A name that carried fear
Albert Reading was a name that carried fear across East London. He was a tough East Ender who was jailed as a kid and came up hard, and in his own words that turned him into a ruthless, violent criminal. He became a feared enforcer, notorious for the way he punished people. He admitted using severe violence on his enemies, and he admitted throwing acid at them. Criminals were not the only ones who knew his name. Many in the police allegedly protected him rather than pursued him, which made him one of the most untouchable gangsters of his era.
He was not the only hard man in the family. Albert and his brother Bobby were the notorious Reading brothers. One war with an enforcer for the Krays left Bobby Reading with one eye.
For years Albert was seen as an uncompromising hardman, well versed in the old-school etiquette, the kind of man who would never talk to the police. That image is the heart of his story, because it did not survive him.
Famous late in life
Reading found a new audience at the end of his life. He built up a real following on social media, where film maker Liam Galvin interviewed him at length. In those interviews he talked about fights with Frankie Fraser, Eddie Richardson and Charlie Richardson, and claimed he had done all three on the same day.
One viral video he made before he died changed how a lot of people saw Fraser. Mad Frankie Fraser was highly respected in the underworld, but some true crime fans who never knew him mocked him on the back of that video. Enquirer 2.0 made a mini documentary on Reading's life, and he was an interesting character. Then the revelations started.
The Chequers
One of the most shocking crimes laid at Reading's door is one almost nobody has heard of. In 1989 a gang of around fifteen men, allegedly led by Reading, stormed the Chequers pub in Walthamstow Market. The pub was nearly empty. The first man through the door pulled out a sawn-off shotgun to keep everyone back, and the rest carried out a savage, planned attack. Their target was a young man playing darts with his family and his children. He was beaten nearly to death in front of them.
This was no attack in a back alley. A Flying Squad officer was in the pub and saw the whole thing. With a police witness and a room full of known attackers, you would expect arrests to follow.
Nothing happened. Nobody was charged. According to ex-detective Mick Randall, Reading was "given a squeeze". Just before his expected arrest, Randall says, a senior CID officer met him in a pub and told him the whole process would be a formality. He would hand himself in, go through the motions and be released without charge. That is exactly what happened, and the attack was buried.
Epping Forest
Later that same year, the bodies of Terry Gooderham and Maxine Arnold were found murdered in Epping Forest. The crime was never solved.
Randall says the Chequers attack and the Epping Forest murders are directly linked. He claims that corruption inside the Metropolitan Police, and the protection certain gangsters enjoyed, Reading among them, stopped the case from ever being properly investigated. In his view this was not incompetence but deliberate obstruction, with known killers never even brought in for questioning. Randall still insists the Met blocks any attempt to reopen the case, because reopening it would expose the corruption that let violent men like Reading operate freely.
The informer
Mad Frankie Fraser had accused Reading of being a police informer for years on his web blogs. Then others came forward. Ex-Met detective Dave McElvey said there was merit in Fraser's claims. Michael Gillard, the author behind the Upsetter blog on Substack, named Reading as a long-time informer for a detective turned private eye who was investigating a double murder.
The biggest blow came from Mick Randall, Reading's former police handler. After Reading's death, Randall revealed that Reading had passed information to the police for a long time under the name David Hampshire, while he carried on operating freely in the underworld.
The revelations of him being a police informer certainly don't fit with his old school persona.
Reading's own explanation, as it has been told, was that he did not approve of the new wave of criminals coming out of his area. That is a convenient story, and it paints him as an old-school villain with a code. Randall paints a different picture. According to him, Reading did very well out of it. His enemies were taken off the streets, his own business was left alone, and every time the police came close he walked away clean. Randall has suggested that many in the Met knew what Reading was, and that some officers profited from it.
The worst label of all
In Britain, being called a grass is one of the deepest shames a villain can carry. Grasses hide away and are rarely seen in their old worlds again. In the underworld a single accusation can mean the end of a reputation, or the end of a life. Reading spent his last years telling his story to a camera as an old-school hardman, and that is exactly the reputation the revelations took from him. If you believe Randall, his alleged handler, and Michael Gillard, one of the most feared men in East London was working with the police all along.