While his brothers Reggie and Ronnie ruled the streets of London with iron fists – shooting, stabbing and beating anyone who got in their way – the older, quieter Charlie Kray was believed by Scotland Yard to be the brains behind their fearsome gang. 

When the twins’ empire finally came crashing down in 1969, Charlie went down with them and was jailed for ten years for helping his brothers dispose of rival gangster Jack ‘the Hat’ McVitie’s body. 

He was banged up again in 1997, this time for his role in a £39million drugs ring after he unknowingly tried to sell two kilos of cocaine to an undercover police officer.

In other words, despite his protestations of being a ‘human punching bag’ for his younger brothers and associates claiming he was a ‘gentler man’ in comparison, Charlie Kray was a villain. 

However, what even the most ardent fans of the romanticised lore of Ronnie and Reggie may not be aware of is – he was also a fan of baking. 

Tom* was a prison officer for 25 years and worked at HMP Long Lartin, one of Britain’s most infamous prisons, for nearly a decade. 

During his time walking the landings of the category-A jail, the former officer, who wishes to keep his name secret, got to know the older Kray brother, and his cooking, very well. 

He told The Crime Desk: ‘At the weekend, Charlie Kray and a couple of the old London gangsters used to make macarons and cakes. 

Charlie Kray, centre, with his notorious London gangster brothers Ronnie, right, and Reggie. The older, quieter Charlie was believed by Scotland Yard to be the brains behind the gang

Charlie carries the coffin of his younger sibling Ronnie at his funeral in 1995 following his death from a heart attack while incarcerated at Broadmoor Hospital

HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire is one of Britain’s toughest jails, housing around 600 category-A male prisoners

‘They’d come up and say: “Do you want some cakes or macarons, gov?” It was a dangerous job but there were some good times. 

‘I suppose it demonstrates that we’re all human beings and we all have the ability to be “normal” – whatever that means to you.’ 

Former gangland torturer ‘Mad’ Frankie Fraser once described Charlie as ‘too nice’ to break the law – but even if he didn’t dish out the same beatings as his younger brothers, their brutality didn’t seem to bother him too much either. 

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However, there was some behaviour that Charlie could not tolerate, according to Tom, and that was swearing in front of women. 

The retired prison officer said: ‘He would go mad and say “that’s so disrespectful, you shouldn’t be swearing around females.” 

‘He was from that generation where that was his morals. 

‘He might’ve been a gangster, but he viewed women as sacrosanct and you should look after them. Some of them [inmates] were like that.’ 

During their 1960s pomp, the Krays’ arch-rivals were the Richardson gang, who ran the streets of south-east London. 

Headed by brothers Charlie and Eddie Richardson, the crew were nicknamed the ‘Torture Gang’ for the brutality they dished out to rivals and used a scrap metal business and fruit machine company as fronts for a criminal empire involving drug dealing, protection and extortion rackets. 

Both brothers were jailed in 1967 with Eddie sentenced to 15 years and Charlie to 25 years. 

Eddie Richardson, left with fellow mobster Frank Fraser, was part of a rival London outfit to the Krays. Eddie and his brother Charlie were part of a group nicknamed the ‘Torture Gang’

Feared gangster Eddie also had a hidden talent for painting which he only discovered while he was in jail

Eddie was back in jail In 1989 on a 25 year-stretch for conspiring to import drugs – it was during this time that Tom met him and despite his reputation for violence, experienced a more sensitive side to one of Britain’s most notorious gangsters.

He said: ‘He was an amazing artist – he did loads of murals in the prison, and when he left prison, he concentrated on the art and a lot of his art was selling for a lot of money.

‘It’s a shame he only discovered this talent when he was in prison. He started it just for something to do. And if he’d have done that before he was a gangster he might have led a totally different life.’

Tom often worked alongside lifers during his time at Long Lartin and said that due to the length of sentences inmates were facing, there was a slower pace of life than in lower security facilities.   

This allowed officers to build relationships with prisoners, sharing jokes, interests and even playing board games with them. 

He explained: ‘My job was never to punish them – their loss of liberty is their punishment. 

Former prison officer Tom developed a relationship with Filipino assassin Victor Castigador

Castigador, nicknamed the ‘Human Torch Killer’, was given a life sentence at Long Lartin for tying up and burning to death two amusement arcade security guards in Soho in 1989

‘My job was to help them get through their sentence and rehabilitate them, impart a bit of life experience on them. 

‘Someone’s got to look after them [inmates] once they’re sentenced, and people forget that.’ 

Often that meant passing the time with prisoners by playing darts, chess, football, or scrabble – which was how Tom developed a ‘good relationship’ with infamous Filipino assassin, Victor Castigador. 

‘Without a doubt, he was the most dangerous prisoner I’ve ever worked with, and probably one of the most dangerous in the system’, he said. 

Castigador, who died behind bars in 2017 and was known as the ‘Human Torch Killer’, was given a life sentence at Long Lartin for tying up and burning to death two amusement arcade security guards in Soho in 1989. 

He killed another inmate in 2016 by beating him to death with a rock hidden in a sock and carried out countless serious assaults on fellow inmates on the inside. He was also allegedly hired to assassinate former president of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos before he came to the UK in 1985. 

But despite his shocking crimes, he was ‘brilliant’ to the officers, Tom reflected. He was also ‘an amazing cook’, whose specialty was Thai food. 

‘I used to play Scrabble with him, and I got to know him really well, I think he liked me. He had his favourite officers on the wing, and there was me and about three or four others he got on with well,’ Tom said. 

Eddie went on to sell some of the paintings he produced at HMP Long Lartin for thousands of pounds

One evening on the wing, Tom decided to ask the killer about his crimes.

‘We were playing Scrabble as usual and I just casually said, “Come on, Vic, how many people have you killed?”

‘He said: “Oh, you can’t ask me that! You can’t ask me that,” and I said: “Oh, come on now, it doesn’t make any difference, you’re never getting out.”

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‘So I started a game and asked if it was more than ten – to which he said “yeah, more than ten”. I said was it more than 20? He said “yeah, more than 20”. I said was it more than 30? “Yeah, more than 30.” Was it more than 40? “Yeah more than 40.” More than 50? “Yeah, more than 50.”

‘And by that point I got bored and said “Oh forget it, come on now it’s your go!”’ 

Another time, Tom was walking above, along the ward spurs, and looked down when he heard a scuffle below. 

Victor had a young boy, who had come into the wing ‘giving it the big I am’, in his grip and was ‘absolutely smashing him to pieces’.

Tom said: ‘I thought,” oh god I haven’t got time for this, I haven’t got time to ring the bell [the emergency bell]”. So I just shouted at him and said: “Victor! Come on, leave him alone”. 

‘And he looked up and said: “Tom, is it alright if I just hit him one more time?” And I said “yeah, go on then”, because I knew he would anyway, and so he did and then he pushed this kid towards me. Within the week the kid was whisked away to another prison.’ 

Humour seemed to be the backbone of prison life, which ran, the former officer told me, ‘on the good will of the prisoners’. 

He laughed at times when he would suddenly realise the identity of some of the notorious inmates he was working with, explaining that often it would take weeks or months before you actually knew what people were in for. 

One evening, for example, he was stationed on the special terrorist wing. 

He’d bought a newspaper and made a cup of tea, glanced at the front page and realised that it was the inmate he’d just checked in – none other than the terrorist Abu Qatada – the ‘spiritual leader’ of al-Qaeda who provided the theological justification for Islamist violence.  

Despite encountering inmates that made ‘the hairs stand up on the back of my neck’, Tom concluded: ‘You have to forget about their crimes, because you wouldn’t be able to do the job properly if you judged every prisoner for what they had done.’

He added: ‘A lot of the prisoners I dealt with, I got on really well with. Probably because I used to treat it like it was an adult youth club in a way. To get through the hours, there’s no point in making enemies – you just want everything to run as smoothly as possible.’

The grim realities of a category A men’s prison are undeniable, and Tom talked openly about the detrimental effects on anyone’s mental health of working in the prison system for a long time.

Tom had prisoners stabbed next to him, worked with prolific self-harmers, and had to break up fights between 20 inmates at a time. He once had to be handcuffed to a prisoner who’d cut his own ear off while he went to hospital to have it sewn back on. 

But, having seen what many would view as the ‘worst of humanity’, the retired officer, now 62, remains optimistic about rehabilitation and life after prison.

He adds: ‘Since I’ve left the prison service, I’ve bumped into quite a few ex-prisoners. About six months ago, I went to get a tyre changed and I went in and this Asian lad came through the door and said: “Hello, Tom, how are you.”

‘And I stopped and asked how he was doing and he said he’d turned his life around and it’s fantastic to see that – that’s what it’s about.’