13/04/00 - Criminal mastermind
The Press (Canterbury, New Zealand)

Charlie Kray was not as well known as his notorious brothers Reggie and Ronnie but he was just as much a Kray as they were, says the retired detective who helped convict the twins for murder.

Leonard "Nipper" Read said when the Kray twins were in trouble, Charlie, who died on April 4, was the first person they turned to. "He was well and truly part of the Kray firm. All he had to say was that he was Charlie Kray. People looked over his shoulder and wondered where the twins were."

Charlie Kray died in an Isle of Wight hospital from heart failure with 10 years of his latest "stretch" still to go. Three years ago, he was jailed at Woolwich Crown Court for 12 years for his role in plotting to bring cocaine worth $120 million into Britain.

As a young man Kray had been a promising boxer but was soon overshadowed by his younger brothers, whom he had coached. He had started off "straight" by trying to establish a modest furniture business but, when Ronnie Kray was jailed for assault, Charlie Kray found himself drawn into the real family business -- extortion.

Reggie and Ronnie Kray ran the London underworld of the 1960s. They demanded respect, using violence. Charlie Kray lacked their reputation for thuggery but police suspected he was the brains behind their protection rackets.

While Charlie Kray took some of the benefits of the rackets, he also found himself in line for the penalties that went with them. When police cracked the Kray empire in 1968, following the murders of George Cornell and Jack "The Hat" McVitie, Charlie Kray received a 10-year jail sentence as an accessory after the death of McVitie, who had been stabbed by Reggie Kray.

Charlie Kray was released from jail in 1975. After an inappropriate job demonstrating cutlery on an Ideal Home exhibition stand, he began a series of attempts to parlay the family name into loot, making as much as $300,000 as a consultant on the feature film The Krays.

He stayed out of trouble until approached by undercover police in the mid-1990s. They asked him to find them some cocaine, and he fell straight into the trap. Kray was doing "porridge" in the Isle of Wight' s Parkhurst Prison when he fell ill.

Ronnie Kray died of a heart attack in 1995, but Reggie Kray, 66, is still in jail for the stabbing of McVitie. Charlie Kray; born Brixton, London, 1926, died Isle of Wight, April 4, aged 73.