Here is a rare TV appearance made by the Kray Twins following the collapse of their first trial March 1965. The jury could not agree a verdict and the judge halted the retrial after some damning evidence appeared about the main prosecution witness.

Interviewer: “Ronald, what are you going to do now?”

Ronnie: ”Well, I’d like to go abroad for a short while and er then I’d like to be left alone.”

The posh interviewer in this clip looks like a very young Tom Mangold. Can anyone confirm this?

Less than a month after this trial ended, the Krays had taken control of the Soho club they had been charged with demanding protection money from. They changed its name to “El Morocco” and threw a huge party. They invited everyone they knew, including the police. Detective Chief Inspector Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read went along, if for no other reason than to see who else was there. Read chatted to Ronnie and, at some stage in the evening, had his photograph taken with him. Naturally this appeared in the newspapers the next day and created a storm of criticism. Letters of complaint flooded into Scotland Yard, most originated via the twins, who were carefully orchestrating a campaign to discredit the police. Although Read was exonerated in a subsequent inquiry, he was removed from the jurisdiction of the Kray investigation, promoted and sent off to help unravel the mystery of The Great Train Robbery, the biggest theft the world had ever known, which had taken place in August 1963.

Ronnie and Reggie Kray were eventually arrested again on May 8th 1968 and charged with murder and variety of other offences.

“A hundred witnesses you say. Only twelve men on a jury, you remember that, only twelve men on a jury,” screams Vic Dakin as he is arrested in the final scene of ‘Villain‘, 1971.

During the eleven months The Twins were in custody awaiting their trial some of the fear, and consequently their power, had drained away to the extent that it was impossible to nobble the jury. They were convicted in March 1969 and both sentenced to life imprisonment.

For further reading, try Thomas L. Jones excellent history of The Krays,  also worth a read is a somewhat lurid biography of Lord Boothby and details of his involvement with The Krays  – you couldn’t make it up!