‘Ronnie Kray gave me an inventory of individuals he wished useless – One of them visited him’

A notorious armed robber who rubbed shoulders with most of London’s gangland “faces” in the 1960s has told how one of the Kray twins handed him a “hit list” of twelve underworld rivals he wanted him to execute. Ronnie Field explained to podcaster Dodge Woodall that he had visited the legendary gangster in Broadmoor.

He said: “Ron give me the list of people he wanted killed …when I went back a week later, he said to me ‘Have you done any of them Ron?’ and as as we came out, one of the geeezers on the list was coming in.

“He said to me ‘Ronnie’s in a good mood,’ and I thought, ‘Oh right, you’re on the death list aren’t you?’”

READ MORE: ‘I was called the UK’s most feared armed robber – but there’s one crime I regret’

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Ronnie Field’s new book, Nefarious, is a catalogue of his long and colourful life of crime, from a £10million diamond heist to being arrested with Charlie Kray on what he insists were trumped-up drugs charges. He admits that he robbed “between 25 and 30” banks, but says that one heist would never be enough to retire on.

“You don’t always walk away with hundreds of thousands of pounds,” Ronnie said. “Sometimes you only come out with 10 grand or 12 grand, and then you got have to have a divvy-up between the four of you.”

He says the police rarely arrived in time to catch them, but recalls one memorable incident where he fired a shotgun at a police car to scare the coppers off: “There was never any mention of it in the paper or anything, that they ran away.”

Ronnie claims that he was on a Met Police death list, because he was getting away with too many crimes: “They tried to shoot us at Gatwick airport, but too many people came out of the Gatwick hotel. People come out when they heard ‘Armed police, get on the floor,’ and all that. People come out don’t they?

“So I put my hands on my head and and said ‘I’m unarmed, I ain’t got a gun, I’m unarmed,’ and he said you bastard, Field’.”

That robbery, involving some £10m worth of diamonds, saw Ronnie behind bars for three and a half years, but in total the career criminal has been locked up for 23 years, befriending the likes of Charles Bronson and Dave Courtney behind bars.

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