Christmas Eve 1966, Britain’s most dangerous escape prisoner climbed into a van in East London because he believed Ronnie Cray was waiting for him. Frank Mitchell was Britain’s most violent inmate. He had spent years fighting prison officers, escaping secure institutions, and terrifying men paid to control violence.
But that night, he was calm. He thought he was finally going to see the man he idolized, Ronny Cray. But as the van doors closed, the engine started. Two men got in the back with him. Alfie Gerard and Fred Foreman. Two names that in 1960s London struck terror into the hardest of criminals.
There would be no Countryside safe house, no roast turkey with all the trimmings. Frank Mitchell had escaped Dartmore prison, but he had made one fatal mistake. He had put his trust in the creators. Frank Mitchell had been in trouble since childhood. Born in Limehouse, East London, one of seven children, he was appearing before juvenile courts before he had even reached double figures.
By the time he was a young man, petty crime had hardened into something more serious, breaking and entering. Mitchell would brag that he could pick his way in or out of any building. If someone locked a door, Frank Mitchell treated it as a challenge. His first major crime was breaking into a nurse’s residential building, thinking it was something far more lucrative.
When he realized his mistake and knew the police had arrived outside, he entered one of the nurse’s rooms. This must have been a frightening ordeal for the young woman. But she said Mitchell did not harm her. He reassured her he meant her no ill will and tried to squeeze his athletic frame into a wardrobe to hide.
The police captured him and he would be sentenced to just shy of 3 years. To most villains, it would be an occupational hazard. They would get their head down, do the required time, and be back out grafting again. But the authorities did not allow that to happen with Mitchell. He was assessed, then diagnosed as being mentally defect, a term widely used at the time.
At over 6 foot, a 54 in chest, and arms like a powerlifter’s legs, Mitchell was an extremely powerful man. But according to authorities, he had the mind of a young child. So he was sent to Rampton Asylum, a secure unit in Nottinghamshire set up to cope with the overspill from the infamous Broadmore. He hated the label. He wasn’t mad. He insisted he was a convict.
There was a difference and he felt it in his bones. He was only serving just under three years. And now he’d been put in a place that could keep him indefinitely if they so wished. He wasn’t going to put that to the test. In January 1957, he escaped with another Rampton inmate. Whilst on the run, they broke into a house to steal clothes, food, and money to aid their escape.
The house owner bravely challenged them as his wife lay terrified in bed. He was battered with an iron bar and was lucky to survive the attack. In the call, Mitchell was more concerned with the mental defect label than the actual attack itself. He demanded to be treated as not insane. He told the judge straight, “There is not a lock I cannot undo.
If you send me back to any mental institute, Broadmore, or anywhere else, I can promise you I will escape and I’m prepared to die.” The judge gave him nine years for attempted murder and perhaps persuaded by his threat sent him back into the prison system rather than another mental institute. It was this 12-month period that his reputation as Britain’s most feared inmate began building its legend.
One of the most revealing stories by Fred Foreman in his book Respect involved Bruce Reynolds. Reynolds had not yet gained infamy as a man who would lead the great train robbery, but was gaining a reputation as a tough, smart villain. Reynolds at the time was devising a daring escape from prison and had allegedly smuggled a firearm into the unit that was being hidden for him by another con.
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But his plan would hit an unexpected stumbling block. One morning on his weekly allowed visit to the bath house to scrub off the prison filth, Reynolds was jumped by Mitchell, who tore into him like a devil dog, stabbing him multiple times in the back. Reynolds was left slumped, bleeding out in the bath house, gasping for breath.
Mitchell will be charged with attempted murder for the stabbing. During one hearing, Mitchell erupted into fury, and it took a mammoth battle with four screws and another six police officers to overpower him. Prison hellraiser and gangland enforcer Mad Frankie Frraasier said Mitchell had his own prison code.
Grasses and sex offenders were targets. So were men he believed he had shown disrespect. Reynolds had unknowingly slipped into that third category and had upset him in some way. Frankie, the dimminative but extremely violent South London villain, said he and the much bigger Mitchell would team up stabbing and cutting grasses.
Whilst Frankie got up close and personal, poking the victims up with homemade shanks, Mitchell would lay into the screws, trying to stop the bloodshed, tossing them around like ragdolls. Foreman described his strength as superhuman. Mitchell would be cleared of the Reynolds attack due to his victim honoring the villain’s code and not fingering Mitchell for it.
But the carnage could not be allowed to continue by authorities. The prison system decided he would be sent to the institute that terrified inmates more than any other. Broadmore opened in 1863 as the Broadmore Criminal Lunatic Asylum, a Victorian institution built for offenders considered insane, dangerous, and impossible to manage in ordinary prisons.
It was not a prison in name, but for men like Frank Mitchell, it was even worse. high daunting walls, locked wards, rigid discipline, and a population made up of some of the most disturbed and violent offenders in Britain. And Broadmore had already learned in the worst possible way what could happen when someone got out. In 1952, John Thomas Strafen escaped from Broadmore.
He climbed out, got over the wall, and within hours murdered a 5-year-old girl. The escape caused panic, outrage, and embarrassment. After Strafen, the authorities installed warning sirens around the surrounding towns and villages based on old air raiden sirens so local people could be alerted if a patient escaped. But strafing would not be the only much publicized breakout.
The sirens would be activated again when Mitchell made good on the promise he had delivered to the judge after his escape from Rem. June 1958. Despite being on the most secure wing, Mitchell had somehow managed to create a lifelike dummy that he shoved under the bed blanket. He prized off shutters in his cell and soared through the metal bars to sliver through the window, scurry along a ledge, scaled down and up a wall to freedom.
At 7:00 a.m. that same morning, he would break into a nearby cottage. The following events over the next hour and a half would earn him the nickname as the Mad Axeman. It would also bring the attention of the national media and London’s most dangerous twin brothers. According to news reports, Mitchell broke into the house through a window.
The couple saw him breaking in and were terrified. The woman described him as looking like a lion, the most feared predator in the animal kingdom. Her husband, 16 stone and a big unit himself, challenged him, but was battered unconscious with the handle of the axe he had picked up from their garage. He came too and said Mitchell had his hands wrapped around his wife’s neck, who was screaming in fear.
Mitchell told the husband to calm his wife down and declared he wouldn’t hurt them further if he did what he said. He instructed the woman to bathe his feet, which were cut to ribbons from the barefooted escape. He took clothing, food, and a car, and left them unharmed by a few cuts and bruises. The press called him the Mad Axeman.
Mitchell hated that, too. To him, madness sounded weak, and whatever else Frank Mitchell was, he did not see himself as weak. He was eventually captured and given the ultimate punishment, a life sentence. This time, the authorities decided to send him to the middle of nowhere, Dartmore Prison. He arrived in Dartmore as part of prison folklore and with very little to lose.
The whole prison was in awe of the tall, strapping, handsome Mitchell, who would pick screws up in mock shows of friendliness, but leave them with cracked ribs. Prisoners who crossed him would be attacked with fists or weapons. He was once again deemed uncontrollable. He had the best cell would have runners who would bring him as bacon sandwiches in the morning and mugs of steaming tea.
One of those being the West London Hardman, John Bindon. 10 years Mitchell’s junior. He was impressed with the mad actsman and would join him on attacks of inmates accused of grassing or sex offending. But then strangely Dartmore found the one thing that seemed to calm him down. A little freedom. Mitchell was moved to the honor party.
A trusted group of inmates allowed to work outside the prison walls. He kept little birds in his cell. He fed the wild ponies on the moors. He was even allowed to visit nearby pubs drinking with locals. Believe it or not, after years of brutality, the system had found something that worked. Not punishment, not treatment, a taste of ordinary life.
But there was still no release date in sight. No end point he could focus on. And that was when Ronny Cray made the decision that would eventually force the twins to commit an unthinkable act. Ronny Cray had known Mitchell from prison. There was a relationship there. Ronny liked damaged men, violent men, men who made the rest of the world nervous.
Mitchell in his own strange way idolized the younger Ronny. So Ronnie Cray decided to break him out. Not out of loyalty, not really. This was reputation. The craze wanted to show they could do what the prison service could not. Mitchell was a trophy. Proof that the twins could reach through prison walls and pull out a so-called monster. That was the arrogance of it.
The craze thought controlling London meant they could control Frank Mitchell. They mistook reputation for power. The escape itself was almost embarrassingly simple. On 12th of December 1966, Mitchell was out on the moors with a small work party. He asked the soul guard if he could go and feed the Dartmore ponies. The guard said yes.
Mitchell walked away. No tunnel, no riot, no hostage drama. Britain’s most dangerous prisoner simply walked to a quiet road where a getaway car was waiting. Inside were Cray Associates, Albert Donahghue, Mad Teddy Smith, and Billy Xley. They drove straight to London. It was over five hours before anyone at Dartmore even realized Mitchell was gone.
The escape made national news. It was debated in the House of Commons. Police, Royal Marines, and even an RAF helicopter searched the moors. But they were looking in the wrong place. Mitchell was already in East London, eating the craze food, waiting for Ronnie, and slowly realizing freedom was not what he had been promised.
The plan, if there ever really was one, had been to use Mitchell’s escape as leverage. With Teddy Smith’s help, Mitchell wrote letters to national newspapers. His demand was simple. Give me a release date. Tell me when this ends. But the home secretary would not be blackmailed by a criminal. The gamble failed almost immediately.
Now the craze had a problem with no obvious solution. They could not release Mitchell. If he walked into the street and got recognized, everything would come down on them. They could not hand him back without implicating themselves in the escape. They could not keep him happy because Ronnie and Reggie had no intention of sitting in that flat with him.
and they could not control him because the minders were petrified of him. The craz proved they could get Mitchell out. Now came the harder part, keeping him in. On one occasion, he grabbed a cray minder, a 16 stone xboxer, lifted him 6 in off the ground by his labels and screamed that he wanted to see the twins. If he didn’t, Mitchell said he would kick the door down, march to Valance Road, and tell their mom exactly how her boys were treating him. It was almost comical.
Britain’s most feared escaped convict turning up at the Cray’s mother’s house to grass up her sons. But the joke ended when you remembered he was genuinely capable of doing it. The craze had built part of their image around family, around their mother, around the East End mythology of manners, respect, and violence all tangled together.
To threaten their mother was different. But Mitchell was not an ordinary villain. You could quietly straighten out. So they tried one more distraction. Lisa Prescco, a blonde nightclub hostess from Leeds, was sent to the flat. She was not sent because anyone cared about Mitchell. She was sent because the minders could no longer hold him with promises.
For a while, she distracted him. But then that even became a problem. Mitchell grew infatuated, possessive, emotional over her. The craze had not calmed him down. They had given him one more thing he could not bear to lose. The flat was a prison. Lisa was a complication. Mitchell was a liability. Eventually, the craze reached the conclusion they had probably been avoiding from the start.
This could not go on. They needed a man who could deal with someone as volatile and dangerous as Frank Mitchell. They had a perfect person in mind. Freddy Foreman. Christmas Eve 1966. The flat on Barking Road was quiet for the first time in weeks. Albert Donahghue told Mitchell to get ready. He was being moved to a safe house in the countryside.
Ronnie Cray would be there waiting. There was almost another argument when he realized Lisa would not be coming with him. Donahghue talked him down. He told Mitchell it was safer for her to follow later. If the police stopped them, she could get hurt or nicked. Better for Mitchell to go ahead first.
Lisa could follow half an hour behind. Mitchell accepted it. He pulled on his coat, walked out to the van, and climbed in. What he did not know was that Foreman and Alfie Gerard were already inside and had deadly intentions. For a few seconds, Mitchell believed he was being taken to Ronny Cray. The engine started and he started driving through East London.
Then Foreman and Gerard pulled their pistols out and opened fire. The shots kept coming. Mitchell sank to his knees, his enormous body absorbing round after round. They put more bullets into his chest as he went still. Then came a groan. His head came up. Gerard looked at Foreman. Mitchell wasn’t dead. Foreman quickly pressed a silent pistol to Mitchell’s head and fired the final shot.
Donahghue, who had been sitting up front with the driver, heard the shots and now feared he might be next, he asked the driver to stop and let him out. They did. He walked away in the dark of Christmas Eve. Still half expecting a bullet between his shoulder blades. When he was far enough away, he found a phone box and called Reggie Cray. He used the agreed code.
That dog has won. It meant Frank Mitchell was dead. Foreman later said Mitchell’s body was bound with chicken wire, weighted down and dropped into the English Channel. If that account is truthful, the intention was simple. Mitchell was not just to be killed. He was to disappear. Moments before the gunshots, Mitchell had looked out to the streets of the East End he had grown up in, not knowing it was goodbye.
He had asked to go and visit his mom and dad in Canyon Town. He was denied that longing. The prison system couldn’t break Frank Mitchell. Ranchon couldn’t hold him. Neither could Broadmore or Dartmore. Even the craze couldn’t control him for long. But they didn’t need to. They only needed him to trust them once. And on Christmas Eve 1966, the year England won the World Cup, Frank Mitchell did, and he paid the ultimate price.
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