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  Sam Giancana died a violent death in 1975 at the age of 67 being shot in the back of the head while frying sausages in the kitchen. He was due to have been an FBI witness in an investigation into organised crime. A police guard had been called away from his home.

  James Earl Ray meets Mad Frankie Fraser

  Mad Frankie Fraser is a London gangster, even as an octogenarian he continues to trade on his notoriety into which is incorporated a claimed 42 years in prison. He has a website, madfrankiefraser.co.uk, where there are pictures of Mr Fraser speaking at the prestigious Oxford Union, online offers to sell branded T-shirts, mentions of his personally guided tours of London’s gangland, and a curious link to a micro-site with the address of www.costadelkrays.info on which there appears an apartment for sale on Spain’s Costa del Sol. There are various tales, and one is of the improbable but true assemblage of four of the most notorious criminals of the 20th century.

  The time was the spring of 1968, Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World* had been at the top of the charts for four weeks, and then transistor radios in England began to deliver some startling opening chords from the guitar of Keith Richards as he played a new tune called Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Bobby Charlton and Manchester United beat Eusebio and Benfica bringing the European Cup to England. In the top security wing of London’s Brixton prison Mad Frankie Fraser was serving two sentences for violent crime when the Kray twins were suddenly arrested for murder and imprisoned in the same unit. The three UK criminals were joined by a US citizen, James Earl Ray, who sixty four days earlier had shot and killed the American civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King.

  The imprisonment of James Earl Ray had been the result of extensive, determined and effective police effort. Ray had been convicted twice for armed robbery, escaped from jail, and evaded capture for a year. In preparing to kill Martin Luther King and escape detection the killer deployed four aliases: Harold Lowmeyer bought the rifle; Eric Galt—driving a white Mustang—booked a Memphis hotel room the previous night; John Willard then checked into Bessie Brewer’s Rooming House, specifying a room that happened to be facing the Lorraine Motel; Paul Bridgeman stayed at a Toronto boarding house and Ramon Sneyd acquired a Canadian passport in the name of a Toronto policeman and then departed North America for Europe.

  James Earl Ray could quite conceivably have escaped detection but immediately after the fatal shot he appeared to have panicked. As he left the rooming house someone remarked to him about hearing a gunshot and then in flight to his car he dropped the rifle, wrapped in only a blanket and bearing his fingerprints. A white Mustang, later also found with his fingerprints, was seen driving away.

  The car was found in Atlanta and questioning about Galt in Birmingham revealed that he liked dancing and that the car had been in Los Angeles. A picture of Galt was found at an LA dance studio. It was decided to check Galt’s fingerprints against fugitives and the identity of escapee James Earl Ray as the murderer was established. Cellmates of Ray told both of possible bounties that had been offered if Martin Luther King was killed and that Ray had said when he escaped from prison he was heading to Canada as it was easy to get a passport in the name of a Canadian citizen.

  The Canadians compared Ray’s photograph with 175,000 passport applications and on June 1st told the FBI that their suspect matched the application of George Sneyd, who had already flown to London on May 5. From there he had travelled to Portugal where he replaced his original Canadian passport with another in the same name and returned to London. Now on the watch list, he was shadowed after arriving from Portugal and had stayed in the transit lounge where he would not normally have been subjected to a passport check, to wait for a flight to Belgium. He was arrested on June 8th and was found to be carrying a handgun.

  James Earl Ray was extradited and pleaded guilty without a trial to receive a 99 year sentence rather than the death penalty, then immediately began a campaign for a trial, which reached the US Supreme Court, but was unsuccessful. He died in prison in 1998 from Hepatitis C liver failure.

  During the time together in Brixton Prison Mad Frankie Fraser said that James Earl Ray had told him he was innocent. Since then questions regarding James Earl Ray’s motive, the possibility of his being involved in a conspiracy, and his guilt or innocence have been asked. The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported in 1978 that Ray was responsible and that there was a likelihood of a conspiracy.

  CK

  In 1969 Charles Kray (42) was tried alongside his brothers—the infamous Kray Twins—in London’s Old Bailey and sentenced to ten years jail for aiding his siblings in disposing of a body. Ronnie and Reggie received life sentences for murder but Charles denied being involved up until his death in prison thirty years later; he had been imprisoned again after being convicted of supplying cocaine to undercover police officers.

  The Birdless Man of Alcatraz

  Cell 42 on Alcatraz Island was once the home of Robert Stroud who wasn’t permitted any avian companions in Alcatraz on being transferred to ‘The Rock’ in 1942. After murdering a guard he spent 42 years in solitary confinement in different prisons. Alcatraz can be reached by ferry from San Francisco’s pier…33.

  The Crime of The Century

  The British Great Train Robbery took place on August 8th 1963. Over £2.6 million worth of used banknotes being returned to the Bank of England for pulping were stolen*. The Bank of England’s online inflation calculator shows that the amount stolen is the equivalent of £42 million in 2011; the theft was then the largest in British history with The New York Times determining that it was the ‘Crime of the Century’.

  Despite having bought an isolated farmhouse in which to hide, their unusual presence was noted by an alert bucolic while checking his livestock. Open-to-air police communications alerted the gang that their location would suddenly become less than felicitous and the rushed nature of their departure meant that they had left their fingerprints, including some found on the Monopoly game being used to play for real money. Their board is displayed at the Sulhamstead police training centre.

  The great train robbers proved not quite so great on getaways, with 12 of the believed 15 associates being caught and convicted. Those caught first received prison sentences of up to 30 years, many at the time considered this be overly harsh—those caught later getting ten years.

  The gang’s leader had been Bruce ‘Napoleon’ Reynolds who had been caught only after returning, with his wife and son, to Britain from Mexico and renting a pleasing villa in docile Torquay. Said to have been dobbed-in by his milkman for paying the bill in fivers this is probably not true, and Reynolds certainly believed otherwise, having already had a ‘close shave’ in London he had visited again, returning with a case of champagne. It seems more believable that he had pushed his luck too far, been recognised, and followed back to Devon.

  The most famous train robber, Ronnie Biggs, received 30 years. In popular mythology he played the most minor of roles, supposedly only recruiting a mysterious ‘Stan Agate’ to shunt the train. (A real Stan Agate existed as the successful racing tipster of the News of the World.) Biggs’s man was supposedly unable to operate the Class 40 locomotive…thereby leading the gang to use violence on the driver of the train. The police never appeared to seek the ‘Stan Agate’ gang member.

  Ronnie Biggs was helped to escape from Wandsworth Prison a little over a year into his sentence. A rope ladder was thrown over the wall and other prisoners held back warders while the great train robber effected his egress. After hiding in Australia he moved to Brazil in 1970 and stayed there, for most of the time openly, until 2001 when his health deteriorated and he returned to England in declining health to spend a further eight years in prison before being released on compassionate grounds in 2009. The great train robbery had taken place on his 34th birthday.

  A letter is displayed on Mad Frankie Fraser’s interweb site purporting to be from a solicitor representing one of the prisoners who had helped impede guards while Biggs climbed the r
ope ladder over the prison wall. The letter is addressed to the sister of Mad Frankie Fraser and states that the assisting convict had authorised his brief to hold money rewarding his client for assisting in the escape of Ronnie Biggs.

  Stolen Carbon

  The Graff jewellery retailer in London has been subjected to six armed robberies resulting in the loss of around £84m between 1980 and 2009. In Graff I the 45 carat Marlborough diamond was stolen by thieves caught as they arrived back at Chicago O’Hare airport but the diamond has never been seen again. Graff III (£23m in 2003) and Graff VI (£40m in 2009) occurred in the same Mayfair shop, each being the biggest jewellery raids in the UK at the time. In Graff VI a diamond necklace worth up to £3.5 million and 42 other pieces comprising 1437 diamonds worth up to £37 million were stolen although for insurance purposes the jewels were valued at £26m—and of this amount Graff was reported to have lost £6.6m as their full value was not covered by their insurance deal. Two Serbians were convicted in the Graff trial and four Londoners were convicted of being involved in Graff VI. Most of the jewels stolen including the bulk of Graf III and all of Graff VI have never been recovered.

  Roman Polanski

  The film director was released from prison after serving 42 days of an in-prison psychiatric evaluation having entered into a plea bargain on six charges by pleading guilty to one of unlawful sexual intercourse, committed with a 13 year old at the home of Jack Nicholson whom he knew was on a skiing trip although his victim had understood she was going there to meet him. Four days after his release and before sentencing he fled from the United States and has lived mainly in France where, as a French citizen, he cannot be extradited. As he was never sentenced all six charges are still pending against him in the US.

  At the request of US authorities in 2009 he was taken into Swiss custody at Zurich airport as he travelled to accept a lifetime achievement award at the Zurich film festival. After being granted house arrest he was released from that requirement in 2010 when the Swiss Justice Minister denied the US extradition request on the grounds that full testimony regarding the original sentencing requirement had not been produced, meaning that it was possible for the 42 day psychiatric assessment to have been intended to constitute a suitable sentence for unlawful sex with a 13 year old—which he had therefore already served.

  Timeshare trial

  In 2004 the BBC published an Underworld Rich List naming or alluding to the identities of 30 individuals or groups in the UK whose assets had come from crime. Heading the BBC’s list was John Palmer, with an estimated wealth of around £300 million. In a surprising one-off interview with Elizabeth Nash for The Independent newspaper in 1999 during the course of which the journalist was reproved for having the temerity to look around while in his Tenerife office (vast, with a marble-floor, a marble fountain, a tank of tropical fish and a collection of carriage clocks) John Palmer claimed that the timeshare fraud charges were a result of the Brinks-Mat ‘affair’ in which three tonnes of gold were stolen from a Brinks-Mat secure facility at Heathrow airport in 1983, melted down and sold. The Independent article stated that he had paid £360,000 to settle a civil action brought by Lloyds insurers relating to the Brinks-Mat gold and believed that the timeshare fraud charges at the Old Bailey Courts in London, relating to the years between 1991 and 1995 during which he turned forty-two, were being trumped-up by the police as a consequence and were silly—a few complaints being understandable from 100,000 timeshare owners.

  John Palmer told Elizabeth Nash he wouldn’t be sent down and wasn’t worried about anything—but unconvincingly jibbed on a request for some timeshare sales literature she could take away with her. In the event, a little under two years later at the Old Bailey, he was convicted of fraud involving 16,000 people who had signed timeshare contracts. After his conviction Mr Palmer stayed in prison in the UK for four years after which he was arrested when entering Spain by the Spanish police and imprisoned in a high-security jail for two years without being charged, eventually being released on bail. At the same time group civil actions were being pursued to recover some of the defrauded losses.

  The Moorgate Control

  A Moorgate Control is a system fitted to London underground trains to automatically apply the brakes if the train were to pass through a terminal station towards a blanked-off tunnel wall. These were fitted as a consequence of the mystery following the Moorgate disaster of 1975 in which 42 passengers died at the scene and around 70 more were injured when the driver continued through Moorgate Station, even appearing to accelerate, before smashing into the tunnel end at 40 mph. No cause was ever proved; the driver, Leslie Newson, was shown to have been holding down the dead man’s handle at the moment of collision.

  First Class Passenger Syndrome

  The Corner was approaching fast and Captain Edward Smith was on the horns of a dilemma. It was Sunday evening, darkness was near, and he had to make a decision. Under normal conditions America-bound ships reaching the 42nd parallel, having avoided the known iceberg areas off Newfoundland, turned the wheel to starboard at ‘The Corner’ to make a direct route over the remaining 1350 miles of their transatlantic journey to New York.

  The first component of his dilemma was that captains of eastbound ships, including vessels even further south near the 41st parallel, had been radioing with sightings of icebergs which could be directly in his path. To avoid them would mean steaming further south before making his turn or resting up for the night to wait for light or, a third option, slowing down to proceed with greater caution. The second part of the dilemma was called First Class Passenger Syndrome. Aboard was his ‘Line’ manager, Mr J. Bruce Ismay, the chairman of the White Star line and the son of ‘Baccy’ Ismay the self-made founder of the line which had been merged into J. Pierpoint Morgan’s massive International Mercantile Marine. (Morgan had been due to sail with the Titanic but late in the day decided to stay on in Europe.) Ismay and Smith knew that by maintaining speed the Titanic could make a triumphant maiden arrival in New York (where IMM had just opened a palatial new office building) on Tuesday evening rather than Wednesday morning. Seemingly inconsequential in comparison with jet travel, an earlier berthing for the new liner would win lead stories in the newspapers and help sell tickets in the competition with Cunard’s RMS Mauretania which was regarded as an ‘ocean greyhound’ and held the Blue Riband having made the speediest combined eastbound and westbound Atlantic crossings. (Like a boy-racer with twin chromed exhausts the Titanic had a dummy fourth funnel to make it appear to be as virile as the popular four-funnelled Cunard liners.)

  Any time spent going south beyond The Corner reduced the chance of reaching New York on Tuesday. Ismay and Smith were overheard during the afternoon while casually sat in a public lounge discussing the ship’s performance so far and planning a trial to discover her top speed the following day. Both were totally aware of the iceberg warnings. Ismay had even read one to a group of passengers. How much Ismay influenced Captain Smith’s fateful decision will never be known but the outcome could be viewed as a wishful compromise. The sea was calm, visibility was excellent and sailing conditions were perfect apart from two things; there were icebergs ahead and there was no moon—which made it impossible to see an iceberg unless it was very close. Smith didn’t turn at The Corner but the delay was for less than hour which placed the ship and her passengers only about 15 miles further south, perhaps hoping he would cut below the iceberg field. Fatefully, there was absolutely no lessening of speed.

  The known risk meant that lookouts were instructed to be vigilant and Captain Smith stayed close to the bridge but even when lookouts believed they had seen icebergs passing to the side, where the ship’s lights may have lit them up, there was still no reduction in speed. The final warning of ‘Iceberg, right ahead!’ came only a very few seconds before striking it. RMS Titanic was steaming at 42 kilometres an hour when she struck the iceberg.

  The northern route was closed on news of the disaster but not before another ship, the Rhein, had
sailed through the location of the Titanic’s disaster. Mrs Henry Buell, a passenger, recounted seeing some of the bodies and flotsam—thoughtfully noting the 23 icebergs of varying dimensions that surrounded the Rhein.

  Captain Smith went down with his ship, it was to have been his final voyage before retirement. Bruce Ismay survived but was vilified in the newspapers for having taken a place on a lifeboat while there were still women and children on board and was forced from public life. As a direct result of the disaster and within three years J. Pierpoint Morgan’s commercial colossus, IMM, had to ask for bankruptcy protection.

  A Myth

  There is a myth on the interweb that the Titanic should have carried 42 lifeboats rather than the 20 that were available. The true story is that the first drawings for the ship showed capacity for 64 lifeboats but this number was reduced to 48 by senior management at the White Star Line. Even this capacity wasn’t filled as there was a convenient belief that lifeboats were surplus to requirements on a vessel that wasn’t going to sink and if it were in trouble would stay afloat long enough for help to arrive. Lifeboats took up premium space on the promenade deck. The twenty on board was just over the legal minimum for ships over 10,000 tons even though the Titanic was 46,000 tons. The shortfall in lifeboats was ‘compensated’ by an over-supply of 3,560 life-vests which were useless in cold North Atlantic water. One of the surviving life-vests with signatures of those who escaped in lifeboat 1 was auctioned for £60,000 in 2008.