The phone-box in North London stank of stale sweat and fag-ash mixed with the smell of my own fear as I dialled 999 and asked to talk to Superintendent Tommy Butler at Scotland Yard.
I’d never spoken to him before and only knew Butler’s name from Ronnie Kray, who used it when he wanted to scare me and others in the ‘Firm’.
‘We’ve got people in the Yard,’ Ronnie would say. ‘They’ll tell me if any of you try to get in contact with Butler.’
A gruff male voice came on the line.
‘I have information regarding the Krays,’ I said.
‘Can you get to Bouverie Street just off Fleet Street by two this afternoon?’ he quickly replied.
The Kray Twins, Ronald and Reginald, the most famous East End gangsters, seen here at home in August 1966
Bobby Teale with his brothers, Alfie and David. The three brothers found the courage to tell the truth about the Krays
‘Yes,’ I said. My stomach was churning but I had made up my mind.
Then 24, I had spent the last six months fawning over both Ronnie and Reggie, flattered that the twins seemed to think well of me. But all their charisma, if they ever had any, meant nothing now.
It was March 14, 1966, and for the past five days, the entire Kray gang had been holed up in my younger brother David’s flat, effectively holding his wife and young kids as hostages.
Hiding behind children was bad enough. But something else had happened in that flat too, something that finally made me break the code I’d grown up with. I was about to grass on the twins with this desperate, dangerous phone call which would soon blow up in my face and make me the Krays’ number one target.
I first met the Krays through my older brother Alfie. There were seven of us kids – our oldest sister Eileen, Alfie, me, then David. Then George, Paul and Jane.
Because Eileen was that much older, and girls weren’t allowed in our gang, Alfie, David and I were always the closest.
Growing up in a poor family in the then rundown streets of Holborn in central London, a city of post-war bomb-sites and gloom, we’d all been in and out of juvenile detention for nicking things.
But we didn’t fancy crime as a career. Street trading was more our style and by the summer of 1965 I was working with some friends on the Isle of Wight, renting out deck chairs, canoes and boats on the beach.
By then I was married with a baby daughter and I’d invited Alfie and David down to help out. They said that a friend in London might be coming to the island to see to some business.
Ronnie and Reggie Kray with their mother Mrs Violet Kray and grandfather James Lee outside their home in Bethnal Green, east London
The friend was Ronnie Kray. He had been introduced to Alfie by ‘Mad’ Teddy Smith – a member of the Firm who invited Alfie to their Double R Club on Bow Road in the East End.
Converted from a disused shop, it was dead smart. All red flock wallpaper and chandeliers, exquisitely dressed-up men and women with waiters in bow ties mincing around the tables.
My brother, a good-looking man in his twenties who fancied himself as a pop star, wanted to be one of those dapper customers.
Reggie was then in prison but Ronnie could not have been nicer to Alfie, especially when he told the gangster that our parents ran a club in Islington. Big mistake.
The twins liked to take a slice of a business in return for ‘protection’. Night after night Ronnie started coming to our parents’ club and it became part of the Kray’s fiefdom, with all the attendant villainy. Dad was too old to fight it and Mum was heartbroken but nobody dared to cross Ronnie.
Soon, both Alfie and David were part of the Firm, running ‘errands’, which gradually got heavier: getting messages in and out of prison, taking packets of money to pay off corrupt policemen, menacing club owners who were late with protection costs — that sort of thing.
Ronnie also loved being driven around in Alfie’s Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire, a big, posh car a little past its prime. He was always wanting to go down to Piccadilly Circus and get boys off the ‘meat rack’ — the railings by the Tube entrance — to sleep with them on the floor of Alfie’s kitchen in nearby Millman Street.
Alfie and his wife Wendy would be in the big double bed in one room with their two sons beside them. Wendy absolutely hated it, but Alfie was too scared to refuse.
I can understand why.
During Ronnie’s trip to the Isle of Wight, we were drinking at the Castle Hotel in Ryde. I was told to join the group upstairs where ‘a few of us are going to continue the party’. Ronnie went first, stomping up the narrow staircase, me following. There was no way out.
When we reached his room, Ronnie ordered me to take off my clothes and get into bed. Then he raped me.
I lay there all night, sleepless, feeling totally humiliated. In the morning, Ronnie kicked me so that I fell on the floor. I only told my brothers years later when David said the same thing had happened to him. We were among hundreds of boys he must have targeted in this way.
I dodged Ronnie after that, but not Reggie, who seemed to need a friend — someone to draw him out of always being in Ronnie’s shadow. Though Ronnie hated anyone who got close to his twin and grew angry when he saw that we were hitting it off.
Visiting London to run little errands for Reggie was a big improvement on tending deckchairs, but my wife Pat couldn’t understand why I was hanging around with these creeps and eventually filed for divorce.
Turning my back on her and the baby, I moved back to London to be part of the big Kray party — one that ended abruptly when the twins took over David’s flat in the early hours of one Thursday morning.
The evening before, Ronnie had gone to the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel and shot dead George Cornell, a member of the rival Richardson gang.
Ronnie Kray shot dead George Kernell (pictured) at the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel, London in 1966
My brothers and I were watching telly at home when Reggie called and ordered us to come to the pub Ron had gone back to. It was all like a big party.
The twins needed somewhere to hide and Reggie said we were all going to David’s place in Clapton.
‘You can’t,’ David said quickly. ‘We’ve only got two rooms. My kids are there. And Christine has got another baby on the way.’
It was no use. The Krays insisted on bringing everyone back to his flat and we arrived at about two in the morning.
God knows what David told his half-awake wife, Christine. Their daughters were only one and two, and she was not happy.
She started trying to find some sheets and blankets, but it was ridiculous. With about a dozen people sleeping on the floor in one room, there was no space to move.
Thursday morning came and the 7am radio news said that George Cornell had died overnight. They all whooped and cheered when they heard.
Ronnie demanded that Christine make cheese sandwiches, and she did, perhaps hoping that it would make them go home sooner. It didn’t and domestic life in a flat full of tooled-up villains continued into the weekend.
By Sunday, we needed more food. Christine and David were allowed out to the local shop but on one sickening condition. One of the little girls had to stay behind, as hostage.
They knew that Ronnie was capable of anything so wouldn’t dare call for help while he had their child.
‘The police won’t come in while the kids are here,’ said Ronnie. He was clever like that.
On the fifth day, our 11-year-old brother Paul unwittingly came round from our mum Nell’s and wasn’t allowed to leave. Ronnie beckoned for him to sit by his side. Under my breath, I told Christine that if Ronnie made any kind of move on my blond-haired brother, I would shoot him dead.
I got my 9mm automatic from where I’d left it on the fridge but Christine grabbed my arm and pleaded: ‘No, no, Bobby! Please not here, not in front of the kids!’
Suddenly Paul got up and came into the kitchen.
Ronnie grunted something along the lines of: ‘There’s a nice boy.’ The danger had passed but I knew I had to do something.
I made the excuse that my mum needed help clearing up her flat. The twins were so close to their own mother, Violet, that I gambled this would persuade Ronnie to let me go out. He did and that’s when I made that call to the police.
I really believed that the police would raid the flat, arrest the Krays and that my family would be safe. But after I’d gone to the agreed rendezvous and talked to Superintendent Butler in the back of an unmarked car, they decided a raid was too risky with the young children in the house.
They would mount a surveillance operation instead.
I had no choice but to go back there. Christine opened the door. She didn’t say a word but gave me a look of utter helplessness.
A second weekend came round. Occasionally, Ronnie would send someone out to buy toys and treats for the children, trying to make himself look like he was all heart. Others were dispatched to buy drink and fags. Ronnie drank crates and crates of brown ale while Reggie had gin and tonics.
The twins needed to know exactly who’d been in the Blind Beggar that night – who’d seen Ronnie, who to put the frighteners on. So there was a constant stream of people coming and going under a cloud of cigarette smoke.
A policeman stands guard outside the Blind Beggar in Whitchapel after George Cornell was shot and killed there
The pub still stands in east London, and remains famous for its connection to the East End gangsters
In the end, after almost two weeks, Ronnie, Reggie and the rest of the Firm finally quit David’s flat. They just stole away late one night. I heard Reggie telling Ronnie: ‘We can’t stay here; the Old Bill knows.’ He didn’t say how the police knew but soon Ronnie started going on about a spy.
He even knew the code name I had agreed with the police: ‘Phillips’. How the hell did he get hold of that?
Clearly someone at Scotland Yard was feeding everything I had said straight back to the Krays. Perhaps I was ‘Phillips’, perhaps not — the twins couldn’t be sure. But, either way, Ronnie still resented how close I was to Reg and he left it to him to get me out of the picture.
One Sunday morning, Reggie insisted we go for a drive to Epping Forest on the edge of the city. It was a place I knew well because my brothers and I hid there after running away as kids once. You could hide anything in Epping and, as we drove through the north-east London suburbs, I felt sure I was going to my death.
When we got there, Reggie told me to look in the trees for a bag of money. I ran into the greenery as fast as I could.
Gunshots split the air. Then he shouted at me to pick up a bottle and hold it as a target. I kept running. He was firing in my direction, bellowing: ‘Stand still! I promise not to hit you. It’s just target practice. You know I’m your best friend.’
Finally, he yelled: ‘I’m leaving.’
I heard the noise of his car engine rise then fade. Exhausted, I waited about half an hour, then circled around and came out at a different point on the road.
That evening, I arrived at a flat in Dolphin Square, Pimlico — occupied by James Wallace, an older man who was in fact my lover at the time.
I’d known from my early adult life that I was bisexual, though I wouldn’t have dared tell my brothers at the time. I had met James several weeks before in a queer-friendly bar in Mayfair, where I’d been told to go by my Yard contact, called ‘Don’.
That I had been instructed to meet him somehow didn’t matter. The relationship blossomed and after a while I actually thought I might love him.
Now, I think that James was probably a Home Office agent — compelled to help the police because of some past gay transgression. And while I said nothing to him of the events that had brought me to his door covered in bits of foliage, it was almost as if he was expecting me.
I knew that wasn’t the end of it with the twins. If Reggie couldn’t shoot straight, Ronnie would soon send someone else. I couldn’t bear it any longer.
The next morning I met ‘Don’ who told me not to panic and that the Yard had a plan to keep me and my brothers safe.
Ronnie (right) and Reggie Kray pictured after spending 36 hours helping the police with their inquiry into the murder of George Cornell
I presumed he meant taking us to a safe house. Instead, Alfie and David and I were arrested in the middle of the night.
We were tried in secret at the Old Bailey and each put away in prison for three years on a ready-made charge of blackmailing ‘Mr X’: my lover, James. After the shock of the sentencing I was burning with rage but at least I knew why we had been lifted. Alfie and David didn’t even have that dubious comfort and I wasn’t about to tell them.
I couldn’t say anything, not even to my own brothers. I had no idea how they would react. I’d broken the code: whatever you do you never, ever grass. If I was honest with them and they told other prisoners what I’d been up to I could have been dead by nightfall and our whole family would be in danger. I wasn’t about to risk that.
Our imprisonment was supposed to protect us while the police built a case against the Krays. But David later learned that, while he was away, the twins’ older brother Charlie went round to the flat where Christine was living with her and David’s three children and raped her. She started drinking heavily, later taking her own life.
It was also Charlie who’d found out that our mum Nell had been taken on as a cleaner by a society figure, Lady Violet Hamilton.
One day he’d barged into the posh house with his cronies and warned Nell not to say a word while they stripped the place of antiques worth the equivalent of around half a million pounds today.
He left Nell to take the blame but hadn’t reckoned with the police using this as a bargaining chip – persuading me and my brothers to give evidence against the twins on condition that our mum was given a suspended sentence and avoided jail. The thought of our mother going to prison outweighed even our fear of the Krays.
When I testified during the committal proceedings at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court in July 1968, I was so frightened that a guard had to teach me breathing exercises he usually gave condemned men, trying to calm them before the gallows.
Ahead of the twins’ trial for the murders of George Cornell and Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie – an armed robber who’d bottled out of a contract killing they’d ordered – their associates in Maidstone Prison tried to get to me.
They’d call out to me at night, telling me that I was a dead man and that all my family would be poisoned if I gave evidence.
This was no empty threat. I later learned that Ronnie had planned to kill Cornell’s widow Olive by poisoning the milk bottle left on her doorstep as she’d smashed the windows at the Krays’ family home in retaliation for his murder.
I had to be shipped out of Maidstone in the middle of the night when a gun was smuggled in to kill me and, when my release date came, I was installed in an anonymous safe house in Ipswich. David and Alfie were also released around then, just in time to give evidence at the twins’ trial at the Old Bailey in January 1969.
It was only then, with the Krays and the rest of the Firm hissing at us when we entered the courtroom, that my brothers discovered I’d been an undercover spy within the murderous gang.
The twins were both sentenced to life with a non-parole period of 30 years – then the longest sentences ever passed for murder at the Central Criminal Court.
Ronnie let it be known that if David and Alfie kept quiet about the rapes and his trips to the meat-rack, he would leave them and their families alone. There was no such deal for me.
The notorious London gangsters pictured circa 1965. In 1969, the twins were both sentenced to life with a non-parole period of 30 years
The world knew I was an informer and there was no formal witness protection scheme then. My handlers had advised me that I would have to disappear for at least five years and I thought it much better to slip away, telling my ex-wife Pat and our child nothing of what had really happened.
I made a new life for myself in America where for 40 years I worked in construction, raising three kids, losing a second wife and finding a third.
I never went back, never contacted the people I’d left behind but the ache to know what had become of them never went away. Then in 2007 I opened a Facebook account, and on a lovely morning that summer I received a friend request from David.
We began talking over Skype and I finally arranged to meet up with him and Alfie in London in the summer of 2010.
Tears ran down our faces as we hugged one another and began to reveal the darkest secrets we’d been holding all these years.
We were reunited: the three brothers who found the courage to tell the truth about the Krays.
- Adapted from Legacy Of Menace: Life In The Shadows Of The Krays by David, Bobby and Alfie Teale (Ebury Spotlight, £16.99), to be published February 13. © David, Bobby and Alfie Teale 2025. To order a copy for £15.29 (offer valid to 22/02/25; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
