Beatles manager Brian Epstein was 'murdered by the US mafia', Kray twins claimed in unearthed interview
The manager of the Beatles, Brian Epstein, was murdered on the orders of the American mafia, according to the Kray twins in a newly revealed interview.
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Epstein, 32, was found dead at his Belgravia home in London which was ruled as an accidental overdose on a drug prescribed for his insomnia.
However, a new book by Philip Norman, the band's biographer, suggests that his death may have been a professional hit linked to Epstein's failed deal to distribute merchandise in the US, which left people out of pocket.
Mr Norman began to investigate properly when he learnt of a "revelatory" interview given by Kray in 1985.
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Speaking of Epstein's death, Reggie Kray said: "It’s easy to kill someone and make it look like an overdose."
One of Epstein’s US-based associates also received an anonymous call weeks before the death, telling him: "You’re going to hear soon that Brian Epstein has met with an accident," it is claimed.
Kray gave the interview with Liverpool Echo journalist Peter Trollope, who visited him at Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight, which was meant to centre around the notirious criminal setting up a boxing gym on Merseyside to keep kids off the street and away from drugs.
But knowing that Trollope also covered music, Kray changed the subject and brought up Epstein's death.
He added: "For us, the Mob were always in the background. They knew that if they wanted anything done in England, they could do it through the Krays. But it [Epstein] wasn’t us."
Reggie and Ronnie Kray said they possessed compromising photographs of Epstein with another man, in an era when homosexuality was illegal which they planned to blackmail him with.
However, he died before they could put their plan into force.
Reggie said: "We ruled London but we were looking for ways to expand.
"We’d heard that Epstein was in trouble. Ronnie had this idea that if we could get him to sign the Beatles over to us, that would have been a passport to worldwide fame.
"We were just going to blackmail Epstein over the photographs but then he goes and dies."
He then made the claim Kray that the murder was covered up by an overdose.
Norman added in the book, titled Mr Moonlight: Brian Epstein and the Making of the Beatles: "This ultimate insider in British organised crime seemingly knew for certain that Brian had been murdered, albeit not by his own 'firm' but, he'd hinted, by the American mafia to which the Firm had been fraternally linked."