Trial Imprisonment and Final Years

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That's why you rack It is the nineteenth of april nineteen sixty five in Bethenal green in the east end of London Light rain is falling admaring what might have been a bright spring day Staring out of the clouds, a man named Frank Shay sits in the back of a sleek black car as it pulls up outside of church He steps out onto the pavement and takes in the scene before him The church is like something from a story, red brick walls contrasting with a gray slate roof and ornate white window frames A large crowd of guests, dressed in their Sunday bestest mill around outside His eyes wide when a huge Rll's vice pulls up next to him and blonde bombshell actress Diana Dawes emerges and makes her way into the church He follows her inside, exchanging nods with the two burly men flanking the doors Making his way down the aisle, he smiles at the people he recognizes before hurrying to join his mother in a pew near the front there is another shock when he reaches her. Why is she wearing a black morning dress? Today of all days Before you can say anything, the vicar of the altar steps forward Clearing his throat, he asks everyone to stand for the entrance of the bride With teears of pride already filling his eyes, Frank turns to watch his baby sister, Francces walk down the aisle She is glowing in a simple white silk dress. her hair teased into an elaborate beehive herer bright smile only falters for a moment when she sees her mother not just the pointed choice of color, but the fact that the older woman is also loudly sobbing Frank beams at his sister to make up for it and can only hope that this obvious show of disapproval doesn't overshadow Francis's big day As the music reaches its final bars, Frances goes to stand beside her bridegroom Reggie Cray's dark hair is slicked back, and he wears a stylish black suit and white shirt Next to him stands his identical twin brother, Ronnie Only the flower in Reggie's buttonhole indicates which one is Franis's husband to be. The service begins with a hymn. They are only a few lines in, when Frank catches movement out of the corner of his eye The Tw men who had been guarding the door are walking up and down the aisle, gesturing and whispering. Frank realizes they're telling people to sing louder and look happier He gulps and swiftly complies. All too soon, the ceremony is over, and the congregation erupts into applause, some of them glancing nervously towards the big men at the back, as they cheer as loudly as they can. Finally, the church bells begin to peal, and the newly married Mrter and Mrs. Cray head down the aisle, arm in arm Looking at his sister's radiant face as she gazes up at Reggie, Frank sends up a silent prayer that their mother is wrong about her new son in law. Surely gangsters can sometimes make good husbands On the surface, the wedding of Reginald Cray and Francces Sheay in april nineteen sixty five looked like a classy society event. But the glamorous exterior hid the rot beneath Because it was in fact the biggest gang lland wedding that London had seen in years In the decade, leading up to that spring morning, Reggie and his twin brother Ronnie had built a vast criminal empire based on extortion, blackmail, and violent intimidation Many of the guests toasting the happy couple were hardened criminals This conflict between image and reality will come to define the legend of the Kray twwigs. They were a vicious pair of gangsters who somehow cultivated an air of charm and sixties cool Criminals who attracted celebrities like Jackie Collins and Judy Garland to the clubs they ran. murderers who became folk heroes in London's East End But how did two boys from poverty stricken post warar London come to rule the capital's underworld Who were Reggie and Ronnie to the people who knew them and to each other And what caused a carefully constructed criminal empire to come crashing down around them? I'm John Hopkins fromr the Noise Podcast Network. This is a short history of the Cray twwins The twwin's story starts with a forbidden romance. In nineteen twenty six, a seventeen year old named Violet Lee meets Charles Cray, seven years her senior in a dance hall Both are working class, London, East Enders through and through Charles buys and sells second hand clothing and jewelry door to door Violet of mixed Irish and Jewish descent is the daughter of John Cannanball Lee a well known boxer, street performer, and market porter. Violet's father disapproves of her new beau. But the couple are soon married in secret, with the underage violet lying about her age at the registry office. And they quickly have a son, Charlie Then six years later, on the twenty fourth of october, nineteen thirty three, Violet gives birth to two identical dark haired boys Instantly smitten, she names them Reginald and Ronald Blyive is a documentary filmaker and the co author of The Craze The Prison News The stories you hear about Violet is how she would walk around with her prayam ' proud as punch of having these beautiful boys And the fact that people would stop her on the street, it makes you special, doesn't it? gives you a sort of significant though their father is largely an absent figure Violet's love will be a constant throughout their lives when they are three boys develop measles and diphtheria Though Reggie soon recovers Ronnie is ill for weeks Afterwards, he seems slower and shyer than his brother And it's possible this spell of ill health impacts its development From a young age, the twins are extremely close, speaking in a secret language and seem to have a telepathic understanding of one another. while they are mischievous and always fighting with other children At home, they compete fiercely for their cherished mother's attention Grew up in the Bethal Green area of London's East End surrounded by Violet's family, who remained tightly knit, despite her earlier wayward behavior The twin's grandfather fills the boys' heads with stories of local boxes and villains And their arunt spoils them with sweets But despite the wealth of love The realities of poverty are pressing you. They live in a tiny Victorian terrace No inside toilet And it is an area where sixty percent of the children are malnourished and eighty five percent of the housing stock is deemed unsatisfactory The outbreak of the Second World War just before their sixth birthday only worsens the situation Home life in the East End in the forties and early fifties was brutal They were being bombed by the Germans They were having to rebuild once the war was over was poverty, extreme poverty, and they were fighting for survival in so many ways Though the family made it through the war, many in the neighborhood are not so lucky by the time the Allies declare victory. ten thousand buildings have been destroyed in Bethyel Green alone Crime rates skyrocket during the conflict and in its aftermath There's a whole generation of men of that era who had to work out how to survive and how to live after such a devastating consequence of the war. So not only did they not have brilliant father figures. The twins themselves clearly didn't have a great father figure, but a lot of the men of their father's generation were either dead in the war or having to survive somehow in the Eastter end So their childhood was uncertain and unpredictable They're also coming into regular contact with associates of their father. M many of whom are part of London's criminal underwork The young boys are instantly drawn in by these colorful characters and their're exciting stories of life outside the law This time, the East End has a reputation for producing some of the country's finest boxes. From the age of ten, Reggie and Ronnie pour their energies into the sport They took up boxing and that was a very good way for them to channel their aggression. And that was a very, very popular and still is a really good way of getting kids off the streets and formalizing their need to fight or their need to be angry. channeling it into a positive sporting action and they were very good at that. They both leave school with a rudimentary education of the age of fourteen And by nineteen fifty one, they are boxing professionally Twins have different fighting styles H hardard as nails, Ronnie will not stop until his opponent is down Reggie is just as tough It also has flair and charm in the ring For those in the know, it is Reggie who has the makings of a real star They both fight several matches and win them all but they fail to restrict their violence to the boxing rom For The year they turned pro, they badly beat a young clerk and assault a police officer. Promoters want nothing more to do with them and their boxing career is over before it has begun. This Jared Dphin the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born again. So what's next? Iel liberated We're gonna take this city back. O the medice All new season, now streaming, onlynly on Disney pllus. They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with that. Yeah. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil Born again. Now streaming, onlyn on Disney pllus. When you finally find your thing, you want the whole world to know about that thing So you use a thing called Canva to make it an even bigger and better thing. Whether you want to create flyers for that thing, make presentations for that thing, or design merch for that thing, you can do anything. so people can see your thing, feel your thing, love your thing. The next thing you know, it's a thing Canva, the thing that makes anything a thing The next year brings a fresh set of challenges. After the war, all people of a certain age were conscripted into service of some sort And the cres were conscription of the army and they did run away. and it resulted in them being put in the toower of London And there is the rumour. I'm not convinced it's one hundred percent fact that they were the last prisoners of the Tower of London. It is the story that we all like to tell Actually, I'm not convinced they really were. I think they were in the last set of prisoners in the Tower of London. but it does show that they spent their time in prison from an early age Teenage twins spent the summer of nineteen fifty two in a continuous cycle of imprisonment escape Some moments are comical such as when they flee to South End and send their commanding officer a postcard from the seaside Others are lesser During one escape attempt, they assault an officer after which they spend a month imprisoned in wormwood scrubs Incarceration helps them expand their network of underworld contacts who later helped build a picture of the craze as young men The fact that there are two of them so uncannily alike, is said to give people the creeps They have an intense menacing air. when they fight They are seemingly immune to pain Eventually, in nineteen fifty three, they are court martalled and dishonorably discharged from the army. Now. twenty, they finally head back home to the East E After the ignominious end to their army careers, Reggie and Ronnie throw themselves into a life of crime. They take over a Snooker Hall, which they use as a base of operations the weeks before they make an offer on the place. The hall is mysteriously targeted in a spate of violent attacks Scaring off the manager and driving down the price Knowing the value of hierarchy and reputation, they start fighting rival outfits to establish their credentials when a Maltese gang tries to extort money from them Praise go at them Lis They also start running protection rackets. targeting local businesses So a protection bracket is simply the understanding that nothing will happen to your business if you pay a certain fee And that certif fee isn't necessarily cash. It could simply be, okay, if you give me enough bread this month. Your bakery will always be looked after. No other gang is going to break into it. no one's going to try and rip you off Y hours. And essentially it's protecting businesses within your patch and ensuring nothing happens to them in return for a fee Businesses that do not pay up are liable to find themselves on the receiving end of the craze violence. somethinghing that stands at odds with the later mythology of the twins as lovable rogues and working class heroes There is a folklore, which is they were loved and feared by the East End community and loved because they didn't hurt their own and they protected the women and the children. And there was a certain code of conduct However At the end of the day, they were brutal thugs who beat people up for money I are not convinced that the code of conduct that everyone so glowingly talks about of never hurting women and children is true They didn't hurt a certain type of women, but equally, they did hurt a lot of other women and there were prostitutes and other people who worked more closely in the scene, who did come to harm, who didn't have the protection of the craze as such So I would suggest that there was more fear in the community than love. Twin's profile grows. Ronnie begins to model himself on Chicago gangsters like Al Capone. and becomes known as the Colonel Sooting for dark, double breasted suits, diamond cufflinks, and heavy gold rings, he also employs a veritable army of teenage boys as an intelligence deep. Now in their twenties, the Kays recruit more experienced criminals into the gang It becomes known as the firm As they expand their enterprise, violence against rivals escalates Soon they're butting heads with the Watney Street gang a group of Irish stalkers whose patch is slightly to the east of the Krays Center of Operations When a member of the firm is attacked in the summer of nineteen fifty six, the Kraz seek revenge by brutally assaulting a young Watney streeter named Terry Martin pulling him out of the pub where he's drinking They slash him several times with a bayonet, severely beat him, and leave him in the gutter. It's just one act of violence among many upon which the Kres build their empire The Twins have so far relied on fear and intimidation to prevent victims and witnesses from going to the authorities and assume the same will happen this time But when the police are alerted to the attack by the hospital treating Martin He breaks the Eastnd code of silence and cooperates In the end Ronnie is convicted of grievous bodily harm and sentenced to three years in prison Reggie is left to manage the firm while his brother is inside He is the more business minded of the two and soon opens a glitzy club at the East End, the Double R which attracts a celebrity clon town including the actor Barbara Windsor, and the actor and later romance novelist Jackie Collins whileile Reggie is rubbing shoulders with the stars Ronnie is suffering Inside prison, he becomes paranoid and continues to be violent Transferred to a secure hospital, he begins treatment for schizophrenia. though he improves He worries that his mental illness will allow the state to detain him indefinite And so Reie comes to his brother's rescue It is a balmy Sunday afternoon june nineteen fifty eight. Two large cars pass through a tall gate and pull up outside Longgrove Hospital A complex of utilitarian buildings nestled in the green embrace of the Surrey countryside Out of an electric blue Lincoln jumps Reggie Cray. Despite the warm weather, he's wearing a heavy beige raincoat With him is an old friend George and a group of others now climbing out of the black Ford accompanying them Together, they all head towards the front door. It is open for them by a hospital porter. But he frowns when he sees how many of them there are and reminds him of the rule, only two visitors per patient shrugging, Reggie directs everyone but George to wait in the car. Then the two of them set off down the long, echoing corridor towards the visitor's room When they open the door, they're immediately hit by a wall of noise. As always, the room is packed with friends and relatives It takes him a second to spot Ronnie, sitting alone at a table He looks well in a blue suit and jazzy maroon tie. A familiar male nurse stands against one wall overseeing proceedings. He raises a hand in greeting as Reggie heads across the room to sit with his brother As Reggie and Ronnie chat, George covertly observes the nurse. Once his attention has moved ont to another family, George nudges Reggie. It's go time In a flash, Reggie has taken off his raincoat and bundled it across the table to Ronnie His own outfit is now revealed, an identical blue suit and maroon tie For a moment, they are mirror images. Then Ronnie is shrugging on the coat and buttoning it up A few minutes later, the nurse announces that tea and biscuits are ready in the kitchen for visitors to collect This is the signal With a nod of confirmation from his brother, Ronnie stands up and walks out of the room with a gaggle of visiting relatives Reggie holds his breath One twin in a beige raincoat walked in, and one just walked out How long until the nurse realizes something is amiss Reggie keeps up the pretense of chatting with George as the seconds tick by. It is twenty minutes before he sees the nurse looking at them and frowning, But by now his brother will be well away in the Back Ford The nurse approaches their table, asking where Reggie has got to Reggie looks confused. I'm Reggie, he tells him. He produces his driver's license from his trouser pocket to prove it, while George nods to back him up. This is definitely Reggie Cray. They drove here together Reggie watches all colour drain from the nurse's face before he races for the door, throwing it open and shouting down the corridor that a patient has escaped. Back in the visitor's room, Reggie throws back his head and laughs After his escape from Longrove Ronnie turns a caravan in the countryside into a criminal hideaway Though he occasionally pops into the snooker Hll or has tea with his mom back in London The strain of life as a fugitive takes its toll. Once the time limit on his psychiatric hold has expired And he can no longer be forced back into long Grove indefinitely He returns to Wandsworth to serve out his prison sentence But no sooner is Ronnie a free man than Reggie is incarcerated He sentenced to eighteen months in nineteen sixty for threatening a shopkeeper who's refused to pay protection money For a while, the running of the firm falls to Ronnie. who works on achieving the twins' dream of opening a nightclub in London's fashionable and wealthy West End The West End historically has been a place of money and pride for the gangs of London. And so from the twenties thirties forties, there was a gang called the Sabini gang who ran it. and then a chap called Billy Hill and Billy Hill is this kind of iconic figure of the early twentieth century in gangland culture And he ran a lot of the clubs up west. and Billy Hill, I think, would have been known to the Cray twins. They would have heard about the club scene up West. They'll have heard about the value and the money that can be made within the nightclub industry So from an early age, they'll have seen it as a pot of gold. So it only does naturally then progress that once they've had the snak clubs and they do the protection racket, they'll start doing a nightclub and then they'll work their way up west. Ronnie obtains information about the takings, shareholders and ownership structure of a popular West End club, Eserelda's Barn. which is set to be more profitable now that gambling has been legalized He is able to intimidate the owner into selling him the controlling stake Reggie gets out of prison, and the twins are soon raking in forty thousand pounds a year each Nearly eight hundred thousand pounds in today's money Pictures from this era show them sharply dressed in dark suits and tightly knotted ties, drinking with the celebrities and politicians who flock to the club But they don't forget their family, and reportedly once even take the actor Judy Garland home to meet their mother. Violet makes tea for the star and is treated to a private performance of her favorite song someomewhere over the Rainbver But after he comes out of prison, twenty seven year old Reggie finds something new to occupy him When he meets sixteen year old schoolgirl, Frances Sheay, a sister of a friend So Frances by all accounts, and I do think this is true, was a sweet young girl who didn't quite know what she was getting herself into And what she saw was the glamour, she saw, the fact that the twins were well known in the area she grew up They were fashionable, popular men with money and in a time when that counted and that mattered because they've come out of a period of not having any money and not having any of that glamour because it's East End bombed London. and they're in a period where people want to be seen with them and people want to be seen with people with money and glamour and celebrity. Reggie is a controlling boyfriend Every afternoon, he waits to collect Frances from her shorthand course Haddie showers her with gifts, as though to prove she will not need to earn an independent living she marries him I find it very hard to speculate about the Reggie Foreances relationship because everybody has such a different opinion on it. The question then lies of where does adoration and love become control And no one really knows that unless you're in a relationship. But you hear accounts of him sending a clothes shop with a wardrobe with a rail of clothes to her house so she could choose what she wanted to wear. She was treated like a princess. but is that love or is that control I'm not sure As Reggie is eczema as unpredictable you can flare less with eGS, a once monthly treatment for moderate to severe eczema After in an initial four month or longer dosing phase, about four in ten people taking EPLS achieve it relief and glare are almost glare skin at sixteen weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more glare at one year, with monthly dosingLS LKZ a two hundred fifty milligram per two milliliter injection is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children twelve years of age and older who weigh at least eighty eight pounds or forty kilograms with moderate severe ecza. also called atopic dermatitis that is not well controlled with cription therapies used on the skin or topicals or who cannot use topical therapies. EBGlS can be used with or without topical corticosteroid. Don't use if you're allergic to EBGlIS. Allergic reactions can occur that can be severe. eye problems can occur. Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EBGLS. Before starting EBGlS, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection Ask your doctor about EBlS and visit Eglus. liily. com or call one it hundred Lily R X or one one hundred five four five five nine seven nine This episode is brought to you by Street Easy Here's the thing, Wanna be the grandparents who bolted to the Burbs or the cool relatives still living in NYC? the city that people come to to be at the center of everything. With twenty years at NYC know how, StreetEasy has the tools, agents, and guidance to make you a forever New Yorker too. Visit streeteasy dot com to buy a rent in NYC Street Easy is an assumed name of Zillow Inc, which has licenses in all fifty states supporting the uncomfortably young Francis Ronie is leading a very different romantic life involving a string of young boyfriends. At Esmer Elders, he starts to meet like minded upper class men and gains a reputation for organizing orgies and finding boys for establishment figures These include the Labour MP Tom Dreryberg Tory Pier, Lord Boothby It is these connections that helped to make the Kray twwins untouchable in the early sixties When the Sunday Mirror newewspaper runs a largely accurate story about Ronnie and Boothby's connection kicks up such a fuss Paper is forced to pay him an enormous settlement The labor leader, Harold Wilson, even lends his lawyer knowing that any scandal will envelop his government too. Thanks to the actions of Drybver The establishment protects its own. with it Alough this is a period when homosexuality is illegal Men like Boothby often go unpsecuted so long as they're discreet while Ronnie Cray's sexuality is something of an open secret prevailing homophobia of the era undoubtedly shapes aspects of his life It's hard to know how society's attitude informed Ronnie's behavior because in so many ways, Ronnie lived outside of the law and lived outside of society and the way he operated in his life in his ethics, how he operated in a a legal and illegal manner In terms of his sexuality and how society informed that I don't think we'll ever know But I do think what we do know is that it was a really tough time to be a homosexual man in London Tins do not let romance distract them from their burgeoning criminal empire. After taking over Esmmerild's barn, they expand their protection racket into the West endnd Thanksks to the involvement of a man named Leslie Payne who becomes something like a business manager to Ronnie and Reie They embark on a series of bigger scams including setting up fake wholesale companies to defraud suppliers The twins also make a show of giving their money away donating to local boys' clubs, sports teams, hospitals, and old people's homes. It is all part of creating the image of themselves as community minded gangsters the height of their power They are now arrested on extortion charges The firm immediately gets to work hiring a private detective to dig up dirt on one key witness, intimidating others and bribing jurists And just like that, in nineteen sixty five, the twins are acquitted To celebrate, they buy the remaining shares of the club Police officers who led the investigation against them are invited to the opening Prase seem untouchable Now aged twenty one, Francis finally agrees to marry Reggie It is a lavish and glamorous affair, captured by legendary fashion photographer David Bailey But not everyone is thrilled Folklore has it that you're marrying Francis caused a problem for Roji with his brother on There is the theory that Ronnie was jealous of Francis. Whether that is true, we will never ever know and you hear so many different accounts, it's hard to actually find the truth in that. But logic would suggest that twin relationships are different and special. So therefore marriage into a twin relationship is always going to prove difficult Francis and Reggie move into the flat below Ronnie's She hates that Regie often leaves her to go and drink and party with his brother Reggie becomes jealous, refusing to let her take driving lessons, and there are reports that he is abusive Within eight weeks, she is back at her parents' house Initiating a pattern of breakups and reconciliation All the while, Frontis's mental health deteriorates And she is soon seeing a psychiatrist But in all other respects, the twins are riding high goingo into business with the American mafia, they buy stolen Canadian and American bonds and sell them on in Europe They start to explore the possibility of providing protection for the London casinos the Mafia are investing in their reputation is no longer local They are by now the internationally recognized crime lords of the Capitol So they cannot stay on top On the tenth of march nineteen sixty six, Ronnie is driven to Bethnel Green's blind beggar pub He is looking for a man called George Connell m amber of the rival Sou London Richardson gang The day before, the Richardsons shot a firm member. And Ronnie is after revenge When he enters the bar Forell looks up. Just look who's here, he says Without a word, Ronnie strides over and shoots him in the head. Police come to investigate No one will talk The craze operated on fear and people were too afraid to speak and too afraid to grasp them up because that was the code that was the code of the villains of the time and it was the code of the East End So you didn't gras up your friend or neighbour or your friendly local protection bracket gang So that's what they relied on after the Georia Canal murder. It is a shocking escalation of the twins violence and raises questions about Ronnie's mental state There is evidence he is self medicating heavily with alcohol alongside antip psychotic drugs No one can actually say what Ron's mental health was exactly during what we know as their heyday or the beginning of their heyday and through to the time they were caught However, there were certain decisions, certain actions that he took that you think, okay, well this could be paranoid schizophrenia, or these aren't the actions of a sane man. But then you could say that with so many criminals and murderers. These aren't the actions of a sane person So you then have to question Reggie as well because he went along with it So it isn't simply Ron was mad and Reggie was pulled along for the ride. That's not the case. They were equals Some accounts of the twins characterize Reggie as a cool headed businessman, in comparison to Ronnie, who was seen as Tgger happappy, reveling in violence This view though, ignores the harm Reggie himself caused Nowhere is this more apparent than in the events of nineteen sixty seven In summer, Reggie and Francis appear to reconcile. and plan to take a second honeymoon But on the morning of the seventh of June, her brother Frank, brings her a cup of tea in bed He assumes she is still asleep trarag She has taken a drug overdose. The official account is that she took her own life And I am inclined to believe that account. The other accounts where you know, did Ronnie murder her or did Reggie murder her or what actually happened, I think come more out of the Cra' ideology and mythology and legend than actually the truth and the reality of what it was, I think She was a lady in an unhappy marriage and didn't see a way out. And I think That is a tragedy in itself without adding on speculation about murder and those sorts of conversations Frances's distraught parents point the figure at Reggie while he in turn blames them. As her widower he plans her funeral himself hasas her buried wearing her wedding dress Every member of the firm sends a wreath In the aftermath of her death Reggie takes a drink and becomes increasingly violent In November, a member of the firm, Jack the Hat McVittie, is contracted to assassinate the twins' old business manager, Leslie Payne. Ronniey has become paranoid that pain knows too much and could turn them into the police Though Jack is paid five hundred pounds up frront, with another five hundred pounds promised after the deed is done Several weeks later Pne remains very much alive And so Reggie and Ronnie deccide to teach McVittie a lesson Colonels cooked up a new ten dollar bucket of the day just for you Monday, twenty four nuggets for ten dollars. Tuesday, eight piece fried chicken for ten dollars. Wednesday, ten wings for ten dollars. Thursday, eight teenders for ten dollars. Friday twenty four nuggets for Oh, you guessed it, didn't you dollars Fin l machine. The ten dollar bucket of the day deal. Every weekday, onlyn at KFC, it's finger licking goo. Prices and participation v veryable supplies last not available on third party ordering platforms, tax extra This episode is brought to you by Starbucks. That is fire. Whoa, that's good. This might be the drink of the summer. Okay, I like this one too. I'm not worth it, okay? Try it for yourself. Starbucks refreshherers concentrates are coming home. Find them in the coffee aisle and make it yours It is the last Saturday in october nineteen sixty seven. In North London, the night air already carries the chill of winter A young firm member named Chris Lambriano shivers as he and his brother steer a very drunk man by the name of Jack towards the steps down to a basement flat. Jack is laughing, weaving slightly as he tells some story, his cheeks red from the cold and the drinks they've been ping him with When they reach the steps, Chris grabs hold of Jack's arm to stop him toppling down head first. The Krays have tasked the Lambriano brothers with getting him into the flat Chris doesn't want to think about what they would do if Jack fell and broke his neck before they got to him Together, Chris and his brother guide Jack safely down the stairs and through the front door They step into a house party in full swing From the living room comes the sound of the Beatles's latest record. The air is thick with cigarette smoke Jack tries to peel away from them, muttering about getting another drink, but Chris keeps a tight grip on his arm and steers him instead into the back bedroom The door swings open to reveal Ronnie and Reggie standing in the center of the room, lit by a single lamp. Other members of the firm stand in the shadows Jack stops realization dawning on his face He has failed to kill pain And now his time is up He tries to turn, but is shoved back inside. and at a nod from one of the men, Chris crosses the threshold too and closes the door behind them. What comes next seems to happen in slow motion Reggie brings out a gun from his waistband and raises it to Jack's forehead. But when the trigger is pulled, There is just a dull click 's jammed Jack's eyes had fluttered closed, but now they snap open rom his position by the door, Chris watches him make a desperate lunge for the window He forces his head and shoulders out through the narrow gap, but that is as far as he gets before two firm members are on him, grabbing his legs and dragging him back into the room. They haul him to his feet, and then Ronnie is behind him, trapping his arms behind his back and screaming at him to act like a man Now, Reggie steps into the pool of orange light cast by the lamp, and Chris is struck by a wave of nausea. Because in Reggie's hand is a wicked looking carving knife its blade gleaming in a low light As Jack struggles even harder against his captors, Chris quietly turns and slips out of the room Sliding down the wall until he's sitting on his heels. He slaps his hands over his ears to muffle the sounds coming from the bedroom You may have played a part in this But all he wants this frick to be over After Jack's murder Brers are now killers I am not an expert in how people kill other people, but to walk in and shoot somebody feels more clinical than to stab somebody to death. To stab somebody to death, you need to be up close to their face You need to be close to their body, the blood, you see the reaction, whereereas walking into a pub and shooting somebody is slightly more distant way of doing it. So for those who say Ronnie was the mad one, Ronnie was the one who was paranoid, schizophrenic You need to think about the murder that Reggie committed, which is far more of a brutal, up close, visceral murder than the one that Ronnie was convicted of At first, they seem to have got away with McVittty's murder as Cornell's. Various firm members, including the twins' elder brother Charlie, work to intimidate witnesses and hide the body For years, corruption within the police, as well as the East End Code of silence, have protected them October nineteen sixty seven The metropolitan police finally launch an investigation into the Kraze operations The effort is led by detective superintendent Leonard Nipper Reid. Little by little His fourteen person squad begin to turn former associates They find witnesses who will be willing to speak in court twins are safely behind bars By may nineteen sixty eight, they have what they need Reid plans a coordinated dawn raid to simultaneously arrest both twins and two dozen of their men. The success of the whole operation hinges on this one mning If any, senior firm members are left on the outside They will be able to bribe and intimidate witnesses. and the case will fall apart. On the ninth of May, Reed and his team burst through the front door of the flat the twins have bought for Violet. Reggie is in bed with a girl, and Ronnie is in the room next door with his latest boy The police have them both in handcuffs before they're fully awake Reed is now in a race against time to secure the cooperation of other firm members before the twins' trial. What he really needs is evidence for the two murders to get the craze put away for the longest stretch possible, as their other crimes might only warrant a few years. For the moment, the twins seem unconcerned and continue to look after their associates even from within the confines of prison Violet is continuing to be the good loyal momum that she is who doesn't necessarily believe the extreme things her sons have done. Clearly, she knows they're dodgy businessmen and that their money isn't legit all all the time. because she's lived a very good lifestyle from their earnings However, she continues to be a mama and take them food in prison and take their associates's food in prison and visit them and ensure they're okay It's not just Violets roast dinners that the twins hope will keep firm members loyal. Reed also has to overcome their well founded fears of speaking out. There's the old phrase of dividing and conquering. So trying to divide affirm and divide the loyalties and play them off against each other was a natural operation. And to a certain extent it worked And they all stood next to each other and they all had cards around their neck. It was a trial where they could all see each other. As the prosecution and defense were speaking, they were standing side by side. So it must have been a very intimidating place to be if you were a firm member. And it must have been extraordinarily intimidating if you were thinking of turning against twins as well as convincing several within the firm to testify about McVitti's murder Reed persuades a barmaid of the blind beggar to identify Ronnie as the man who shot Cornell It swings things for the prosecution. And on the eighth of march, nineteen sixty nine, Reginald and Ronald Cray are both convicted of murder. sentenced to life in prison tririal tears the firm apart, as other key members, including the twins's brother Charlie are sentenced as accessories to the murders Prase Rign of Terror is over. Twins are at first placed in separate prisons But after a campaign by their mother, they are incarcerated together at Parkhurst on the Isle of White But the reunion does not last long In nineteen seventy nine, Ronnie is certified as a paranoid schizophrenic and transferred to Broadmore The notorious High security psychiatric Hospital al though the distance from his twin is hard his standard of life otherwise improves There is no doubt that Broadmore was a nicer place to be than Podcast. You had more freedom and you were treated patient rather than as a prisoner. And that's the fundamental difference. Broadmore is a posospital for the criminally insane. Parkhurst is a category A prisoner So Reggie will have been living a very difficult prison life in a wing with other violent, violent criminals. which for him probably had its pluses as well as its minuses. Whereas Ronnie, yes, he had a cell essentially that he was in, but he has more freedom to walk into communal areas Ronnie had velvet curtains in his room. He was dressed beautifully Yes, Reggie was in aftunate position of being a relatively top dog, but the idea for any younger up and coming criminal to hurt Radi in some way was something that everyone aimed for He had a target on his back throughout his park cur years and then subsequently into other prisons Reggie and Ronnie write to one another frequently They also begin to grow the Cay brand withith the help of their brother Charlie, once he is released For a fee, they lend their name to security companies They write books and sell the rights to their story to film producers so successful are they at marketing themselves that some people estimate the Kraze made more money in prison. than during their criminal heyday on the outside In nineteen eighty two, the twins are briefly reunited But it's no cause for celebration because it is for their beloved mother's funeral The next time Regie is allowed out of prison, it will be March nineteen ninety five when he attends another funeral at Chingford Mount Cemetery. this time It's for his beloved twin brother So when Ronnie died, Reggie was a maidstone. And obviously hearing the news that your twin brother has died and will never be free again must have been devastating for Reggie My understanding is that Freddy Foreman, the Krazs enforcer, was in prisoned at the time with Reggie. I think he was on a different wing However, the prison governor kindly let Freddie Foreman go and comfort Reggie and share his grief Some reports suggest that the spectacular funeral with which Reggie sends Ronnie off is the largest the capitol has seen Winston Churchills three decades earlier In nineteen ninety seven, the surviving Cray twin meets and subsequently marries a production assistant named Roberta when she visits the prison to make a film about the twins Reggie becomes a born again Christian. Then in august two thousand, he is finally freed, aged sixty six after serving over thirty years of his sentence. His release is granted on compassionate grounds because by now he has terminal cancer On the first of October, with Roberta by his side, Reggie Cray breathes his last in a country hotel in Norfolk Ten days later, he is laid to rest beside Charlie, his parents, Francis, and of course, his twin, Ronnie From prison, the Cray twins spent decades building up their own legend as good old fashioned East end criminals. It was a compelling story and the world largely fell for it. They became an iconic part of the image of sixties London As Ronnie Cray himself later wrote They called them the swinging sixties The Beatles and the Rolling stones were the rulers of pop music Carnaby Street ruled the fashioned world And me and my brother ruled London We were untouchable The myth has served to obscure their true nature and the truth of their crimes The legacy of the Cray twins is failure. They were failed as young men by the system They could have been sent in a far more positive direction. They could have used their talents in many different ways And their circumstance and the world that they grew up in sent them into this life of crime. and then they made a choice to follow that path and they made incredibly bad choices along the way C So They chose to be criminals, they chose to be villains, and they did a really bad job of that because they got caught And they both died having spent most of their lives behind bars. Nothing about that is heroic. Nothing about that has a Rubin hood esque tendency All of that says failure Next time on Short History, I will bring you a short history of Hurricane Katrina It was an enormous test. It was a test equivalent to the San Francisco earthquake, to the Fukushima disaster in Japan to the Kyoto earthquake. to the Chicago fire And yet Importantly, the city survived it And the city's ability to survive it spoke to and revealed strengths that we didn't even understand were strengths. and made for an important learning experience and more importantly than learning made for and emotional re engagement with each other that is at the very essence of what about New Orleans was worth saving 's next time. You can listen to the next two episodes of Short History of right Now without waiting and without adverts by subscribing to Noiser Plus Just hit the link in the episode description or head to wWw. noiser. com forward slash subscriptions s one lot more episodes today B Brian Reynolds here from Mit Mbile I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for fifteen dollars a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint mobile today I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile d. com slash switch. Upfront payment of forty five dollars for three month plan, equivalent to fifteen dollars per month required. intntro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. taxes and fees extra. Fful terms at mintmobile d. com