‘I was first to nab Kray twins. They did come quietly’
When 24-year-old PC Les Alton knocked at the front door of the Kray twins’ mother’s house he had no idea how notorious they would become.
But the seeds had been sown and Ronald and Reginald Kray were fast becoming immortalised in East End folklore.
It was midsummer when PC Alton was deployed to 178 Vallance Road in Bethnal Green. It was to be the first of many arrests in the twins’ long career of law breaking and violence. Their crime was beating a bobby patrolling his own beat 20 minutes earlier, for which Mr Alton recalls they were later convicted at East London Juveniles Court by a magistrate called Basil Henriques.
Since that moment 67 years ago, Ronnie and Reggie went on to become the foremost instigators of organised crime in the East End of London, with their crime sheet including murder, armed robbery, arson, protection rackets and assaults.
The twins were also known for running a string of nightclubs and amassing property, including The Russell Hotel in Maidstone, now the site of housing. After the law caught up with the pair, Reggie went on to spend time behind bars at Maidstone Prison from 1989. Mr Alton, now 91 and living near Deal, recalls: “Back then they, were both approaching 18. There was a crowd outside a snooker and billiards club which was above a tailor’s shop. “There was a crowd of local yobs and the twins were inciting the crowd to interrupt the police man from carrying out his duties.”
He recalls: “The Krays at the time were big in the amateur boxing world and were getting publicity. And the publicity went to their heads.
“The policeman drew the truncheon out, not having the correct strap on his wrist. They took the truncheon from him and beat him up with it.”
The grandfather and widow recalls news of the assault coming into the police station and being tasked to bring them in, alongside a colleague.
He said: “Their mother came to the door. We told her briefly what had happened. She called them. They were upstairs in their room. When they came down we arrested them at the front door of the house.
“We took them by the arm, and walked from their home to the police station. They weren’t handcuffed.”
There was no fuss or need for restraint, he recalls. It was at a time when the police were feared.
“They adored their mother.
She just told them to go with us. They had no option really. “Policing in those days was slightly different to what it was today. We didn’t need to go all kitted up. In those days we didn’t use handcuffs, only if they were rough.
“They just came to the station. They would have been proud of it. They had never been arrested before. So I was the first person in their long career of crime to arrest them.”
He said: “In those days juveniles were never convicted, the official term was ‘finding of guilt’, so the Krays were found guilty of GBH.”
The injured officer spent a week in Bethnal Green Hospital and Mr Alton said the incident wasn’t seen as dramatic.
He left the East End for the West End as a fully trained CID officer in 1954 and went on to join Scotland Yard.
By now - the 1960s - the twins were becoming celebrities. Ronnie Kray shot and killed George Cornell, a member of a rival gang at a Whitechapel pub in 1966.
In 1967 Reggie Kray stabbed Jack ‘the Hat’ McVitie to death, after he broke a contract to kill the twins’ financial adviser. The pair were convicted in 1969 and Ronnie’s deteriorating mental health saw him incarcerated in Broadmoor until he died in 1995, while Reggie was released in 2000, but died a few weeks later of bladder cancer. Mr Alton said: “Reggie was the harder man of the two but Ronnie was very vicious. The boys were glorified and their crimes became sensational. But they committed murder and it had to come to an end.”