| Reggie Kray's coffin is carried to his hearse | |
By Dick Durham, CNN.com writer
LONDON, England -- The large wreath hanging on the side of gangster Reggie Kray's horse-drawn hearse said it all: "Free At Last."
On the other side of the sombre Victorian death cart hung another wreath: "Respect" which said in flowers what 10,000 Londoners had turned out to pay.
The man who served 31 years imprisonment for murdering a small time crook, Jack "The Hat" McVitie, had campaigned ceaselessly for his own release.
The fact he only got it two weeks before his death because he was already terminally ill with cancer partly explains why a brutal murderer should enjoy such heady lionisation.
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"He was made an example of, him and his brother," said family friend and fellow former villain Bernie Lee, as he watched Reggie's coffin set off to join his twin brother Ronnie's grave in Chingford Mount cemetery ten miles (16 km) away from their beloved East End.
"There was no drugs in them days, no old ladies getting mugged. The East End was a safe place when they was running it. They only ever done their own," Bernie, dressed in funereal black, continued.
As the six black horses with black plumes sitting vertically on their heads, stamped and chewed their bits awaiting their celebrated cargo outside W. English's funeral parlour in the Bethnal Green Road, Lee rued the passing of the old East End.
He told of a time when paedophiles would have been strung up from the nearest lamp-post, when front doors were left unlocked, and when people could sleep safely in their beds, secure in the knowledge the "Terrible Twins" were looking after things.
But when asked whether this was simply a romantic view of Kray rule, a rule which included extorting money from the very shopkeepers, bookmakers and pub landlords whose premises were now thronged with "fans," Lee, a gypsy, fell momentarily silent.
"Well I didn't work for them, so I can't comment on that. I had me own firm to run."
The wreaths laid on the pavement outside the funeral parlour were a riot of superlative virtue.
"Proud to be a good friend of a GREAT man -- Ricky Bloom and family." They had sent a large bouquet of lillies.
| Friends of Reggie Kray pay tribute | |
"My pal Reg, a soldier to the end -- Danny Woollard and family." Their red carnation boxing glove marked the twins' beginnings in their violent rise to the top of the underworld.
"In knowing you I have walked with Kings. God bless you Reg, Joe," another label said on a model in flowers of the Pearly Gates.
The expensive wooden coffin was carried out to the hearse not by the mobsters of yesteryear, as in the case of Ronnie five years ago, but by skinny youths and refined gents.
This was thanks to the determination of Reggies' widow Roberta, 42, that his demise was not to be upstaged by a criminal circus.
Instead the pallbearers were pop singer Tony Mortimer of E 17, Alex Myhill a boxer, Mark Goldstein Kray's solicitor and Bradley Allardyce who had met Kray when he was in Maidstone jail.
The funeral procession made its way down to Bethnal Green Road flanked by 400 minders wearing red arm bands with RKF (Reggie Kray Funeral) on their biceps.
Four London buses chugged slowly along in the heaving traffic behind the hearse which eventually turned left down Vallance Road where the Twins grew up in the 1930s.
On each side of the long cortege spectators flocked aiming camcorders from tops of buses, street-side and even hanging from chimney pots.
Police battled to keep the crowds back from the path of the hearse.
| Playwright Stephen Berkoff joins the mourners | |
"Go in peace Reggie," a young man shouted.
Following the hearse was Billy Murray, star of TV's "The Bill" and longtime friend of the Krays, playwright Stephen Berkoff, an East Ender turned up dressed all in black including a black jockey cap and winkle-picker shoes.
"I don't have any underworld connections," he said, "I just grew up here."
Former rival gangster "Mad" Frankie Fraser was there, too, no longer in opposition, but coming out in that strange of solidarity that is gangsterdom.
The hearse continued its journey along Cheshire Street and past the Repton Boys Club where Reggie and brother Ronnie learned how to fight.
Then passing their old watering hole, The Carpenters Arms, the snaking cortege eventually reached St Matthew's Church in St Matthew's Row.
To a packed congregation and with loudspeakers rigged up outside the church for another 5,000 people. Mourners and the morbid listened between furiously rustling, gale-twisted trees, to the service.
It was taken by Dr Ken Stallard, a minister of the Evangelical Free Church, who was summoned to Broadmoor hospital for the criminally insane 17 years go by Ronnie Kray.
Kray had read a book on drug culture and youth written by Dr Stallard and was impressed.
"He told me it was the only book he had ever read from cover to cover," said Stallard.
Stallard said the Krays had helped raise money for charity over the years and he had become very close to Reggie Kray. When Reggie asked him what God thought of him Stallard was able to comfort the troubled killer with the example of Moses who killed an Egyptian and buried him in the sand.
"Even with killing there is forgiveness," he said.
"I'm sure there are many here today who remember those little lads playing in Vallance Road. I'm sure they could have gone on to international fame as boxers," he added. But even after they strayed into lives of crime they had "depths of spiritual feeling" which the world never knew about.
Stallard told the congregation of a "world secret" -- that Reggie had repented of his crimes and become a Christian.
The cortege then left for the journey to the Kray family plot in Chingford Mount ceremony where a fly-past by a World War II Spitfire had been organised. As it left St Matthew's Church however the only craft hovering over Reggie's coffin was a police helicopter.
From CNN.com Europe
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