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Trailblazing astronomer
hailed as ‘Lady Stardust’
Professor Margaret Burbidge
Page 50
Nipper Read secured his place in the
mythology of crimebusting as the man
who brought the notorious Kray twins
and other members of “the Firm” to
justice, and ended a 12-year reign of
terror in the London underworld.
On a May morning in 1968 detectives
burst through the door of the flat where
the twins were sleeping with their
paramours — in Reggie’s case a woman,
in Ronnie’s a young man. Before
the two men were properly awake they
were face down on the floor, hand-
cuffed. It was the culmination of
months of painstaking detective work
from Read.
Ronnie Kray once remarked that in
the unlikely event that anyone would
secure their convictions it would be
Read, “the cunning little bastard”. The
detective realised that he would need
the co-operation of other criminals
who had crossed paths with the Krays.
Although the twins had carefully culti-
vated a “wall of silence” over the years,
Read could not believethere was not
someone among their victims whose
desire for revenge would prove stronger
than their fear of retribution.
Even so, the investigation was long
and difficult. Time and time again Read
spoke to individuals who had been
maimed by the Krays and had their
lives ruined, only to be told that the
brothers or their henchmen had got
there first, inculcating fear that far
worse would come if the victims spoke
out. “I hate the sight of blood —
particularly my own,” said one such
would-be informant when asked by
Read why he would not give evidence. It
was a typical reaction.
Read persisted and the breaks began
to come, first in the shape of Leslie
Payne, a member of the Firm who knew
he had been the target of one murder
attempt, feared another and was
convinced that his only safety lay in
talking to the police. The subsequent
botched murder attempt of a West End
club owner, organised by Alan Cooper,
Payne’s successor as the Firm’s financial
adviser, to impress the Krays’ American
mafia connections, provided another
way into the maze.
Read was aware that such a heavy
reliance on the evidence of informants
who could only be depended upon if the
twins were remanded in custody after
their arrest, was a high-risk strategy. In
the event it paid off and the simultane-
ous arrest in the dawn of May 8, 1968, of
26 members of the Firm, including the
Krays, additionally ensured that none
of the members of the criminal fraterni-
ty could warn each other. In court, as a
procession of their erstwhile hench-
men filed through the witness box to
give evidence, the Krays realised just
how thoroughly Read and his team had
gone about their business.
Leonard Ernest Read was born in
Nottingham in 1925, the son of Leonard
Sr, who worked at a lace company, and
Ida May (née Morris). His mother died
when he was three. He was academical-
ly bright but left school at 14 because his
father could not afford to buy his books.
Instead he went to work at the Player’s
tobacco factory in the city. In 1943 he
was called up into the Royal Navy, serv-
ing for three years until he was de-
mobbed as a petty officer in 1946. In
1947 he joined the Metropolitan Police.
were responsible for Cornell’s murder
after he had made the inadvisable move
of calling Ronnie a “fat poof”.
Read was surprised to encounter,
even among the top men at Scotland
Yard, a stunning lack of interest in
pursuing the Krays. The effect of this
apathy was that there was a crippling
lack of co-ordinated intelligence on
their activities.
Read set about putting that right by
compiling a dossier on 32 of the Krays’
former associates in a little black book,
which he called his “delightful index”.
One by one he tracked them down.
Read assembled a core of about 20 spe-
cialists and set up an office at Tintagel
House on the South Bank, an HQ with
the river between it and Scotland Yard.
Though the special squad was passed
off as something to do with security in
Northern Ireland, no one was in any
doubt that the underworld would soon
know what Read was up to. He became
a natural target for a pre-emptive strikethe other side of the Atlantic. When a
Philadelphia mafia chief came to
London on a business trip, Ronnie
decided to impress him with a series of
spectacular assassinations. It was one
of these, a planned bomb attack on a
West End club owner, which led to the
second decisive break in the cracking of
the case. The man carrying the dyna-
mite was arrested and revealed that
Alan Cooper, the Firm’s new chief of
staff, was behind the murder attempt.
When Cooper was arrested he claimed
that he was working for Scotland Yard
and the US Treasury. Read declined to
become inveigled in the web of lies he
sensed in these assertions. In the mean-
time he was content to use Cooper as a
witness against the Krays, instead of ar-
resting and charging him.
By now vast amounts of intelligence
and evidence had been gathered and on
the evening before the raid Read
assembled his men at Tintagel House
and briefed them. The following morn-
ing, packing a standard .38 Webley
police revolver, he had the satisfaction
of bursting into the Krays’ flat and con-
fronting the opponents who had eluded
him for so long.
On March 8, 1969, after a two-month
trial, Ronald and Reginald Kray were
found guilty of murder and sentenced
by Melford Stevenson to life imprison-
ment, with the recommendation that
they serve at least 30 years.
After passing sentence the judge
praised Read and his officers, saying
that the public owed them a debt that
“cannot be overstated and can never be
discharged”.
Nipper Read was twice married, first
in 1951 to Marion Millar, by whom he
had one daughter, Maralyn, a retired
food company manager. The marriage
was dissolved in 1979 and the following
year he married Patricia Allen, a
detective constable he had met when
she served as his driver during the
Krays investigation.
Read remained with the murder
squad for a further year. In 1970 he was
appointed assistant chief constable of
Nottinghamshire Combined Constab-
ulary and in 1972 made national
co-ordinator of regional crime squads
for England and Wales. He retired from
the police in 1976, having been awarded
the Queen’s Police Medal. From 1978 to
1986 he served as national security
adviser to the Museums and Galleries
Commission. Read was made a free-
man of the City of London in 1983. He
published his autobiography, Nipper, in- He disapproved of the casting of
Christopher Ecclestone, who played
him in the 2015 film Legend, which
starred Tom Hardy as the Kray twins,
because he was too tall.
He maintained his interest in boxing
through his involvement with the Brit-
ish Boxing Board of Control, of which
he was a council member from 1976,
and served as its chairman from 1996 to
2000 and president from 1997. He was
also a senior vice-president of the
World Boxing Council. He never got
the chance to face either of the Kray
twins in the ring, but outside of it he
won on points.
Leonard “Nipper” Read, QPM, murder
squad detective, was born on March 31,- He died on April 7, 2020, aged 95
Obituaries
Leonard ‘Nipper’ Read
Dogged and meticulous murder squad detective who brought the Kray twins to justice, as well as several of the Great Train Robbers
ROGER JACKSON/CENTRAL PRESS; WILLIAM LOVELACE/GETTY IMAGESNipper Read in 1972 when he was made national co-ordinator of regional crime squads. Below: the Kray twins in 1966
Over the next 20 years he
gained wide experience of
criminal work and was a de-
tective inspector by the age of- Within the force he was
known as a dedicated officer.
He was also a fine boxer, an in-
terest he shared with the Kray
twins, and was police force
champion at lightweight from
1947 to 1949. Whether his nick-
name “Nipper” stemmed from
his speed in the ring, or because
at 5ft 7in he was half an inch too
short to meet the Met’s physical
requirements, was always a
moot point. The Met never had
cause to repent its waiving the
rules in Read’s case.
Read made his name as a detective
chief inspector at West End Central in
the 1960s. His special squad was instru-
mental in breaking up a number of the
mobs who extorted protection money.
In 1963 he was involved in the hunt for
the Great Train Robbery gang and was
responsible for the arrest of several of
its members. He had his first brush with
the Krays in 1965 when he led the in-
quiry that resulted in the twins being
prosecuted for trying to obtain money
with menaces from a Mayfair club own-
er. On that occasion the prosecution
could not make the charges stick.
When, in 1967, Read was posted to the
murder squad as a detective chief
superintendent, his brief from the
assistant commissioner, Peter Brodie,
was simply: “Get the Krays.” He began
by investigating the murder of George
Cornell in the Blind Beggar pub in the
East End. It was common knowledge in
the criminal underworld that the Krays
by the Krays. Travel routes
to and from work were
changed assiduously. Read
and his family received
close surveillance.
Read focused his effort
on repairing the breaches
in Scotland Yard’s intelli-
gence. He and his squad
visited nightclubs, restau-
rants and bookmakers
trying to establish evi-
dence of extortion. Read
realised that evidence
from other criminals was
going to be vital if charges
were to be substantiated,
and there were long and heated meet-
ings with the Yard’s top police lawyers
before the principle was established.
Feeling the heat from Read’s investi-
gation, the mentally unstable Ronnie
ordered a python from the Harrods pet
department, which he called Mr Read.
He liked to sit at home with his new
plaything, feeding it live mice.
In the end it was Ronnie’s megaloma-
nia that opened a chink in the Firm’s
armour. The twins had been travellingin America, hoping to gain some useful
tips on how to regularise and expand
their British operation along mafia
lines. They in fact met no big mafia
figures and Ronnie came to the
conclusion that he and his associates
were not highly enough esteemed onRonnie Kray bought a
python from Harrods,
which he called Mr Read
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