The family of a man murdered by Ronnie Kray in the Blind Beggar pub have broken their 50-year silence .
George Cornell’s son Billy Cornell has told how his dad’s shooting at the East End Pub wrecked his family and has haunted him and younger sister Rayner ever since.
Billy, 58, says: “ The Krays widowed my mother and orphaned two children, and my daughter and nieces and nephews never met their grandfather. My father was not the only victim that night.
“I hate the Krays and anyone who is part of their family – and worse, the people who hero-worship them today as some kind of glamorous Robin Hoods of the East End. They were vicious and evil.”
The slaying of his father, which has been re-enacted countless times in films about the Kray twins – most recently in Legend, starring Tom Hardy – is one of Britain’s most famous murders.
It illustrated the power the Krays believed they had, and demonstrated psychopath Ronnie’s warped thirst for violence.
But it also signalled the beginning of the end of the twins’ violent stranglehold over the East End of London.
Ron Kray was jailed for life for the killing and died behind bars.
His brother Reggie, who went on to kill Jack “The Hat” McVitie in Stoke Newington, North London, also got life for that murder.
Cornell had known the Krays since childhood, when the three of them were growing up on the streets around Whitechapel, and for a time they even did business together.
George worked as a Billingsgate fish porter from the age of 13, and then at the nearby docks where he ran credit rackets.
Billy says: “Dad knew all the traders in Mile End and the guvnors of all the pubs. 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.
“He was from a very poor family but was physically strong and good with his fists. When people saw he could fight he got respect, they were afraid to challenge him.
Billy tells how, aged four, he went to the Krays’ East London home with his dad for a business meeting.
He says: “I recall being in the front room and them drinking tea.
“Ronnie was very edgy, like he could snap at any point and his brother was flash with a nice suit and slick way about him.”
He says his father grew to despise Ronnie in particular, and refused to show deference to the twins. He says: “Ronnie was gay and liked being with young boys and to my dad, who was a gentleman who wouldn’t let anyone swear in front of a woman, in those days that was unacceptable.”
Cornell left the East End in the mid-1950s when he married wife Olive from Camberwell, South London, and set up his family in two flats there.
Billy says: “He made a success of himself in the most difficult circumstances. He was always well turned out in Aquascutum suits, Burberry raincoats and crocodile skin shoes.
“We had money and nice food at Christmas and he had a car and we lived in two flats in south London and had a house in the countryside.”
George became close to the Krays’ arch rivals, South London’s notorious Richardson gang – who, with their enforcer “Mad” Frankie Fraser terrorised London in the 1960s and 1970s.
And Cornell could look after himself. “Dad wasn’t scared of anyone,” says Billy. “I recall more than one occasion where he came home bashed up after a fight.
“One time we were in Maidstone, where we had a bungalow, and we’d stopped in the town centre so mum could get some cakes.
“My dad parked his Austin 11, and we were waiting in the car when a bloke came over and told him not to park where he had as it was for cabs.
“My dad told him to ‘leave off’ and said he was only waiting for his wife but the bloke wouldn’t let it go and three other men came over and were getting on to dad.
“He got out of the car and took all four of them on and gave them a hiding.”
But it was Cornell’s refusal to show fear to Ronnie Kray that was to sign his death warrant.
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 and Reg , was shot dead outside the back doors. But the next day George Cornell went to the Krays’ territory in the East End with two associates to visit a shot pal being treated at the Royal London Hospital.
Billy says: “My dad went into the Blind Beggar opposite the hospital for a pint after he had seen his mate.
“I’d seen him earlier that evening as I’d been a naughty boy and he’d given me a clip around the ear and sent me to bed. Dad was talking to someone he knew in the pub but they said they had to go – I think West Ham had just qualified for Europe and the only place you could get coverage was on the radio and he said he was going to listen to that.
“He didn’t though, he went outside and called the Krays and told them dad was in the pub.”
The Kray twins drove to the pub, stopping to pick up a gun on the way.
Billy says: “Dad was drinking and turned as the door opened and saw Ronnie, and said: ‘Look what the cat’s dragged in.’
“Ronnie pulled out a gun and as dad went to get off his stool he shot him in the head.”
Legend has it that the juke box in the pub was playing the Walker Brothers song The Sun Ain’t Going to Shine Anymore and a warning bullet which ricocheted off the ceiling made the record stick, playing the chorus over and over again.
Billy says: “I think dad probably knew what was coming when Ronnie walked in but he wasn’t afraid of anyone. The twins drove off and my father was taken to the hospital but although they tried to save him he died two hours later.
“The two men he was with had to leave London as they knew they would be next as witnesses.”
Back at the Cornell family home, young Billy was woken by the sound of his mum answering the telephone.
He says: “I could hear her saying ‘who is this? What is your name?’
“She put down the phone and called my auntie Pat and told her a fella had phoned up and said dad had been shot.
“I must have gone back to sleep but when I woke up a couple of hours later and went into the lounge it was full of men sat smoking.
“People were talking to me, asking me about football and how I was, but no one said dad was dead – but I knew he wasn’t coming back again.
“It was mum who told me, she said: ‘Your dad went out and there was a fight, it was with someone he has been angry with for a while, someone he worked with, he got killed.’
“It didn’t really sink in, I don’t know when it did. I know there was a big funeral and I wasn’t allowed to go. I remember looking out the window of our flat at the square of green outside and it being covered in bunches of flowers, like a carpet.
“My father was liked and respected and people showed their respect.”
But that was the end of the life young Billy had known.
His mother, widowed in her 20s with a son of seven and six-month-old baby daughter, “never recovered”, he says. She died from cancer aged 59, 20 years ago.
He says: “She loved dad from the moment they met to the day she died, she never got over his death.”
In the hours after George died, Olive is said to have gone to the Krays’ family home in Bethnal Green and thrown a brick through the front window.
He says: “She hated them more than anything in the world from the day he died.”
Former market trader Billy, who now lives in Bermondsey, South London, fell into crime and was jailed for pick-pocketing several times.
He once served a 14-month term in Camp Hill Prison on the Isle of Wight, next door to Parkhurst Prison – home at the time to Ronnie Kray.
He says: “Mother begged me not to do anything if I ever saw him.
“I used to dread her coming to visit me in case she bumped into any of his family on the ferry crossing, she would not have handled it well.”
Billy’s sister Rayner has had her own brush with the law, pleading guilty in 2011 to money laundering in relation to a plot to traffic more than a tonne of cocaine worth £375million.
Her husband Robert went on the run but was caught by police two years ago and is 18 months into a 10-year sentence for possession of 3kg of the drug.
She says: “I guess I’m like my mum and married a villain but you can’t help who you love.”
Billy said he has avoided the TV shows and films about his father’s death.
He says: “I can’t watch the films, people making money from those two killers makes me sick. When they died I wanted to go down to the funerals and tell all those people who have their faces tattooed on their arms what they were like, but my mum begged me not to.
“My sister got sick of being known around here because of dad’s death and moved to Spain to try and protect her children from it as they grew up.
“I used to see a lot of the old faces around, Frankie Fraser knew my dad and said he was a good guy to me and people say I look like him. But no one ever wants to hear our story, it’s always about them – but they wrecked our lives.
“People should remember they were killers and not be fooled by the pictures of them in suits with celebrities.”