Read lots more about all the real heists, the gangs the geezers and the aftermath in the only factual book that covers them all, 1930s-present-day. paperback £7.99 ebook £2.99 see more about it here; https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08429CBT5/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_taft_p1_i0n.co.uk/B.L.-Faulkner/e/B00ND8R6OO
If you have any information on Roy Hall, Barry Harris, Albert Longman, Tommy Clark or any other members of the Richardson gang let me know please so I can enter it.
JIM MOODY
James Alfred “Jimmy” Moody was an English gangster and hitman who worked closely with The Richardsons. His career spanned more than four decades and included run-ins with Jack Spot, Billy Hill, “Mad” Frankie Fraser, The Krays, The Richardsons and the Provisional IRA. Described by Police Detectives as “extremely professional” and “extremely intimidating”, Moody’s speciality was robbing armoured trucks and would use a chainsaw to saw through the side of security vehicles.
Moody was born in Looe, Cornwall to a mother who was a wartime evacuee from Camberwell, London. His father was killed during World War II after his ship was torpedoed by a German U-boat.
Criminal career
Moody was an enforcer for the Richardsons and did freelance “work” for the Krays. He was considered by many of his peers to be “the hardest man in London”. In the 1970s, he joined a team of criminals to form the Chainsaw Gang who went on to become that decade’s most successful group of armed robbers.
Moody was convicted, along with his brother Richard, of manslaughter in 1967 for the killing of William Day, a young merchant navy steward. He was released in 1972, but sent in 1979 on remand to Brixton Prison to await trial for armed robbery His cellmate was Provisional IRA member Gerard Tuite. The two men and fellow-robber Stan Thompson escaped Brixton Prison on 16 December 1980, which put them to the top of Scotland Yard’s Most Wanted list. It was alleged that Moody had been paid £10,000 by the IRA to help get Tuite out of prison. Fleeing to Northern Ireland, Moody worked with the Provisional IRA. It was there that Moody coined the expression of awarding someone an OBE (One Behind The Ear) as in to shoot them in the head, a play on an OBE Award. The expression would reportedly be used by killers in Belfast for the next decade or so. Tuite was later arrested in Dublin.
Still on the run, Moody returned to London in the late 1980s where he was now known as “Mick the Irishman”. By now, his list of enemies included the police, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British security services.
Death
He was shot dead on 1 June 1993 in the Royal Hotel (now Royal Inn on the Park) in Hackney, East London by an unknown assailant, who was described as being in his late forties and wearing a leather bomber jacket. The assailant fled in a stolen Ford Fiesta.
Aftermath
Following his death, Moody was linked to multiple unsolved murders including that of gangster David Brindle in August 1991, of businessman Terry Gooderham and his girlfriend Maxine Arnold in Epping Forest, and that of a couple, the Dixons, walking the Pembrokeshire coast in June 1989 who had potentially unearthed a cache of weapons owned by the Provisional IRA. Pembrokeshire-based serial killer and rapist John Cooper was found guilty of the murder of the Dixons in May 2011. The police had been unable to establish what Moody had been doing since his return to England, nor who had arranged a council flat for him. His flat was only traced three weeks after his death, by which time it had been completely emptied.
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GEORGE CORNELL
George Cornell (born George Myers) was an English criminal and member of the Richardson Gang, who were scrap metal dealers and criminals from South London.
A childhood friend of the Kray twins, Cornell was a prominent criminal in east London during the 1960s. He is most prominently known for being the first victim of Ronnie Kray, after being shot at the Blind Beggar public house in Whitechapel, East London in 1966. Kray was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder three years later and remained in Broadmoor Hospital until his death in 1995. Jack McVitie was then killed a year later in 1966, by Reggie Kray.
Cornell was born on the 13th November 1927 in St George In The East, in Stepney, London to Mary Ann Garrett and Joseph Cornell. One of seven children, his older brother James would later say that their parents were not married and that he and his siblings – with the exception of George, who never managed to get round to it – had changed their name by deed poll from Myers to Cornell. Certainly, there is no record of any marriage between Mary Ann Garrett and a Myers or even a Cornell. Mary Ann was recorded as living with a Joseph Cornell in Everard Street, St George-in-the-East, around the time of George’s birth. What is probably the case is that George and his siblings were born to a man called Myers who may well have disappeared from the scene, to be replaced by Joseph Cornell in the mother’s and thus the family’s affections. Myers was his step father’s surname whereas Cornell was his biological father’s. Cornell often worked as a Billingsgate fish porter from the age of 12, and then at the nearby docks where he ran credit rackets and became friends with Lennie Hamilton and Billy Frost. He was a tough and loyal enforcer who worked for the Richardson Gang; and he was known for being totally fearless and was physically strong and good with his fists, a well feared experienced fighter. He did his National Service with Billy Wiltshire, the Kray twin’s cousin.
His first conviction (as Myers) came on 30 October 1944, for stealing chickens; in May the following year, he was bound over for three years for garage-breaking and larceny after stealing goods worth £327. In 1950 (as Cornell), he received his first prison sentence, of fifteen months, after being convicted at the Central Criminal Court for unlawful wounding and malicious damage.
In 1952, he received substantial fines for assault and wilful damage and then, the following year, another spell in prison for shop breaking (stealing cigarettes and razor blades). No sooner was Cornell free than, again as Myers, he assaulted two police officers and used insulting words and behaviour, getting off with a 40 shilling fine. George Cornell, as he is always known, would go on to face several more spells in prison, one for malicious wounding when he is believed to have slashed a woman’s face with a blade. His last spell in prison was in 1963, but it must have been after one of these prior convictions in the 1950s that he went to the twins for assistance. Cornell was extended this courtesy as an ex-con and Eastender, and, although he was friendly with the Krays, they would never become what one could describe as close friends.
Upon moving to South London he joined up with the Kray twins’ rivals, the Richardson Gang, led by brothers Charlie Richardson and Eddie Richardson. Cornell knew all the traders in Mile End and the guvnors of all the local public houses. He made his money setting up warehouses and buying in goods on credit then selling them cheap and folding the business without paying his bills. Over six-feet tall, and with a wide neck, Cornell would often dress smart, often seen wearing Aquascutum suits and Burberry raincoats. He had been described as a ‘sick sadistic bastard’ that loved to inflict pain on his enemies. He once got 3 years in prison for slashing a woman’s face. He was a heavy drinker and when he was drunk everyone would steer clear of him.
Cornell was heavily involved in drug dealing, in purple hearts and dexys, uppers, downers and cannabis. He was also involved in the distribution of pornography and may have been associated with Jimmy Humphreys, who was responsible for the exposure of corrupt police officials in 1971, including Commander Ken Drury of the Flying Squad. Humphreys was under investigation by another squad, and Drury refused to acknowledge his association with Humphreys even after Drury reportedly received a “Wish you were here” holiday postcard from him. Cornell was originally a member of an East End gang called “The Watney Streeters” and later became involved with the Krays. However, he changed sides around 1964 and allied himself with the Richardsons. Cornell was unstable, unpredictable and nearly caused an all-out war between the two gangs before his death when Ronnie Kray shot and killed him in 1966.
Cornell, along with Richardson Gang colleague and friend “Mad” Frankie Fraser, became an enforcer for the Richardsons and was primarily used by them for talks with the Krays. Meetings were often held in pubs such as The Grave Maurice. Cornell left the East End in 1955 when he married wife Olive Hudd from The Elephant and Castle, and the pair moved to Masterman House In Camberwell, South London, where he set up his family of three children in two flats, and also owning another house in the countryside. The Krays felt angered that a once associate was now working with The Richardsons. On March 8, 1966, there was a bloody confrontation between the Kray gang and the Richardson gang at Mr Smiths nightclub in Catford, South London. Richard Hart, a friend of Ronnie, was shot dead outside the back doors. The twins were angry, stating that Cornell was the only one who managed to escape the scene. There have been other stories of the feud between Ronnie and Cornell, including an incident at The Brown Bear public-house, in which Cornell knocked him unconscious (according to Lenny Hamilton). Another is the common story that Cornell called Ronnie a ‘fat poof’, which was later denied by Kray, who stated in an interview in Broadmoor in 1989, that this was not true, and Cornell had simply threatened to kill Ronnie, so he thought he would kill him first.
On 9 March 1966, Cornell and his friend Albie Woods were visiting their friend Jimmy Andrews in hospital who had lost his leg in a shooting. On the way back they stopped for a drink at The Blind Beggar public house in the Whitechapel Road, with another man, Johnny Dale. The three men entered the pub, ordered some light ales and then sat upon stools next to the bar. There were just five other customers in the pub, including a 79 year-old man was sitting at the other end reading a newspaper and half watching the television, and also a barmaid who was washing glasses and who had just put on ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ by the Walker Bothers on the pub’s record player.
The Twins were having a drink with some of The Firm in The Widow’s pub in Tapp street. Ronnie received a phone call telling him that Cornell was in The Blind Beggar only a short distance away. He took Reg’s driver, John ‘Scotch Jack’ Dickson and Ian Barrie, his right-hand man. They jumped in their Mark 1 Ford Cortina and set off for The Blind Beggar. On the way they stopped to pick up some guns at 178 Vallance Road.
At around 8:30pm, both men were approached by Ronnie Kray and Ian Barrie; upon seeing him, Cornell smiled and said sardonically, “Well, just look who’s here”. As a warning to the barmaid and the few others in the pub, Barrie fired two shots into the ceiling, while Kray walked towards Cornell, took out a 9mm Luger, and calmly shot him once in the forehead, just above his right eye. The men turned and departed to a waiting the car on the street, driven by Jack Dickson.
The crime scene after the shooting.
Cornell slumped against a nearby pillar, the bullet, apparently, passing straight through him, before falling to the floor. The manager of the pub, a woman called Patsy Quill, called an ambulance and it wasn’t long before he was being seen by doctors across the road in the London Hospital. They quickly had the patient transferred to Maida Vale Hospital which specialised in brain injuries but at 10.29pm, and roughly two hours after he had been shot, Cornell died before any operation took place. His wife later in a fit of rage, threw a brick through the window of 178 Vallance Road.
Ronnie went back to The Widow’s and told Reggie what had happened. They then went to The Chequers public-house where they got cleaned up and changed their clothes. The news on the radio confirmed that Cornell was dead. Ronnie’s clothes were burnt and the 9mm Mauser was given to the cat-burglar Charlie Clark to be disposed of.
The news spread rapidly. Although Ronnie Kray was identified by several eyewitnesses as he calmly left the public-house, no one would agree to testify against him and the police were forced to release him from custody. At the time of his death, George Cornell was living at Masterman House, New Church Road, Camberwell, with his wife Olive and their two children. Cornell was buried in Camberwell New Cemetery, south London.
Cornell after being shot.
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The FAULKNERS
The Faulkners were a small family firm from Stockwell. Brothers Arthur and Stanley were the main people and operated out of a car and lorry tyre business premises behind a row of shops that had one of their ‘ Second Hand Book’ shops in it. The shops were a front for fencing stolen property. They also worked the Southampton docks when the big Atlantic liners docked taking advantage of the lax security afforded to the luggage coming off.
Arthur was an organiser and was the man behind the outrageous Dorchester Hotel heist in which he, Stanley and one other dressed in real Dorchester Hotel bell boy uniforms took the luggage from arriving guests and whilst the guests took the main lift to their floor and rooms, their luggage took the luggage lift to the basement carpark where it was loaded into a van and taken away. They used this con a few times, waiting until a particularly busy period, usually a Saturday change over day, to run it.
Many of the well organised smaller heists of the period were the work of the brothers who seldom took part but did the research and planning for a cut of the proceeds.
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geezers2016 