On Christmas Eve 1966, Britain's most dangerous escaped prisoner climbed into a van in East London because he believed Ronnie Kray was waiting for him. Frank Mitchell had spent years fighting prison officers and escaping secure institutions. He thought he was going to a safe house in the country to see the man he idolised. As the van pulled away, two men were in the back with him: Alfie Gerrard and Freddie Foreman. He had made one fatal mistake: he had trusted the Kray twins.
Limehouse to Rampton
Mitchell was born in Limehouse, East London, one of seven children, and appeared before juvenile courts before he reached double figures. His first major crime was breaking into a nurses' residence. Cornered by police, he hid in one nurse's room; she said he did not harm her, and he tried to squeeze into her wardrobe.
Sentenced to just under three years, he was assessed and labelled "mentally defective". Over six foot, with a 54-inch chest, he was said by the authorities to have the mind of a young child, and he was sent to Rampton, the secure hospital in Nottinghamshire. He hated the label. He was not mad, he insisted; he was a convict. Rampton could hold him indefinitely.
In January 1957 he escaped with another inmate. On the run, a householder who challenged them was beaten with an iron bar and was lucky to survive. He told the judge there was not a lock he could not undo, and that if he was sent back to any mental institution he would escape. He was given nine years for attempted murder and sent into the prison system.
Reynolds and the bathhouse
Freddie Foreman, in his book Respect, tells of Bruce Reynolds, not yet famous as the man who would lead the Great Train Robbery. One morning in the bathhouse, Mitchell attacked him and stabbed him several times in the back. At one hearing it took four prison officers and six police officers to hold Mitchell down. He was cleared of the attack because Reynolds kept to the villain's code and would not name him.
Mad Frankie Fraser said Mitchell's own prison code targeted informers, sex offenders and men he felt had disrespected him.
The Mad Axeman
He was sent to Broadmoor, which had installed warning sirens in the surrounding towns after John Thomas Straffen escaped in 1952 and murdered a five-year-old girl within hours.
In June 1958 the sirens sounded for Mitchell. He left a dummy in his bed, prised off the shutters, sawed through the bars and climbed down to freedom. At seven that morning he broke into a nearby cottage. The husband challenged him and was knocked unconscious with the handle of an axe from the couple's garage. When he came round, Mitchell had his hands around his wife's neck. Mitchell promised not to hurt them further if they did as he said, and had the woman bathe his feet, cut to ribbons from running barefoot. The press called him the Mad Axeman. He hated that too.
He was given a life sentence and sent to Dartmoor.
Dartmoor and the Krays
At Dartmoor he had runners bringing him bacon sandwiches and tea, one of them the young John Bindon. Then Dartmoor found something that calmed him: a little freedom. On the honour party he worked outside the walls, kept birds in his cell, fed the ponies on the moor and even drank in local pubs. But there was still no release date.
Ronnie Kray had known him in prison, and decided to break him out. It was about reputation: proof the twins could reach through prison walls. On 12 December 1966 Mitchell was on the moor with a work party and asked the sole guard if he could feed the ponies. The guard said yes. Mitchell walked to a quiet road where a car was waiting, with Kray associates Albert Donoghue, Teddy Smith and Billy Exley inside. It was more than five hours before anyone noticed. Police, Royal Marines and an RAF helicopter searched the moor, but Mitchell was already in East London.
With Teddy Smith's help Mitchell wrote to the newspapers asking for a release date, and the Home Secretary would not be pressured. Now the Krays could not free him, hand him back or control him. He lifted a minder off the ground and threatened to walk to Vallance Road and tell their mother how her sons were treating him. A nightclub hostess, Lisa Prescott, was sent to the flat to keep him occupied, and he became infatuated with her.
Christmas Eve, 1966
Donoghue told Mitchell he was being moved to the countryside, where Ronnie would be waiting, and that Lisa would follow later. As it drove through East London, by Foreman's own later account, he and Gerrard opened fire. Mitchell was hit again and again, and when he groaned and lifted his head, Foreman finished him with a silenced pistol. Donoghue got out, found a phone box and called Reggie Kray with the agreed code: the dog has won. Foreman later said the body was bound in chicken wire, weighted and dropped into the English Channel.
Rampton could not hold Frank Mitchell. Neither could Broadmoor or Dartmoor, and the Krays could not control him for long. They only needed him to trust them once.