A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

Taggart was being tortured, described being appalled at the sight of a naked man tied to a chair and
covered in blood while Richardson screamed at him and kept hitting him with a heavy pair of pliers
- the pair used for pulling teeth. After being untied, Taggart was made to clean up his own blood -
including splashes on the wall.
He went to the police, who were shocked at his injuries, and even more shocked at his story.
Bradbury was at this time under arrest for the murder of the businessman, Thomas Waldeck, in
South Africa, and a detective flew out from London to question him. What he heard convinced him
that the Richardsons were at least as dangerous as their more notorious rivals, the Kray brothers.
But by this time, Charles Richardson was a wealthy businessman with large offices in Park Lane. It
was necessary to proceed with caution, and Commander John du Rose - who later trapped the
Krays - was appointed to look into the brothers’ business activities. It was suspected that
Richardson had police officers in his pay, and every man on the investigation squad was ordered to
total secrecy. Even so, the Richardsons heard about the investigation, and they began to make
preparations to leave the country. By this time, the enquiry had been under way for a year, and it
was necessary to act quickly. The Assistant Chief Constable Gerald McArthur - who was in charge
of the investigation - went on holiday to Austria, to allay the suspicion of the gang, and returned
secretly a few days later. The police swooped at dawn on July 1966, and arrested the Richardson
brothers and another eight men; Charles Richardson’s common-law wife was also arrested. At the
trial, victim after victim came forward to describe torture, and it became clear that this was
something more than the normal intimidation practised by the underworld; Charles Richardson did
it for pleasure.
After a trial of forty-two days, Charles Richardson was sentenced to a total of fifty-eight years in
jail; his brother Eddie received a ten-year sentence. Roy Hall, the man in charge of the electric
generator, also received ten years. Other gang members received various sentences.
In prison, Charles Richardson showed every sign of being a reformed character, and by 1980, was
working with handicapped prisoners and had become a ‘trusty’. Then, angered by eight parole
rejections, he absconded from his open prison. An offer to give himself up came to nothing, and at
the time of this writing, he is still at large, allegedly living in Paris.
The Richardson gang, like the American Mafia, believed in keeping a low profile. They were not
interested in notoriety, only in money and power. The Kray twins, their chief rivals, were as
flamboyant as Big Jim Colosimo or Al Capone. Oddly enough, their methods kept them out of jail
rather longer than the Richardsons.
Ronald and Reginald Kray were born in the East End of London in October 1933; at school, they
acquired a reputation as formidable fighters. In their teens, both became professional boxers; then,
after a period in the army - much of it spent in detention - they worked for Jack ‘Spot’ at a night
club in Covent Garden. They had soon moved into the ‘protection’ racket, and ‘cut themselves in’
on a billiard hall in the Mile End Road and a club called the Green Dragon in the East End.
Business prospered; with their reputation for violence, they were soon known and feared from
Woolwich to the City.
In 1956, Ronald Kray landed in serious trouble; with two companions, he strode into the Britannia
pub in Stepney, and shouted at a man named Terrence Martin, ‘Come on outside or we’ll kill you in
here.’ Outside, without paying attention to many witnesses, they beat Martin and stabbed him with
a bayonet. As a result of this affair, Ronald Kray and one of his companions were sentenced to
three years; the man who had actually used the bayonet, Robert Ramsey, received seven.