Connections to THE KRAYS
Twelve days before he died in 2000, Reggie Kray gave his final interview. The notorious career criminal and gang leader was experiencing freedom after spending 31 years behind bars for the brutal murder of Jack ‘the Hat’ McVitie. But he was a shadow of his former self. Lying in a bed suffering from the advance stages of bladder cancer, it was a rare opportunity for him to speak about his life to a public who had become entranced over the years by the portrayal of him and his twin Ronnie.
He gave little away, nor was he posed the question which could have ended generations of Kentish urban myths - just how many pubs and clubs in the county did he and the remnants of his East End empire really own?
Because regardless of where you live in the county, every town has its own tale of how a certain hostelry was once under the control of the Kray twins.
Few were based in any form of fact, but it all added fuel to the remarkable legend which the pair generated. Although it could be argued anyone who thinks spending half of your life in a prison cell is something to aspire to, is perhaps a little disillusioned, to put it mildly.
But then the Kray legend is built around half-truths and rumours.
If you believed it all, then the unfortunate McVitie ended up in a freshly dug grave in Gravesend. Although Kray associate Freddie Foreman insisted he hurled the body off a boat off the coast of Newhaven. Either way, his body was never recovered. We take a look at the real links the county has to the gang leaders who ruled London during the 1960s before both were arrested in 1968 and jailed the following year. In 1969, after one of the most famous criminal cases in British legal history, Ron and Reggie Kray were convicted of murder and jailed for life terms with a minimum of 30 years and no parole. Both were just 35 at the time.
They were sent to separate jails, with Ronnie’s mental ill health ultimately leading him to be transferred to the topsecurity Broadmoor - an institution he would never emerge from, eventually dying at the age of 61 in 1995 after suffering a heart attack.
But for eight years Reggie would spend his time at Maidstone Prison. He was transferred to the Category B jail - for long-term and high security inmates - in 1989.
During his time there he would correspond on headed notepaper which came complete with his picture and initials RK, as well as return address - Weald Wing of HMP Maidstone.
He kept himself in shape during his time behind bars a cold shower each morning followed by a work-out. It prompted one guard to say of him: “He’s as good as gold. If every prisoner was like him there would be no problems here at all.”
It was there he learned of his brother’s death and, he would reflect in that final interview, he felt his presence within him.
He said: “I noticed I had this nice warm glowing feeling in my back - I’m sure it’s Ronnie’s presence. I felt it in Maidstone.”
In 1997, aged 63, he tied the knot with his second wife Roberta Jones, 38, in the chapel at the jail.
In typical Kray fashion, a 30-minute laser show lit up the prison walls the day