Love & Tragedy

A love story that ended in tragedy.

In Episode 9 of The Krays Web, we explore the devastating final chapter of Reggie Kray and Frances Shea’s relationship — and the lasting impact it had on both their lives.

What began as obsession and romance ultimately spirals into heartbreak, control, and loss, revealing the darker reality behind one of the Krays’ most personal stories.

In this episode:
• The reality of Reggie and Frances’ troubled marriage
• Isolation, control, and Frances’ declining mental health
• Medical treatment and the pressures she faced
• The events leading to her death in 1967
• Reggie’s reaction and the aftermath
• Family tensions and funeral arrangements
• Reggie’s continued decline and links to future violence
• The twins’ later relationships and life after Frances

Why it matters:
This episode highlights the human cost of the Kray legacy — showing how control, power, and emotional turmoil led to irreversible tragedy.

Follow the show for more deep-dive episodes into the truth behind the Kray twins.

Next episode: The violence escalates — the crimes that will ultimately bring the Krays to justice.

Links to Resources

 Check out my website for resources used and social media links : thekraysweb.com

 Contact me : wendyceepods@gmail.com

 Music by Captain Fat Hands captainfathands.com

Transcript

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Wendy Cee 0:23

Welcome to the Krays Web, a podcast about the infamous Kray twins and those associated with them. I'm your host, Wendy C, and this is season one, The Krays, episode nine, Love and Tragedy. Please note that there is some swearing in this podcast and descriptions of violence. I will also be adding specific trigger warnings where needed, as this episode mentions suicide. The voices that you hear throughout the podcast are all my family and friends who have rallied around to help me to make this podcast more enjoyable for you to listen to. I've used lots of sources when writing these episodes, far too many to list here, but details of which you'll be able to find on my website, thecrazeweb.com. Sadly, the marriage of Reggie and Frances was to be short-lived. The problem started on the honeymoon in Athens. Reggie was out drinking most nights while Frances sat alone in the hotel room. Their sex life was either poor or non-existent, depending on who you speak to. There are even suggestions that Reggie, like Ronnie, was homosexual. Once home, Frances fills her days by travelling. She spent June to August 1965 in Spain. And in the book The Tragic Bride, there are various extracts from Frances' diaries that detail the despair that she was feeling at this time. Reggie's drinking was too much for her. She hated that he was out all hours of the night, and when she complained, Reggie would give her money or tell her she was unwell and offer to get her a doctor. She had become more aware of Reggie's business dealings. She had seen some of the weapons that he had, and within a few months of the wedding, Frances had left Reggie and moved back home. She also started seeing psychiatrists around the same time. But Reggie wasn't going to let Frances go. He would turn up at the house begging to see her. Frances' parents wouldn't let him in, so he would stand in the street and talk to Frances while she stood at her open bedroom window. In the early days of their relationship, this would have been romantic. Now it was just tragic. Reggie just would not let Frances go. She was his and he wanted her back. Reggie would visit his wife and they would take walks around the gardens, or go for lunch at the local pub. A fellow patient Michael spent a lot of time with Frances during the few months she was there.

Charlie Kray 2:59

He said that she told him, She told me she was never in love in her life. He never had time for her. He was always out, drinking, clubbing. She told me she would wake up in the morning when she was with him and find a gun or a hammer lying under the mattress.

Wendy Cee 3:13

I do want to put a trigger warning on the next part, as I will be talking about suicide. If you need to skip this, go forward two minutes. Frances was released from the hospital a few months later in September, but she was still very unwell. And after just a month, her father found her in her bedroom barely alive after taking an overdose. The ambulance arrived just in time and she was taken to St. Leonard's hospital. Reggie tried to visit his wife, but the hospital declined, saying that Frances was too frail. Three days later, Frances was sent back home. Frances struggled through the next few months. There was a second suicide attempt in January, but then she renewed her passport and went off with friends for a ten day cruise around the Canary Islands in March 1967. And when they came back, another trip was booked, this time to Ibiza. But Frances never did get to Ibiza. In fact, Frances never went abroad again. On the morning of the 7th of June 1967, Frankie Shea took his sister a cup of tea in bed. She was living in his flat at this time. Frances was still soundly asleep, so he left the cup on the bedside table and went to work. But something was niggling him. Something that didn't feel quite right. So at lunchtime, Frankie popped home to check on Frances. The tea on her bedside table was stone cold, and so was Frances. It was later confirmed that Frances had taken an overdose of sleeping pills. Frances was gone. And Reggie was about to spiral. Reggie already had an extremely difficult relationship with his in-laws, but it wasn't about to get any easier. He drove to Frances' parents' house and demanded all of her belongings, including letters, jewellery, clothes, souvenirs, and even her makeup. He insisted that she was buried in her wedding dress in his family plot. Her mother Elsie managed to persuade the undertaker to put a slip and tights on underneath the dress, so that as little of it touched her body as possible. And she managed to swap Francis' wedding ring for one that she had worn as a young girl. Reggie did the only thing he knew how to do. He threw money at the funeral. It cost around thirty thousand pounds or forty thousand US dollars in today's money. Reggie ordered huge floral wreaths. One was six foot tall and had her name on it. Another was a heart made with red roses and white carnations. Reggie ignored all of Frances' family's wishes and did not acknowledge the suffering that they were going through following the devastating loss of their daughter. Nothing else mattered to Reggie right now. He had lost his Frances and he didn't know how to cope. I spoke to Flan about Frances. Here is part of that interview.

Flan 6:04

He dropped her off there maybe five. Shall we go into the cinema? We're going to the cinema tonight. Then drink her little cup of tea with the gloves on. Drink her little cup of tea. Mm-hmm. Seven o'clock now. Sometimes I thought I've not got anything to rush home about. I'll stay a couple of hours. And then not come to the door. Oh, here he is. He's late. We'll have to go to another uh time. Anyway, she's got up, she's opened the door. There's Albert Donahue. Another time Dixon, another time, Bender. Reggie said, I've got to drive you home. Well, where is he? Oh, he's had to go on out on business with Ronnie. They've gone to look at a club. Now don't forget this girl lives two streets away. But there's no way Reggie Kray is going to have her a walk, even if it was five o'clock broad daylight. She's not going to be going nowhere on her own. She's going in that thing. He's been told, you sit her in the back, not the front with you. You sit her in the back, like men will be men, not that they would, but she goes in the back. Yeah, we know Reg. We've driven her before. And then you drop her right to her door and you don't drive away until she's indoor and close the door. Okay. And you could see the disappointment and not angry, just done it again, sort of thing. And you see Mrs. Craig, she'd really tell him, Don't keep leaving her here, Reggie. Plan talks about Reggie and France's honeymoon. And when she came back, in front of me, she said to Mrs. How'd you get on? Oh, Athens, I bet it was lovely. And where'd you go? And oh, we went to a lot of sightseeing, I got loads of photos. And Reggie bought me a lovely ring, and Reggie bought me a lovely dress. She into the markets of the day, and they're walking through, and you know, and they went to Morocco, you see, with the donkeys, these there's pictures of and she's got them silly sandals on with the toes out, whatever, and some silly trousers and socks. And then she looked at Mrs. Kray, she went, Do you know? She said, I think she got a bit brave. She went, he never touched me once on the honeymoon. There's Mrs. Kray's got to act like a mother. I'm doing the hair. And I thought, I've got to shut up. I mustn't speak, because anything I say, she has to tell Reggie. So she said, Well, you have sometimes you have to wait for these things to happen, dear. She said, Um, don't worry, darn. She said, It'll come right in the end. She said, You know, both of my boys, she said, they're very, very shy around women. She said, You can't talk about any sex things in front of the two of them. She said, Unlike the other one, she said, Charlie, he's got a hundred girlfriends. He's been in a hundred beds him, he's casting over him and laughed it off like that, and we all laughed. But that's what she said. My boys are very shy, no talking of sex. The mother couldn't even say any like sexual thing. They look for they don't want their mother to talk like that or to be around anything like that, or villainy, or swearing. So, yeah, poor Francis. Yeah, she knew she couldn't have had a life, she couldn't have divorced him because she went to her mother and said to her mother, I've been to a solicitor. Right. I'm gonna divorce him and I'm gonna change my name back to Shay. Funny, her name was Shay and married a Kray. It was unbelievable, really, but there you go. And the mother really agreed and thought it was marvelous, and said it after she killed herself, she went, Well, she won't be buried under the name Kray because she was gonna divorce him, and um and Reggie said, but she didn't. And I'm her next of kin. And they had terrible rows, and you know, I'm her mother, and the father, I'm her next of kin, and I've already bought the plot of land, and her and all my family are being buried there. She said, Over my dead body. He said, That can be arranged. And there was the scene in the film when he's over there laying flowers, which used to go every week, sometimes three times a week. Mrs. Kray used to say, It never been the same. He's drinking, drinking, he's always drunk. He was never drunk when he came in here, my Reggie. My boys don't come in here drunk. And they didn't. She ran up to the car, which he'd been driven over there in, and he was putting more and more flowers. Um, she can put as many flowers as you like, blah, spend all your money on flowers, yeah, it'll never bring her back. And by the way, she hated you, and she was going to divorce you. And she was changing her name. Now, had that been a man, he'd have jumped out and had the most terrible, terrible fire. But you see, he wouldn't even went down the window, go, fuck off, you old bat. Yeah, piss off. Go, because he wouldn't dare talk to a woman like that, especially her mother. So that's the difference in them and other men. I I know a hundred men that would have jumped out and and uh Welly had a terrible go at her and the old man, yeah, and um maybe pushed her or called her all the names under the sun and blah blah blah, but that's not the way they treated women.

Wendy Cee 11:35

We will never know what the relationship between Reggie and Francis was really like, but we do know that Reggie spiraled after Francis died. He was heartbroken and life for him changed irrevocably forever. In fact, just four months later, Reggie would murder Jack the Hat McVitie, and within two years of her death, Reggie would go to prison, where he would stay for the rest of his life. Reggie never really got over Francis, but he did have other relationships. Flan used to visit Reggie in prison and said that he proposed to her three times. Here is Flan talking about those proposals. In the first part, she is retelling a story about Reggie telling his brother Charlie about his first proposal.

Flan 12:16

Once in front of Steve Tully, because when she was on the first visit, and I said, Are you gonna marry me? Or what? We'll make a we'll make a very good pair. And Ronnie says, I've got to marry you because you'll help me with my parole. I looked at him, I went, Look, Rich. Number one, I love my name. I love it. I love it. I've even got rid of the first my Christian name. I've only known as Flanagan. He said, Well, yeah, my mum used to call you Maury. And I said, Well, yeah, but everyone else now calls me Flanagan. So I love it, right? Second of all, Rich, I've got a little boy. His name is Cox. His daddy won't have his name as Kray, and his daddy visits us every Sunday. He went, Well, that's a matter. He can add two surnames. I said, What, like Cox Kray or Kray Cox? What are you talking about? He said, Well, I'll adopt him. I said, His father won't allow that. We're better off as friends, and you're so bossy, and I'm so bossy. Well, Steve Tully started laughing and went, Well, I have never met a bossier woman. And now I know in here, I've never, because they met in Parkas, I've never met a bossier man. Well, of course he hasn't. So he said, You two, if you're married, he said, I think you'd kill each other in a week. So he went, Oh silly, he said, I ain't out of here yet. He said, but we can get married in a church, because I know you're Catholic. I said, yeah, he said, but in the church, I gotta be handcuffed. So I said, yeah. He said, but if we get married in the chapel in here, in Parkhouse, he said, you know, we can have a cake, and you can have some wine, and we can have um what's called guests. Uh, we are allowed twelve people. I said, no. He went, Oh, I'll have to work on you. And he was laughing. Well, that night, Steve Tullyphoned me up because you can have phone calls in there, it's about eight o'clock, you make a lot one call. And Flan, quick. He said, It's Tully. I never ever called him Steve. I said, Tully. He said, Oh my god, when you said no, I don't want my name to be cracked. He said, I thought he was gonna spring across the big strangle you. He said, Did you say? I said, Well, because it's the truth. And anyway, what's he gonna do? If he sprung across the table and strangled me, he said, within two minutes the guards would get hold of him. I said, No, we said he's they they don't touch women. He said, I know, but oh, he said he's come back, he said, we've had a drink in the cell, because they made the hooch, didn't they? And the guards turn a blind eye to certain people. He said, Um, he never stopped. What do you think she meant by that? Hey, what do you think, eh? Hey, at the end of every line. So Taddy said, Well, I can understand you've got a little boy and he goes to school and he turns up with the name of Kray, all of a sudden his name's not Cox anymore. You know, there's people who say, Oh, you know his father who's adopted him, he was a murderer. He was one of the he said, Oh, silly, no, they don't. And it he's really put me up a good argument plan. He said, I'm trying to defend you, but he said, You know what he's like? I said, Don't take no notice, don't even talk about it. The answer's no. The second time I was in Victoria Parker, me and my son had got up on this morning, I suppose it was about nine. Don't think it was a school morning. Yeah. And then not come at the door, I said, Oh Jay, I was in a dressing gown. We was having a cup of tea and tow. I said, Go and open the door. He said, All right, and I heard this man's voice say, Hello, son, is your mother in? He went, Oh, he said, Hello, Charlie. Well, it could have been any Charlie, I know ten Charlies.

Speaker 2 16:01

Yeah.

Flan 16:02

And he must have gone, come, come in, because he's come marching down my hall and into my lounge. I'm on my settee with just, I mean, oh Charlie, I'm Charlie Grey. Well, in his arms, he's got the caravan made with matchsticks that they do in um prisons. He put it on my coffee table. He went, please, he said, if you're not gonna marry him, can you tell him now you're not gonna marry him? Because I went on the visit yesterday. I've had to come all from the Isle of White with that. He said, and he can never stop talking about you. You'll go around them in the morning. Don't go when she's out, go early morning. So get up and I live in South London, she's in the East. Yeah, well, get up, bossy, and go there and see what it's all about. So now Charlie Crow turns up with the caravan. Please, he said, Would you go and see? I said, I have got a visit. I've got a visit in two days. He said, All right, he said, are you taking JJ? I said, you know what? You don't have to have a visit for a child. I'm just going to turn up with JJ. I said, uh, do you want to come to Parkhurst? You go over on a nice ferry, you're like that, Jay. He'd already been to Broadmoor. I said, You've already seen Ronnie. I said, So it's really nice to see Reggie. He said, Yeah, but what about if he says he he's got to marry you and he asks me what I said, you will turn around and say, I've already got a dad. You're only young. What's he gonna say? He's not gonna be nasty to you. I said he'd probably sign. Bring your football. I said, your Arsenal football. He'd put it in a string thing and we'd take it with us. Selly a football, they'll allow you in with a football. He's gonna sign it. He said, All right, that's how we got there. Well, and he came out with Tally. That's uh my JJ first knew Tally, and he really likes him, you know, and he always asks about JJ. And uh he said, uh, wow, he said, I've got someone on my side. I thought, he said, you don't mind, do you, JJ? Do we call you JJ or James? So, well, everybody calls me JJ, only my dad calls me James. So he said, You don't mind, he said, if we get married, I'm not coming to live with you, he said, for quite a long time. He's talking to him like a little boy. Uh uh, I'll write to you and you can come on visits with your mother. Oh JJ said, but I've already got a dad, and my name is James Cox at school. He said, Don't don't you want me to marry your mother? He said, um, not really. And he and he just looked around like that, and he looked just in Italian, he went, is that me dumb? Like that. And then we continued on the visit, never mentioned any more. So as we're leaving, stood up and kissed me on the cheek. He shook hands with my JJ and he went, work on her, work on her for me. And and as we're going out, I went, Oh, by the way, all this talk about marriage and proposing this is my ring. He went, You've already got rings. You like diamonds? I said, I do like diamonds. Well, you can get me a diamond ring tomorrow. It can be delivered to my address. Where is it? He said, Well, this is a lovely ring. You're always telling everybody wants this ring, and this is your engagement ring, and everybody. I said, You won't get me a ring, what I like. He said, But you're not married to that man anymore. But you wear that ring. What you gotta do? Take that ring off and put my ring on. I went, no, because your ring won't be as nice as that. He said, How do you know? I can get you a ring as good as that. That was we called that number two, right? And then I went again, he never said a word. And then he told me to come with Charlie and Charlie's girlfriend. And that's how we travelled, and on that horrible fairy again. Oh, I hated it. We got there, and he said, Right, I'm gonna say this, and I'm only saying it for the last time. I looked at Diane, she went. He said, Charlie, Diane, as you know, I've said it in front of Steve Tully, I've said it in front of her son. Never says, Will you marry me? or gets down on a knee. Remember, you're in a waiting room with all people, they're all looking over. He's obviously told a few people. He said, last night I walked into the dinner hall, he said, and uh they said, Who you got coming tomorrow? He said, uh, Flanagan and my brother Charlie went, another proposal. He said, and as I walked in, he said, they all stood up and da da da. He said, I'm having here comes the bride sung to me now. He said, so I've got to finish that or say yes. Come on, he said, are we gonna get married? Not will you marry me, Flan or you know he can't say loved me, but he could say, you know what, I think of you, you know, and they obviously thought of me as a sister when they were free, and now I'm still a organizer, I'm still a petitioner, I'm still writing to Downing Street, I'm still in the book, I've wrote to the Queen, you know, doing all these things, taking him up, running up his clothes, what he wanted, and his smoke sermon. And um, I said, Well, I hope you're not gonna cause an argument in front of your brother and Diane. I said, but I've really, really thought about it. I said, My son said he doesn't mind, but Terry will always be his dad, and he's going, thinking I'm gonna say so, yeah. You know, I said, so, you know, I want to keep it as it is. We'd always be friends, you can boss me, and I'll boss you. Charlie Kray started laughing, roaring out laughing, yeah, yeah. Said, right, you bossy, you are the bossiest woman I know, and he's the bossiest man. And he went, right, that's it. More tea, more coffee, got a few cakes. They brought them out and they said, Oh, he said, I could have had a good drink tonight if you'd have said yes. I said, No more. And never mis mentioned again. Were you ever tempted? The only way that you could have done it, or I would have done it, is if I hadn't have had a child. Yeah. And I don't know, I only had the one, and blah blah blah, but he was my baby and he's my son, and his name is Cox. And his daddy came every Sunday till he died.

Wendy Cee 22:30

In 1996, Reggie was visited in prison by Roberta Jones. She had been asked by a friend to help with some publicity for a film about the life of Ronnie Kray and went to meet Reggie to find out more. In an article in the Sun newspaper she said, I didn't know much about the craze at all.

Flan 22:47

It wasn't love at first, no chemistry or flying sparks. I thought he was interesting, but what was most fascinating was how he had managed to survive that long in jail without going completely mad.

Wendy Cee 23:00

Roberta and Reggie married at a ceremony in the chapel in Maidstone Prison on the 14th of July 1997. Reggie was 63 and Roberta was thirty-eight. Roberta wore a floor-length, short sleeved, simple white dress with buttons to the waist, her shoulder length strawberry blonde wavy hair loose, and a white rose corsage on her left breast. Reggie wore a dark suit and white shirt with a matching corsage on his right lapel. There was no wedding bouquet, though they were holding a single long-stemmed red rose in their wedding photos. They celebrated with a few family and close friends at a small alcohol free reception at the prison. Roberta and Reggie stayed married until his death. Ronnie's love life was a lot more complicated than his brother's. He knew he was homosexual from an early age, which was still very taboo at this time. He later said that he was actually bisexual. Ronnie was also mentally unwell and extremely volatile, which made maintaining a relationship challenging. Over the years Ronnie did have lovers, including a member of the firm, Mad Teddy Smith. It is not known how long they were together, but he was one of the few people that Ronnie trusted and who could handle him. Ronnie was also alleged to have a relationship with prominent MP Lord Boothby, which led to the Boothby affair, something I will talk about in a later season. In the nineteen sixties, Ronnie did meet a lady called Monica, who he planned to marry, but he was arrested before this could happen. She went on to marry Ronnie's ex boyfriend. Ronnie did marry twice while in Broadmoor. Both weddings were held at the Broadmoor chapel. The first Mrs. Ronnie Kray was Elaine Mildener, who married Ronnie in nineteen eighty five. Elaine had dark, short, curly hair and wore a dark dress with a white fur stole, with a large white flower corsage on her left breast. Ronnie wore a dark flecked frock coat with a white shirt and a striped tie. He wore a dark carnation on his left buttonhole. We cannot see the colours of the outfits as I can only find black and white photos. The couple divorced in nineteen eighty nine. Ronnie remarried later that same year, on the sixth of november nineteen eighty nine to Kate Howard, who he had met at Broadmoor. Kate wore a pale pink taffeta off the shoulder, puffy gown with a mixed pink floral bouquet. Her blonde hair was swept up and she wore a pale pink ribbon around her head. Ronnie wore a grey suit with crisp white shirt and a blue tie. He had a pink carnation in his buttonhole. Ronnie and Kate divorced in nineteen ninety four after she published a book about her life, and included details of an affair she had while married to Ronnie. He asked her to withdraw it from publication and she refused, so he divorced her. It seems that both twins did find love of some kind in their lives. I wanted to end this episode by sharing a poem that Reggie wrote about his wife Frances. We had our joy and sorrow, but we did not think about tomorrow. Each day was new and fun. Our love had a good run. We were so in love. Such love could only be sent from above. The magic was in her large brown eyes, and beautiful smiles. She was meant for me, she was everything I wished to see. She was just sixteen. I was twenty six years, and I did not foresee the tears because we were so happy, but the tears came and life was no longer a game. We have both the joy and sorrow. Yesterday was not like tomorrow. Our teenage love is no more. We had not counted on what was in store. The girl with the beautiful eyes and smiles was no more. This is what life had in store. I will not forget those eyes and smile. They remain part of my memory forever. How can I forget such a smile? I'm sad that can say I've known true love and will remember her beautiful eyes. She is somewhere in the skies. So our love remains above. Maybe our love will begin again tomorrow. Thank you for listening to The Kray's Web. This was episode nine, Love and Tragedy. Next week in episode ten, Murder and Mayhem, I will be discussing a very different side of Ronnie and Reggie Kray. Finally, I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who has helped me to put this podcast together. Please check out the show notes and my website for more information on the books and reference material that I used for my research. Until next time, stay safe.