Chopper Unchopped (119 page)

Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read is Australia’s most famous standover man and one of its most prolific authors. He has written eleven volumes of memoirs and a crime fiction bestseller. Now, from inside a maximum security jail where he is serving an indefinite sentence, comes his sixth book.

He returns to the inner-city backstreets that were his stomping ground for twenty-five years. Only a man who lived where the law means nothing and problems are solved with a gun, knife or iron bar could take the reader into a criminal sub-culture of violence, death and betrayal. Most can only imagine what it would be like. Read doesn’t imagine it. He was there.

MARK Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read is serving an indefinite sentence in Risdon Prison, Tasmania, for allegedly shooting a former friend, Sidney Collins, in the chest while driving near Launceston.

The notorious standover man and gunman was originally charged with attempted murder, but the charge was amended to assault occasioning grievous bodily harm.

After the first jury failed to reach a decision, the second was split for three days, finally returning a majority verdict of guilty. He was sentenced to six years jail, but also declared a ‘Dangerous Criminal’ under section 392 of the Tasmanian Criminal Code, which meant he was not given a release date and could be kept in jail for the term of his natural life.

Read has spent more than 25 years preying on Australia’s underworld. He became the criminal that other criminals feared, a toecutter who hunted wealthy drug dealers and demanded protection money from them at the point of a gun.

In prison he led the feared ‘overcoat gang’, a group of violent inmates who controlled the maximum security divisions of Victoria’s biggest jail, Pentridge. He was stabbed, shot and bashed but continued his own one-man war. Read had his ears cut off by another prisoner as an act of defiance – proving that he was impervious to pain and that he could get out of the top-security H-Division.

Outside prison, he attempted to abduct a judge at gunpoint in a bizarre and futile plot to free a gang member who later betrayed him. He shot dead a drug dealer at point blank range outside a Melbourne nightclub while wearing a police issue bullet proof vest. It was a line ball who was more amazed when a jury acquitted him of murder on grounds of self defence – Read or the prosecution.

But while Read’s exploits with a gun and blowtorch have been the topic of many bar room conversations in police, legal and underworld circles, it his literary activities that have amazed many. The teenage delinquent who became a standover man, killer and long-term prisoner has now become one of Australia’s most successful authors.

He has written four best-selling books based on his intimate knowledge of the underworld. His ‘hands-on’ stories tell the cold-blooded story of Australia’s criminal class from the inside. He does not apologise for the crimes he has committed and confesses to many that he has never been charged with.

The impact and popularity of the books, written by a man who left school in year eight and has never been gainfully employed, has been staggering. Six figure sales put Read among Australia’s most successful authors of all time. He has been inundated with hundreds of fan letters. He has been visited in prison by women he has never met making outrageous propositions, by autograph hunters and by devout Christians who want to save his soul. He now has to have his visitors vetted.

His books have inspired a major movie project and he has been the subject of television, newspaper and magazine features in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, England and America.

One of the world’s most successful authors, Canadian William Gibson, used Read as the basis for one of his characters, standover man Keith Blackwell, in his latest best seller,
Idoru.
‘Anything I know about the toecutting business, I owe to the criminal memoirs of Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read (Chopper from the Inside, Sly Ink, Australia, 1991). Mr Read is a great deal scarier than Blackwell, and has even fewer ears,’ Gibson wrote in the foreword to
Idoru.

But while Read’s worldwide reputation continued to grow prison authorities became uncomfortable with their notorious inmate. Politicians and some lawyers began to complain that Read was becoming rich on profits indirectly derived from his life of crime. The truth was that the money was used to pay lawyers who would have otherwise been paid by the taxpayer through legal aid.

Prison authorities tried to stop him writing. One manuscript had to be smuggled from jail before it could be published. Eventually, he was given permission to continue writing, but only on the basis that any further works were ‘fiction’. Read obliged with a runaway best seller,
Pulp Faction,
which combined his intimate knowledge of the crime world and his natural ability as a story teller with his vivid imagination.

Read has been a model prisoner. He has married a Hobart woman, Mary Ann Read, and together they are buying a house.

He has been moved from maximum to medium security and is working to have his classification as a ‘Dangerous Criminal’ lifted so that he would be eligible for immediate parole. Not for the first time Read has said that he will turn his back on crime if and when he is released.

While inside he has undertaken a series of activities to show he is ready for release. He has completed a chainsaw course, and has the certificate to prove it, although some might wonder what use he might make of such a skill. He is a member of the prison fire brigade, although he is not allowed out of the prison to fight fires. This could prove that he has turned over a new leaf, given that his criminal record shows a conviction for burning down the house of a Melbourne drug dealer.

Read has been appointed prison barber. The thought of an earless man covered in tattoos, wearing a set of cobalt blue false teeth and brandishing a pair of scissors is a frightening one. He is no Edward Beale. Blow waves are not in his repertoire.

He is allowed out of jail under strict supervision to collect animals killed by cars on roads near the prison. They are collected to be fed to injured eagles as part of a wildlife program at Risdon. The spectacle of an earless prisoner carrying a dead wallaby is probably not one the Tasmanian Tourist Bureau is keen to promote.

Read has also taken up painting, and he has written a film script – in one weekend. But what he does best is write books.

This second work of fiction takes Read back to his roots, to the back streets of Melbourne where the underworld flourishes, where violence and crime are part of life. A bleak place that produced a cold-blooded gunman with no regrets who’s lived to tell the tale. So far.

I’VE known a hundred good street fighters and a thousand not so good ones. But in a lifetime I’ve met only a handful of freak street fighters, the best of the best. They all died young. The freaks always do. This is the story of one of them
…

HIS name was Billy, but they called him ‘Blueberry’ for short. There was no choice, really. His real name was William Hill, so it just came naturally that he’d get ‘Blueberry’ while he was still a little kid.

Not that Billy stayed little for long. He grew fast, and by the time he was 16 he stood an even six feet tall. He was a thin kid with an abnormally thick ‘bull’ neck. He had long skinny arms with giant hands hanging on the ends of them. They looked as big as dinner plates.

Billy seemed to be born with the makings of a professional boxer’s face, and soon picked up the optional extras — the classic pug nose and the flattened top lip. His ears were slightly cauliflowered and both eyebrows were thickened and scarred. He had a rich olive complexion but his hair was light brown, almost blond, and curly. The vivid green eyes stared out into nothing. Those eyes didn’t smile, even when he did. When he grinned, the missing top tooth gave him a look that was a sort of a cross between a naughty schoolboy and a grey nurse shark.

Billy didn’t so much walk as swagger. He had an arrogant air mixed with a streak of dark violence that warned anyone near him the full-of-himself look was backed up with a heap of dash. The big hands were covered in a patchwork quilt of scars. And he hadn’t got them chopping up rump steak.

They used to say around Collingwood, ‘If Blueberry Hill isn’t a nut case he’ll do till one comes along.’ The fact was, Blueberry was not a nut case. He was just tough, a freak street-fighter. That’s why, at 15, he was arrested for killing a 27-year-old man in a fist fight.

PETER Stavros was a black belt fourth dan karate expert with a criminal record as long as your arm. Fourteen convictions for assaulting police and one conviction for rape. He never did a day’s jail for any of his assaults on police.

Times had changed. Only a few years earlier anyone who raised his hands against a copper would get a flogging for his trouble and jail time to boot. Then, when he got to the Big House he would have to walk the ‘liquorice mile’ — getting whacked by a line of prison officers with truncheons. But for Stavros it was fines, fines, probation and more bloody probation. And, for some unknown reason, he served a lousy 16 months of a four-year sentence for rape.

He’d been out of jail and working as a bouncer at the London Tavern Hotel in Lennox Street, Richmond, for about nine weeks when he hit a snag. One night he told a big 15-year-old kid he couldn’t come in. The skinny kid with the big neck just stood there, looking at him with a gap-toothed smile. Stavros threw a punch at the kid to back up his words. He wasn’t in the mood for arguing.

The Coroner’s report showed that Peter Stavros was dead from blows to the head before he hit the ground. The self-defence plea was accepted and a Supreme Court jury found Billy Hill not guilty.

Nine months later the death of Peter Stavros and the publicity it generated took a little-known teenage Richmond street-fighter from being a nothing to being something. The Press went mad.

‘Billy “Blueberry” Hill Not Guilty!’… ‘Fifteen-year-old Kills Karate Expert’ … ‘Greek Rapist Dies At Hands Of Schoolboy.’ And ‘Princess Di’s Amazing Broccoli Diet’. Some things never change.

For the public, it was another case of 15 minutes of fame. Like the kid who took the gun from the Melbourne docks after Freddie ‘The Frog’ Harrison had his head removed from his neck per medium of a shotgun blast, it was just a jolly good read for a little while. But to the underworld, it was a lot more.

The public might not have remembered Billy Hill’s name, although no-one who’d seen his smile would forget it. But to every drunk, pimp, slut, and would-be gangster he was a deadset instant legend.

Every rung up or down the ladder in the underbelly of any city in Australia was always stained in blood. Stavros was considered a topline fighter in every way. He was a national kick boxing champion, light heavyweight division, and one of the most feared standup street fighters ever to come out of Brunswick. He was backed up by a 20-man mob of nutters from Albert Street, Brunswick, and their blood battles with the Coburg boys in Bell Street were famous.

Stavros was so well-known that the fact he had been killed by a 15-year-old kid with a strange nickname created a sensation. How could the Press avoid paying special attention to such a kid?

Of course, anybody from the back streets of Tigerland already knew that young Blueberry Hill was already a rising star in the street fighting caper. Born and bred in Lennox Street, Richmond, he’d been punching his way up the ladder from the age of 14, when he opened his innings by biting the nose off Reggie McKee outside the Royal Hotel in Punt Road.

Reggie may not have had a nose any more, but he still had mates. Two weeks after McKee lost his sense of smell it was payback time. The 22-year-old streetfighter from Fitzroy with the nasal problem had half a dozen boys, all armed with iron bars, to back him up. Billy spent 14 weeks in the Epworth Hospital in Erin Street. Then he discharged himself, walked into the Lord Newry Hotel in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, pulled Reggie McKee’s right eye out, then set about the bar with a broken Irish Whiskey bottle. They reckon the blood was so thick on the floor they had to rip the carpet up and burn it.

Billy was a young lone wolf but since the Stavros unpleasantness he had taken to walking about Richmond with his own crew. Two teenage criminals, Leigh Kinniburgh, nicknamed ‘The Face’, and Bobby Michieletto.

At 16, Billy Hill looked like a 20-year-old tent fighter who’d learned to fight in jail, and his two mates didn’t look much better. But they could have been in nappies and be sucking on dummies and no bouncer would have blocked their way into any pub or nightclub after Stavros bit the dust. Everyone knew it was healthier to stay on the good side of the boy with the grey nurse smile.

Bobby Michieletto had tried to buy a hand gun from a crew of nutters who drank in the Morning Star Hotel in Hoddle Street, Collingwood. Being young and foolish, he had paid $700 in advance, then got lashed on the deal. It was this small matter of business and honor that captured the attention of Blueberry and his two companions.

As they drank in the Citizens Park Hotel in Church Street, Billy said: ‘You’re a bloody mental case, Bobby — $700 up front and you get lashed. Any mug could see that lot coming.’

Bobby Mick, as his friends called him, was a fast thinking but slow talking kid, built like a small bull. At 16, he could bench press 280 pounds, in sets of a dozen, all day long. And he had a punch like a sledge hammer. His only trouble was, he trusted people.

Leigh Kinniburgh, on the other hand, trusted no-one and was slow thinking and fast talking. He wasn’t physically strong at all but tossed punches at a hundred miles per hour and used his face as a battering ram. He was totally fearless in a fight and quite psychopathic when it came to inflicting or taking injury. But, as good and as game as both kids were, they knew they were so far behind Blueberry they couldn’t hear the band playing. Hence their total loyalty and devotion.

It was up to Billy what action was to be taken, and they waited for his decision on the matter. No correspondence would be entered into.

Billy was making the most of his chance to bag Bobby Mick. ‘What the bloody hell made you want to do business with them rat bags from Hoddle Street? Bloody Collingwood. They are all nut cases over there,’ he sneered.

Bobby Mick looked a bit shamefaced. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

‘Sorry indeed,’ said Leigh Kinniburgh. ‘Ya stupid dago.’

‘Shut up, Face,’ said Billy. ‘Insulting people won’t get things even.’

The Face returned to his beer in silence.

‘Yeah, well,’ said Billy. ‘I don’t like going out of Richmond for any reason, but needs must be met and when the Devil calls and all that sort of shit. Ha ha.’

‘So what are we doing?’ asked Bobby Mick.

Billy looked down at his little mate as if he was a pup that had just pissed on the carpet.

‘We are going to bloody Hoddle Street. That’s what we are doing,’ he said slowly, with exaggerated patience.

‘Collingwood,’ said The Face, breaking his silence. ‘We’ll need a fucking army. Jesus Christ. Collingwood.’

He shook his head. ‘Hoddle Street. That’s seen more bodies than the Western Front.’

‘Well,’ snapped Billy, dropping the patient routine. ‘We either go to the Morning Star Hotel, or we cop it sweet. Whether it’s $700 or 70 cents, they lashed Bobby, and that means they lashed me. And no one lashes me.

‘Who are these turds anyhow?’

‘Skinny Kerr and his crew. Peter Thorpe, Kevin Toy and Rockin Ronny,’ said Bobby.

‘Rockin Ronny,’ Leigh Kinniburgh yelped. ‘Rockin Ronny the Nazi. Shit, he’s got a crew of at least 60 backing him.’

Bobby continued, ‘Ray Bennett, Terry Taylor, Steve Finney, Ronnie Cox and Fatty Kane.’

Blueberry Hill looked at his mate with a look of comic horror.

‘Is that all?’ he asked.

‘Yeah,’ said Bobby Mick.

Nine men in all, thought Billy.

‘How we going to handle that?’ asked Leigh.

‘I think,’ said Billy, ‘it’s safe to say we’ll be relying heavily on the element of surprise. Ha ha.’

‘How do ya mean?’ asked Leigh.

‘Who owes you the money?’ Billy asked Bobby Mick.

‘Skinny Kerr,’ said Bobby.

Billy had a think. ‘He lives in Cambridge Street near the Collingwood State School,’ he said after a while. ‘So let’s not bother with the pub, let’s just go and see him at his joint.’

Leigh smiled. He was relieved. ‘Can I wear a mask?’ he asked. ‘I think we’d all better,’ Billy said.

They didn’t know that what was to take place would haunt them all.

SKINNY Kerr lived with his mother in a little single-fronted, two bedroom, brick workman’s cottage, built in the last century. Cambridge Street was an old bit of Collingwood, and at night it was a very dark part of town.

When Mrs Kerr answered her front door at 9.30 at night the fist that hit her on the chin put her to sleep for a full three weeks. It wasn’t a full coma but near enough to it.

Skinny was watching TV with a pie in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other. He heard his mother hit the floor and turned to look down the dark hallway as three masked men came down it.

Skinny was as hard as nails, a tough hood in his late 20s. He smashed his beer bottle over his own skull as he rose to his feet screaming with rage. He swung a savage blow into the face of Bobby Mick as Billy Hill rained blows down on him. Skinny went down. Leigh Kinniburgh put the slipper in and the fun started. Bobby Mick held his bleeding face in pain and rage and helped the other two as they kicked and kicked and kicked the unconscious body. After about three minutes Billy was getting tired and pulled up. Skinny didn’t move. He couldn’t. He was quite dead.

‘Search him and go through the house,’ Billy ordered.

Skinny was soaking wet from neck to knee in his own blood and the $1200 he had in his pockets was also red and wet. The boots Leigh ‘The Face’ had been wearing had dug into Skinny’s chest and into his heart and lungs. They had literally kicked holes in him. Billy ransacked his mother’s bedroom and found cash to the tune of $2200 and jewellery.

Bobby located a bag full of guns in Skinny’s room. Two sawn-off double barrel shotguns and cartridges, and six hand guns with boxes of ammo. Leigh removed the rings and personal jewellery from the sleeping body of Mrs Kerr and the three walked out.

They took their masks off and walked through the night back to Elizabeth Street, Richmond, to Bobby Mick’s place. His Italian mother went crazy when she saw the damage to his face and she rushed him to the Epworth Hospital, to the Accident and Emergency Unit. Billy took all the loot and gave Leigh $200 and sent him home. ‘Meet me at the corner of Church and Victoria tomorrow,’ he said. ‘We’ll whack this lot up then.’

‘But I want to check it all out,’ said Leigh.

‘That $200 comes out of your whack,’ said Billy.

Leigh wasn’t pleased, but he wouldn’t question Blueberry Hill, let alone defy him.

BILLY Hill wasn’t too interested in firearms, but he wanted to keep them out of the hands of his two friends. Billy was a fist fighter, pure and simple. But he knew Bobby Mick and Leigh Kinniburgh both wanted to step up the criminal ladder into the deadly world of the gunnie.

They were both a bit mad, and if they got armed up to the eyeballs they would grow away from him and either run headlong to a small box in the graveyard, or a slightly larger one in Pentridge. Billy decided to hide the guns. They could be of great use when needed, but carting loaded guns on you all the time was a bit out of the league of a 16-year-old, no matter how tough he was. Anyway, Billy didn’t like them, and didn’t trust people who carried them, so he hid them away. He counted out the money. There was $3200. He hid the jewellery; he knew it could be traced. Then he kissed his Aunty Muriel good night and went to bed. Every night before he went to sleep in his bedroom in his auntie’s place on Lennox Street he would say a little prayer. His late mother had taught him this prayer. She had died when he was 10 years old. He’d never met his dad.

Billy closed his eyes and mumbled the words he’d recited every night that he could remember. ‘And now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen. Good night, Mum, wherever you are.’

THE homicide squad couldn’t operate a three-seated shithouse without getting one of the pans blocked up, or so it seemed to a lot of people who took an interest in the violent end of Skinny Kerr. It had been six months since the murder, and Blueberry Hill had been arrested, questioned and let go five times.