I'M REGGIE KRAY'S SECRET DAUGHTER; Sandra tells of her mum's fling with gangster and a moving prison reunion.
WHEN THE last of the notorious Kray brothers was laid to rest he took one final secret to the grave with him.
Among the thousands of mourners who gathered in London's East End to pay their last respects to Reggie Kray was the secret daughter he did not want to know.
Sandra Ireson, a 42-year-old mother and gran, was born after a brief romance between Reggie and cabaret dancer Greta Harper in 1958.
And she didn't discover who her real father was until 1995 following the death of Reggie's twin brother Ronnie.
For the next five years she tried to forge a relationship with Britain's best-known long-term prisoner.
But only once did she manage to meet Reggie, who was jailed for life in 1969 for stabbing small-time villain Jack "The Hat" McVitie.
Sandra, now 42, briefly hugged the ageing mobster after an hour-long chat inside Maidstone Prison two years before his death from bladder cancer, in October last year
But he later rejected his daughter's attempt to cement their relationship.
He had been devastated by the death of his elder brother Charlie in April last year and feared upsetting his young wife Roberta, 41.
But last night, speaking exclusively to the Sunday Mirror, Sandra said: "I am his daughter and I couldn't care less who knows.
"I don't feel any shame about who my real father is. It's time it was out in the open and the world knew the truth."
Sandra's existence was until now, a closely-guarded secret known only to her family and a handful of Kray's close associates.
She was told the truth by an aunt - years after both her mother and the man she thought was her father had died. Sandra, whose son Tim, 20, is the spitting image of the young Reggie, was stunned.
But as she and half-sister Tracey, 39, absorbed the news, things began to fall into place.
"All through my life I felt something was not quite right," said Sandra who lives in a detached home in King's Lynn, Norfolk with husband David, 43, and Tim.
"I knew Mum and Dad worked for the twins in London in the 50s and they often talked about them.
"But it was when I asked my Auntie Anne about it that she said:" There's something you should know, Reggie is actually your father.'
"Once we started thinking about it, it made a lot of other things make sense. My Nan, who was my mum's mother, always said, 'I've always treated you two girls exactly the same'.
"It was said as if she should have said afterwards, 'Even though you've got different Dads'."
Sandra, whose daughter Tammy, 21, and two-year-old grand-daughter Zilanne live near her in King's Lynn, added: "My son Tim has always asked where he got his big nose from. Now he knows.
"He laughs about the fact that he's Reggie Kray's grandson."
Sandra was conceived when her mother, Greta Harper, then 21, had an affair with Kray, 24 at the time. Greta was working at the RR club in London's West End as Reggie and twin Ronnie were beginning their reign of terror in underworld London.
Reggie's affair with Greta lasted on and off for around eight months after her relationship with regular lover Jimmy Steptoe hit a difficult patch.
But by the time Sandra was born Kray had ended the affair and Greta was back together with Steptoe.
And as the family moved to Norfolk to run a caravan park, Jimmy raised Sandra as his own.
It was when Sandra finally found out the truth that she struggled to forge a relationship with the notorious gangster.
She wrote to him in prison and he phoned and agreed to see her. Sandra said: "It came as a real shock. He just said,'I think you better come and see me'. He said he would send me a visiting order. Straight after he spoke to me, he posted it to me and I got it the next day."
The scrawled note, in Kray's distinctive style, reads: "Sandra, good to talk to you. You have nice soft voice. Will arrange a visit. God bless, Reg."
That one meeting with her natural father happened on October 7, 1998, when they spoke for an hour in Maidstone Prison.
"When I first saw him. I remember thinking, 'Oh God he's a little old man'. I expected him to be much bigger than he was and to fill the doorway when he came in.
"But he was smartly dressed in a nice shirt and trousers and his manner was nice. It was quite formal to start with.
"When he first came in he shook my hand and just said, 'We better get this sorted out'. As we talked more he relaxed. He said: "I am not frightened of the truth but I have got to know that it is the truth.
"He said he would leave the ball with me and told me to get back to him.
"And then when he stood up to go he gave me a cuddle and a kiss on the cheek."
Yet they were to have no further contact as Kray became pre-occupied with fighting drugs charges brought against his older brother, Charlie. And Sandra was left distraught by Reggie's death.
She blames much of Kray's reluctance to contact her on his wife Roberta.
"Once I left that prison I never heard from him again," she said. "I can only think it it because of Roberta, who is the same age as me and didn't want to know about his secret daughter.
"I wrote a letter telling him he was messing up my life but even that didn't get a response."
But Reggie did open his heart to close friends about the daughter he had kept secret from the world .
Jan Lamb, 51, a long-term Kray associate and an ex-lover of Reggie's, said last night: "Reggie wanted people to know about Sandra.
"He feared people might use her and her family to get back at him if they knew about his daughter when he was alive.
"But he wanted the world to know about her after he was gone. It was his dying wish."
When Kray died of bladder cancer last October, it left Sandra frustrated over the lost relationship.
"I was distraught," said Sandra,"I thought 'How dare you die before this is sorted out'. I couldn't believe it."
Despite her feelings, Sandra went to his funeral. "I felt I had to, or I might regret it.
"I would have liked to have known him and for him to know my kids and to have had some sort of relationship. I think it would have given him something.
Sandra, whose family run a pub in King's Lynn, does not condemn her father for the way he lived his life. "Everyone is different," she said.
"You have got choices in life. If you want to go the wrong way in life and can live with the consequences that's up to you.
"And it was awful that they kept Reggie inside for so long.
"No matter who he was, it is really bad that somebody was treated like that.
"I always hoped they would let him out so that something could happen.
"Reg would never have taken my Dad's place. He would have just been Reg I suppose.
"But he would have been fun to have around."