Reggie Kray would not be most people’s first choice as a flatmate but you couldn’t exactly say ‘no’ to him, or his twin Ronnie for that matter. So, in the early summer of 1966, I found myself accepting an ‘invitation’ to move into his rented flat in north London.
Both of our marriages had recently come to an end – Reggie’s because of the constant physical and emotional abuse he had inflicted on his young wife Frances, and mine because my wife Pat could no longer stand me hanging around with those ‘creeps’, as she called the twins.
I was then 24 and, along with my brothers Alfie and David, had become part of the Kray’s ‘Firm’.
At first, as I explained in The Mail on Sunday, the twins seemed to have it all — glamour, clothes, money — but the shine had quickly worn off when, that March, Ronnie had shot dead rival gangster George Cornell and insisted that the entire gang hide out at David’s flat.
They were there nearly two weeks, Ronnie calculating that the police would not risk storming the place as long as David’s wife and two baby daughters were there.
The realisation that the Krays were prepared to hide behind women and children, and my fear that Ronnie might molest our 11-year-old brother Paul who was also at the flat, had finally driven me to start informing on the twins.
So it came about that, while the police worked to gather more evidence against the Krays, Reggie was unwittingly living with the ‘supergrass’ whose evidence would see the twins jailed for life two years later.
I was only there a couple of months before he moved back in with Ron but those few months sharing a flat with Reggie made for the most terrifying summer of my life.
The Kray Twins, Ronald and Reginald, the most famous East End gangsters, in 1965
Bobby Teale was part of the Kray’s ‘Firm’ and risked his own life to bring down the twins
Ronnie at Steeple Bay, on the Essex coast, where the twins and their parents often holidayed
Reggie had slipped my older brother Alfie £100 — about £2,500 today — to buy furniture, in ‘contemporary’ style from Harrison Gibson, a well-known trendy shop just up the road in Ilford, Essex.
The flat was our party place. Reggie would tell me to get a couple of birds and the four of us would all sleep in the same bed.
There were plenty of people who wanted the Krays dead so whenever we got back to the flat I would go up with my gun at the ready and check for intruders. When the coast was clear, I would signal to Reggie and he would come up with the girls and so it went.
Ronnie hated anyone who got close to his twin and when he saw that we were hitting it off, he’d get angry about it. He would come over with some of the Firm and whatever boy was with him to stay the night.
He would just glare straight at me. ‘Go on, go,’ he would say. ‘Get out of it and go home!’
The brothers were always arguing. They would have screaming matches with Ronnie criticising Reggie’s drinking or any trivial thing he could come up with, but it always came back to me; the jealousy was always raging just under the surface.
At the same time, Ronnie seemed to be seeking out the company of my younger brother David at Steeple Bay, the caravan site on the Essex coast where the twins and their parents, Violet and Charlie Senior, often went.
After some ‘persuasion’ from Ronnie, David had bought his own caravan on the site. Big and shiny, it was right next to the Krays’ parents and Ronnie seemed pretty keen on having David’s family there.
Bobby Teale, right, with his brothers Alfie (left) and David
While David travelled back and forth from London, his wife and children often stayed for a fortnight at a time. Did Ronnie really want their company, or did he just want the kids around as protection from the police, just as he had at David’s flat?
Sometimes Alfie and I would go down too, knocking back light ales in the social club with our good pals the Kray twins, their brother Charlie and his wife Dolly.
It was all light-hearted enough but I was getting ever more frightened of my own shadow. Did Ronnie know about my arrangement with Scotland Yard? There was one time when I was sure that he did.
One morning at Steeple Bay he said it was ‘a lovely day’ (it wasn’t) and invited me for a walk around a local gravel pit. I could tell he had something bad on his mind so as Ronnie started down the slope, I kept walking along the top. Ronnie stood down in the pit and said to me ‘Come down, Bobby, it’s nice.’
I could see him thinking that this was an ideal place to kill someone but I held my ground. If he was thinking of shooting me, the moment passed.
It may have been a lucky escape. When Mad Teddy Smith, the member of the Firm who had first introduced us to the Krays, disappeared a few years later, word had it that the twins had done him in at the caravan and dumped his body into the marshes at Steeple Bay, right where Ronnie and I had been standing.
***
Suspecting there was a traitor in the Firm, Ron seemed to be going mad (later, he would be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia too). He’d started talking to himself, just muttering: ‘Yeah, right’ all the time as if he was in conversation with someone.
Or else he was constantly half-mumbling, half-shouting, ‘I’m the governor round here. F*** the police, f*** the government!’
The only authority he would listen to was his mum, Violet. She still lived at 178 Vallance Road, the small east London terraced house where the twins had grown up. Everything there was spotless, the doors done up with pink bows and nightclub wallpaper, with velvet stripes and stars on the ceiling and a guitar-shaped mirror on the wall.
Word had it that the twins had done in Teddy Smith, centre, at the caravan
Reggie stabbed to death Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie, who had bottled out of a killing but kept the Krays’ fee anyway
Violet disapproved of her sons’ criminal ways, which bothered Ron, but she still seemed prepared to put up with a lot. Her and her husband often turned a blind eye, including during a traumatic night for my brother David at around this time.
Late one night David drove Ron back to Vallance Road after they’d been out at a Mayfair nightclub. After insisting that David should stay overnight and sleep in the same bed as him, Ron raped him. He threatened to kill his family if David ever spoke about it.
David shouted for Ron’s parents but, although he was screaming loudly enough to wake the dead, they did not intervene.
The next morning they went downstairs like nothing had happened and Mrs Kray was fussing around with the tea and toast.
When David told him he was going straight to the police, Ron phoned Teddy Smith and together they led him to the bath house across the road.
Smithy was whispering, ‘No, no, Ron! No!’ David thought Ronnie was going to kill him.
He was probably right. The following year, when Reggie stabbed to death Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie, who had bottled out of killing someone but kept the Krays’ fee anyway, one theory was that his body had disappeared into the furnace that heated those baths.
***
By the time midsummer came, the London streets were hot, the city air was stuffy and Ron was getting crazier by the day. Often sinking into manic periods, he’d drink for days on end and leaving Reggie in charge.
The Firm started getting shooter happy.
Reggie shot a small-time villain called Jimmy Field in the legs because he’d offended the twins in some way. He was dumped outside a local hospital.
Ronnie with Kray-enforcer Pat Connolly on holiday in 1969
Another time some drunken punter came up to Kray-enforcer Pat Connolly at the door of the Starlight Club, one of their favourite places, and said ‘You fat c***. Who do you think you are? A gangster?’
Pat shot and wounded him, and the victim was dumped in the street.
Things were getting out of control, as I saw with my own eyes when the Krays decided to deal with a man called Bobby Cannon who owed them money.
Brought to a flat in Hackney, Cannon was told to sit down. Reggie had a little silver revolver, like a cowboy’s gun. He tied a handkerchief over the muzzle to act as a silencer and Cannon was shaking, sensing what was coming.
I couldn’t stand by and be a witness to murder.
But, as I walked over to Reggie, it seemed it was already too late. His eyes had started to glaze. I leaned over to whisper in his ear that someone was at the door, which was a lie.
This gave Cannon the split-second he needed. Suddenly he jumped up, burst through the rear door and ran out into the street. Reggie was cursing everyone.
After that though, we just went to a local club and got drunk. It might seem like madness but back then, as I discovered that crazy summer, it was just another day with 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.
