One of Britain's most notorious gangsters was buried without his brain following his death in March 1995 while still in prison.
Ronnie Kray and his brother Reggie are of course two of the most notorious criminals in British history after a two-decade run of armed robberies, arson, protection rackets, assaults and murders.
Eventually arrested on 8 May 1968 alongside 15 other members of The Firm - the infamous protection racket mob they'd set up in London - they were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Advert
Today (7 January) marks the anniversary of an earlier arrest in 1965 on a 'menacing charge'.
Reggie died in 2000 of bladder cancer, but it's his brother Ronnie's death five years prior that perhaps has the most intrigue given his brain was mysteriously removed before burial.
It meant that the notorious gangster could not be buried with the organ because it went 'missing' for 11 months.
Advert
Why the pathologist removed the brain despite decreeing the death was due to a heart attack was a strange, and it was looked into by the twins' solicitor Stephen Gold.
The issue was such that former MP Harry Cohen even went as far as tabling two questions to the Home Office as to why Ronnie's brain wasn't buried with his body.
Mr. Gold, however, eventually got to the bottom of it, as he later revealed in his book Breaking Law and on his website.
The brain had been sent from Wexham Park Hospital to a neuropathologist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and then sent back to Wexham Park Hospital.
Advert
Mr Gold wrote: "There does not appear to have been any good reason for removing the brain if not for research purposes and for that there was no consultation with relatives.
"And another matter. Although the pathologist maintains that the brain was sent to the John Radcliffe, the NHS Trust responsible for that hospital say to me that 'the Trust did not receive the brain at any point'."
Gold went to add that the Trust 'maintains that it received only brain samples including blocks and histological slides but not the whole organ and that it received a referral from Wexham Park to provide a post-mortem neuropathological opinion on Ron in March 1996 which was after the brain had been returned'.
Mr Gold also revealed that he had made several attempts to learn more about the testing on Ronnie's brain samples but he was denied by the Information Commissioner.
Advert
Ultimately, Ronnie's brain was buried with his body several months later.
Mr Gold added: "I have established that the brain was released to the funeral directors E English & Son by Wexham Park Hospital at which the pathologist (now retired) was based 11 months after it had been removed.
"It was in a casket which was then buried in Ron's grave."
Featured Image Credit: AlamyTopics: True Crime, crime