Kray twins auction raises 111,000 pounds

LONDON (Reuters) - An auction of items once belonging to the gangster Kray twins, who controlled London's East End with a vice-like grip in the 1960s, raised 111,000 pounds ($157,000), well above expectations.

The sale at Chiswick Auctions in London on Monday evening was packed, and one bidder bought almost half of the 160 lots on offer, said William Rouse who runs the auctioneer.

"We were extremely happy," he told Reuters, adding that the auction house had not made any pre-sale estimates.

"The sale room was rammed full of people and there were a lot of buyers and underbidders online." Ronnie and Reggie Kray enjoy almost mythical status in Britain despite their record of intimidation and convictions of murder for which they were sent to jail for life in 1969.

The feared brothers built up a crime empire in the 1950s and 1960s, and as nightclub owners they rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous.

Ronnie, who spent much of his sentence at the Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital, died in 1995 aged 61 and Reggie died five years later.

At their funerals, thousands of people watched their corteges as the cream of London's 1960s underworld paid its respects.

The top lot at Monday's sale was a pair of Ronnie's gold cufflinks, in the form of his initials "RK," which fetched 10,000 pounds. ($14,100)

A letter to Ronnie from the artist Francis Bacon sold for 7,400 pounds ($10,400), and one of Ronnie's oil paintings completed in Parkhurst prison fetched 4,800 pounds ($6,770).

Rouse said more than 90 percent of the lots offered came from a single owner who was a friend of the family and had visited the twins in prison.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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