Brian Epstein was found dead at his Belgravia home in London in 1967 with a pathologist ruling at the time that he accidentally overdosed on a drug prescribed for his insomnia
The manager of The Beatles was murdered by the Mob, according to a sensational claim from beyond the grave by gangster Reggie Kray.
Brian Epstein was found dead at his Belgravia home in London in 1967 with a pathologist ruling at the time that he accidentally overdosed on a drug prescribed for his insomnia.
But a new book by Beatles biographer Philip Norman contains a newly unearthed interview with Kray that he gave to Liverpool Echo reporter Peter Trollope who visited him at Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight in 1985.
In his book, Norman writes: “This ultimate insider in British organised crime seemingly knew for certain that Brian had been murdered, albeit not by his own Firm… but, he’d hinted, by the American mafia to which the Firm had been fraternally linked.”
The author suggested that the death may have been a professional hit linked to Epstein’s botched deal to distribute Beatles merchandise in the US, which left people out of pocket.
Kray told Trollope: “For us, the Mob were always in the background.
“They knew that if they wanted anything done in England, they could do it through the Krays. But it [Epstein] wasn’t us.
“It’s easy to kill someone and make it look like an overdose.”
The Kray twins threw parties in the 1960s at which Epstein was a frequent guest and plotted to blackmail him after getting their hands on compromising photographs of Epstein with another man, at a time when homosexuality was illegal, but he died before they could put their plan into action.
Kray said: “We ruled London, but we were looking for ways to expand. We’d heard that Epstein was in trouble.
“Ronnie had this idea that if we could get him to sign the Beatles over to us, that would have been a passport to worldwide fame.
“We were just going to blackmail Epstein over the photographs, but then he goes and dies.”
Other revelations in the book – Mr Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles – include a claim that Epstein had a clandestine fling with Little Richard.
ends