Wannabe in My Gang?
Read Wannabe in My Gang? Online
Authors: Bernard O’Mahoney
WANNABE IN MY GANG?
FROM THE KRAYS TO THE ESSEX BOYS
BROUGHT TO YOU BY KeVkRaY
Bernard O’Mahoney
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licenced or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781780570730
Version 1.0
Reprinted, 2006
Copyright © Bernard O’Mahoney, 2004
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First published in Great Britain in 2004 by
MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY (EDINBURGH) LTD
7 Albany Street
Edinburgh EH1 3UG
ISBN 1 84018 767 0
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Extracts from
Stop the Ride
by Dave Courtney, reproduced by permission of Virgin Books Ltd.
© Dave Courtney, 1999, Virgin Books Ltd.
Extracts from
Inside the Firm
by Tony Lambianou, reproduced by permission of John Blake Publishing.
© Tony Lambrianou, 1991, 2002
This book is dedicated to those who survived those years of madness, mayhem and murder:
My good friend Gavin Spicer, who was always at my side; my good friend Martin Hall and family; Sue Woods; Steve ‘Nipper’ Ellis; Big Greg from Leytonstone; Ian from Barking; Jeff (stitch my head) Bulman; Larry Johnston; Mark Rothermel; Peter and Tony Simms; Chris Raal; Mark and Carol Shinnik; Roger Mellin; Dave (where’s my television) Thomkins; Steve Curtis and Nathan from Bristol; Liam the jogger from Basildon; Maurice (I’m so handsome) Golding; Paul Trehern; Chemical Bob and partner Mark. Special thanks to Martin Moore of Great Barr, Birmingham. Last, but not least, my partner Emma Turner, and my children, Adrian, Vinney and Karis.
Those that have passed cannot change anything.
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. About a Boy
2. Looking After Your Own
3. GangStars’ Paradise
4. ‘I Read the News Today . . . Oh Boy’
5. Conspiracy to Murder
6. Debt and Destruction
7. An Indecent Proposal
8. Four Funerals and a Death Threat
9. Murder and Mayhem
10. Crossing the Thin Blue Line
11. A Right Charlie
12. Reunited at Last
13. Pinky and Perky
14. I’m a Celebrity? Get Out of Here!
15. The Ride Breaks Down and the Jester is Unmasked
Epilogue
Reg Kray
, ‘
gang boss
’:
‘There are no sex offenders or the like on my wing. We are the so-called hard men of the prison and we simply wouldn’t tolerate them. No one likes these monsters.’
David Courtney
, ‘
gang boss
’:
‘One thing that never fails to amaze me is some people’s capacity for self-delusion. I can understand trying to con someone else because you might get a reward, but conning yourself? One of the hardest things in life is to be honest with yourself; do that and you’re halfway there.’
Leighton Frayne
, ‘
gang boss
’:
‘I was stabbed very bad, through the lung, heart and spleen and seven other wounds. Pretty bad ones, but that’s life isn’t it?
‘I don’t like bullshit, I’m a man of my word.’
Tony Lambrianou
, ‘
gang boss
’:
‘I have regrets about my past, I must admit, but more important than anything else, I’m not ashamed of it. It’s important to me as a person that I can hold my head up, knowing that I didn’t point the finger at anybody, that I was with the twins and I fell with the twins.’
John
‘
Gaffer
’
Rollinson
:
‘All families are good families. I believe in the family structure; people look after each other. If I could have been born into a Mafia family, I would have loved it.
‘I was what I was. Basically, a violent, selfish, lazy, pig-headed thug, whose idea of domestic bliss was to say goodbye on a Friday evening and turn up again on Monday morning, smashed out of my skull, with a load of drunken mates in tow, waking up the kids.’
Kate Howard
(
Kray
):
(
1993
) Ron Kray: ‘I don’t like your book. It’s too personal . . . no more books about us?’
Kate: I smiled back. ‘No more books about us.’
Ron: ‘Let’s forget about it.’
Kate: ‘I couldn’t agree more.’
(
2003, from the official Kate ‘Kray’ website
) ‘When Kate married gangster Ronnie Kray, he introduced her to some of the most feared and deadly criminals Britain has ever known. She persuaded them to open their hearts to her and talk about their crimes, their fears and their dreams. Kate is now an established author and has written three books on the Kray Twins and many more on what she knows best – tough guys.’
INTRODUCTION
I can hear them now in the pubs and clubs around Essex and London: calling me a hypocrite, swearing murderous revenge for showing them disrespect by casting doubt on their prowess.
They will call me a hypocrite because I am a man who, like them, has broken the law, spent time in prison, intimidated, punched, kicked, cut and stabbed others to get what he wanted. They will want their revenge because nobody who thinks they have a reputation likes to hear the truth about themselves.
So, I hear you ask, who are ‘they’?
‘They’ are the men who promote themselves as ‘the kings of the underworld’, the ‘hardest men in Britain’, or the ‘most evil men on the planet’.
Fucking idiots . . .
To be honest, I couldn’t care less what these people say or think because I am my own man and I say what I feel needs to be said. Throughout my life I have been at odds with people who have tried to impose their views or authority on me. I couldn’t see eye to eye with my father, school teachers, policemen, probation officers and later in life, prison officers. They didn’t seem to realise when they were shouting and screaming at me that I consider nothing more despicable than so-called respect based on fear. I loathed their attempts to intimidate me, make me do their will and agree with their twisted philosophy simply because they thought they could scare or overpower me. I am neither ashamed nor proud of the fact that I have been in trouble all of my life. I would be ashamed if I and those close to me had endured the years of misery it has caused for nothing.
I don’t believe we have. Adversity has given us a bond nobody can break. It has also given me the will to try and prevent others from following the same path that I took.
I wish somebody had been there to guide me before I embarked on this nightmare of a journey.
Few in Essex will ever forget 1995 – I certainly won’t. Young people, fuelled initially by recreational drugs, embraced and danced at raves across the county. The Summer of Love, as the media called it, soon soured and gave way to the Winter of Discontent. My friends, their minds poisoned with Class ‘A’ drugs and ideas of gangland grandeur, began murdering one another. As well as the casualties of an undeclared war, others on the fringes were suffering mental-health problems, imprisonment and death because of the drugs the combatants supplied.
Five weeks before Christmas in 1995, an eighteen-year-old girl called Leah Betts died after taking a pill that had been supplied by my associates. Two weeks later, three of my friends had their brains blown out by an assassin as they sat in their Range Rover, parked down a quiet farm track. So much for the season of goodwill.
The death of Leah Betts and the murder of my friends in such a short period of time had a profound effect on me. I knew my time had come, that I had to get out or I too would die an undignified death or be imprisoned. I realised I had to try and shed the criminal make-up I had worn since I was a boy.
I did everything I could to break my criminal bonds. I distanced myself from my associates and I did the unthinkable; I assisted the police. I told myself that I was a reformed character but I soon found out that society never really wants to forgive, because people are not prepared to forget. Why should they, particularly when the debt you owe involves the deaths of others?
Such debts can never really be settled.
In 1996, Leah Betts’ father appeared on national television and called me a bastard, saying he held me responsible for the death of his daughter. The public naturally felt for a man who had lost somebody so young and many believed that I had indeed killed her. At school my children were taunted by other children who said that I was a murderer. Life for us all became impossible. In an effort to set the record straight, I wrote
So this is Ecstasy?
, telling the true story of the events which led up to Leah’s death.
I have since written three other books.
Essex Boys
highlights the plight of Jack Whomes and Mick Steele, who were convicted of murdering my three friends as they sat in their car. I firmly believe that they are innocent and so felt it was a book that needed to be published. I then wrote
Soldier of the Queen
, an honest account of my time serving as a British soldier in my family’s native Ireland. Forget those SAS memoirs, this book tells the true story of what life was really like fighting an everyday war against the IRA. After a three-year legal battle at the High Court in London, I won the right to publish
The Dream Solution
, which tells the story of my involvement with sisters Lisa and Michelle Taylor who butchered 21-year-old bride Alison Shaughnessy and evaded justice.
There is nothing wrong with anybody writing books that are factual and have something worthwhile to say, but I do think that during the last decade publishers and those in the media who serialise and review books have turned misery and murder into a form of light entertainment.
When ‘gangster’ Dave Courtney wrote his biography (1999), he boasted about getting away with murder, living a life of luxury funded by crime and dealing in drugs. The book was serialised by a national newspaper who printed a photograph of one of Courtney’s young children holding a gun. This was an absolutely obscene episode and should have been condemned, but the newspaper concerned paid Courtney for the ‘privilege’ of promoting him as a successful criminal and showing the offensive photograph. I can now reveal that Courtney has never committed a murder; the book is based on his weird and disturbing fantasies.