Gangsters' Wives (23 page)

I wasn’t surprised when I heard about the first murder, George Cornell, who was left dead on the floor of the Blind Beggar pub. To me, Ronnie Kray could have murdered anyone in the state he was in. He was a time bomb waiting to go off. He was on these terrible tablets, he was in a depressive state. He thought nobody could touch him. He thought the police couldn’t touch him.

He was obsessed with guns from a young age – Mrs Kray told me that. That’s why the twins left home and got a flat nearby because she wouldn’t have weapons in the house. Everyone always behaved like gentlemen in Violet’s house.

They used to hold meetings upstairs in the house at Vallance Road. Violet would take a tray up with tea and biscuits. Then if we were sat downstairs having cake, Reg would come down and joke, ‘Oh I see, you send us up biscuits and keep the cake for yourselves. Where’s our cake then?’ Later, they’d all come down the stairs one by one and call, ‘Bye bye, Mrs Kray.’ The last one down would bring back the tray and say, ‘Thank you, Mrs Kray.’ They all loved her. But while she didn’t mind the meetings – ‘They’re all businessmen,’ she used to say – she wouldn’t allow the weapons in the house, so Ronnie had to have somewhere else to keep them.

What I
was
surprised about was the murder Reggie did. That wasn’t supposed to be. Jack McVitie was a nuisance and a scallywag. He used to hit women. He was on pills. He was only taken to that party, I believe, to get a good hiding from Reggie. Reggie pulled out the gun and fired. But the gun didn’t go off, therefore Ronnie handed Reggie a knife and the man got stabbed to death trying to run out of the door. No body has ever been found. The Lambrianou brothers who were part of the Firm, were told by Ronnie to ‘clear that up‘. Charlie Kray, who was in bed fast asleep with his wife at the time, got ten years for it. He wasn’t even told about the murder until the next morning.

There were all sorts of myths about where the body ended up. He was fed to the pigs, was one of them. Tony Lambrianou has always admitted the body was rolled up in a quilt and put in the car. He drove to south London and then Freddie Foreman, a former member of the Firm, took over and the body was transferred. The McVitie family has always wanted to know where it was. He did have a wife and he did have kids and sisters and brothers, after all.

It was a volatile time. I noticed Mrs Kray was more tense than usual in the weeks before the twins were arrested in May 1968. I asked her what the matter was and she said: ‘I hear people whispering things and there’s a terrible atmosphere over the East End that something’s going to happen.’ Well, happen it did.

At six o’clock one morning, the day after one of my visits to Vallance Road, the twins were arrested in their flat. Reggie was with a girlfriend and Ronnie was with a boy. That police inspector, Nipper Read, had arranged it so that they swooped and arrested a whole load of them all at the same time, all over London, including Charlie Kray.

The trial, at the beginning of 1969, lasted several weeks. I went to the Old Bailey about a dozen times with Mrs Kray. I remember one time I was there the judge, Melford Stevenson, mentioned Frances, Reggie’s dead wife, and Reggie started screaming across the court.

I was there in court for the sentence, but Mrs Kray wouldn’t go. Couldn’t face it. Don’t forget Charlie was there in the dock too – all three of her boys facing long prison sentences. Neither of the twins had a wife at the time, so I went.

We knew the sentence was about to be pronounced because the judge said the day before: ‘I’ve heard everything. I don’t want to hear any more.’

In today’s world, they’d have got seven years each. In fact, Ronnie would have been sent away for psychiatric assessment, but Reggie would have got seven years.

At the time, we all thought they’d get twenty years, although when I said that to Mrs Kray, she was upset and said, ‘Please don’t say that.’

I knew by the way Melford Stevenson came out and said, ‘In my view society has earned a long rest from your activities,’ that it was going to be a political sentence. But I wasn’t prepared for how long it was.

They were sentenced to life. The judge said, ‘I sentence you to life, and you’ll serve a minimum of thirty years.’ To say that thing about thirty years, that was political. They wanted to get them off the streets. They wanted to stop organised crime spreading into the West End.

Tony Lambrianou – one of my best friends, who I’d known since I was a teenager – was waiting downstairs at the courthouse while Ronnie and Reggie were being sentenced. Ronnie and Reggie came down the stairs just as the others were getting ready to go up to get their own sentences.

Tony said Ronnie walked down, took a cigarette, lit it – don’t forget he’d just got told he was going to spend thirty years in prison, no less – and he looked out of the window and said: ‘All right, Tony, you’re up next. Ain’t it a lovely day?’ It
was
a beautiful sunny day, but he had to be mad, didn’t he? To say that after hearing he’d spend the next thirty years in prison?

Tony couldn’t believe it. He said, ‘I turned to Reggie and said “what did you get?” thinking it must have been a light sentence. Reggie said, “We have to serve thirty years minimum”.’

As everyone else came up, I sat there in court and watched them all being sentenced. They were all standing there, the Lambrianous, Freddie Foreman. Freddie got ten years; the Lambrianous got fifteen.

They couldn’t give Charlie Kray the same sentence as his brothers, so they sentenced him for disposing of a body, even though he’d been in bed at the time of the murder and they’d never found a body. He got ten years and he served seven. When Charlie was sentenced I felt more sorry for him than anyone else because he hadn’t done anything wrong. He wasn’t there at either one of the killings. He wasn’t a villain. We used to call him Champagne Charlie. He liked the women – and the women certainly liked him. Including Miss Barbara Windsor. He had an affair with her. He really liked her.

After starting off being imprisoned separately, the twins were eventually brought together again at Parkhurst. Mrs Kray was their first visitor. Don’t forget she had to visit three sons in prison. She was always taking gifts to the wardens. She used to take her homemade apple pie all the way to Parkhurst, which is on the Isle of Wight – a train and a ferry, and then all the way back.

She always said to me: ‘If ever I can’t go to see the boys, promise me you’ll go to see them.’ I said, ‘I’ll go anyway, just as soon as I’m passed by the Home Office.’ She said, ‘You will get passed because I’ve put in a request and so have the boys.’

In the meantime, my career was flourishing. I was doing more and more television. I’d started to do
Monty Python
,
The Two Ronnies
,
Dave Allen
,
The Likely Lads
; I’d been a
Benny Hill
girl three times. I got on very well with Benny Hill. We used to go up to his house in Kensington, about every third Friday I’d take three or four girls with me – models, beautiful girls. He’d say, ‘She’s nice, Flan, she’s chatty.’ He liked women with a bit of animation. Don’t forget, at five o’clock in the morning you were expected to be running around trees in Acton Park wearing a bikini and boots. You had to have some character to do that.

We’d do it because we wanted to be seen on television. But my first husband didn’t like it. He didn’t like me doing anything risqué. In the ten years I was with him, I did television and films and swimsuits and leg-work but nothing topless. He would never have stood for that. But when we split up in 1970 I started doing other types of work.

I became a Page Three after being on
Benny Hill
. It was a brand new thing then. They picked two girls to have their pictures taken on the same day – a blonde (me) and a brunette. We each got £12.50. That’s all you got in those days. It’s funny, I knew Sam Fox since she was a child when her parents occasionally brought her into my husband’s pub in Stoke Newington. After she got famous, I asked her how much she got for doing Page Three on her sixteenth birthday. She said, ‘£250 for the hour. And I always think of you, Flan, with your £12.50.’

At the end of the day Larry Lamb, who was the editor of the
Sun
spread out the pictures in front of him and tried to pick one. Apparently, he said: ‘Do you know what? This is going to appear tomorrow morning in the newspaper. The kids are sitting there eating their breakfast before they go to school. We’ll go for the angelic-looking one.’ That was me. That was how Page Three was conceived at that time. There was nothing dirty about it.

I never forgot my promise to Violet Kray and used to visit Reggie and Ronnie when I could, sometimes with Mrs Kray, sometimes not. She used to say Reggie loved me. She’d say, ‘My Reggie has a soft spot for you.’ I’d say, ‘Oh, Violet, you’re just saying that.’ She’d say, ‘He’s always talking about you.’ But then men are men. They’ll talk about you if you’re looking nice or they fancy you; it doesn’t mean they love you.

The truth is I loved Reggie Kray, but not in the way I loved my second husband, Terry Cox. He was the love of my life. Terry knew the Krays before they went into prison so they accepted him no problem. It didn’t make a difference to them whether I was married or not because they were inside. They were just glad I married someone they knew. I was married to Terry for seven years from 1976 to 1983, but left when he got into cocaine. He’d got in with the wrong crowd, and I had the feeling he was starting to get into drugs. That is so against everything I believe in. I’ve campaigned against drugs all my life. I’ve buried two Page Three girls because of drugs, so I certainly wasn’t going to be married to someone who was using them. We lived in a beautiful house in Chigwell, but I left with my little boy who was only seven. After we left, my husband had heart problems, probably exacerbated by his cocaine use. He had a heart transplant while still in his early forties and lasted another twenty-two months, but he was still taking cocaine and he eventually died from a fatal heart attack. What a waste. Ron and Reggie sent flowers to the funeral.

But at least I had my son out of that marriage. Everyone calls him JJ. I named him James Jeremy and the nurses couldn’t fit it on the little band, so they put JJ and it stuck. Everyone knows JJ. I used to take him everywhere. I took him on jobs, took him to prisons, even took him to Stringfellows and hid him in the toilet so that he could meet Tony Adams, the Arsenal player who I knew was going to be there. I sneaked him in and hid him in the ladies. Sneaked him out when Peter Stringfellow wasn’t looking so he could get his autograph. Over the years, JJ came to know all the Page Three girls – Linda Lusardi, Sam Fox, Suzi Mizzi …

All the time this was going on, I never stopped visiting the Krays. After seven years, when Charlie came out of prison, we’d sometimes go together. I was visiting Reggie for years. He always wanted me to look lovely. I could never go with trousers. I’d have my hair done and wear lovely, beautiful tailored suits I got from work with stockings and always high heels. He loved it of course – if you’ve got a roomful of men sitting there with their women and their women don’t look anything like the one who’s visiting you … well, he was really proud. He always said I looked lovely and asked me where I got my clothes. He was quite controlling, mind. He’d say, ‘I love your hair – but wear it down next week.’

Whenever I got home I’d get a call from Reggie to make sure I’d got back all right. Don’t forget I had to take a ferry and a train back from the prison. Parkhurst was a freezing cold horrible prison. Nice wardens though, but a dreadful place to get to. I used to hate that ferry journey. I don’t like water. I can’t swim. I’m frightened of water. There used to be a lot of trouble on the ferry sometimes. Later on, I’d sometimes travel there with Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper. The things the other wives used to do to her! They’d throw drinks on her, spit on her. They all thought she knew, you see, what her husband was doing (even though she didn’t). Their husbands might be in for robbery and violence, but not against women or children.

Even so, I never forgot my promise to Mrs Kray and so I’d go every month to see Reggie and every six weeks to Broadmoor to see Ronnie – he’d been moved there when he got more unstable. Broadmoor is completely different to Parkhurst or the other prisons. Anyone can visit Broadmoor, you just have to sign the book and say what relation you are to the prisoner.

I think that’s why Mrs Kray was always so adamant that I should specially visit Reggie. It surprised me at the time because Ronnie was always her favourite. I couldn’t understand it, but of course in the end I realised Ronnie Kray was in Broadmoor with a beautiful cell and could order what he wanted to eat, and have any visitor he liked any day, twice a day. He could wear all his own clothes and could take presents and money from people – which he did all the time.

Ronnie had a thing about watches. He had some lovely watches. He was always taking them off people. I’d always say to people, ‘Wear a £10 watch when you go to visit Ron. Don’t wear anything valuable.’ One time, Ronnie asked me to bring Tony Lambrianou to visit, after he’d been released. As we went in I said, ‘Tony, what watch are you wearing?’ He said, ‘The one my parents gave me when I was in prison.’ I said, ‘Take it off, quick. He’ll ask for it.’ I put it in my handbag. I took lots of people to visit Ronnie. I took the Kemp brothers. I said, ‘Don’t wear an expensive watch. He’ll ask you for a present.’

I suppose Mrs Kray felt sorry for Reggie, who was in prison uniform and could accept no money or presents, only postal orders for his canteen money. Ronnie Kray had a pork pie in a tin delivered from Harrods every Saturday. In his cell he used to have two other friends. Every Saturday night he’d cut up this pork pie and have lovely cheese and wine. Reggie would have nothing.

When I used to go visiting with Charlie, Charlie would be all lovely – beautiful suit, beautiful tie – but whatever Charlie was wearing, Ronnie would be dressed better. He’d come out and he’d have gold cufflinks with R & R engraved on them. He’d be wearing beautiful rings people had given him, lovely suits and always an expensive watch. He used to have a tailor going in every Christmas to measure him up in case he’d put on an ounce or two, then he’d take delivery of a new suit in January. Beautiful ties, silk shirts. Whatever Charlie wore, he couldn’t compete with Ronnie. You’d think Ronnie was the psychiatrist in there.