Chopper Unchopped (17 page)

My warning to Minogue forged a bond between us, something I learned to appreciate later when another party approached him in H Division in relation to killing me. Minogue alerted me. Not only that but he’s a brilliant jailhouse cook. I put on two and a half stone in H Division over 12 months eating food he cooked.

What a nuthouse.

Julian Knight will live in infamy as the man who went mad in Hoddle Street, killing seven people and injuring 19 others in 1987. He was sentenced to 27 years for the slaughter.

Knight, a former officer cadet at Duntroon Military College, had been ordered out of the College after stabbing another cadet at a Canberra nightclub.

On the evening of August 9, 1987, Knight left his adoptive mother’s house in Ramsden Street, Clifton Hill, armed with a .22 rifle, an M14 military rifle and a shotgun.

He then walked around the area and in 40 minutes shot at anything that moved, killing and wounding as many people as he could. He also shot at the police helicopter, which was forced down.

Knight, slightly built and reasonably intelligent, has always been fascinated with guns and military tactics.

Despite the fact that he is a mass murderer, he still does not see himself as a criminal.

But there is another side to Knight which has never been revealed. As a teenager he used to delight in dressing in the ‘bovver boy’ garb of English National Front hoodlums — a group of violent Right Wing fanatics. The question of how such a person was accepted as a candidate to train as an officer in the Royal Australian Army has never been answered.

I DON’T agree with what Julian Knight did in Hoddle Street and now, he doesn’t agree with what he did, either. I tend to think you either hang him or leave him in peace — but don’t torment him in the prison system. Strangely enough, I have found him to be a loyal friend. He certainly isn’t a poof, which has been hinted at in some quarters.

That said, let me reveal that it is only by the grace of God — with just a little bit of help from me — that Julian is still alive today. The fact is, he came within a hair’s breadth of being executed not long after he got to jail. The kangaroo courts we have in prison aren’t as forgiving as the law courts.

It happened like this. When Julian arrived in H Division he made the mistake of trying to impress everybody by flashing his murder photos around — meaning the pictures taken at the scene of the Hoddle Street massacre by police for evidence at court.

I’ve seen some bad sights, but the photos of these innocent people with their faces blown away were terrible. One poor lady had her whole face, nose, mouth, chin, forehead and eyes simply blown off. The .308 bullet entered at the back of the skull and went through her head.

It was all too much for us. My right hand man, ‘Joe the Boss’ Ditroia, wanted to put an ice pick through the back of Julian’s skull. In fact, we all considered putting Julian to sleep. The screws even agreed to turn a blind eye if we decided to finish him off.

So, you see, it was touch and go. However, Julian put his photos away and Craig Minogue had a talk to him and tried to put him right on a few points and all was well. Funny thing, when Craig has a talk to people out here they tend to listen.

On the other hand, Joe the Boss was far from convinced that Knight had learned his lesson and was still looking for any excuse to kill him. But Joe had a small problem with carrying out the killing. After he had stabbed Sandy Macrae they had taken all his ice picks and knives from him.

Around that time Joe was quite kill happy. He was always saying: ‘Can I kill Knight, Chopper, can I please?’ I would say ‘No, he’s on our side. He always wanted to be in the army — well, he’s in Chopper’s army now.’

I told Joe that we could send Julian out in our battles and that if he got killed, then it would be fair enough, but we wouldn’t kill members of our own crew. Joe finally agreed after a lot of grumbling. Joe was a bloodthirsty little customer. He had previously stood over Alex Tsakmakis’ fallen body, eating a plate of spaghetti, waiting until the screws rushed in. Joe didn’t mind a bit of blood, but he did what I told him and that’s why Julian is alive now.

But Joe couldn’t help thinking about getting Knight. While I was away fighting my murder trial, Joe hatched his own murder plot. He went into the labour yard with Julian. It is fair to say that Julian obviously wasn’t too bright to get caught in there.

Joe wanted to start a fight. He suggested it was only because Julian was part of Chopper’s crew that he wasn’t being regularly raped in the showers. Joe threw in a few more taunts of a sexual nature and Julian flipped out.

Screaming and ranting with rage, Julian picked up a chair and attacked Joe. Joe was shot a few years ago when escaping from Geelong Jail, leaving him with a badly shattered left arm, which still carries a big pin in it. This means that when it comes to a punch on or a knife fight he is a bit of a one-armed bandit. Anyway, with his one good arm, Joe disarmed Julian and then ripped a few right hooks into him. Julian responded by scratching Joe’s face like a woman. When the screws came in Julian ran out. Joe yelled after him: ‘I’ll kill you; I’ll kill your whole family’.

Joe was a bit excited by this time. His eye fell on Minogue and he said in a rage: ‘You fat slug, you’re off as well. I’ll fix you all! When Chopper gets back you’re a dead man, Minogue’.

Thanks for that little effort, Joe. Fine, great and wonderful. Here I was in court on a murder charge and Joe gets me involved in murder threats. I came back and went into the yard with Slim Minogue and he told me all about it. The screws said Joe was mad.

It was all a mess, but I patched things up by making them all say they were sorry, like naughty schoolkids. I got Julian to apologise for attacking Joe. He apologised to me, not to Joe. Then Joe apologised to me for all the trouble — but he still hated Slim and Julian, calling them the Laurel and Hardy of Pentridge.

Joe wanted to see Julian and Slim dead, he wanted to see everyone dead. He even asked me if I wanted him to stab Russell Cox, after he read somewhere that we were supposed to hate each other.

At the same time Slim wanted to kill Joe. What a mess. But I loved little Joe the Boss. He was as mad as a hatter, but he was loyal to me.

Slim and me had teamed up. I couldn’t allow this rather powerful friendship to become upset by some kill-crazy little half-Italian, so I spoke firmly to Joe and demanded that he stop all the kill talk and say sorry to everyone. Joe was due to go back to South Australia in a short while so the crew got back together with a very shaky peace.

Thinking back, it probably wouldn’t have hurt to have Joe kill Julian. Ollie the German, who helped make our weapons inside, was first for letting Joe kill Julian. Then he was with me, saying he should live. Ollie would agree to anything as long as it didn’t lead to him being stabbed.

It was a nutty crew back then. Later, Julian went to J Division and I got Ted Eastwood to look after him. The whole idea was to turn a mass murderer into our own personal mass murderer. But Julian was not what I would call a heavy thinker. He had a heap of wonderful points and would be a top addition to any jail gang, but when he went to K Division he was placed in the same unit as the Crown witness in the murder trial that my friend, Frankie Waghorn, was facing. Julian knew this — but the big deal mass murderer failed to take any action.

I tolerate Julian, but if he had been in the Surrey Road gang, he’d be eating lit cigarettes, drinking vodka and getting a bashing every weekend. Dave the Jew would have put him on the missing list after a month.

In his own way Slim liked Julian too, but he always resented the fact that Julian got less jail than him. Left to their own devices, Slim, Joe and Julian would have killed each other and Ollie the German would have made a huge profit selling ice picks to all sides.

In jail, Julian is learning and growing into a sensible young man. He was just a stupid young kid when he was in my crew and for some reason, Slim and I felt sorry for his situation and we got hold of him before his mind got too perverted by the drug gangsters in here.

Slim is a strong friend, a thinker and a cold-blooded, hard man. Julian might be a mass murderer but he hasn’t got a drop of real cold blood in him. On the streets I’d take a dozen Joe the Bosses over a thousand Julian Knights.

Joe had guts, dash and loved blood. He has a big mouth that gave me an earache, but a big heart to go with it. I saw the look of sheer delight when he put that ice pick in Sandy Macrae’s back. Joe loves blood and in the end that’s the key. Mass murderers come and go but good soldiers like Joe are hard to find.

Because Julian became part of my small crew in H Division it was only normal that when he went up to J Division he would team up with Ted Eastwood, a longtime and loyal friend of mine. In other words, Eastwood looked after him.

Julian and myself share an interest in firearms and military history and he has a great depth of knowledge on both topics.

Julian has become a pen friend to my father in Tasmania. The mind boggles at the contents of those letters. But, as my father is an ex-army man himself, I think he feels for Julian.

It is hard to defend the indefensible, but Hoddle Street aside, Julian is a nice chap, a solid and loyal friend who knows the rules and doesn’t talk out of school and can take what is dished up to him like a man.

Whatever demon or insane monster gripped him on the night he went to Hoddle Street with his guns, it no longer possesses him. I’ve mixed with killers for 20 years and Julian is no cold-blooded killer, nor is he a head-banging psychopath. He was a kid who flipped out.

He calls me the mentor to the mentally ill. He says it in jest but I don’t think he’s in any position to be casting doubt on my mental health.

One more thing. Not many people know this, but in 1986 Julian used to get around the city with the Neo-Nazis as an 18 year old, dressed up like those skinheads in England.

He was recruited by some nitwit Nazi group that was getting around at the time. He told me he was introduced to them by some young bucks he met in what he said was the Prince of Wales Light Horse Regiment in the reserve based in Carlton. He was a member of the army reserve from November 1985 to January 1987. He started off in the training squadron then transferred to B Squadron, employed as a signaller in Squadron HQ, and as an assault trooper in the assault troop.

I couldn’t get into the army because I was too ‘violent’ but they accepted a fascist sympathiser into the Duntroon officers’ course. Maybe I wasn’t Right-wing enough for them. It makes you wonder.

Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox is one of the biggest names in Australian crime. He escaped from Long Bay’s maximum security Katingal division in 1977, and spent 11 years on the run with his de facto wife, Helen Deane. Cox, an accomplished armed robber, was serving a life sentence for the attempted murder of a prison officer when he escaped.

A vegetarian and fitness fanatic, Cox was known to run 15 kilometres a day with his dog, Devil.

He was born Melville Schnitzerling on September 15, 1949, and nicknamed ‘Tim’ by his family because he was the smallest. In 1972 he started using the name Russell Cox. According to police intelligence, he once tapped a telephone line into a police station so that he could be up to date on the search for him.

Cox is a keen student of bushrangers and was an avid reader of Ned Kelly and the ‘Wild Colonial Boy’ and other bushrangers.

Cox was a master of disguise and kept books with chapters on theatrical makeup. He was caught in Melbourne in 1988 with another NSW prison escapee, Raymond John Denning, who turned out to be a police informer.

Cox was sentenced to five years in 1989 on charges of using a firearm to resist arrest and reckless conduct endangering life. He was acquitted of the murder of Painter and Docker, Ian Revell Carroll, who was killed in Mt Martha in 1983.

FOR quite a few years now there have been rumours and rumblings from Melbourne and Sydney of trouble between myself and Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox, rumours and stories re Cox going to kill me and me out to kill Cox. Police have even jumped on this band wagon, believing it to be true.

I’m glad to say that Cox and I got to clear the air in H Division in 1991. Both understanding that we have been victims of a scallywag rumour mill. Personally, I have found Coxy to be quite a nice chap, considering he is a vegetarian, a yoga freak, and a bit of a greenie.

I’ve nicknamed him the ‘skinny hippie’ and the ‘Gloria Marshall Graduate’, and he thinks I’m a comical nutcase. Instead of murdering each other we’ve had quite a giggle over it all. We suspect the rumours were started in the hope that one would kill the other, or we’d kill each other. But that was not to be.

We both feel there are people out there who are broken hearted that Coxy and myself have gotten together. Russell Cox ended up taking over all the cooking in the laundry yard. It’s curried vegies for breakfast — on toast, curried vegies and noodles for lunch and curried vegies and cheese for tea. When I sit on the toilet at night it’s like a Bombay hurricane. I’m starting to wonder if the rumours that Coxy wanted to kill me were true after all.

My small stomach ulcer protests violently and I wash it all down with hot coffee or iced water, to try and settle my guts. Coxy had the laundry yard smelling like Calcutta. I’ll walk out of here looking like Mahatma Gandhi. His jail house curries with garlic and paprika are so hot, you don’t know if you’re eating meat, fish or veges. Craig Minogue, where are you when I need you? Even one of Slim’s tuna fondues sounds good.

Cox can’t walk past a frypan without wanting to shake hands with it. The first thing I’m having when I get out is a big steak with chips, eggs and mushrooms and some good old Aussie tomato sauce. I will do bodily harm to anyone who comes near me with a curry. The things I’ve had to suffer in the name of good manners. Jail house lawyers and cooks, they will be the death of me.

I don’t know if there is such a thing as a cooking psychopath, but I’m starting to wonder about Coxy. The man is possessed. But the curry lunches do have their moments. The other day Rusell invited a mate of his, Peter Clune, to lunch at the laundry yard. Clune had just been convicted over armed robberies. We sat their eating one of Russell’s curries, the sweat pouring out of us.

Peter was telling Russell about how much money he made from the armed robberies. He said that at one time he was driving a Porsche that he paid $93,000 for in cash.

Without missing a mouthful of curry I mumbled, ‘I wish I had known you then’ and gave a little giggle. Both Russell and Peter looked at each other, then at me. ‘What did you mean by that, Chopper?’ asked Russell. Realising that I had said the wrong thing, I said, ‘Oh, I’ve never ridden in a Porsche before’.

As the conversation continued on money, I looked down at Peter’s feet and asked, ‘What size shoes do you take?’

That was it. Peter said, ‘A man gets convicted of bank jobs one day, gets invited to lunch the next, only to have his stomach set on fire with an Indian curry while Chopper Read cracks toecutter jokes. I’m not coming to the restaurant again.’

The toecutter is the natural enemy of the bank robber. That is why the friendship between Russell and I is a strange one. But Peter Clune is a friend of a mate of mine in Tassie, so his feet are safe under the old mate’s act. Clune’s mob made a million or two but where has it got him? He says he is broke, but I’m not so sure. He sits in here with a half finished hair transplant. Most of those in the criminal world end up broke, dead or dying day by day.

Even Coxy agrees that if you walk across a busy street back and forth, you’ll get bowled over in the end. Clune’s nickname inside is ‘Piggy Bank Pete’ as we suspect he really does have plenty of dollars. I joke to the boys that Piggy Bank Pete should be put under heavy questioning. He laughs and says that he is just an honest tax avoider.

Although I have put a lot of shit on Sydney crooks the exception is Russell. Coxy is probably the greatest bank robber in the history of the nation. America had Willie Sutton and we have Russell Cox. Coxy puts his hero, Ned Kelly, to shame. But in the real world of blood and guts violence, Russell would front up with a note from his mother saying he could not attend. He is a top bloke and the only Sydney crook that I like. But ‘Mad Dog’ is a nickname the police or reporters gave him down here and, I can tell you, he was badly named.

Russell is a warm-hearted, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly type. He is polite, good mannered and gentle natured. He admits he did all his fighting from a distance of about six feet with a gun in his hand. Blood and guts, rip-tear violence was not his cup of tea whatsoever. For a man with such violent reputation I have found him to be a friendly, non-violent fellow.

He loathes the mainstream prison population as much as I do. For two men who lived with stories and rumours that one was going to kill the other, it is quite funny the way things have worked out. We both hate the two-bob type gangsters in the criminal world and we both hate drugs and the men who deal in them.

We are both well read — him more than me — and we have some ‘interesting’ conversations. He knew Jimmy ‘The Pom’ Driscoll years ago and he was a great friend of Ray Chuck. Intelligent conversations are hard to find in prison so I like talking to Russell. I am glad we got together and sorted out fact from fiction.

It would have been sad to have to kill a good bloke because of some bullshit rumour. He was told that I was out to kill him and I was told that he was going to kill me. We both felt that our first meeting would be in the streets with guns blazing. I didn’t know it at the time, but in 1987 some crims were taking bets and giving odds on who would kill who first. The whole thing got right out of hand. Now that we are friends, the only thing that Coxy and I fight about is when he puts too much garlic in our lunchtime curry.

Russell’s favourite song is the 1964 classic,
‘King of the Road’
by Roger Miller. He sings it over and over to himself when he is cooking. I suppose for the 11 years he was on the run he really was the king of the road.

Russell used the name Mr Walker when he was on the run. He liked the name because it was the code name used by the Phantom in the comic book series. Russell’s dog, Devil, even had a code name. He was known as Butch when they were on the run.

Russell was always cool. He was pulled over for licence checks and breath tests and was never fazed. Once, when there were police screaming all over the place, he just drove off. The police didn’t notice the dog running after the car. Russell just opened the door of the car and Devil jumped in, barking out the back window at the police, who were blissfully unaware.

On the day Russell was caught it was one of the few times he didn’t heed the advice of his beloved wife, Helen. She said, ‘Don’t go, I have a bad feeling about it.’ Raymond Denning was there. Denning is a dog but Russell doesn’t blame anyone but himself. Regardless of how treacherous Denning turned out to be, the fact was Russell failed to take notice of the alarm bells he heard in his head and the warning he got from his wife. Denning was a police informer — a dog. But a dog can’t bite you unless you drop your guard.

There is something almost Zen in Russell’s thinking. What will be, will be. It is all in the hands of fate. He is the most peaceful so-called killer I have ever met, and one of the most interesting people I have known.

Not many people know that the turning point in Russell’s life came when he was just ten years old. He had the winning ticket in a raffle for a brand new, beautiful bike. He wasn’t at the draw, but he was told by some other kid that his number had won. Filled with boyish excitement he ran to town to collect his prize. When he arrived he held his ticket in his hand and said that he had won. ‘Here’s my ticket — where’s my bike?’

The man in charge told him he was too late and because he wasn’t at the draw, the bike had been raffled again. The kid protested in vain, but was sent away empty handed. So he stole a brand new bike and told everyone he had won it in a raffle. However, he never forgot being cheated out of the bike.

The turning point in my life was never so clear, but I think Russell’s story would bring a tear to a glass eye.

Personally, I think he has had better luck on his worst days than I’ve had on my best. He even won $15,000 on Tatts Lotto when he was on the run, and collected it. Jesus Christ, I’ve shot people for less money than that.