The notorious 1960s killing in the Blind Beggar pub in Mile End Road was said to have been perpetrated in revenge for the murder three days earlier of Dicky Hart, a minor associate of the Kray twins. Hart was shot to death in an affray in a south-east London nightclub on Monday, March 7th, 1966.

The affray was probably sparked by a row over protection rackets. The Richardson gang were proposing to take protection control of the nightclub from the Hayward brothers. Unfortunately, no one had informed the Haywards that they were about to be dispossessed.

During the evening the rival gangs chatted, apparently amicably.

Before the flare-up, Hart went out and armed himself with a shotgun. “Mad Frankie” Fraser was charged with Hart’s murder, but that came to nothing. In the complex world of the Krays it was not always easy to establish who were the murderers, if only because there were so many of them. UK Murder Stories from True Crime Library.

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