Bringing Down the Krays Read online

  Two days before my release date I was told to get ready for a transfer. When I went down to the reception they told me to put my own clothes on. I asked, ‘Why? Am I going home early?’ The prison officers said they didn’t know. I was taken in what looked like a minicab with two prison officers and a driver. Again I asked, ‘Excuse me, can you tell me where we’re going?’ And again I was just told, ‘Sorry, we can’t say anything.’

  Then all of a sudden we pulled up outside what looked like a castle – it was Canterbury Prison. I wasn’t there long. After two days an officer came into my cell and I was told, ‘You’re being released.’

  I knew it was coming. I remember the night before hanging my proper clothes, my jacket and trousers, on a hanger I borrowed from a screw, just so that I wouldn’t look too down-at-heel as I walked out. I was freezing that night as I then had only a blanket to curl up in, but rather that than looking like a tramp on my release.

  The next morning I signed a piece of paper to get my things back. I noticed they didn’t give me a travel pass and asked how I was going to get back to London. But the prison officer told me, ‘You don’t need to worry about that.’ I guessed then that somebody was going to pick me up. Then they opened a little gate in the huge prison door and I stepped through to freedom. It was 13 September 1968.

  Minutes later a car pulled up. Two men got out and walked over to meet me. ‘Hello, Alf! All right? Nice to be out?’ They sat me in the back of the car. I asked them where they were taking me and one of them said, ‘The first thing we are going to do is get you a nice breakfast.’

  So they took me a caff where I ordered eggs, bacon, sausages and a few tomatoes, mushrooms, toast, Marmite, the lot. Nothing ever tasted so good. I asked if they were dropping me home, but they said we had to go to Tintagel House again.

  They then took me to London. Nipper could not have been more reassuring. ‘Hello, Alfred, all right are you? Don’t you worry about a thing. David and Bobby are fine. It won’t be long until they are released. Everything is going to be all right, I promise you.’

  Then I started talking. This time it was about my trip to Dartmoor to ‘bump into’ Frank Mitchell. I remembered Ronnie telling me in the Grave Maurice that he wanted us to pretend to be a pop group and take guitars with us. As soon as Nipper heard about Mitchell, he said: ‘This is wonderful!’ In the end I gave the full statement to Henry Mooney.

  I told him about the orders given by Ronnie to go and see a ‘friend’ in Dartmoor. I described the drive with Wally Garelick – how we’d gone first that night to Stamford Hill to collect two girls to come with us. One needed to get a baby-sitter first. Only on the way down had Wally had told me who the ‘friend’ actually was. That’s what I told Mooney, although of course I already knew. At the prison, Wally produced the necessary visiting orders, which were in false names. The girls stayed in the car. When we met Frank he had said: ‘Wally, you’ll have to get me out of here – I can’t do no more bird.’ There had been talk about how fast Frank could run and over what distance.

  I told Mooney that I was convinced that Ronnie, Reggie and Charlie Kray were intending to spring Mitchell, and I signed a statement to that effect.

  Nipper was jumping with joy. ‘This is absolutely fantastic, Alfie. Just what I needed!’ At the end of the interview he told me: ‘Right, Alfie. You go home now. You, and David and Chrissie, have each got a police officer looking after you. They’ll keep you safe.’

  So the two cops took me home at last. One of them said he was going over to the Section House and I gave the other a couple of blankets and a quilt and told him he could sleep on the couch. The protection officers changed all the time. All the officers were armed and had a direct phone to the Yard in their squad car.

  David was also going home. He told me how it happened:

  I got picked up by a policeman outside the prison on the day of my release from Ford. Christine was with him. It felt strange to be free but even odder to be kissing and cuddling Christine in front of this man.

  I asked where the kids were, and Christine said they were being looked after by her mother. So the copper, his name was Dick De Lillo, said he’d got a horse to back and suggested we all go to the races. So it was that Christine and I found ourselves at Sandown Park racetrack. We didn’t get back until the evening and there wasn’t much time to talk about anything intimate with Dick around us all the time. Christine, too, had a policewoman with her so it was virtually impossible for us to be natural with one another. I knew why they were taking so much interest. Was I free or wasn’t I?

  We were given twenty-four-hour protection. They used to come everywhere with Alfie and me after that – boozing, street trading, the lot. We tried to pick up as ‘normal’ a life as possible. The police used to joke with us, telling us they shouldn’t do it and that if Nipper Read found out they’d get the sack.

  But although we laughed about it, there was a real danger that either of us could have got a bullet in the back. But there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t leave our wives and children.

  But the joy of David’s homecoming was quickly turned sour by a cruel revelation:

  Over the next couple of weeks Christine and I gradually started to talk about all that had happened to her during my time in prison. Of me, there wasn’t much to say. She told me about Charlie Kray coming round and bringing Big Pat Connolly and that at first it had cheered her and the kids up to see someone while I was banged up. She said they’d just have a cup of tea, he’d give her some money and then go. But I felt there was something wrong. I remembered what Charlie was like when we used to go out together in the past. I’d covered up for him lots of times, saying he’d slept on the sofa in the club when he’d really been with Barbara Windsor or Christine Keeler. Charlie was always with some woman or another, it was the way he was.

  I asked in particular about an occasion when she’d come to visit me and seemed really upset. I’d assumed it must have been due to the stress of it all, but it had bothered me afterwards and I wanted to know more. Christine immediately started to cry, saying she didn’t want to tell me.

  Out it came, through her sobs. Charlie had started giving her money, and she’d been grateful. He’d said he wanted to help in any way he could. This went on for a long time before he started making the odd remark, saying what a nice figure she had and generally starting to come on to her.

  He’d come round one day with Big Pat and given her a ten-pound note. He said, ‘I might pop back later.’ He did come back, but this time Pat left and went home. Charlie then started touching her and following her when she went into the kitchen. Eventually he began to force her. Christine screamed and kicked and Charlie said, ‘What do you expect after I came round and gave you money?’

  They struggled until Charlie eventually forced himself on her. Charlie Kray then raped my wife.

  I felt so angry I wanted to go straight out and kill him. I was also so confused by my feelings that I started questioning Christine, asking her repeatedly whether she’d encouraged him. Did she really push him off? Why hadn’t she told me before?

  But Christine was so obviously distressed that I could see she was telling me the truth. She said she had felt ill and depressed ever since – but she hadn’t known how to tell me.

  She said she didn’t want to go to the police because she was too ashamed. When she said that I knew exactly how she felt. I’d been through the same experience, of being raped by Ronnie, myself. Could I tell her that?

  I could not. I already felt too humiliated. I felt she’d never think of me as a man ever again. In the end I never told her, although now I wish I had.

  Things stayed very difficult between us. In the weeks and months following my release from prison and the lead-up to the trial, Christine was drinking more than she’d ever done before. I warned her several times but she didn’t seem able to stop. She was also visiting the doctor frequently, getting pills to wake her up in the morning and pills to help her sleep at night.
r />   She was pregnant when the Firm all came to camp out at our flat. She gave birth to our youngest daughter while I was in prison. And then to be raped by Charlie. What happened was tough on everyone, but it was tougher on Christine than any of us.

  Charlie Kray was not as violent as his brothers – but he was the jackal of the family. I wanted to go and front him up straight away but there was nothing I could do. Not then anyway. My brothers and I were about to go and face the whole lot of them at the Old Bailey.

  CHAPTER 21

  SECRETS AND LIES

  AS FOR ME, my own release date was getting near too. I’ve done my number at Bow Street and everyone knows I’m a grass. Am I safer in prison or outside? And I’ve got to go through the whole thing again at the full trial that’s coming down the track like a train. If I can stay alive that long.

  My life was in Nipper Read’s hands. But could I still trust him? I guessed he was never telling me the full truth and was keeping things back from me. In one of our talks at Tintagel House, Nipper told me about the changeover at the Yard. When he’d gone to look for my files he found that ‘they had disappeared’. That’s what he said in his memoirs – and further that he was not aware of there being an informer in the Firm until the Old Bailey trial, which was in January 1969.

  In fact he knew there was an informer from what I said at the committal six months before. Either that or he didn’t believe me. That was a matter of official record. I had said it out loud from the witness box in Bow Street when I was being cross-examined by Scotch Ian’s brief.

  There were other puzzles too. Our mother’s court appearance on a wrongful charge of housebreaking had been mysteriously postponed. And whatever Read might say, I knew that evidence from March 1966 did exist – surveillance photographs of Moresby Road, of the comings and goings at the flat. I saw them. David and Bobby saw them. Walls covered in them at Tintagel House. That was Butler’s operation, when I was meeting Pogue. And I had actually got a photograph of Ian Barrie for Butler at the time. I was asked for it. I gave it to Pogue. I saw it blown up as a mug-shot at Tintagel.

  Whenever I asked where Butler was, I was told he was sick, or he had retired. In fact I found out later he had managed to get his retirement postponed, aged fifty-five, and in 1968 he was in pursuit of the last Great Train Robbers still on the run. I was asked to make another statement. I did so willingly.

  I think they wanted as little as possible to emerge about how Butler had cocked up the Cornell investigation. Especially how they’d left the Krays free to kill again. Not just once but lots of times. Tommy Butler was supposed to be the most renowned head of the Flying Squad in its history. I think they wanted nothing said about Butler and the Krays at all – and the Yard has kept the same line ever since.

  I was allowed out for a weekend on pre-release home leave. Around that time I had a little chat with Henry Mooney, Read’s deputy. I’ve got a note of what he said from the file. It’s pretty terse but it shows the way my case was playing in Read’s mind as he was putting together his part of the big Old Bailey prosecution:

  Robert Teale came to see me on 24 September [1968] on home leave from prison. It will be recalled he gave evidence at the Bow Street committal during cross examination that he was obliged to reveal he was in contact with police shortly after the death of Cornell. A further statement has been taken from him that he used the name ‘Phillips’. DS Pogue confirms the story. A copy of a photo of Barrie was taken and this can be produced.

  So Read’s man knew it was me who’d got the photograph of Scotch Ian. They even had a ‘copy’ of it. So why, I ask again, did Read insist there was ‘nothing on file’?

  A few days later it was the end of my sentence at Maidstone. I was all ready with my suit and my few belongings on my way to the prison gate when I was stopped by two men. The fear of ‘the gate re-arrest’, as any con will tell you, is terrible, but apparently these men just wanted to take me back to Tintagel for further questioning. My nerves were on edge in fear of yet another false arrest. I just couldn’t trust them any more after all that had happened. We had to change cars three times in case anyone was following us before arriving at Tintagel.

  I’d already told them at length about the chaotic goings-on after George Cornell had been shot. That was down to Ronnie. Now they wanted to know more about the time between the end of the Moresby Road siege and our removal from the streets. They wanted to know about me and Reggie.

  I didn’t know it but they’d charged Reggie the week before, with killing Jack the Hat, even though no body had been found. Now it was all about Reggie – my time with him, what he was thinking, what he was capable of. So on 29 September I gave a statement to Henry Mooney in which I explained how Ronnie had been urging Reggie to kill someone after the Cornell murder. He would say: ‘Why don’t you do one, you don’t do fuck all, get something going.’ I also told him about the twins’ ‘dreaded list’, and about the time in Blonde Vicky’s flat off the Hackney Road when Reggie, Albert Donoghue and Big Pat Connolly were there, when Jack McVitie and Connie Whitehead had turned up with Bobby Cannon – and how Reggie was all set to kill him.

  I also told Mooney all about the shooting at the Starlight Club and how Reggie had shot Jimmy Field at the Regency. It was all about Reggie – my best friend Reggie Kray who would have done for me in Epping Forest if he could have shot straight.

  It was all good stuff but what I had to offer was not going to put the Krays away. I could also tell that what Read was dreading was another Yard cock-up. I repeated in this new statement what I’d said in open court at Bow Street about being the informer. And I added this bit, which I hadn’t said in court: ‘I kept in touch with the police after the Cornell murder. The officer I dealt with was Pogue. I used the name of Phillips. I was arrested on 9th August 1966.’

  Read and Mooney believed me, I’m sure, but at this stage they really did seem not to know too much. And so I was baffled. How come they didn’t seem to know anything about Butler’s operation given that I knew they’d seen all those surveillance photographs? Anyway they went off to track down Detective Sergeant Pogue and get some more out of him. I’ve got what he told them from the archive, dated 8 October 1968.

  He told them that in spring 1966 he had been engaged under Detective Superintendent Axon of H Division (Whitechapel) in the inquiry into the killing of George Cornell in the Blind Beggar. He had ‘met and interviewed a large number of people,’ so he said, and ‘one of them was Robert Teale who had introduced himself as “Bobby Phillips”.’

  According to Pogue’s statement I had ‘offered to supply information concerning Reginald and Ronald Kray with whom [I] was at that time living at a house in the Clapton E5 area [David and Christine’s flat],’ he said. Then he said this:

  [Phillips] stated that he had heard Ronald and Reginald Kray talk about the shooting of George Cornell and Ronald Kray had boasted about the way he had shot him in the public house… another man known as ‘Scotch Ian’ was in the Blind Beggar that night when the shooting took place. He then promised that, although he was not able to give evidence of the actual shooting, he would glean as much information as he could regarding the identity of ‘Scotch Ian’ and the movements of the Kray twins.

  At the time that must have been gold dust. Remember, this was when nobody was saying anything to the police – especially about the identity of the second gunman in the Blind Beggar. And here it had all been on a plate for Scotland Yard in spring 1966! Pogue went on:

  It was arranged that I would meet him [me, a.k.a. ‘Phillips’] daily at a particular place in the Clapton area. If he failed to turn up, the meeting stood for the same time the following day and so on. It was quite obvious from Phillips’s behaviour that he was terrified of the Kray twins and he admitted this, stating he had difficulty in getting away from them without being missed.

  During the following weeks I met Phillips who passed on information that the Kray twins and Ian had stayed immediately after the shooting of Cornell at
his brother David’s flat before moving to the house in the Clapton area. He also stated that they paid visits to a woman publican’s premises with whom they were friendly, she having a pub in the Bethnal Green area. The pub was known as the ‘Widow’s Pub’ [Madge’s].

  Further information given by Phillips was that the Kray twins had visited a man named Geoffrey Allen who lived in the Saffron Walden area in Essex and had stayed with him for some days and during this time had visited the Saffron Walden Hotel and a number of hotels in the Cambridge area. This information was verified by myself after a visit to Saffron Walden and Cambridge.

  During this time Phillips was endeavouring to establish the identity of ‘Scotch Ian’ and after some weeks he managed to get to me a photograph of ‘Scotch Ian’ but still no identity was made. However, later this man was identified as John Barrie.

  Although Phillips was unwilling at that time to give evidence [to be used in court] he stated he would [do so] if police were able to secure the arrest of the Kray twins and ‘Scotch Ian’.

  Some weeks after meeting Phillips regularly, he failed to show up at the meeting place and I never saw him again or heard from him.

  This statement confirmed that everything I’d said was true. I had met Butler’s man while the Firm had been holed up in Clapton E5. The great detective had presumably set up a surveillance operation as a result. Then I’d risked everything to get a picture that would identify Scotch Ian.