This is your friend Reg Kray speaking. Open your eyes, open your eyes, don’t hesitate, just open your eyes and we can talk. I will shake your hand and we will talk.
THE IDEA OF one of the Kray twins whispering the words above in your ear might fill you with terror but the intentions in this case do not appear to have been sinister.
When Reggie Kray read a newspaper article in 1995 about a 34-year-old Irishman who had been beaten up and left in a coma in Kent he decided to see if he could help wake him up.
He recorded a cassette tape of him encouraging Greg Smith to open his eyes, telling him his friend Reggie Kray would be waiting by his bedside to chat to him.
Beaten up
This bizarre story was featured on today’s RTÉ Liveline after Smith’s brother Vincent got in touch about the tape which he had kept for years, along with a note from the gangland killer.
Greg had been beaten up outside a bar in Dover by two local brothers. His injuries were so severe that he was left in a coma and Vincent travelled from Ireland to be by his bedside.
When local media heard of his story they ran a number of newspaper articles about the attack on the Irishman and about how his brother was playing music to him on a walkman.
‘A nice gesture’
Vincent said he assumes Reggie Kray, then in his early 60s, read one of these articles as neither he nor his brother knew the Kray twins personally.
Though he said he thought the tape was “a nice gesture” it came as a bit of a shock.
“I nearly went into a coma listening to the tape myself,” the man told Joe Duffy earlier today.
His brother sadly passed away and his death was just one of the tragedies in Vincent’s life as he revealed four members of his family took their own lives and his mother also died of cancer.
The tape is one of the rare recordings that exists of either of the Kray brothers and makes for eerie listening. Check out the full interview with Vincent below, with soundbites from the tape Reggie sent to his brother:
RTÉ Radio 1 / SoundCloud
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