01x03 - Fall

[bunniefuu]

It's quite clear

from several sources that

serious criminal players

were contemplating

assassinating the twins.

It was chaotic.

It wasn't good for business.

The Krays had to go.

Afraid they'd get me,

but I decided to get Reggie first.

We decided to sh**t him and

cut his throat and leave him there

as a message

to the rest of his cronies.

Everybody knew about the Kray twins

and the myth and the legend

far outgrew the reality.

They felt they were indestructible

and, you know, they probably

could have been for a lot longer,

but when he shot George Cornell,

I mean, that WAS

the beginning of the end.

This house of cards

is coming crashing down.

CROWD CLAMOURING

The thing that

was important to the Krays

was the name, the legacy.

CHANTING: Let him out! Let him out!

Would they like the way their

legend's made and the film's made?

They would have loved

every minute of it,

because that's what they wanted.

MAN: How are you feeling today,

Reggie?

All right. Yeah?

Yeah, I feel good. I'm relaxed.

In 1965

you and Ronnie,

you had the world at your feet.

Mm. Everything was great.

Mm. Fashion pop art.

David Bailey taking photographs

of you and Ronnie.

Entertainers and criminals

were very closely aligned.

What went wrong?

Ronnie Kray,

he believes he's invincible.

He's walked into The Blind Beggar.

He's shot George Cornell.

He was very proud of his m*rder.

Ronnie kept on to Reggie,

"Look, I've done one."

In other words,

"I've k*lled George Cornell."

"You've got to do one."

So, the pressure was on him to do

to do his m*rder,

and along came Jack the Hat.

'My dad knew Jack the Hat,

'and he said he was a bit

of a practical joker, you know?

'He used to get on people's nerves

a bit, but he was all right.'

He weren't really a gangster,

really. He just dabbled in things.

Jack the Hat McVitie

had been given £1,000

to carry out some sort of

contract k*lling for them,

which wasn't carried out,

and the money never came back

to the Kray twins.

And when he was reprimanded

for this,

he started to make threats

against the twins.

He turned up at a club one night

with a sawn-off shot g*n.

He was gonna k*ll the Krays.

Which wasn't

a wise thing to do anyway,

but it's worth stressing

that Jack the Hat

was no shrinking violet.

This was a violent man, someone

who could look after himself.

He lived in that violent world.

They knew that

he was a tough guy,

and they didn't like that,

tough guys going around,

saying they're not afraid of 'em.

This is an unpublished manuscript

from Ronnie Hart.

Ronnie Hart

is the cousin of the Krays

and he's then a member of the firm.

"Ronnie decreed that something would

have to be done about McVitie.

"Ronnie called Reggie,

"and when Reggie

was finished talking to Ronnie,

"his mood had changed completely.

"His lips twitched, and he began

drinking one gin after another."

"Ronnie then told us all

what was going to happen."

"He said McVitie was to die

that night."

There was a party at Evering Road

in Stoke Newington

at the flat of a woman

called Blonde Carol's.

McVitie was invited,

and he turned up.

d*ck HOBBS: It becomes apparent

that, this party,

this a k*lling zone.

'My name's Chris Lambrianou.

'My regret is,

I did meet the Krays.

'On that night, I thought

"How can we get out of this?"

'We're going to Evering Road,

Blonde Carol's place.'

Down the stairs we go.

Jack comes dashing by

and goes into the room,

"Where's the party?

Where's the girls?"

And so on and so forth.

Next thing, there's an argument,

altercation.

Reggie pulls a g*n out.

g*n don't work.

So, I've gone to walk out.

I said,

"I didn't come down here for this."

You know, "I'm going home."

My brother, Tony, was still there.

When I spoke to my brother

after the event,

Tony said that there was a fight

when Reggie the g*n didn't work,

Jack smashed a window

trying to get out.

So, in his manuscript, Ronnie Hart

paints an horrific picture

of the m*rder and the details.

"Reg punched Jack in the face

"and then stuck the knife

he was holding in his left

"into Jack's face,

an inch or two below his right eye,

"and his face seemed to fall open.

"The blood spurted.

"Ronnie was yelling,

'Don't stop, Reg.

"k*ll him, Reg.

Do him in. k*ll him.'

"Then Reg started

to stab him in the stomach.

"He must have struck him

five or six times with a knife.

"There was blood everywhere."

"Reggie then stabbed McVitie again

in the chest"

"and Jack slumped slowly

to the floor."

This was Reg proving,

in Ron's words,

that he was "a real man"

and that he could commit violence,

that he could commit m*rder.

Then they've got to do away

with the body.

By now, the drink is

kind of leaving me a little bit

and I'm getting a bit sober,

and I drive round to Evering Road.

And I'd gone in the front room,

and there's Jack the Hat,

laying full length.

I want him to be alive.

I I don't want to

I want him to jump up.

I want him to be

be the Jack I know, not

not this

person laying there,

not gonna be doing nothing.

The twins had walked out,

and they've given instructions.

We're talking about

very dangerous people here.

They've just k*lled a man.

Are you gonna turn round and say,

"Oh, excuse me, Mr Kray,

by the way, do you mind"

"You know, you k*lled him.

You get rid of him. You clean up."

No.

They would turn on anybody.

It could have been us.

We cleaned the blood up, and we

I we

we give it a thorough clean,

as best we can.

Not only that, we went round,

and we spoke to different people

who were there,

told them to keep their mouths shut

and everything else.

And we got Jack out

and we tried to put him in the boot.

You can't put a fully-grown man

in the boot of a car.

A A Ford Consul.

So, what we did, we managed to get

him in and put him on the back seat.

The body is taken

south of the river

..and Fred Foreman is given the task

of getting rid of the body.

Now, Fred was known by this time

as someone who was willing and able

to get rid of bodies.

They thought they were gonna

get away with m*rder again,

because they had it under control.

They had nothing under control.

They couldn't control themselves.

They were not behaving

like gangsters.

They were completely unpredictable.

They were upsetting a lot

of people for no reason.

They were getting fed up of them.

You know, you start

k*lling your own, where do you stop?

And it is quite clear

from several sources that

serious criminal players

were contemplating

assassinating the twins

in order to bring

some kind of equilibrium

back to the crime scene in London.

It was chaotic.

It wasn't good for business.

The Krays had to go.

They were evil, dangerous b*stards.

EXHALES SLOWLY

'I would have been afraid

they would have had me shot.

'But I decided to get Reggie first.'

And we waited outside the flat

in Stratford.

I get a phone call saying,

"Reggie is on his way."

We decided to sh**t him and

cut his throat and leave him there

as a message

to the rest of his cronies.

And, er, he never arrived.

So we

decided to leave it

to another night.

By now, Scotland Yard realised that

people were beginning to laugh

at the ineffectiveness

of the police in arresting them.

They were embarrassing the police.

Protection rackets were still

around, murders had gone unpunished.

People are still writing

about "missing Frank Mitchell".

"Missing Jack the Hat".

"The unsolved m*rder

of George Cornell".

Journalists are having a field day.

Their notoriety and their fame

became an embarrassment

to Scotland Yard,

and, in the end, the Yard

decided to put a stop to it.

Nipper Read starts to build

a new team to go after the Krays.

He now knows that

he has to be incredibly careful

with the witnesses that he's got

and trying to

give an appearance

that they can look after them,

that the Krays WILL be arrested,

and that these people

can now start talking to him.

But it's hugely important

for Nipper

to get the Krays off the streets.

My name is Maurice Harding,

and in the 1960s,

I was a detective constable

in the Metropolitan Police.

May the 8th, 1968,

I was home in bed here, fast asleep.

About three thirty in the morning

PHONE RINGS

..I got a telephone call

from someone

who told me to go to my office.

SIREN WAILS

When we were there,

we received a telephone call

to go to Tintagel House.

Nipper Read came in, stood on a box.

"Morning, gentlemen."

"We're going to arrest the Krays

today."

I was on the Kray inquiry.

'I was the first woman WDC.'

Even my brother and my father,

who were in the police force,

didn't know what job I was on

at the time.

I wasn't allowed to tell anybody.

I never told anybody.

SIREN WAILS

Nipper Read,

he went into the Krays' flat.

And the milkman

came at the same time.

They had to clear

the milkman out the way,

say, "We're police officers."

When they got there,

Reggie was with a woman,

and Ronnie was in bed

with a 16-year-old boy.

I think somebody said,

"Good morning, Mr Read,"

or something ridiculous.

There was no fighting

or anything like that.

They were told what they were

arrested for and they came quietly.

But then, they were taken

to West End Central Police Station,

and they were just

just in casual clothes.

And as they went into the cell,

they were shouting out,

"You won't keep us here very long."

LOCKS CLICKING

I was very proud to think

that I'd been involved in something

as serious as that.

'We'd done the right thing,

we'd got the right people,

'and all it was now

was going to court and proving it.'

The 34-year-old ex-boxer brothers

Reginald and Ronald

came here with Flying Squad officers

at six o'clock this morning.

Two m*rder Squad superintendents

and a number of Fraud Squad officers

have been engaged

in a special hush-hush operation.

It was headlines on the front page

of the paper, "Kray Twins arrested".

In the end,

I think there were about

two dozen people that were picked up

either that morning

or the week after.

INDISTINCT POLICE RADIO CHATTER

The police came up to Birmingham

and they arrested me up there.

And they took me to a place

called Tintagel House.

I observed in the room itself

photographs of all the firm.

There were photographs of the twins,

Ian Barrie, Tony, Ronnie Bender,

Ronnie Hart, Albert Donoghue,

Jack Dickson,

so it was pretty serious business.

And Nipper Read says to me

"About the McVitie m*rder"

"..as we've got it,

you had nothing to do with it."

"Tell us about it."

I said, "I don't know

what you're talking about."

I said, "I don't know anything."

I came up in a school

..where you didn't rat on

your friends, no matter what it was.

They kept their mouth shut,

and you kept your mouth shut.

And he turned round, and he said,

"I've had enough of you," he said.

"Charge him with m*rder."

People would never,

ever talk about the Krays,

because they were so frightened

of 'em, until they were in custody.

It was really, really

in Nipper's interest,

before we did anything else,

to arrest them,

and, having arrested them, we could

then go on and get the evidence.

Nipper got a bit tense,

wondering whether anybody

was gonna come forward and stick by

what they'd said they'd say.

I'd have been worried,

I think, myself,

if I'd given evidence against them

and that you were on your own

and somebody'd come up

and try and get rid of you.

SIREN WAILS

The girl that was the barmaid

at The Blind Beggar pub

she witnessed the sh**ting

of George Cornell in the pub.

And we had to try

and not talk her round,

but just tell her

that she was doing the right thing

by telling the truth.

Very difficult.

Took her kids out for walks.

Persuaded her that

we were the right people.

Once the Krays were inside,

this idea of a solid criminal firm

who were all going to

stand up for the Krays and

it virtually collapsed,

with the exception

of their brother, Charlie

..and the Lambrianou brothers.

I couldn't believe

any of the firm were gonna turn,

to be honest with you.

I thought they were all loyal

to the twins.

It didn't matter

whether it was King Kong

or Little Billy round the corner

you didn't do it.

Albert Donoghue

is Reggie Kray's right-hand man.

He acts as driver, muscle

and collector of protection rackets.

He was a serious criminal,

and I think, of all of the firm,

he probably had more respect.

Pressure was put

on Albert Donoghue to

take the pressure off of the Krays

by admitting to

to crimes that he hadn't committed.

The twins asked him, yeah.

Well, didn't ask him. Told him.

And that's what turned them people.

They thought,

"No, I'm not gonna do that for you."

When I arrested Albert,

he just sat down next to me,

put his shoes on and said,

"OK, let's go."

And once he started

to give evidence, really,

things started to go badly wrong

for the Krays.

We were still investigating

the m*rder of Jack the Hat McVitie.

Make yourself comfortable.

But Albert Donoghue, when

he admitted what his connection

was that he'd wallpapered

the whole flat again.

We actually went back

to Evering Road.

First thing I did was go

and peel a corner off the wallpaper

and pull it up,

and we found obvious blood there.

There was blood all up the wall.

The police,

they are right on their case.

But I was confident I'd be OK.

They'd beat the police before.

I thought they were quite capable

of covering things up.

They couldn't see themselves

going down.

My name's Ivan Lawrence.

I'm a Queen's Counsel,

and I was junior counsel

in defence of Ronald Kray

in the m*rder trials.

Didn't get a great deal

of cooperation

from our client, Ronald Kray.

I remember one occasion,

when we were getting close to him

having to give evidence,

I said to him

.."Can we come down afterwards

and go through your statement?

"Prepare you for giving defence?"

And he said, "No, no," he says,

"I don't want you

to come down tonight."

"I've got a nice young boy

coming to see me tonight."

And I said,

"Well, it's very important, Mr Kray,"

"that we go through your evidence."

"' Yes, we'll do it another day.'"

When Ronnie saw me in court,

he wrote a little note,

which he got one of the wardens

to pass to me, saying,

"Dear Miss Lethbridge,

you are more beautiful than ever."

"When I get out of this,

I will take you to the moon."

Ronnie was I would say

he was off with the fairies.

Poor Violet had to go

to the Old Bailey

with the shirts the day before,

for them to put on in the morning.

They had to be dressed better

than anybody else in the court,

the barristers included.

So we sat there

for the longest m*rder trial,

the most expensive m*rder trial

ever.

39-day trial has cost about

£150,000 in defence costs alone.

But what they did,

they did a fascinating thing.

They put two m*rder trials together.

George Cornell

..McVitie m*rder.

And they linked it by saying

that Ronnie Kray said to Reggie,

"I've done mine. You do yours."

Still, to this day,

I cannot get over it.

Two m*rder trials

being put together.

A strong team of uniformed

Special Patrol Group officers

has handled the escort duty

of the prisoners

from various prisons to the court.

When the trial started

at the Old Bailey

..and I began to see

Donoghue

..and Ronnie Hart and others,

then it dawned on me

about the pictures.

The pictures was, on one side,

those that were giving evidence

and those that weren't.

When Ronnie Hart got up

and spoke in the box, I was shocked.

He was their flesh and blood.

He was a cousin of the Krays

and well involved with them

in the m*rder

of Jack the Hat McVitie.

And I took him to the trial

and sat in court with him

while he gave his evidence.

He looked up from the dock,

and Ronnie Kray was looking at him

with his fingers like this, and

BLOWS AIR

He'd done the old g*n sign,

as if to say,

"You're dead, young man."

But Ronnie just looked at him

and mouthed, "Poof."

The Cornell m*rder,

everybody was talking about, well,

"It's the barmaid that will be able

to recognise Ronnie."

Nobody else is going to say

it was Ronnie Kray.

The day that she turned up

she was nice, dressed nice,

good looking,

and I heard her speak.

I remember Chris Lambrianou going

..as much as to say,

"We're finished."

It was the end.

We're going down.

Because she was so believable.

Everything she said.

She convinced me

that she was telling the truth.

But now,

it all rests with the 12 men

locked in a little room back there,

and we all wait for what

they have to say about it.

When the guilty verdicts

were read out

..it was rough justice.

It was the twins they was after,

and if you was with the twins,

you were going down as well.

The judge was Melford Stevenson,

who was notoriously tough.

And you weren't gonna go down

with a sloppy ten

or something else like that.

You were gonna do big bird.

Ronnie Bender did 20 years.

My brother, Tony, did 15.

I did 15.

When he said "Twins, I sentence you

to life imprisonment,"

you heard that gasp, going,

"Oh, God, no, no!"

"But I suggest"

"30 years."

I mean, undoubtedly,

they were guilty.

But it really worried me.

I didn't feel that

they were being given a fair trial.

I was left with

a horrible feeling of class w*r.

Nobody is particularly worried

when gangsters k*ll each other.

But they're terribly worried

if they

..go beyond their station.

The sentences that they received

were very high by the standards

of the 1960s.

Life, with a recommendation

of 30 years.

Poor Violet.

She was just in total shock.

She couldn't believe it.

"Why did all those people

come and talk bad about them?"

"Those people have sat at my table.

"They've had tea in my house.

I talk to their mothers.

"I ask 'em about

their wives and children."

"Why Why were

they all saying bad things?"

"They're calling 'em murderers!"

And that's when I thought,

"I can't pretend any more."

I said, "But Violet"

"..they DID commit m*rder."

ROCK MUSIC PLAYS

Ronnie Kray is sent to Durham.

Reggie Kray is sent

to the Isle of Wight.

And this means that Violet Kray,

their mother,

has two incredibly long journeys

to prisons

north and south of the UK.

That's got to really,

really wear you down.

Now, she's had to ask for lifts,

and not a lot of people

wanted to do that.

It sounds terrible,

because they all wanted

to do everything for her

when the twins were here.

Prison, for a start, in the 1970s,

was an extremely rough place to be.

It was rough.

People do know

how to use knives in jail.

They know how to hurt people

in jail.

REPORTER: And the prison's

so-called Black Museum

contains a terrifying

array of weapons

that the prisoners have constructed

to do violence to themselves,

each other and the staff.

So it's incredibly dangerous

for them.

They are the old guard,

and they are surrounded

by young bucks.

And they fancy their chances

of taking on Ronnie and Reggie.

The famous book

The Profession Of Violence

has come out,

and is selling by the thousand.

The myth of the Krays starts

with The Profession Of Violence.

This was written by a journalist,

John Pearson,

who the Krays allowed access

before they were finally arrested.

Said to be the most-read book

in prison

and said to be the most stolen book

out of book shops.

They were kind of

celebrities in prison.

They had tear-ups.

They had differences of opinion

with people.

My name's Bobby Cummines.

I was in Parkhurst Maximum

Security with Reggie Kray.

'My name's Steve Tully.'

I first met Reg in Parkhurst,

in November '82.

Some very dangerous, dangerous,

dangerous people in them prisons.

Sometimes, it could be quite heavy.

A friend of mine got k*lled,

stabbed to death over an onion.

You know, when people say,

"Prison is an 'oliday camp,"

I don't know what 'oliday camps

they do,

but there's people slashing,

they was stabbing each other.

Everybody in the wing

used to have a wedge,

which was like a wooden wedge,

so, when you're banged up at night,

you'd put the wedge under the door,

because a lot of people

would come in and attack you

while you're still asleep.

But everyone was tooled up in there.

You know, even I had

half a gardening shear in me coat.

There's a serious bit of work there.

Ronnie is struggling into '77, '78.

He's having to deal,

and Reggie are having to deal,

with regular prison attacks.

His mental health was deteriorating.

And eventually, in 1979,

Ronnie was moved to Broadmoor.

REPORTER: Maximum-security

special hospitals like Broadmoor

are designed to cope with people

of dangerous and violent behaviour.

Paranoid schizophrenia is that

form of schizophrenia which has,

as its main symptoms, delusions -

that is false beliefs -

and hallucinations.

When Ronnie decided

he weren't gonna be let out,

that's when he decided

he wanted to go to Broadmoor.

Cos he said,

"Well, if I'm gonna be in here,"

"I might as well be in

a place like that."

You know,

when we talk about the Krays

and you talk about people

doing long sentences in prison,

it's really hard to explain

to people what it's like.

But their mother

was the greatest woman.

She never missed a visit

with them boys.

Well, I first noticed in about 1981

that she was so tired,

lost weight and very, very drawn.

She'd already been diagnosed then,

but she told nobody.

Not even the old man.

She didn't tell her husband

about the cancer.

And when they was in jail, she'd

visit them non-stop all them years,

you know, until she died, bless her.

REPORTER: Violet Kray died the day

before her 73rd birthday

still fighting to get parole

for her notorious twins,

the gangsters who were sentenced

to 30 years each in 1969 for m*rder.

Oh, God.

The funeral at Chingford,

the little church

is right opposite the graveyard.

There was a crowd outside.

Lots of Chingford people

that had heard what was happening

and wanted to see the twins.

The kindness, I can't believe.

I mean, I just can't believe it.

It amazed me. The amount of wreaths

and the way people behaved.

In fact, everybody.

PHOTOGRAPHER: Ronnie! Ronnie!

Then came Reggie,

also handcuffed from the

maximum security wing at Parkhurst.

Reggie! PHOTOGRAPHER: Reggie!

Neither of them cried

at their mother's funeral.

They were too concerned

with the day.

They weren't gonna get out of a van

and cry in front of all these

crowds.

Meanwhile, an even bigger crowd

rushed to the graveside service

for Vi.

There were more flowers

from film stars,

underworld figures,

and an ex-Great Train Robber or two.

She called the Kray twins,

Ronnie and Reggie, "my lovely boys"

and faithfully visited them

all over the country.

But the sad part about that was,

they weren't

allowed to go to the grave.

You know, from the church, they were

taken, again, out the back door,

one into a car,

one into a van, and gone.

I wrote the Kray twins'

autobiography, Our Story,

in the mid-1980s, when Reg,

in the main,

was in Parkhurst Prison,

and Ronnie

was at Broadmoor Hospital.

I would go and see them both

at least once a month.

I think Ronnie

was quite happy in Broadmoor.

In his own way,

he sort of ruled Broadmoor.

You know, he was the top man there.

He was much respected there.

He was always incredibly smart,

beautifully turned out.

When he walked in,

it flipped me back

all those years,

because, dress-wise,

he had a beautiful Italian suit,

navy suit, white silk shirt,

an Italian silk tie,

beautiful handkerchief,

the gold cuff links with "RR"

written on them, the gold watch.

Oh, and the cigarettes.

Chain smoked

SOFT EXHALATION

..in that way he did.

You know, like Noel Coward.

I said,

"You're smoking like Noel Coward."

"Why are you holding the cigarette

down there?"

He says, "Ain't you nosy."

Ronnie had a butler.

In fact, a convicted m*rder*r,

double m*rder*r.

He would look after Ronnie

and Ronnie's guests.

When I first went and saw him,

you know, he said,

"What would you like?"

And he had a white coat on,

and I said, "I'd like coffee,"

and he brought me a lovely

silver coffee pot and China cup,

biscuits on a plate.

I'd always enjoy

going to see Ronnie,

because it was always quite

a pleasant, sociable occasion,

to be quite honest.

My name is David Courtney,

and I came to know Ronnie and Reggie

round about the mid-'80s, where

I had a large security company.

I was doing and organising a lot of

things that was happening in London,

and they wanted to know about it.

Worst thing about

being in prison is,

the world's going on without you

and no-one knows I'm here.

So if you can do anything

to get in the paper or something,

that's a that's orgasmic for you.

But it was, like,

romantic to run with the myth.

They became, as the years went by,

complete celebrities,

and with it, in rolled the money.

My name's Steve Wraith,

and I was one of

the Krays' business advisers

in the '90s

when they were in prison.

I came up with a suggestion

by letter to Reg

that we put his image onto a T-shirt

and see

you know,

see whether they would sell.

And he said, "Yes,

I'm more than happy to do that."

"The split will be 70% for us

and 30% for you."

So, this is the

one of the first T-shirt designs

that we did,

"The Profession Of Violence,

The Krays."

The The Krays tea towel,

"the original EastEnders".

Quite the piece de resistance,

the Krays shopping bag.

I can imagine

going down to your local supermarket

and getting your shopping

in one of those.

But cups, pens, mirrors, calendars -

you name it.

You know, everything was embossed

with the Krays. It sold.

The one thing

that was important to the Krays,

given the time that they had

to serve in prison, was the name.

The legacy. And you know,

to keep the name "Kray" alive.

The film did that.

CROWD CLAMOURING

I am incredibly, incredibly proud

and grateful that the opportunity

came my way to make

The Krays film.

I just did the real true legend,

which existed about

the Kray twins in the East End.

GRUNTING AND YELPING

It was designed to

to shock, but also designed

to attract people and, yeah, look,

there's no doubt about it

that putting the Krays

on the big screen glamorised them.

You go back, and you tell them,

no-one f*ck with us!

"Glamour is fear", yeah?

That's the quote.

I learned that a long time ago.

If people are afraid of you,

you can just do anything.

Glamour is fear.

And they had the control

of all the people around them.

And it grew into this legend

of the East End.

Would they like the way their

legend's made and the film's made?

They would have loved every minute

of it, cos that's what they wanted.

And it helped the empire behind bars

grow even bigger,

because, suddenly,

the Kray twins' story

was introduced to a new generation

of "fans", if you like.

It basically glamorised crime,

to a degree.

People read about gangsters

because, in their head,

they'd like to rob a bank,

or they'd like to sh**t someone

they don't like.

But they don't want

to do the jail for it

and they're not gonna do it,

cos they ain't got it in 'em.

Please believe me

If anyone thinks our life

was glamorous, no.

It's really hard,

cos you know you're gonna die here.

You're dying in a concrete box.

On 17th of March, 1995

..Ronnie dies.

Word goes out everywhere.

Everyone's getting phone calls.

"Do you know he's gone?"

Today, Ronnie Kray

died in hospital

two days after collapsing

in Broadmoor Prison,

where he'd been since 1969.

You know, we were actually losing,

genuinely, a monarch

of the British underworld.

That's what Reggie

said to me on the phone.

"He will be buried like a king."

"I have arranged with Dave Courtney,"

"and he can supply 150 men

for outside."

There was 150 flat-nosed,

bald-headed,

of what I considered

..the tastiest, hardest,

realist men I knew

from all over all four bits

of the country.

REPORTER: Reggie Kray appeared,

handcuffed to a prison officer,

granted compassionate leave

to attend the funeral.

It was important that Ron's funeral

was a big affair,

a big media affair, because keeping

the name "Kray" in the headlines

was important to Ronnie and Reggie.

To have a big show of strength

with a lot of famous faces

meant that the Kray legend

would continue to live on

for many, many years to come.

The procession was to take

Ronnie Kray's body

along the streets

the twins used to rule

with their own brand of terror

and protection rackets.

There were large crowds -

several thousand,

according to police estimates.

You can see hundreds and thousands

screaming at him hysterically,

like he was a pop star.

CROWD CLAMOURING

There was no time in there

to actually grieve,

cos it was all too wow!

He was a good brother,

he was very loyal,

and he was very generous.

He had lots of nice ways about him,

and I must always remember him.

It was good memories, you know?

And erm

..I know he's at peace.

Reggie, for once, when Ron died,

tragic, broke his heart,

but then, he was free.

In his later years, the celebrity

thing was always a big thing,

because it kept them

in the limelight.

In the 1990s, nothing had changed.

CROWD SHOUTING Well, hey, now.

We're gonna play an old song.

I'd like to sing it to

all y'all folks in the house tonight

enjoying yourselves,

and also to my friend, Reg,

hanging in there, baby.

MUSIC: 'King Of New York'

by Fun Lovin' Criminals

'My name is Rob Ferguson.

I'm a music manager.'

I took people who were, you know,

actually celebrities to meet Reg.

Reg was becoming part

of folklore and legend.

There were a number of people

that were really keen to meet and

or talk to Reg, which I achieved.

Save the roach

The King Of New York ♪

I took the Fun Lovin' Criminals

to meet him in prison,

and Huey came in, and later, the

guys came in to meet him afterwards,

and they were playing

Reading Festival that year,

and so they did a version

of their song, King Of New York,

but changed the main lyric to

"Hey, hey, free Reg Kray,"

and there were 70,000 people

at Reading all singing that lyric.

Come on, I said

Hey, hey, free Reg Kray

Come on Hey, hey, free Reg Kray

Come on

Hey, hey, free Reg Kray ♪

I was on the side of the stage

at that point,

and I had Reg on the phone,

and I said,

"Hey, Reg, listen to this."

And he was so made up.

It was really

It was one of the ideas

that came to fruition

that really kept him going.

Cos he was a shell

of what he formerly was.

He was wasting away.

He actually told me one time that

when I was sitting with him, that

he'd had some pain in his stomach,

and he'd been away to Norfolk

and Norwich Hospital, I think it is.

He intimated to me

that he knew he had cancer.

Reggie's diagnosed with cancer.

He's had stomach problems

for the last five years,

so he's probably gone undiagnosed.

They've eventually relented

and let him out

a few weeks before he dies.

The trust has been advised

that Mr Reginald Kray

was today informed

of the Home Secretary's decision

to accept

the parole board recommendation

that he should be released from

prison on compassionate grounds.

Never missing a trick,

Reggie signs a contract with the BBC

and does his final

deathbed interview.

MAN: Not that it matters now,

cos nothing can be done now,

but were there any other killings,

any other crimes, any other murders?

REGGIE BREATHES HEAVILY

There's none that I can speak about.

Mm But were there any others?

Even though you're

not gonna speak about them.

Oh, yeah, but that's it. Yeah.

So there were other murders,

but we'll leave it there. Yeah.

INTERVIEWER: How do you think

we should remember

Ronnie and Reggie Kray?

The Krays are the benchmark

for British organised criminals.

They were more important

for providing

highly-stylised presentation

of British gangsterdom

that we'd never had before.

They were smartly dressed

..violent

and there was two of 'em.

At the end of the day,

they want to be remembered

as the baddest gangsters

that hit London.

And I think they achieved that.

They deserve to be remembered

..but as people

who destroyed everything.

My regret is I DID meet the Krays.

Cost me 15 years of my life.

They were evil, dangerous b*stards.

They didn't write

any great poems or

..they didn't write

any great books or anything.

They didn't really

leave anything behind.

Except their myth, like Robin Hood.

I mean, all they are is a myth now.