Free Wannabe in My Gang? by Bernard O'Mahoney Page A

felt that we let him down, because we should have been there towards the end of his life.’ He states that the death of his parents whilst he was inside is the biggest regret of his life.
    I doubt it. In his heart, the biggest regret in Lambrianou’s life must be not being man enough to stand up to the Krays and their threats and not making the statement to police he was only prepared to make behind the Krays’ backs. But if Tony had had the guts to do that, his ‘reputation’, his ‘name’, would have been in tatters. Instead, to promote his sham, he attacks better men than himself, other gang members who refused to be bullied by the Krays into serving time for crimes the Krays had committed themselves. Men like ‘Scotch Jack’ Dickson who later wrote a book called Murder Without Conviction , published in 1986. Tony says:
A lot of it was untrue [presumably unlike his book]. This was a person who had came to London to put himself on the twins firm. Why didn’t he say in his book what he did to us – that he became a grass? If I saw him today, I’d spit on him. I wouldn’t hit him – he wouldn’t be worth it.
I wouldn’t like anyone to harm him: it would be a sin. Let him live to a ripe old age, living with what he did, looking in the mirror and seeing what he is, every day. He’s a disgusting piece of work.
    This is Tony’s opinion of a man who made a statement and gave evidence against the Krays, written, of course, without the knowledge that his own statement would one day surface. Describing the trial and others who gave evidence, Tony is equally scathing.
The worst damage of all was done by members and associates of the firm who gave evidence against us. It didn’t take the brains of Einstein to see that they were out to save their own skins and blame those in the dock for the violence that they had willingly participated in throughout their careers. That was the saddest, most sickening thing, to see people you’d had a cup of tea with, shared a fag with, standing up and showing that when the crunch came their so-called loyalty didn’t mean a thing. I think the twins were shocked and disappointed. Let’s get it right. We’d all done wrong but some of us didn’t try to worm our way out of it by blaming other people. If the grasses had got up there and told the truth we may not have liked it but we could have lived with it. If they had admitted their part and told it as it happened it may not have changed the course of the trial, but at least we would have gone down knowing the truth had been told, but when we heard them telling lie after lie there was no way we could accept that. God Almighty! It was unforgivable.
    The Krays destroyed the Lambrianou family and yet Tony still maintains that they were honourable and men of dignity in order to sustain his pathetic image as a gangster.
    Many would think him more of a man if he told the truth about the misery and heartache his brief encounter with the Krays had caused him and those he clearly loved. I wish I had heeded Geoff Allen’s advice at the boxing show and steered well clear of Lambrianou, because I now know why Geoff thought so little of the individual who calls himself a ‘Kray gang boss’.

4
    ‘I READ THE NEWS TODAY . . . OH BOY’
    The telephone call from my brother Michael was frantic and to the point. ‘Mom’s collapsed,’ he said. ‘You had better come home quickly.’ It’s the news everybody dreads; your mind swarms with every conceivable possibility. I picked up my brother Paul in south London and tore up the motorway, torturing myself with dark thoughts. In my haste to leave, I realised that I hadn’t even bothered to ask Michael what had happened.
    My mother had, over the years, suffered some horrific injuries after falls. Once she fell down the stairs of her house, fracturing her skull. Mom was rushed to a neurosurgery unit where she underwent major brain surgery. None of us thought she would survive, but in less than two