[72] Shortly afterwards, Raft was prevented from returning to Britain following a trip back to the United States by a Home Office order as an "undesirable", thereby costing the Krays their strongest ally within the Mafia. At a time when homosexuality was widely considered abnormal especially in the underworld of the East End Ronnie made a point of flaunting his homosexual relationships, which was considered to be quite shocking in the 1950s1960s. Almost all the raids were done at night, either using stolen mopeds or mopeds with license plates removed. Seven men and one woman were convicted of conspiracy to commit robbery following a five-week trial at Kingston Crown Court. They called them the swinging sixties. [47] One of Boothby's first actions after being awarded the libel suit was to write a cheque for 5,000 pounds to Ronnie. They were jailed for life in 1969, with a recommended sentence of 30 . [65], The business of redeeming the stolen bearer bonds in London ultimately led to a break between Payne and the Krays. Richardson member Ray "the Belgian" Cullinane testified that he saw Cornell kicking Hart. The Kray brothers formed an alliance with "the Commission" of New York that was the governing board of the American Mafia, being in contact with Meyer Lansky and Angelo Bruno, who were looking to invest in London's gambling clubs and nightclubs. Cannabis gang members jailed for murdering London rival [56] Ronnie had also launched a libel action of his own against The Sunday Mirror columnist Cecil King for calling him a "homosexual thug" in one of his columns, but the judge dismissed the suit under the grounds that it was a "fair comment". They were the best years of our lives. When you see her, tell her I am in love with her more than ever. One of them held a Stanley knife to a ten-month-old baby's throat and ordered the family to give them the code to open a safe while tying a 71-year-old grandmother to a chair. Crockett, of Handsworth, Birmingham, who also admitted charges of handling stolen cars, was jailed for a total of 12 years on July 12. In 1964, nine of the 15-strong gang, including Biggs, were jailed for the crime. A Tulse Hill-based county lines drugs gang who sold crack cocaine and heroin and boasted about it in their music have been jailed for a total of 61 years. Mitchell felt that the authorities should review his case for parole, so Ronnie thought that he would be doing him a favour by getting him out of Dartmoor, highlighting his case in the media and forcing the authorities to act. An elision of style and brutality can emerge, as it did in the form of the Krays". She was helping to publicise a film she was making about Ronnie, who had died in hospital two years earlier. [46] Ronnie was a sexual sadist while Boothby was a masochist who enjoyed the way that he was dominated by Ronnie. Ziyad Al-Daher, 28, of Brockley Road, Lewisham, was sentenced for nine offences and was given a 10 and a half year term. [40] Jenks and Lorentzen wrote the Krays became symbols in the public mind of British organised crime itself as the Krays were associated with "tales of excessive and gratuitous violence and to a time when London criminality appeared not only as organised as never before, but also integrated into the Establishment and the vanguard of popular culture".