Then they transferred him to the psychiatric wing at Winchester Prison in Hampshire.
And a doctor certified him insane.
The family all reacted differently. I was very worried and disturbed because I realized the implications: Ronnie could be kept in jail indefinitely. Mum couldn’t believe it, but she tried to keep cool about it and was as optimistic as usual, saying everything would be bound to sort itself out in the end. The old man wouldn’t believe it. Ronnie was being clever, he said; he was getting the authorities at it, working his ticket. No way was Ronnie mad.
And Reggie? Reggie was beside himself with fury and worry. If his identical twin, the man who shared his innermost thoughts, had been officially declared a nut-case, what on earth did that make him?
The news from Winchester that spring of 1958 shattered us all and for weeks we tried to change the prison rules that did not allow us to have a second opinion. Mean-while, Ronnie was given massive doses of a tranquillizing drug called Stemetil. We were told this was to stabilize him and curb his violent tendencies. But it dulled his mind and affected his memory, and we were powerless to do anything about it. We watched him deteriorate before us to a point where sometimes he didn’t even recognize us.
Out of my mind with worry, I decided to find out just what Stemetil was. When I did, I was horrified. A Harley Street specialist confirmed that Ronnie was being treated for schizophrenia with a drug normally used for treating vertigo and vomiting! To make matters even worse he said, ‘The precise mechanisms of the action of this drug are not yet fully understood.’
It was too much to take. Reggie and I decided that Ronnie was coming out of Winchester even if we had to blow a hole in the prison wall to get him. Happily, this wasn’t necessary. A week or so later, in May 1958, Ronnie was transferred to a mental hospital just fourteen miles from London. It was Long Grove near Epsom, Surrey. And springing him from there was going to be a doddle.
The Strange Case of the Vanished Twin hit the headlines later the same month. Millions probably thought it was just another piece of Kray skulduggery, another cheeky swipe at authority, but we removed Ronnie from that hospital because we were far from convinced of his unbalanced mind. Also, we were very concerned at the bad effect the drugs were having on him.
One thing the drugs hadn’t done was change Ronnie’s appearance; he still looked like Reggie. When Reggie put on a blue suit, white shirt and blue tie, similar to those Ronnie wore in hospital, only those who knew them well could spot the difference. When Reggie had his hair cut as short as Ronnie’s and put on a pair of glasses, even I had trouble telling them apart.
The switch was a simple operation. Leaving some friends in a couple of cars outside the hospital grounds, Reggie went in to see Ronnie as though it was just another routine visit. They sat chatting at a table in the small visiting hall and waited until a patrolling male nurse’s back was turned. Ronnie whipped off his glasses; Reggie slipped his on. Then they quickly but discreetly changed places.
When they were sure no one had noticed the change-over, Ronnie got up and sauntered over to a door which visitors were allowed to go through to fetch tea and biscuits. The nurse, assuming he was Reggie, opened the door and Ronnie walked out. But he didn’t go for tea; he walked straight out of the hospital into the grounds. One of the hospital staff came towards him on a bike and Ronnie tensed. But the man merely nodded a greeting and rode past. Ronnie walked on and on until he reached the gate, and then he spotted the cars Reggie had told him about and he was gone.
Reggie waited for about half an hour, then he went up to the nurse on the door and said, ‘Excuse me, Ron’s been a long time getting the tea. I didn’t think they were allowed to get the tea.’
The nurse looked puzzled. ‘You’re Ronnie,’ he said.
Reggie shook his head. ‘I’m Reggie. Ronnie went to get the tea. I’m getting worried.’
The nurse stared at Reggie closely. He must have believed him, because he ran off, a worried look on his face. Then all hell broke loose. An alarm bell went off. Hospital staff started running around. And then the police arrived.
Someone said to Reggie, ‘This is all down to you.’
But Reggie pleaded innocence. ‘I just came to see him. He went to get the tea, then everyone got excited.’
To confirm Reggie’s story, the police took his finger-prints and checked them with the Criminal Records Office at Scotland Yard.
‘You are Reg Kray,’ someone commented.
‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last hour,’ said Reg. Then he added, straight-faced, ‘I’m worried. What’s happened to him?’
‘Do us a favour,’ one copper said impatiently. ‘You know what’s happened.’
But Reggie kept saying he didn’t. And they kept him there for a couple of hours before letting him go.
By then, Ronnie was in a beautiful, expensive flat in St John’s Wood. Not for long, though. When he arrived, he took one look round and said, ‘I don’t like this. You can get me out of here.’ And we did – the next morning. Ronnie was like that. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that we’d gone to a lot of trouble and expense to get him a ‘safe’ house. He just didn’t like the place and that was that.
That day, the Superintendent of Long Grove got in touch with us and asked us to see him at the hospital. He said we’d made a serious mistake: Ronnie wasn’t well and should have stayed there for treatment. We played dumb, but the Superintendent laughed. He said he admired how it had been done: there had been no trouble, no one had been hurt. But, nevertheless, we had made a mistake. And he warned us that we would find out he was right.
For the next few months Reggie and I had our work cut out running our businesses while keeping Ronnie ahead of the law. The escape was big news and stories of his whereabouts flooded the East End: he was reliably reported to be in the Bahamas, New York, Malta, the Cote d’Azur, Southern Spain and goodness knows where else. In fact, he never strayed further north than Finchley or further west than Fulham. He took a few chances to visit Mum in Vallance Road, and the first visit proved very traumatic for him. While he was there, he wanted to see Aunt Rose. But she had died while he was in Winchester and Mum had decided not to tell him until he was better. When she did break the news, Ronnie got up and went into the yard. He stood there, looking up at the railway arch. The death of his Aunt Rose was the biggest blow of his life then. He stood out there, looking up, trying to take it in.
Ronnie didn’t want to be on the trot for the rest of his life. But he didn’t want to go back to a mental hospital either. While he had been in Wandsworth, he had heard about people who had been in and out of mental institutions for years and was terrified of ending up like them. One had actually been certified insane and was being detained without a firm date for release. Ronnie dreaded the same thing happening to him.
To solve the problem, we had to prove that Ronnie was, in fact, sane. So we booked an appointment with a Harley Street psychiatrist under an assumed name and asked him to give an opinion on Ronnie’s mental state. Ronnie made it sound plausible with a cock-and-bull story about getting