Wannabe in My Gang? (7 page)

I was in the front room of Tony Lambrianou’s flat with Alan Smith, the Scotsman I had met at the boxing show. Alan had travelled down to London from Edinburgh that day to visit Ronnie Kray and to meet me for a drink.

Half an hour earlier, Alan and I had received a telephone call from Tony Lambrianou, who had invited us to his home. In the ’60s, Tony and his brother Chris had lured Jack McVitie to a flat where the Krays had then murdered him. Looking back, I realise I had been foolish to accept Tony’s invitation to visit his home.

It was Tony Lambrianou who stood before me now, threatening to ‘smash a hammer through your head’ and shouting, ‘I’ll kill you.’ Alan and I had called around to see Tony earlier that day, but he wasn’t in. According to Tony, his wife had told Alan and me he was out, but we had refused to accept the fact. We were then said to have insisted that Tony was home and we had become abusive. Alan and I were now going to pay for our stupidity.

As Tony raised the hammer, which would surely extinguish my life, I instinctively threw my hands up to protect my face. Bang! Bang! I screamed out in pain as my fists struck the headboard behind my bed.

Sitting up and nursing my grazed knuckles, I realised with relief I had been having a rather silly dream. Lambrianou must have had a similar silly dream because in his book
Getting It Straight
(2001) he describes to Freddie Foreman, his co-author, threatening Alan and me in much the same manner. The only significant difference between my version of events and Tony’s is that he seems to believe that the attack actually happened. Like so many stories and people associated with the Kray myth, the incidents and non-events they describe have been fleshed out and exaggerated to inflate the egos and reputations of those involved or those who say they were involved.

The truth of the matter is, Ronnie Kray had asked me to visit Tony Lambrianou at his flat, which was on the upper floor of a rundown council block at the Elephant and Castle in south-east London. I had met Tony several times on visits with Ronnie after he had been asked to resolve the mystery of the missing money from the boxing show. He had not seen Ronnie for years and they appeared to get on well, but I sensed something was not quite right because of the way Ronnie talked about Lambrianou to other people. In 1988 Ronnie and his brother Reg published
Our Story
in which they admitted for the first time their involvement in the murders of George Cornell and Jack McVitie.

Lambrianou must have thought that the Krays’ public admissions would give him the opportunity to cash in on his own story. Not long after Reg and Ron’s book, Lambrianou published his first book,
Inside the Firm
(1991), in which he described himself on the front cover as ‘a former Kray gang boss’. When Ronnie Kray saw the book he was livid. Tony had written:

Up until the time that Reggie Kray admitted his part in the murder of Jack the Hat McVitie, every loyal one of us held our silence over the events of a unique era in British crime. Now perhaps it’s time for a member of the firm to have a say. For years we’ve been hearing what everybody else has had to say about us, in courtrooms, books and newspapers, and the twins have taken their chance to reply in print. I intend, with this book, to set the record straight for all of us who stood together in the dock and went to prison for our crimes.

Ronnie told me that Tony was a liar, had not held his silence and was no Kray gang boss. ‘Lambrianou and his brother grassed us up and Tony was no member of our firm.’ Leaning over the visiting-room table in Broadmoor, Ron whispered, ‘I want you to get Lambrianou and jump up and down on his ribs until every single one of them is broken and he has no wind left in him.’

I tried explaining to Ronnie that somebody who had served 15 years for a crime that he and his brother had committed deserved to make a few quid out of their story. I attempted to reason with Ronnie: ‘You and Reg have admitted the murders yourselves in your own book, so he isn’t doing any harm, is he?’

Ronnie sneered and said that Lambrianou was a snivelling grass and had not kept quiet, as he was claiming. ‘Lambrianou is saying that he had kept his mouth shut and should therefore be shown some respect, but that is total shit,’ Ronnie said. ‘Tony Lambrianou and his brother Chris made statements against me and my brother in an effort to save themselves. I will show you the paperwork.’ Ronnie was prone to making false allegations when he fell out with someone or he thought that people were conspiring against him.

He would often have a go at me, not threatening to kill me or anything, just asking why I was talking to such-and-such a person and asking what had been said. Had they mentioned Ron and did I trust them? He often talked about killing other people who had displeased him or who he thought had been talking badly of him, but in actual fact the person concerned had done no wrong. Ron was, more often than not, suffering from a bout of his paranoid schizophrenia.

I couldn’t see how Tony could be guilty as charged by Ron, so I thought I would go and warn him about what was being said. If I wasn’t prepared to carry out Ron’s will, I was 100 per cent sure that one of the Kray hangers-on would, just to get into Ronnie’s good books.

The Kray gang had stood trial 20 years ago. Tony, since then, had been mentioned in numerous newspaper articles and books and had always been portrayed as a man who was loyal to the twins. If he had informed on them, as Ronnie claimed, I was certain that after 20 years the facts would have come out before. Whichever way I looked at it, I just couldn’t believe what Ronnie was saying.

When we arrived at Lambrianou’s flat, I admit Alan and I had taken a drink but we certainly were not drunk. Tony’s wife, Wendy, had answered the door and told us that he was out. I thought that he might be avoiding coming to the door because he had heard about Ronnie’s ranting. Most ‘jobs’ in the Kray camp were given to many instead of one. Ronnie had probably asked numerous people to confront Tony and so I wouldn’t have been surprised if he was aware of Ron’s displeasure.

If I was right about Ronnie just being paranoid, I wanted Tony to know that despite the rumours, he had nothing to be concerned about because I was sure Ronnie would calm down and see sense at some stage.

I told Wendy that there was no need for Tony to pretend he wasn’t in and this seemed to upset her. I can see why it would as I hadn’t explained that I was there with good intentions and she could have taken it as some sort of insult or veiled threat.

From there on in, it was all downhill. Wendy asked us to leave, so I gave her my mobile-phone number and asked her to ask Tony to call me. Alan and I then walked away. Later that afternoon Tony did call and asked if we would go to his flat. When we arrived Tony said that he didn’t think it was right that Alan and I had turned up at his home earlier after taking a drink.

I agreed, but explained that Alan had come down from Edinburgh that morning. ‘We had gone for a drink and after discussing what Ronnie had asked me to do, we decided to warn you before somebody else did Ron’s dirty work.’ Tony’s mood changed at once and the conversation turned to Ronnie’s paranoia and how it would all blow over. I told Tony I would keep him informed about what was going on.

He thanked me and that was the end of the matter. No threats were made and no hammer was brandished, in spite of what Tony claimed in his book. In fact, Tony had posed for a photo with Alan. At the next visit, Ronnie asked me what had happened regarding Lambrianou. I told Ronnie that I had gone around to his flat but he wasn’t in. Ronnie seemed disappointed, but said that he had found out Lambrianou was holding a book launch in Epping and he was going to get him ‘pulled’ there. I mentioned this to Lambrianou and he immediately cancelled that particular event.

I saw Ronnie a couple of weeks later and I thought that he would have calmed down, but I was wrong. Tony had appeared in the
News of the World
claiming McVitie, whose body has never been found, was buried in a grave 50 miles from London.

Jack and his hat were dumped into the grave. Then his body was covered by a layer of soil. The next day an unsuspecting funeral procession pulled up at the graveside and a service was held. As the coffin was lowered into the grave, no one noticed that the hole was not quite as deep as it had been the day before.

Tony had not mentioned any of this in his book and Ron said Lambrianou was now making up stories to make money, stories that, he said, could damage Reggie’s chances of parole. I had never seen Ronnie so annoyed. He kept saying that Lambrianou was a ‘lackey’ and a ‘grass’. He said he was never in the fucking firm and he was a liar. I found this very hard to believe because Lambrianou’s book claimed that he was a ‘boss’ in the Krays’ firm and he and his brother had served 15 years because they had refused to tell police the truth about the McVitie murder.

If Tony had, as Ronnie claimed, grassed them up, then it was inconceivable that he would have been sentenced to life imprisonment and served 15 years. The judge would surely have shown Tony leniency for assisting the prosecution’s case against the Kray brothers. What Ronnie was claiming just did not add up, but when Tony and his brother’s statements were shown to me, I could not believe what I was reading.

In his book, Tony said that Reggie Kray had told him to invite McVitie to a party. ‘It was on Saturday night at a basement flat belonging to a girl called Blonde Carol in Stoke Newington, North London,’ says Lambrianou. ‘I knew there was a chance of him copping a right hander but I didn’t know someone had taken a gun.’

Lambrianou and his brother Chris, plus two brothers called Mills accompanied McVitie to the party. Waiting for McVitie were Reggie and Ronnie Kray, gangsters Ronnie Hart and Ronald Bender and two of Ronnie Kray’s young homosexual boyfriends called Terry and Trevor. Lambrianou says:

Ronnie pushed past me and did Jack right underneath the eye with a glass, ‘I’ve had enough of you,’ he said, ‘keep your mouth shut.’ Next thing Reggie was on him. This was the first time I had seen the gun. He tried to shoot him in the back of the head and I jumped, expecting an explosion but the gun wouldn’t work. As soon as Reggie pulled the gun I realised it had gone too far. My brother Chris and I had unwittingly set up Jack by taking him to Blonde Carol’s so now it was our row too. Jack would come back to us. When the gun failed to go off I said to Chris ‘Go and get one of ours.’ I knew we might have to do him ourselves. Chris went to our house to fetch a Smith and Wesson .38 police special.

By now Reggie had let go of Jack who was sitting on the sofa asking ‘What have I done?’ Reggie told him ‘You know what you’ve done.’ The gun came out again. Again it just clicked. ‘They gave me a duff ’un,’ said Reggie.

The next thing I saw was Reggie with a carving knife; it was happening so fast. Jack was in a bear hug and someone was shouting, ‘Do him, Reg, go on, Reg, do him.’ I saw the first stab go in and turned away. I walked out of the room. I couldn’t believe it was really happening. He got it three times with the knife but he must have been dead with the first one. The scene went quiet. I walked back into the room and I didn’t want to look but I had to. Then I saw the blood. I saw Reggie pointing the knife into Jack’s neck as if he was trying to find his jugular vein. The knife blade was arched and then it went straight through.

I’ve seen some bad things in my time, men stabbed, near death, but this was worse. And I will never forget the smell.

Death smells like something singeing, like hair and blood burning, a smell that never leaves you. When it was over, Reggie stood there for a second just looking. The knife was twisted to bits. Jack was on the floor in the middle of the room. His hat was a foot from him, crumpled up. Chris wandered back in with the gun we no longer needed. Suddenly everybody seemed to snap out of it. The two boys and the Mills brothers were running out of the room. Reggie Kray turned to me and said: ‘Get rid of that, Tony.’ And with that, he and his brother and Ronnie Hart had gone.

Jack had been warned by myself and other members of the firm about his behaviour but had paid no attention. How far could the twins let it go when he was persistently challenging their power, constantly trying to undermine their authority?

They could not allow it to happen. Men of their standing could not be seen to have someone like McVitie carrying on like that, particularly in the East End. Had I been in Reggie’s shoes I would certainly have done the same thing and the tragedy of it all is that so many suffered for something which the victim himself had decided to cause.

Tony, clearly a leading member of the Kray firm, had decided he and his brother were going to murder McVitie if the Krays failed to do so. McVitie had done the Lambrianous no wrong, but as Tony said, McVitie knew they had lured him to a particularly unpleasant ‘meeting’ with the Krays and not a party as promised, and for that McVitie would not forgive them. Dramatic stuff, if true, but it isn’t – it’s fantasy, invented to bolster Lambrianou’s ego.

In 1969 Tony Lambrianou had appealed against his murder conviction. In a full and frank statement he told the truth about what happened that night and afterwards in order to try and secure his freedom. Tony said:

On 28 October, 1967 I met my brother Chris at about 7.30 p.m. and we went to various public houses to have a drink. We went to the Regency Club and upstairs Jack McVitie joined us. My younger brother Nicky was also at the club and he told me sometime after we had arrived that Reggie Kray was in the club. Sometime after midnight when we had gone downstairs to the lower bar, I decided to get some cigarettes from the machine near the office. I went upstairs and while there, Tony Barry came out of his office and walked back in again. He then re-emerged and asked me into his office. Ronnie Kray, Reggie Kray, Bender and Hart were there.