Chopper Unchopped (11 page)

A great sadness to me is that I have never had any children of my own, although, over the years, I could have had a school yard full. I have lived with the harsh rule that a professional criminal should never have children, as children can be weapons that one day can be used against you. An enemy with a wife and children ceases to be an enemy when the rules of true war are explained to him.

I have never, nor would I ever harm a child. The thought is repugnant. However, a father in a wheelchair cannot properly provide for children and as for a wife, ‘It is too high up to eat grass’ and she will soon leave him.

These rules, once explained, tend to dampen the passions for battle in the hearts of enemies. There are some animals in the criminal world who would sell their wife on the streets to buy bullets and teach their kids to steal so dad can drink the money. Ridding a family of such a man is, to my mind, an act of charity.

Let me clarify the term ‘street fighting’. I win because I am treacherous. If people want fair play, let them join a cricket club. A street fight is a no holds barred, anything goes battle between two men or ten men. Anything can be used, from a slap on the face with a wet tea towel to a meat axe through the brain. Mainly fists, feet, knees, elbows and head butts are used, if a heavy object is not close handy.

Personally, I would rather shoot someone than go through the messy business of fighting them. But in jail it is anything from bare fists to razor blades, butcher’s knives to iron bars. To stand on top of the heap for 20 years simply means you are less frightened of death than the other fellow.

I don’t fight to win, I fight to kill, so even if I don’t kill I win. No crim could survive the baggings I’ve got. The only reason that I am still around is that I can fight like a death adder. But I know my limitations, I know that after 20 years I am not as strong or as big as I once was.

My old injuries play up. I suffer from short-term memory loss, a broken bone in my right hand which mended by itself gives me hell in the cold weather, my left shoulder aches in winter from the old ice pick wound to the back of the neck and a bullet in the lower shoulder. I know that it is time to retire before someone retires me permanently.

Gambling and prostitution have always been the stock standard main players in the criminal world, but drugs have taken over the whole criminal culture. Prostitution is now legal in a manner of speaking, so drug money can be invested in parlours, brothels and escort agencies. Gambling is now an accepted illegal cover for criminals trying to conceal their true source of wealth. For example, ‘I am not a drug dealer, I run a gambling club’. The fine for running an illegal gambling club is hardly worth mentioning.

It seems that every aspect of crime is geared around drugs, violence over drugs, females entering prostitution to pay for drugs, robberies committed to pay for drugs. In fact, I can’t think of any area of crime that is not related to drugs in some way. Even standover men and torturers now stand over people connected with the drug world.

To call what’s going on a drug problem is like calling AIDS a health problem or nuclear war an environmental problem. The drug culture has totally destroyed the criminal world and in my view will, in time, destroy normal society. Using coke, crack, smack, speed and smoking dope is now viewed by a large section of normal society as acceptable. In the case of the dreaded heroin, anti-drug preachers are seen as highly boring yawns.

In a matter of ten years children have turned into a flock of diehard environmentally aware and concerned young people, eager to fight the good fight for clean air and against toxic waste. Meanwhile, a great many of these same environmentally aware and concerned young people partake of assorted drugs, ignoring their own personal toxic intake.

Why was the education program in relation to environmental issues put in front of anti-drugs education? The drug culture can only die in the class room. Australia was once a nation of racists until the issue was fought in the classrooms, just as people have become rock solid environmentalists after the issue was fought in the schools.

However, the war against drugs has not been fought in the schools. The government fires a few shots now and again, but no real war has ever truly been mounted. Maybe it is easier to fight non-profit issues, whereas drugs is a high profit issue … too much profit for too many people, I suspect. And in the end no-one fights profit. That’s my opinion.

On November 24 1986, Mark Brandon Read was released from Bendigo Prison after serving about nine years for attempting to kidnap Judge Martin from the County Court. During his time inside he was involved in a jail war which nearly cost him his life. In the decade in jail he had watched from the inside as certain underworld figures amassed fortunes. They were the sacred cows of the crime world, and had never been milked. The drug, gambling and vice industries were pumping out cash at an unprecedented rate, and Read wanted a piece of it. The violence inside had been for fun; now, on the outside, he could do it for profit.

Not content just to be known as a hard crim, he wanted to be the biggest standover man in Australia. He flew to Tasmania with a plan, a plan to declare war on the major criminal crews of Melbourne. He had a place in Collingwood, and made flying sorties to Melbourne from Tasmania to shoot, bash and extort anyone he felt like standing over. He concentrated on drug dealers in the western suburbs, card games, gambling houses in Lygon Street, massage parlours and some respectable nightclubs. A favourite trick was to walk into a crowded disco with a stick of gelignite in his mouth and threaten to light it. This would tend to make people concentrate on the issues at hand, such as how much cash was to change hands. ‘It's no use keeping in it your pocket where they can't see it,' Read once remarked of his penchant for gelignite.

The criminals of Melbourne were not going to allow one loose cannon to destroy empires that had taken decades to build. The word was soon out that Chopper was a walking dead man. Several contracts were taken out on him, including one for $50,000. ‘The man who killed me would never have had to pay for a beer for the rest of his life, he would have been a hero,' Read noted later. One night in Collingwood four shots were fired at him. All missed — narrowly.

While this was going on he had contacted police through a prison officer and offered his services to a team of armed robbery squad detectives, headed by Rod Porter. Police hoped that Read could be turned to become a vital informer on the underworld heavyweights. He was given the police code name of Melville and detectives hoped he would provide information which would result in several major crimes being solved, particularly a $55,000 armed robbery in Glen Waverley where two guards were shot with machine guns.

Police received information of yet another contract on Read's life and advised him that things were too hot for him in Melbourne, and that he should return to Tasmania for a while. But Read ignored the advice. It would mean missing out on all the ‘fun'.

On June 11 1987, at the Fawkner Club Hotel in South Yarra, Read told police that while he was prepared to continue gathering information he wanted some extra ‘insurance'. Rod Porter thought he wanted a gun, but Read said he just wanted a bullet proof vest. That night in a park near the St Kilda Road police station, Read was fitted with a bullet proof vest provided by the detectives.

Several hours later, around 6.30am, Read shot and killed a drug dealer, Siam Ozerkam, also known as Sammy the Turk, outside the Bojangles nightclub in St Kilda. Next day he lightheartedly told Porter that he committed the killing — but the armed robbery detectives thought his confession was a black joke. They felt he was testing them to see if they would relay the ‘admission' to the homicide squad. In fact, they did tell homicide detectives in passing but at that point, the investigators had another suspect in mind.

Read was later charged with the murder. Police alleged that while wearing the bullet proof vest he shot and robbed Ozerkam. Read told the court that he was set up to be killed in the car park of Bojangles and killed Ozerkam in self-defence. He was acquitted but sentenced to five years jail for some of the many other offences he had committed during his crime rampage. He was charged and convicted for burning down the house of drug dealer, Nick Apostolidis, shooting Chris Liapis and firing shots into Apostolidis' mother's house.

He was out of jail for only seven months.

When he went back inside many heavyweight criminals felt safe again
…
at least, for the time being.

IT was a busy few months when I got out, there's no doubt about that, but you know what they say about busy hands. I made a bit of money when I was out but I had a few expenses too. It wasn't that cheap flying in and out from Tassie, I can tell you.

I have my version of events with silly Sam the Turk. The police have theirs. Obviously the jury believed me, God bless them. I have always had the greatest faith in the British Justice System and the common sense of the average person. But, I digress.

I went that night to Bojangles for a quiet drink, wearing a police bullet proof vest and carrying a handgun down the front of my strides and a sawn-off .410 shotgun down the back. Anyone who has been to Bojangles will know that, if anything, I was a bit light-on for fire power, when you consider the class of clientele that got there in the early hours of the morning.

There is no doubt that the Turk was set up to lure me outside, where I was going to be the victim of some serious mischief. This Turk tried to con me to go outside. He said he was going to sell me some guns.

He said ‘come outside we talk, ssh ssh, guns guns, business business'.

They've told this Turk to get Chopper out into the car park. The trouble is that Bojangles has two car parks. This knucklehead took me to the wrong car park. The rest of the gang were waiting for me in the front car park.

This Turk thought, no-one's going to kill someone at the front car park so they must mean the side car park. They were waiting out the front but we whizzed out to the side. A bad move. A fatal move, as it turned out, for Sammy.

He's turned around and looked at me and said, ‘They'll be here in a minute'.

I thought, ‘you shifty bastard'.

He said ‘You got gun, you got gun' and I said, ‘yeah, I've got a gun' and he asked where was it. I showed it to him. It was stuffed down the front of my pants. When he saw it he grabbed it and put it to my head. He wanted to blow my head right off. He thinks I'm a dickhead. The gun was an automatic. No-one just picks up an automatic and fires it. You have to cock it.

He's got the gun at my head going click, click. The cheeky bastard had my gun out at my head going click, click, click.

But I carry two guns. I had the shotty down the back. I had a bullet proof vest on, a sawn off .410 shotgun down the back and the .32 at the front.

So I've pulled the shotty out and gone bang and it's bye bye Turk.

One hundred per cent genuine self-defence.

It had been 6.30 in the morning when Sammy had come up to me. He was part of a team with Frank Valastro and Graeme Jensen, both enemies of mine who were later to die at the hands of the police. They were with Shane Goodfellow that morning at Bojangles.

They claimed they wanted to talk to me to persuade me to go back to Tasmania. In the carpark at bloody Bojangles at 6.30 in the morning. Just to have a quiet word with me, you understand.

That lot wanted me dead and Sammy was the dummy they picked to set me up. But it all went wrong. The Turk made a stupid mistake by grabbing my gun … and I blew his brains out through his left eye ball.

I had nothing against him personally, but he made his move and lost. In the chess game of life and death, you only get one move. His mates left him and ran. He was a stooge, used to get me outside. And when he did, they left him. It was a top stupid set-up, and if the crew outside had had the courage of their convictions — and any real guts — I'd be dead now.

I was found not guilty on the grounds of self-defence. I can't be tried twice for the same offence. Was it murder? No. It was clear cut self-defence. However, from the moment he approached me I knew it was a set-up. As we walked outside I was ready. It was so childish and stupid. I marvelled at the thinking that went into such a childish and slap-happy plot. They were trying to kill a tiger snake with a feather duster.

Morally, maybe, it was murder. I could have shot him in both knee caps and finished a game of cards before the would-be murder crew got their act together. But he had my own gun at my head. The fact that this poor simple mental retard couldn't make it work is beside the point. He tried to kill me — a stupidly inept attempt, but there can be no second chances. No one's ever given me a second chance.

Yes, poor Sammy was just a silly kid, a young up and comer. The weak mice who stooged him into it were the men who really murdered him. At the trial and in the newspapers it was alleged I was a police informer. Well, I deny that. I am not a police informer. There is no way known that I would be able to live in jail with some of the most dangerous men in Australia if any of them believed I was. I know police have publicly branded me an informer, but in my view that is really nothing but an attempt to commit murder by proxy. The fact is, no-one has ever done a day's jail because of me.

I am not soliciting for donations, running for public office, nor am I the director of a multinational corporation. I am not the host of a TV game show relying on popularity for ratings. Keeping those facts in mind, how is calling me names like ‘informer' going to hurt me. I have never based my life on popularity and if name-calling and public condemnation is a strategic tactic employed to destroy me, then those who dreamt it up will have to think again.

But, anyway, that is all in the past now. It is doubtful that I will be invited to any more drinking sessions at the Fawkner Club. I am alive and well and acquitted of murder. The police involved have moved on to other duties out of harm's way — and far away from Chopper Read. As long as I have no bullets coming at me through the taxi window as I go to the airport I'm quite happy to leave this old bone well and truly buried. I will probably never really know just what the hell I was really walking into that dark morning at Bojangles. Or who really pulled the strings that jerked the puppets.