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LONDON -- Reggie Kray, the last survivor of a crime family that rose to the top of London's underworld in the 1950s and 1960s, died Sunday of cancer. He was 66.
Kray died in his sleep after more than three decades in prison and 35 days of freedom. He had been sentenced to life in jail for murder in 1969, but was granted compassionate parole on Aug. 26 because of his illness.
With his twin, Ronnie, and older brother Charlie, Reggie Kray was a Cockney legend and icon of "gangster chic" -- profiled in the media and remembered in the streets of their native east London as Robin Hood-style anti-heroes who behaved like gentlemen and loved their dear old mum.
The reality was considerably more brutal. In the 1950s, The Kray twins assembled their gang, known as "The Firm," and built up a network of protection and extortion rackets that they enforced with the threat of violence.
The twins were sentenced to prison for Reggie Kray's 1968 killing of a bungling hitman named Jack "The Hat" McVitie in a north London apartment and Ronnie Kray's shooting of rival gangster George Cornell.
Ronnie Kray died in 1995 in the Broadmoor institute for the criminally insane. Charlie died in April while serving a sentence for drug dealing.
