Ronald “Ronnie” and Reginald “Reggie” Kray were born on 24 October 1933 in Haggerston, East London, to Charles David Kray (10 March 1907 – 8 March 1983), a wardrobe dealer, and Violet Annie Lee (5 August 1909 – 4 August 1982). The brothers were twins, with Reggie was born in 10 minutes before Ronnie. Their parents already had a six-year-old son, Charles James (9 July 1927 – 4 April 2000). A sister, Violet (born 1929), died in infancy. When the twins were three years old, they contracted diphtheria.

The twins first attended Wood Close School in Brick Lane, and then Daniel Street School. In 1938, the Kray family moved from Stean Street in Haggerston to 178 Vallance Road in Bethnal Green.

The Krays were called up to do National Service in the British Army in March 1952. Although the pair reported to the depot of the Royal Fusiliers at the Tower of London, they attempted to leave after only a few minutes. When the corporal in charge tried to stop them, he was seriously injured by Ronnie Kray who punched him on the jaw. The Krays walked back to their East End home. They were arrested the next morning by the police and turned over to the army.

Their criminal records and dishonourable discharges from the Royal Fusiliers ended their boxing careers, and the brothers turned to crime full-time. They bought a run-down snooker club in Mile End where they started several protection rackets. By the end of the 1950s, the Krays were working for Jay Murray from Liverpool and were involved in hijacking, armed robbery and arson, through which they acquired other clubs and properties. In 1960, Ronnie Kray was imprisoned for 18 months for running a protection racket and related threats. While Ronnie was in prison, Peter Rachman, head of a landlord operation, sold Reggie a nightclub called Esmeralda’s Barn, to ward off threats of further extortion. The location is where the Berkeley Hotel now stands.

The Krays also came to public attention in July 1964 when an exposé in the tabloid newspaper Sunday Mirror insinuated that Ronnie had conceived a sexual relationship with Lord Boothby, a Conservative politician, at a time when sex between men was still a criminal offence in the UK. Although no names were printed in the piece, the twins threatened the journalists involved, and Boothby threatened to sue the newspaper with the help of Labour Party leader Harold Wilson’s solicitor Arnold Goodman (Wilson wanted to protect the reputation of Labour MP Tom Driberg, a relatively open gay man known to associate with both Boothby and Ronnie Kray, just weeks ahead of a pending General Election which Labour was hoping to win). In the face of this, the newspaper backed down, sacking its editor, printing an apology and paying Boothby £40,000 in an out-of-court settlement. Because of this, other newspapers were unwilling to expose the Krays’ connections and criminal activities. Much later, Channel 4 established the truth of the allegations and released a documentary on the subject called The Gangster and the Pervert Peer (2009).

According to some sources, Ronnie killed Cornell because Cornell referred to him as a “fat poof” (a derogatory term for gay men) during a confrontation between the Krays and the Richardson gang at the Astor Club on Christmas Day 1965.

Reggie married Frances Shea in 1965; she died by suicide two years later. Reggie married Roberta Jones, whom he met while still in prison. She was helping to publicise a film he was making about Ronnie, who had died in hospital two years earlier.

Reggie’s marriage to Frances Shea (1943–67) in 1965 lasted eight months when she left, although the marriage was never formally dissolved. An inquest came to the conclusion that she had committed suicide, but in 2002 an ex-lover of Reggie Kray’s came forward to allege that Frances was murdered by a jealous Ronnie. Bradley Allardyce spent 3 years in Maidstone Prison with Reggie and explained, “I was sitting in my cell with Reg and it was one of those nights where we turned the lights down low and put some nice music on and sometimes he would reminisce. He would get really deep and open up to me. He suddenly broke down and said ‘I’m going to tell you something I’ve only ever told two people and something I’ve carried around with me’ – something that had been a black hole since the day he found out. He put his head on my shoulder and told me Ronnie killed Frances. He told Reggie what he had done two days after.”

Ronnie Kray shot and killed George Cornell, a member of the Richardson Gang (a rival South London gang), at the Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel on 9 March 1966. The day before, there had been a shoot-out at Mr Smith’s, a nightclub in Catford, involving the Richardson gang and Richard Hart, an associate of the Krays, who was shot dead. This public shoot-out led to the arrest of nearly all the Richardson gang. Cornell, by chance, was not present at the club during the shoot-out and was not arrested. After visiting the hospital to check up on his friends, he randomly chose to visit the Blind Beggar pub, only a mile away from where the Krays lived.

On 12 December 1966, the Krays helped Frank Mitchell, “the Mad Axeman”, to escape from Dartmoor Prison. Ronnie had befriended Mitchell while they served time together in Wandsworth Prison. Mitchell felt that the authorities should review his case for parole, so Ronnie thought that he would be doing him a favour by getting him out of Dartmoor, highlighting his case in the media and forcing the authorities to act.

The Krays’ criminal activities remained hidden behind both their celebrity status and seemingly legitimate businesses. Reggie was allegedly encouraged by his brother in October 1967, four months after the suicide of his wife, Frances, to kill Jack “the Hat” McVitie, a minor member of the Kray gang who had failed to fulfil a £1,000 contract, £500 of which had been paid to him in advance, to kill their financial advisor, Leslie Payne. McVitie was lured to a basement flat in Evering Road, Stoke Newington on the pretence of a party. Upon entering the premises, he saw Ronnie Kray seated in the front room. Ronnie approached, letting loose a barrage of verbal abuse and cutting McVitie below his eye with a piece of broken glass. It is believed that an argument then broke out between the twins and McVitie. As the argument got more heated, Reggie Kray pointed a handgun at McVitie’s head and pulled the trigger twice, but the gun failed to discharge.

Detective Chief Superintendent Leonard “Nipper” Read of Scotland Yard was promoted to the Murder Squad and his first assignment was to bring down the Kray twins. It was not his first involvement with them. During the first half of 1964, Read had been investigating their activities, but publicity and official denials of Ron’s relationship with Boothby made the evidence that he collected useless. Read went after the twins with renewed activity in 1967, but frequently came up against the East End “wall of silence” which discouraged anyone from providing information to the police. They were represented in court by Nemone Lethbridge.

Early in 1968, the Krays employed Alan Bruce Cooper who sent Paul Elvey to Glasgow to buy explosives for a car bomb. Elvey was the radio engineer who put Radio Sutch on the air in 1964, later renamed Radio City. After police detained him in Scotland, he confessed to being involved in three murder attempts. The evidence was weakened by Cooper, who claimed that he was an agent for the US Treasury Department investigating links between the American Mafia and the Kray gang. The botched murders were his attempt to put the blame on the Krays. Cooper was being employed as a source by one of Read’s superior officers, and Read tried using him as a trap for the Krays, but they avoided him.

Eventually, Scotland Yard decided to arrest the Krays on the evidence already collected, in the hope that other witnesses would be forthcoming once the Krays were in custody. On 8 May 1968, the Krays and 15 other members of the Firm were arrested. Exceptional circumstances were put in place so as to stop any possible co-operation between any of the accused. Nipper Read then secretly interviewed each of the arrested, and offered each member of the Firm a deal if they testified against the others. Whilst in prison, the Krays had come up with a plan, which included having Scotch Jack Dickson to confess to the murder of Cornell, Ronnie Hart to take the McVitie murder and Albert Donoghue to stand for Mitchell.

A letter Ronnie sent to his mother Violet from prison in 1968 also refers to Monica: “if they let me see Monica and put me with Reg, I could not ask for more.” He went on to say, with spelling mistakes, “Monica is the only girl I have liked in my life. She is a luvely [sic] little person as you know. When you see her, tell her I am in luve [sic] with her more than ever.” Ronnie subsequently married twice, marrying Elaine Mildener in 1985 at Broadmoor chapel before the couple divorced in 1989, following which he married Kate Howard, whom he divorced in 1994.

The twins’ defence under their counsel John Platts-Mills, QC consisted of flat denials of all charges and discrediting witnesses by pointing out their criminal past. Justice Melford Stevenson said: “In my view, society has earned a rest from your activities.” It was the longest murder hearing in history of British criminal justice, during which Justice Melford Stevenson stated of the sentences “which I recommend should not be less than thirty years.” In March 1969, both were sentenced to life imprisonment, with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of Cornell and McVitie, the longest sentences ever passed at the Old Bailey (Central Criminal Court, London) for murder. Their brother Charlie was imprisoned for ten years for his part in the murders.

In addition to films explicitly about the twins, James Fox met Ronnie whilst the twins were held at HM Prison Brixton as part of his research for his role in the 1970 film Performance, and Richard Burton visited Ronnie at Broadmoor as part of his preparation for his role as a violent gangster in the 1971 film Villain.

Ronnie and Reggie’s older brother Charlie Kray was released from prison in 1975 after serving seven years for his role in their gangland crimes, but was sentenced again in 1997 for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine in an undercover drugs sting. He died in prison of natural causes on 4 April 2000, aged 73.

Ronnie Kray was a Category A prisoner, denied almost all liberties and not allowed to mix with other prisoners. He was eventually certified insane, his paranoid schizophrenia being tempered with constant medication; in 1979 he was committed and lived the remainder of his life in Broadmoor Hospital in Crowthorne, Berkshire. Reggie Kray, constantly being refused parole, was locked up in Maidstone Prison for 8 years (Category B). In 1997, he was transferred to the Category C Wayland Prison in Norfolk.

Ronnie and Reggie Kray were allowed, under heavy police guard, to attend the funeral service of their mother Violet on 11 August 1982 following her death from cancer a week earlier. They were not, however, allowed to attend her burial in the Kray family plot at Chingford Mount Cemetery. The funeral was attended by celebrities including Diana Dors and underworld figures known to the Krays. To avoid the publicity that had surrounded their mother’s funeral, the twins did not ask for permission to attend their father’s funeral in March 1983.

In 1985, officials at Broadmoor Hospital discovered a business card of Ronnie’s that led to evidence that the twins, from separate institutions, were operating Krayleigh Enterprises (a “lucrative bodyguard and ‘protection’ business for Hollywood stars”) together with their older brother Charlie Kray and an accomplice at large. Among their clients was Frank Sinatra, who hired 18 bodyguards from Krayleigh Enterprises on his visit to the 1985 Wimbledon Championships. Documents released under Freedom of Information laws revealed that although officials were concerned about this operation, they believed that there was no legal basis to shut it down.

During the Second World War, the twins were evacuated to East House in Hadleigh, Suffolk with their mother Violet and their older brother Charles. They stayed at East House with the owners Dr and Mrs Style for about one year before moving back to London as Violet missed her friends and family. While they were in Hadleigh, the twins attended Bridge Street Boys School. When the twins were interviewed in 1989 while at Broadmoor Prison, Ronnie described Hadleigh as their first time in the countryside. What appealed to the twins was the “quietness, the peacefulness of it, the fresh air, nice scenery, nice countryside – different from London. We used to go to a big ‘ill called Constitution Hill and used to go sledging there in the winter-time.”

Ronnie died on 17 March 1995 at the age of 61 at Wexham Park Hospital in Slough, Berkshire. He had suffered a heart attack at Broadmoor Hospital two days earlier. Reggie was allowed out of prison in handcuffs to attend the funeral.

McVitie was then held in a bear hug by the twins’ cousin, Ronnie Hart, and Reggie Kray was handed a carving knife. He then stabbed McVitie in the face and stomach, driving the blade into his neck while twisting the knife, not stopping even as McVitie lay on the floor dying. Reggie had committed a very public murder, against someone who many members of the Firm felt did not deserve to die. In an interview in 2000, shortly after Reggie’s death, Freddie Foreman revealed that McVitie had a reputation for leaving carnage behind him due to his habitual consumption of drugs and heavy drinking, and his having threatened to harm the twins and their family.

During his incarceration, Reggie Kray became a born-again Christian. He was freed from Wayland on 26 August 2000 on compassionate grounds, on the direction of Home Secretary Jack Straw, following the diagnosis of cancer. He had been diagnosed with bladder cancer earlier that year, and the illness had been declared as terminal. The final weeks of his life were spent with his wife of three years, Roberta, in a suite at the Townhouse Hotel at Norwich, after he left the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital on 22 September 2000. On 1 October 2000, Reggie died in his sleep. Ten days later, he was buried beside his brother Ronnie in Chingford Mount Cemetery. During the funeral, crowds of thousands lined up to applaud.

Ronnie was arrested before he had the chance to marry Monica, and although she married his ex-boyfriend, 59 letters sent to her between May and December 1968 when he was imprisoned show Ronnie still had feelings for her, and his love for her was very clear. He referred to her as “my little angel” and “my little doll.” She also still had feelings for Ronnie. These letters were auctioned in 2010.

Warped by Martin Malcolm directed by Russell Lucas opened at VAULT Festival in 2019. The play tells the story of two young men who idolise the Krays.