Karen Kilgariff

speaker

3,962 appearances 39 recordings 3 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard 8 Jun

Karen Kilgariff’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark · 467 - Nipper & The Hat · 13 Feb 2025 podcast

While Ronnie and Reggie's rise to the top of London's underworld is swift, by 1966, tensions between the Krays and a South London group of gangsters called the Richardson Gang come to a head. While these two gangs typically steer clear of each other's business, Ronnie later claims that the Krays had spies inside the Richardson camp.

And those spies eventually report back that one of the Richardson's gang associates... who was a guy named George Cornell who used to be in the firm. So he was like an ex-Craze gang member that went to the Richardson's gang. George had been talking about a plan to move into the Craze territory.

Ronnie also admits, though, that this rift with their ex-colleague was very personal with this George Cornell. Because he says, quote, the trouble might still have been avoided, but then Cornell did the most stupid thing he'd ever done in his life. In front of a table full of villains, he actually called me a fat poof. He virtually signed his own death warrant. Yeah, you can't do that. End quote.

You gotta be careful. Yeah. Like in front of everybody and to a person where it's just like, oh, okay, well, then there you go. Yeah. So as you can imagine, things escalate from there. On March 8th, 1966, members of the Richardson gang, including George Cornell, shoot up a pub that's frequented by members of the firm. Ronnie and Reggie aren't there, but one of their associates is killed.

So one night later, Ronnie's out drinking when he learns that George Cornell is posted up at a pub called the Blind Beggar that's also in the East End. And it's also in the firm's territory. So Ronnie walks over, walks up to George at the bar and shoots him in front of basically all the patrons that are in there. George Cornell dies later that night.

After the murder, Ronnie says, quote, I felt fucking marvelous. Well, don't don't call him slurs then. I know. And certainly don't call him fat.

You would just be fucking traumatized into infinity if you had to shoot somebody. Totally. Months pass. Ronnie faces zero repercussions for Georgia's murder because, again, no witnesses are willing to talk. About a year later, with the rivalry between the Krays and the Richardson gang continuing to build, Reggie brutally murders a low-ranking member of his own gang over basically a small debt.

This man's name was Jack the Hat McVitie. I'm going to start calling you the hat for sure.

The hat. You could just wear a little hat all the time. Always. Jack is baited into a basement. He's told there's a party down there that everyone's going to. You never go to a party. Especially in the basement. Yeah. When he gets down there, he instead finds Reggie and Ronnie waiting for him. Reggie pulls the trigger to shoot Jack. The gun jams. Come on. So Ronnie holds Jack down.

Reggie pulls out a knife and repeatedly stabs him in the face, throat and chest until he bleeds out on the floor. And Jack McVitie's body is disposed of and never recovered. Wow. So that's where all the, like, glamour and glitz and kind of, like, superficial stuff really, really melts away for me. Where it's like, oh, that's cute and neat and Tom Hardy and hooray.

But then it's like, you could do that. That's fucking brutal as shit. To someone in your own game. Right. This murder is seen as a terrible, needless, and very sloppy move, and it alienates the craze from members of their own gang. It's also out of character for Reggie, who's typically more of the strategic and thinking one.

Years later, he blames this decision to murder Jack on his poor mental state because his beloved wife Frances had recently taken her own life. Oh, no. Yeah. Still. No, no. Oh, no. For her. Yeah. Strictly. Like the oh, no. Stop. Yeah. Firmly there. So both the murders of Jack McVitie and George Cornell happened in front of witnesses over at Scotland Yard.

There's a detective named Leonard, quote unquote, Nipper Reed. Nipper. That's your new nickname. Is it? The hat. Nipper in the hat. Nipper in the hat. That's our new Tuesday show. No. So the Nippers are determined to bring down the craze, essentially. In 1968, Ronnie Reggie and about 15 members of the firm are arrested for various illicit activities.

Reed's plan is to bring them all in and then flip someone from the inside. Yeah. He holds separate interrogations with each gang member and offers them legal protection in exchange for their testimony about the murders of Cornell and McVitie. And the plan works. After about a decade of getting nothing but silence, Reed is finally able to turn members of Cray's own inner circle around.

who are finally willing to speak in court. The twins' 1969 trial is a true media sensation. Ooh, I bet.

Thanks to all the damning evidence, and most crucially, the consequential testimony against them, it ends with both Ronnie and Reggie being found guilty of the murders of George Cornell and Jack McVitie, respectively, as well as all the unprovable crimes that no one would or could talk about up until that point.

The Krays are sentenced to life sentences in separate prisons. They're both 35 years old. At their sentencing hearing, the judge tells them, quote, But they don't get arrest from the Kray's activities. Instead, Ronnie and Reggie maintain a very public profile once they're in prison.

Duncan Campbell reports that, quote, once jailed, they devoted their considerable energies to their image as gangland stars, always open to visitors from the outside. The twins are able to generate a decent income by feeding stories to visitors who would then sell them to British tabloids and then bring the money back to the Krays in jail. Oh, that's smart. Right?

They also have more elaborate ways of capitalizing off their imprisonment. In 1985, for example, Ronnie gets engaged to a woman named Elaine who's been writing him letters during his incarceration. There's always these Alaines. These Alaines. By this point, Ronnie's been transferred to Broadmoor, a famous London psychiatric hospital we have talked about on the show many times.

Ronnie and Alaine decide to get married at the facility's chapel. But there's an ulterior motive here. It's not love? I mean, it could have been the greatest Valentine's Day of all time, but no, it's not real. When the tabloids catch wind about this upcoming wedding, the son offers 20,000 pounds, which is nearly how much in today's U.S. dollars? 20,000 in the 80s?

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