David Teale - Surviving the Krays: The Final Explosive Secret about the Firm

David Teale: groomed by the twins, controlled by threats, falsely imprisoned by the State for his own protection as younger brother of Kray-informer Bobby. Turns out thats only half the story.

David first met the Krays when he was seventeen years old. He was drawn into Londons underworld, and became Ronnies reluctant foot soldier, driver, errand boy. He was close to murder, and witnessed menaces and the increasingly psychotic behaviour of the most feared men in gangster land.

Unbeknown to David, his brother Bobby had bravely turned informer at great risk to his own safety and that of his brothers. That had its own consequences. But why, when the police were being furnished with eye-witness statements, from an impeccable source, were they seemingly incapable of bringing the twins to justice? The Krays were untouchable.

After tireless research through newly released documents in the National Archives, and piecing previously classified information together with his own, first-hand knowledge of the time, David Teale uncovers the shocking new truth, revealed in this book for the first time.

Davids story rewrites history.

This book is for Debbie

and for my daughters, Diane Teale, Joanne Teale and the youngest, Christine Teale, who arrived when I was away.

All photographs provided by David Teale, except:

Mirrorpix/Reach Licensing

The National Archives

Collect/Alamy Stock Photo

Chronicle/Alamy Stock Photo

Girling/Stringer/Getty Images

Mirrorpix/Reach Licensing

Mirrorpix/Reach Licensing

Ron Gerelli/Stringer/Getty Images

Bentley Archive/Popperfoto/Getty Images

away in prison

bellon telephone tap

Bringing Down the Krays book by my brother Bobby, written with the help of Alfie and myself, published in 2012

C.1 Scotland Yard Central Office

C.8 Flying Squad

C.11 Scotland Yard Criminal Intelligence Department (sometimes branch or bureau)

carpet prison sentence

chemmy chemin-de-fer gambling card game

chiv razor

CIA Central Intelligence Agency (US)

CRO Criminal Record Office

D Branch MI5 counterespionage

D4 MI5 agent-running section of D Branch

DCS Detective Chief Superintendent

DI Detective Inspector

dilly gay clubland round Piccadilly Circus, London

DPP Director of Public Prosecutions

DS Detective Sergeant

form criminal record

GPO General Post Office (ran UK telephone system)

pony 25

spieler illegal gambling club

tool gun

Things happen in your life which it might seem better to forget, so why should I want to go back to that terrifying time as a young man in London when I was involved with the Krays?

I was about seventeen years old when I first met Ronnie Kray. Id meet his twin brother Reggie a little later. My older brother, Alfie, had been introduced to Ronnie by his gay friend, Mad Teddy Smith. Hed been nicknamed that way for his habit of getting off his head and his reputation for being a bit of a tearaway. Some accounts say he was in Broadmoor special hospital for a while when he was just a kid. I never knew that.

Teddy had been topped by Ronnie sometime in 1967. At least thats what the police were putting around through the underworld at the time when I myself was in prison. More about Teddy later

For five years of my young life I had been around but never on the Firm. Id done the driving, run little errands. I wish from the bottom of my heart that it had happened differently. My involvement with the murderous twins would cause years of pain to those I loved. And it still causes me deep pain today.

One way of dealing with bad past experiences is to go back into them. Thats what I and my brothers, Alfie and Bobby Teale, did a few years back. Some of what follows has been told in our book, Bringing Down the Krays, put together by the three of us when we were reunited in 2010 after a very long time apart. It told the story of how Bobby had been an informer inside the Firm. Alfie and I didnt know. A corrupt policeman exposed him to the twins. Years before, in summer 1966, the three of us had gone to prison in a get-the-Teales-off the-streets operation of which, at the time, I had no comprehension.

Someone high up decided the way to keep we three brothers alive was to put us on trial as blackmailers (demanding money with menaces, it was called) and find us all guilty. We went to prison. When we were all released, Bobby disappeared.

We assumed he must be dead.

***

Id begun this journey of discovery with a bit of a problem: I could not read or write. Then, a few years into the new century, I started helping people with drugs problems. I had never been into drugs myself, but I knew some who were, including within my own close family. It was while taking someone to a support meeting that I first met a woman called Lally who later helped me learn to read and write.

Lally was an addiction counsellor but was there as much to support the carers as the addicts. So when Lally asked me if I had ever had any help myself, I found myself telling her my whole life story.

During the course of our conversations I told her about my childhood, my brothers Alfie and Bobby, and our association with the Krays the twins from East London who had been so notorious in my young life and who, long after, still seemed to have a terrifying fascination.

Lally was amazed and told me, Dave, you have got to write a book. It was then that I confided in her that I could not read or write. She told me to get a laptop and that she would recommend an adult literacy class. She also asked me where Bobby was. I said wed been told many years back that he was dead, although I had never really accepted this was true. Lally also told me to start going to the library, where I learned how to use my new laptop the internet was really getting going by now.

My life wasnt much at the time, it had dwindled to a one-room bedsit in the Caledonian Road in north London. My smart clothes, of which I had always been so proud, now hung on a sad metal clothes rail; expensive suits on plastic hangers with Italian shoes stacked beneath acted as an incentive to try harder.

From the moment I signed up to join the reading class, my life started to change. Although functionally illiterate (how bad does that sound?), I had in the past been a very capable man and successful in business. As a result, I had at times in my life been comfortably off.

The kids in the class showed me a new thing called Facebook. Lally suggested I put up a post looking for Bobby giving my own name but not much else. So, sitting in my bedsit, I did just that.