Ronnie Kray visited a Mafia boss’s Las Vegas mansion – complete with a tiger cage in the basement where rivals of the mob were “disposed of”.
The notorious East End gangster travelled to the States in the late 1960s to see how the Mafia operated its casinos, a former pal has revealed.
The Krays hoped to form a partnership with the American mob and expand their criminal empire, setting up a string of similar casinos around London and the UK.
Ronnie and twin brother Reggie dominated London’s underworld for 20 years in the 1950s and 60s after forming their gang, The Firm.
Ronnie told their former PR adviser James Campbell about the trip to Chicago and Sin City. James won the Krays’ trust in the 1980s, negotiating book deals on their behalf while they were behind bars.
He told how in the late 60s Ronnie travelled across the Atlantic for meetings with US mobster Meyer Lansky.
Lansky was known as the “mob’s accountant” and became a key figure in the American underworld, helping to establish the National Crime Syndicate – a loose confederation of criminal organisations.
James said: “Ronnie went to America to meet the Mafia and see how they operated the casinos. Ronnie wanted to be part of that. He was very adventurous and ambitious.
“At first he travelled to Chicago to meet Meyer Lansky. He was the man with all the connections. While he was there he travelled to Vegas.”
James said: “While he was there he met Frank Sinatra. While they were talking Sinatra told him his son, Frank Sinatra Jr, was coming to London for a series of shows at the Palladium. He was worried that Frank Jr could be kidnapped.
“Sinatra asked if he could help and Ronnie agreed that the Krays would look after him, they would provide his bodyguards.”
James added: “He told me he was invited to a cocktail party at this massive mansion in Vegas.
“While he was being shown around the house he was taken into the basement where there was this huge metal cage with tigers in it. There was blood on the floor.
"They told him this was where their enemies were disposed of. They had a bone collector who would take any remains to the Hoover Dam and throw them in.
“When Ronnie came back he was really impressed with the way they operated over there. It was on a different scale.”
The Krays were jailed for life in 1969 over the knife murder of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie.
Ronnie was also found guilty of shooting dead George Cornell in an East London pub in 1966.
In 1990 James was invited on to the set of The Krays film, starring Spandau Ballet idols Martin and Gary Kemp.
Ronnie died of a heart attack in 1995, aged 61. Reggie was released from prison on compassionate grounds in August 2000, eight and a half weeks before his death from cancer, aged 66.
