Ronnie Knight

Ronald J. Knight (born 1934 in Hoxton, London) is better known as Ronnie Knight, a British criminal, conman and businessman in the construction industry.

Knight handled several million pounds stolen from a Security Express robbery in Shoreditch, East End of London, in 1983. After spending over a decade on the run in the Costa Del Sol, Knight gave himself up in May 1994. In January 1995 he was sentenced to seven years in jail, but was released on parole in November 1998.

In 1980, Knight was acquitted at the Old Bailey of killing club-owner Alfredo Zomparelli. Yet, in his 1998 autobiography "Memories and Confessions", 18 years later, he boasts of how he had hired hitman, Nicki Gerrard, to kill him. Knight’s published confession caused outrage at the time, as he could not be tried again under Britain’s "double jeopardy" rule. However, as of the change in the law in 2003, he might be.

Zomparelli was shot dead by two men in the Golden Goose amusement arcade in Soho in 1974, following a four-year prison stretch for the manslaughter of Knight’s 21-year old brother, David. Knight had made no secret of his hatred of Zomparelli after he killed David in a gang fight in 1970, but had several alibis for the night of the Italian’s murder.

He was good friends with boxing legend Lenny McLean before his death in 1998, and was married to actress Barbara Windsor in the years between 1964 and 1985.