EXT DOOR TO THE EVIL KRAY TWINS My dear cousins Ronnie & Reggie
I can’t say I talk about them with pride, but they were family and I loved them
KIM PEAT ON HER INFAMOUS RELATIVES
gie. “She wanted just Reggie and her, Ronnie in the background. Ronnie n’t friendly to her. Once she was ng down once, filing her nails. He d, ‘Get up and make a cup of tea ead of sitting there doing nothing’. be spiteful. Reggie said, ‘I’ll make tea’. Ronnie was jealous.” rances and Reggie had split n she killed herself in 1967. At funeral, Kim’s mum said gie had to be held back from wing himself in to the grave. Reggie was in a really bad way,” Kim. “After the funeral he was ur house staring into the fire. I , ‘Do you like my new doll? I’m ng to name her Frances. He d me tight and kissed me on my d. I could see he’d welled up.”
Ronnie was openly gay among his close family at a time when homosexuality was illegal. “He told Violet, ‘I like blokes’,” says Kim. “His boyfriend Teddy Smith used to stay overnight with us. Our family were very broad-minded. People say Reggie had boyfriends too, but we never saw that. He used to leave lots of one night stands at my nan’s. She’d say, ‘I think you’d better go home, love – I’m sure he will contact you’.”
The boys’ adored their mother. Ronnie and Reggie took Violet to meet Judy Garland in one of their nightclubs. Kim says: “She and Judy got on like a house on fire. Reggie took Judy to Violet’s house. Judy sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow in the front room for Violet.”
In March 1969 the Krays were found guilty of murdering Jack McVitie and Ronnie of George Cornell’s murder.
The family could not believe a second cousin Ronnie Hart testified against them. Kim says: “We wondered if he was planted.”
Kim visited them in jails such as Broadmoor, where Ronnie’s butler served visitors tea from a silver pot.
She says: “Me and Reggie wrote to each other every day. He sent me poems and recommended books. I could tell him anything.” Kim became acutely aware of her relatives’ infamy at their funerals. “I’d
SPEAKING OUT Kim has rarely talked about her family’s history until today
never seen anything like it. At Ronnie’s in 1995, the streets were lined and kids climbed lampposts to get a better look.”
Kim was devastated when Reggie died of cancer in 2000. She says: “Of course I know about the twins’ violence, I can’t say I talk about them with pride. But they were my family and I loved them.
“To any young person seeing pictures of Ronnie and Reggie with film stars, thinking that’s how they’d like to be, think again. They were jailed, their lives effectively over at 35, and they broke their mother’s heart. One thing their stories should teach is to try to succeed using your brain, not brawn.”
Secrets of the Krays is available exclusively on Britbox. Visit Britbox.co.uk