Eddie Richardson, who died in August 2026 at the age of 90, was widely paired with his brother Charlie as joint leaders of south London's notorious "Torture Gang" during the 1960s, a criminal outfit often compared to the rival Kray twins' east London empire. In reality, the two brothers went their separate ways in terms of criminal activity from the early 1960s onwards and grew increasingly estranged, reaching a point of having no contact at all; when Charlie died in 2012, Eddie attended his funeral but pointedly refused to go to the burial.

Born in Camberwell in 1936, Eddie drifted into crime as a child, gaining his first conviction at 13 for stealing a torch, while Charlie built a legitimate scrap metal business worth £250,000 that doubled as cover for extortion, robbery and prostitution rackets. The brothers used violence and intimidation, including a basement "courtroom" used for torturing those who crossed them, to run protection rackets across London businesses, with Eddie noted as the more physically volatile of the two, once nearly attacking Charlie decades later at a black-tie event out of long-simmering personal hatred.