attended Wood Close School and the Daneford Street School and, in 1939, the family moved to 178 Vallance Road, Bethnal Green.

Of the two, Reggie was slightly brighter and more outgoing than his twin brother. Even at an early age, he found it easier than Ronnie to talk to people. Ronnie found ways to compensate, though – either by sulking or screaming to gain attention, or trying to out-do his twin in over-blown displays of love for their mother.

According to their teachers, Reggie and Ronnie were ‘salt of the earth, and never the slightest trouble to anyone who knew how to handle them. If there was anything to be done at school, they’d be utterly cooperative… they’d always be the first to help. Nothing was too much trouble.’

Each twin would pay close attention to every move the other made. Fiercely loyal to each other, they were also the greatest of rivals. If one started a fight, the other had to join in. And it was to fighting that both would eventually turn. The influence of their grandfather, John ‘Southpaw Cannonball’ Lee, led both lads into amateur boxing, which was at that time a popular working-class
pursuit for boys in the East End. By 1946, they were feared competitors and are said never to have lost a bout before turning professional at age 28.

Regaling the twins with his tales of bare-knuckle fighting in Hackney’s Victoria Park, Grandad Lee was one of the great east London characters of the inter-war years. He fought as a featherweight and had one of the hardest left-handed punches in his class. He also possessed a huge repertoire of showman tricks, which included licking a white-hot poker and walking along a line of bottles balanced upside down on their tops. Even as an old man, he kept himself fit, punching an old mattress hung up in his back yard and, on one occasion, cycling the 42 miles to Southend for a family party at the age of 75. He died aged 98 and, to Ronnie, he was simply ‘the most amazing man I’ve ever met’.

But the twins’ big problem was an inability to confine their violence to the ring. Amid the devastation of the Blitz, on the bomb sites and in burned-out buildings, they fought rival gangs of boys, and quickly earned a reputation as the toughest of scrappers. Rapidly they were learning the art of survival, which included outwitting the forces of law and order, and making the most of their passion for fighting.

So, all of the social, physical and psychological ingredients had been put in place for the Kray twins to become hardened villains from the day they were born. They came from an impoverished background; they had an absentee father, and a doting mother who came from a strict household. Her twins became effectively the sons the bare-knuckle fighter had always wanted, yet denied him by the gift of three daughters.

Despite her eventual reconciliation with her father, Violet was determined that her children would be raised in a kind and loving environment, in complete contrast to her father’s harsh regime. As a result, and despite the toughness of the area they inhabited, Reggie and Ronnie experienced a comparatively sheltered upbringing during their early years.

There is no doubt that the Kray twins adored their mother, and they continued to show their respect for her until her death in early August 1982, by always stopping off at their Aunt Rose’s house next door to clean up before presenting themselves to their mother.

This, I think, says a lot for the Kray twins, and when I met Ronnie in Broadmoor, he’d clearly made an effort with the spit and polish. Not to impress me, but this was how he had been raised to be by his mum; her
old-fashioned
values had been firmly imprinted on her sons, who would always look after her, and themselves, in any way they could.

The Kray twins’ first serious brush with the Old Bill came in 1950, when they beat up a 16-year-old fellow East Ender in a Hackney alleyway. Two witnesses saw the fight and named the Krays as the attackers. Their evidence was supported by the roughed-up victim, and the twins were remanded in custody for trial at the Old Bailey.

Before the trial took place, however, both the witnesses and the victim were threatened, a reminder that giving evidence against the twins was an unwise move. The case was rapidly dismissed for lack of evidence. It was a valuable lesson for Ronnie and Reggie; the power of threats backed up by violence proved how easy it was to
escape justice by instilling the fear of God into anyone who crossed them.

A year later, in the summer of 1951, the 18-year-old twins were standing outside a café on the Bethnal Green Road, when a police officer pushed Ronnie in the back and told him to move along. Ronnie turned round and punched the officer in the mouth, knocking him to the pavement. The lads made their escape, but Ronnie was arrested within the hour.

Although Reggie had nothing to do with the original incident, he felt he had let his brother down badly. As a matter of honour, he returned to the Bethnal Green Road in search of the policeman Ronnie had hit. When he found him, he tapped him on the shoulder. As the officer turned around, Reggie slammed his fist into the man’s jaw, laying him out for the second time that afternoon. A few days later, the twins appeared before a magistrate. But with a local priest speaking on their behalf, they escaped with nothing more than probation.

In the spring of 1952, the twins received their National Service call-up papers, requiring them to join the Royal Fusiliers at the Tower of London. Post-war National Service had a significant effect on many people, and on society and culture as a whole. Some National Servicemen went on to become celebrities – Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones played rock ’n’ roll while stationed in Germany. Authors Leslie Thomas, David Lodge and David Findlay Clark wrote books based on their experiences –
The Virgin Soldiers
, and
Ginger You’re
Barmy
, for example. Actor Oliver Reed, comedian Tony Hancock and Hancock’s writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson developed their talents during conscription.

On the other hand, National Service interrupted some men’s careers. For example John Clark, a former child actor, was tired of ubiquitous recognition and feared mockery in the armed forces, so he worked in the merchant navy on a Silver Line freighter for over three years. And the Krays reckoned that National Service would interfere with their budding careers, too.