What is behind mobster mania?

Fraser: Alleged to have killed 40 people

By Richard Blystone

CNN Senior Correspondent

LONDON, England (CNN) -- When they freed Reg Kray on humanitarian grounds, I had a walk and a talk with his old friend and associate, the retired hit man Frank Fraser.

Nobody in, or out, of jail is quite so qualified as "Mad Frankie" to explain why people were treating Reggie like the Princess Diana of the underworld.

To walk a London street with Frank is like walking with a star of, say, some TV show you never knew existed.

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Listen as "Mad Frankie" Fraser, retired hit man, talks about: His nickname: WAV AIFF Crime: WAV AIFF His criminal record: WAV AIFF Reggie Kray: WAV AIFF His regrets: WAV AIFF

Heads turn, people say, "Mornin' Frank," "Awright?" "Good on yer, Frankie."

But doesn't it bother him to be labeled "Mad Frankie?"

"Well," he says, "I've been certified insane in prison three times and once in the army during the war. So I can't very well expect them to call me 'sane Frankie,' can I."

He says it with a straight face, which may be the straightest thing about Mad Frankie Fraser.

This spry, 77-year-old had visited Reggie, the people's villain, only a couple of days before. And they'd talked of the 1960s, when Reggie and his twin brother Ronnie ran a virtual monopoly on professional wrongdoing in London's East End.

"Reggie is one lovely man," declares Frankie with the air of one who fears no contradiction. "If you took 'im 'ome to your mother, your wife or anything, they'd say what a gentleman 'e was."

Though a comparative bantamweight among enforcers, in his heyday Frankie was admired for his knife and pistol work.

He once earned the sobriquet "The Dentist" for extracting a victim's teeth with rusty pliers. He'd have to reach way up to do that to most people.

"I was renowned for my violence, of course," he says, deadpan. "When we had to do a bit of strongarm, things like that -- the police by the way say I've killed 40 people. If they'd said 39 or 41 I'd have really been upset. I hate odd numbers. So I ain't arguing."

After the even number of 42 years in prisons around Britain, Frankie Fraser has become his own Damon Runyan, re-mixing the brutality of the past and serving it up as exotic colour.

When he last left prison 10 years ago, he linked up with Marilyn Wisbey, daughter of a noted bank robber. Together they've come up with a less stressful way of making crime pay.

For $45 they'll take you on their four-hour "Gangland Tour of London," featuring the Blind Beggar Pub and other murder landmarks.

Frankie travels the country giving speeches -- he's now got three books to his name, the latest, "Mad Frankie's Diary," just out.

But it'll be another seven years before he can say he's spent half his life out of jail.

Forty years have changed the old East End. The old houses, old shops, old factories have given way to decay or gentrification. The Chinese have left Limehouse, the Jews have moved northwards, the Irish and the English aborigines out to the east.

The new typical East Enders are ethnic Bangladeshis.

Nowadays the crime is more widespread and more frightening to ordinary people, many of whom think nobody cares about them.

So it's easy to remember the brutal Kray mob as modern Robin Hoods.

"I am nostalgic about them days," Frankie says, "because there was no muggin's or women bein' knocked about, children tampered with. And the '60s were a wonderful period. Wonderful. Remember, I knew The Beatles, met Frank Sinatra.

"I have three regrets in life: One, I wisht I 'adnta been caught. Two, I wisht I'da robbed a bigger bank. And three, I wisht I'da been on the Great Train Robbery. And when you go down that road, if you're a failure, which obviously I was in that sense, in 42 years, you have to put up with it, that's all part of the game and I ain't grumbling about it at all."

Then he slips back into his act: "There's always been crime in Britain and always will be. There's always been gangsters, I'm 'appy to say."