Chopper Unchopped (205 page)

Captain. W.E. Johns, known to one and all as ‘Biggles’, is one of the other great figures of
Boys Own
type literature. I like to think that in a funny sort of way I’ve kept up the tradition of rousing adventure tales for those who don’t go for the arty farty, namby pamby stuff that bookshops are full of these days. The Captain was always ready to take a pot shot at the enemy, and it’s a philosophy I’ve followed all my life. Correction, used to follow. Now I just read and write about it.

As a matter of fact, I collect Biggles books and boast several first editions. I have twenty-three books in my collection, with the hope of gaining more.

For a boy, Biggles is what life and adventure is all about. I grew up on Biggles books and it didn’t do me any harm — if you consider spending two decades inside no harm. On my worst day one was still left with an inner sense of fair play, a strange sense of honour. Coming from a man like me, with my past, such remarks must sound odd, but I did have within me my own sense of justice. As bad as I was, I still saw myself the lesser of two evils, and my victories would even the score of life or maintain a check and balance regarding the status quo. I can recommend Biggles as bedtime reading for all kiddies.

I note that the famous writer Ernest Hemingway and his father both committed suicide. Is greatness passed on from father to son? I doubt it. Is courage passed on? I don’t think so. Is intelligence passed on? Not enough. Is evil passed on? Or goodness? The answer is no again.

There are only four lasting things passed on to children: love, hate, baldness and sadness. I received the latter — my publishers got the other three, plus greed. If you pass love on the child will embrace all the gifts and riches life has to offer. If hate is passed on he will grasp all the venom the snake of life spits out. But if sadness is passed on a strange creature walks the land.

A mental and emotional and psychological freak, devoid of love or hate, a sort of empty human. Place a human like that in a criminal environment and you have what I was, an enigma.

It is only when the sadness passes that humanity takes over. So ends the lesson in self-analysis, with maybe one parting remark from Sir Winston Churchill, who said that a cat looks down on man and that a dog looks up to man, but a pig will look man in the eye and see his equal.

I had to laugh the other day when reading RSL President Bruce Ruxton, a grand old fellow, in my opinion. The question was: is he still stiffly opposed to gays in the military?

‘We are dead against it,’ replied Bruce.

‘There is simply no place for queers in the service and it’s not just me, it’s time immemorial. Once a person is found out in the military that he bats offside they go for him. He’s taunted until you’ve just got to send him away. That’s exactly what happened in World War II. If a homosexual was found in the Battalion he was gone the next day and never heard of again.’

That may be the case in the army, but a favourite homosexual comic saying is ‘Hello Sailor’ and you don’t have to be Einstein to know why.

After I got out of prison in 1998, I had occasion to do a bit of business with a visiting American warship — or, more to the point, some men off this ship.

I won’t name the ship but, not to put too fine a point on it, visiting American warships have always been great traders in heroin, cocaine, small arms, ordinance, methamphetamine and other interesting products, most of them illegal. Naturally the Australian and American Governments will poo poo this as nonsense. The military has changed in some ways and, believe it or not, one war ship had a female crew that almost outnumbered the men.

One sailor I was involved with on a matter of no importance to this story was a gun collector and trader in small arms ordinance, not that I was the least bit interested in that, we were simply swapping American and Tasmanian souvenirs.

The point was, this American sailor and his friends were openly gay, and I mean as camp as a row of tents. They told me that there was little trouble with the female crew as they or most of them were also gay. Then they debated among each other. The homosexual percentage population of the ship must be fifty per cent? ‘No no’, more said Rudy. ‘Sixty, maybe seventy per cent’ said Tex, a black Mexican from Texas who talked like La Toya Jackson.

According to these guys the only one who wasn’t gay was the captain and they weren’t too sure about him. Put the battleship on wheels and they could tow it down the streets of Sydney during the Mardi Gras.

I had occasion to speak to other sailors from other visiting warships and, believe me, she was six of one and half a dozen of the other. Then the French Navy paid a visit to Hobart. A French warship — well, what a show. The whole thing was like a floating drag queen show. I think anyone who wasn’t a poof on that ship could face a court martial. Bloody hell. Hey Bruce, they don’t pull triggers these days, mate, they press buttons. And in the navy they press the brown one. When they talk of a hot date in the navy they mean exactly that. This book started off about crime and criminals, and now we are talking about sailors and Nancy Boys. Let’s get back to Mad Charlie, Alphonse and so on and so forth.

One of the most vicious things I ever did in a street fight was to rip a bloke’s eyeball out and eat it or, to be precise, swallow it down with a glass of beer.

Mad Charlie was a great one for latching on to the human nose with his teeth and as Charlie was being dragged off, taking half the bloke’s nose with him. Shane Goodfellow was famous for ripping out eyes in fights and was rumoured to be the man who blinded a well-known radio personality, later to become a gameshow host, in one eye.

I was at that fight on a beach back in the sharpie days. The radio chap, a big bloke, was working for Radio 3AK, a 3AK Good Guy as they called themselves. I got the blame for that lot but without naming the personality involved it was Shane Goodfellow, not me. I was the one who decked you, but Goodfellow gouged your eye.

Now, on to Alphonse. I can’t think of one thing, apart from belting sheilas, that bloke ever did to earn a reputation. Kicking? He was a great kicker when the other guy was down and, yes, I will say he was a master with a broken pool cue, but Charlie and his nose biting got me.

If you have never seen a bloke with half his nose hanging off, well let’s put it this way, it’s a strange sight. As for the 3AK Good Guy with one eye — you were paid to spin the bloody platters not be the fucking beach bouncer, you one-eyed goose.

Starting a book is easy. Working your way through it is okay but the ending is always the hard bit. I’m trying to end this one but I keep getting side tracked. Remember when cocaine kings like Pablo Escobar and the Columbian cartels were all just shit we saw on TV. None of it was real.

Then the Cali and Medellin cartels came along. The same yawn. Coke top grade is $250 a gram in Melbourne and getting cheaper and you know who is bringing it in, not Columbians and not up the bums of South Americans.

American Mexicans, members of the United States Navy, bring in heaps of the stuff. The FBI know it, the DEA know it, and the NCA know it, but you know what an Australian city earns in dollars from one goodwill visit from an American warship? Five thousand sailors all cashed up and all the other little extras involved. It is mega dollars, big revenue and so what if a few sailors bring in a kilo or two or twenty of cocaine. One way or the other it’s a fucking boost to the economy.

Get this, the heroin trade increased six hundred percent in Perth after US warships made it a regular port of call. Now cocaine and small arms have been added to the list and while the DEA, NCA and sniffer dogs go through the containers on the waterfront and the airports, Uncle Sam gets the green light.

Of course, what would I know, laugh it up, I’m just the fat bloke in the white t-shirt. Let’s not allow hard drugs to upset international goodwill, hands across the sea and all that sort of shit. Imagine what would happen if customs and the Federal Police set the sniffer dogs on the US sailors. Do you reckon we would be confident of having the US back us up next time. It was hairy enough in East Timor. Don’t piss off big brother by shown our best friends are drug dealers. As always, everyone is looking at the trees but they can’t see the wood. You get what you deserve.

AT the moment I’m reading the
Red Beret
by Hilary St George Saunders with a forward by Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein KG, GCB. It’s the story of the Parachute Regiment at War, 1940-1945. This is a somewhat a rare issue as it would appear the forward has been written in Montgomery’s own hand and is signed Montgomery of Alamein F.M. Colonel Commandant, The Parachute Regiment.

It is the book I read before I myself tried my hand at such insane nonsense and I’m not ashamed to say never ever again. To fall to my death was my greatest fear so, without a word to anyone, I arranged things and confronted my fear. One of my uncles stood in the blazing sun for over twenty minutes while General Sir Bernard Montgomery spoke to the Fourth Parachute Brigade on their way to Tunisia, or so the legend goes. Anyone from the fourth row back couldn’t hear a word he said. When he wasn’t stuttering, that is.

I still read military history but not as much as I once did. Some of the military books I’ve collected are quite rare, to say the least, and the tactics and strategy in them are as true today as they were yesterday.

In the criminal world I saw myself as a war lord, a general. In reality I was a mental case. Now I’m a mental-case general writing about the wars that were and the men that fought in them who are no more. I’m afraid that in closing I must quote the great Ernest Hemingway:

‘It is too bad there’s no way of exchanging some of the dead for some of the living.’

I’ve known some very wonderful people who, even though they were going directly to the grave, managed to put up a very fine performance en route.

— Mark Brandon Read

THIS is the most dangerous man in Australia. He has killed more than Golden Staph. As a hitman he works alone and I always admire a man who enjoys his work. When he says he’s going to take someone out, he doesn’t mean for dinner.

The Jew has been blood loyal to me since we were kids but I have to keep away from him if I am to remain clear of jail.

I have made The Jew the Godfather to my son. It is my sort of Israeli insurance. If anyone tried to get to me through my son it would be a fatal mistake. Remember Entebbe.

The Jew has turned the paid hit into a science. He works out the movements of the target and once stayed under the house of a soon-to-be victim living on baked-beans and water as he noted the bloke’s comings and goings. The Jew lives a simple life and as long as he knows where to get some baked-beans and lime he is happy. When his guts start rumbling it’s time to stand clear — and not just because he’s about to start breaking wind. It’s the signal that he has taken another contract.

A GOOSE with a gun who ended up stuffed. Unlike The Jew, Chris wanted not only to be a hit man, but he wanted headlines as well, which can be a fatal combination. He ran out of control when he got up to Sydney and ended up being knocked. The Coroner came down to Risdon prison when he wanted to know the truth and I informed him that Mr ‘Rent-a-Kill’ was murdered and his body stuffed into a tree shredder. Had a tattoo on his guts with an arrow pointing down that said ‘lunch time’. A pretentious plonker who couldn’t work out when it was time to pull his head in, so someone pulled it off.

He wanted to be famous so if Shakespeare was a crime writer Flannery’s biography would have been called:
Mulch To Do About Nothing.

DIMITRIOUS was a gambler and a spiv well known in the Melbourne underworld. He knew about money and some criminals used him as a front to buy land and investments. In the old days when he got too big for his boots he would get a smack, like using a rolled up newspaper on a puppy when it gets too cheeky.

He did some time over a $330,000 property scam in 1994. He didn’t learn his lesson and in 1999 Belias was put off in the car park of a St Kilda Road office complex. He was dressed in a suit and tie when he was shot. At least it saved the undertaker from dressing him later.

FAT Al was once a friend who turned on me in later years. It was a bad move. Many people have hobbies — stamp collecting, train spotting and the like — and I had one, too. It was hunting down Al. He was good at hitting squareheads with a pool cue but he behaved in a far more polite way when he knew I was out. He moved drugs and was in everything that could turn a quid. He had to be because as his reputation got bigger and his waist line fatter, so did his legal bills. He shot Greg Workman and then had to hide a couple of witnesses. He was a dead man walking and weeks before I got out of jail I knew that Alphonse was soon to lose the breathing habit. He was shot dead in January 1998 in his Templestowe home by a man very close to him. It has started an underworld power struggle that has them dropping like rodents on Ratsak. I’ll just tend to my chickens and watch all the geese and the turkeys get lead poisoning.

MAD Charlie was a friend who wanted to be a legend. When he arrived from Europe as a thirteen year old he said to I his mum: ‘Where is the Statue Of Liberty?’ All he ever wanted to be was a gangster in New York. He went to the Big Apple and stood outside an old nightclub until he saw mob leader Carlo Gambino. For Charlie it was better than meeting Elvis. When Charlie and me ran together we stood over a few massage parlour owners. In those days he was known as ‘The Don’. I wanted to declare war on the bigtime gangsters of the day but Charlie had other ideas. He became the major supplier of amphetamine chemicals in Australia and pulled strings behind the scenes. But it wasn’t enough for Charlie who wanted to be recognised as a major gangster.

He got the reputation but only after he was shot dead in the front garden of his South Caulfield home on 23 November, 1998. The goose didn’t have a tape in his security camera out the front.

No truth to the rumour that an empty tin of baked beans was found under a tree near the front gate.

VINCE loved a good night out and went to a coffee shop and a restaurant around Fitzroy on 9 January, 1999. When he came home just before midnight he got whacked in his front yard.

He was one of the team of mice who liked to be around Alphonse and were exposed when Fat Al got ventilated. Vince was good fun at times but he had his own violent streak. He once shot a bloke seven times in the guts when he was banned from some pissy cafe card game. What would he have done if he couldn’t get into the Melbourne Cup? He and his crew flogged large amounts of food from some coolstores a few months before he was shot. Now it’s not just the cheese that’s stiff.

GERARDO was the younger brother of Vince. He used to carry a gun but had tidied his act up and worked in the building trade. He made the mistake of mouthing off that he was going to avenge his brother’s murder. He was too dangerous to be allowed to live and the people who got Vince had to get him.

Gerry was visiting another brother, Sal, on 20 October, 1999 and when he walked out two blokes were there. Gerry knew they weren’t there to detail his car so he took off but only got about fifty metres before he was blatted.

And people reckon there’s no gang war going on.

JOE was shot dead when he arrived at work at a Toorak supermarket on 3am on 28 May. Now Joe was a good bloke who wasn’t a crook but he knew some of the best around. Someone rang me months earlier and asked me if I knew anyone who could put him off. Naturally, as a humble chicken farmer. I couldn’t help. It’s against the Telecommunications Act to discuss such matters. Joe was really sick when he was shot and may well have died from natural causes if he hadn’t been knocked. I wonder why three major gangsters, including the bloke who shot Fat A, turned up at Joe’s funeral.

HAD been out with his missus when he got home to his Wantirna unit. Went into the bathroom to clean his teeth as he knew plaque was really dangerous. Chuckles Bennett, Vinnie and Laurie Prendergast popped up with some special .22 machine guns with silencers made in Sydney for Jimmy the Pom. Rat-a-tat and the holes in his head didn’t come from tooth decay. Dumped on the carpet at the front hallway, he was then put in the boot of his own car and driven off. The car and Les were never seen again. The car was crushed and I was told the body went through a meat mincer in NSW. If you ever ended up munching on a burger from Griffith and it had a tattoo, that was Les.

Bon Apetit!

PS Laurie later went on missing list too. Some of these nasty criminals play for keeps.

TOUGH and brave, he was the brains behind the Great Bookie Robbery. He had a big fall-out with the Kane brothers that started a blood war in Melbourne. Ray and two of his crew grabbed Les Kane in his house in Wantirna and that was the end of Les. Chuckles and the other two were charged with murder but heal it easy. On 12 November, 1979, two coppers were marching Chuck into the Magistrates’ Court when a bloke in a suit stood up and shot him. Chuck was shot in the heart. When the ambo officers got there they couldn’t get a tube into his gob because his jaw was locked tight. He never was much of a talker.

The killer was able to escape after someone pulled open a hole in a tin fence down the back. For the police chasing it was one of those cases when everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Now, whose law was that again?

IT WAS always said that Brian was the one in the suit that knocked Chuckles to even up for his brother, Les. Whatever, Brian started to hit the piss and you can’t watch your back sitting on a bar stool. The Quarry Hotel in Brunswick was where he finally got knocked. His gun was in his girlfriend’s bag. Now a Gucci handbag might be a great fashion accessory but it won’t stop a bullet. Bad move, Brian.

HIGGS, born in 1946, was in constant trouble with the police as a teenager, with his first conviction at the age of thirteen. Has convictions for theft, stealing cars, assaults, manslaughter, assault police, resist arrest and possession of cannabis and firearms offence. Also charged with illegal possession of a stuffed possum.

It was only to be an apprenticeship. Drugs was the growth industry in his line of work.

He was a founding member of the Black Uhlans Motorcycle Gang, involved in amphetamine distribution for years. Higgs gave the gang its Melbourne club house and is a life member.

He was released from prison in 1978 after serving more than eight years for the manslaughter of a chicken farmer, which was very bad manners.

In 1984 Higgs became a major player in drugs: producing amphetamines, importing heroin, cocaine and hashish. Around this time he started to pal up with Mad Charlie. Charlie made sure I stayed onside. Better to make money than shed blood, I always say. His gang learned counter surveillance, rarely trusted telephones, spoke in codes and only trust fellow crims they had known for years. It took the cops fifteen years to nail him and by then he’d made more speed than Michael Schumacher and Jack Brabham put together. After eight separate task force operations, he was still the biggest amphetamine producer in Australia and possibly the world.

There’s no doubt that he stayed in front of the posse with the help of inside information. On 20 August, 1993, he delayed an amphetamine cook for more than two weeks after he was warned police were about to launch a blitz on the five biggest speed gangs in Victoria. He later got the drug squad burgled and that wasn’t done by fairies from the bottom of the garden, unless they wore bad suits and answered to the name Senior Detective.

Higgsy was the sort who wanted things to run smoothly and didn’t use violence just for enjoyment but he could get cross when it suited. He took out an $80,000 contract on Daniel Hacking who owed him a $100,000. Hacking later fell from a boat in Queensland and drowned.

Police made Higgs their number one drug target and set up Operation Phalanx. It resulted in the arrest of 135 suspects.

Higgs pleaded guilty to one charge of conspiracy to traffic methamphetamine between 1 January 1993 and 30 June, 1996. Judge David Jones sentenced him to six years with a minimum of four years, and described him as the principal, key figure, driving force and mastermind of the conspiracy.

Described by his barrister, Roy Punshon, as a semi-literate ‘wheeler and dealer’, Higgs discovered while previously in custody there were opportunities to be had in supplying the private prison system with various items.

A company of Higgs’ had a prison’s contract to supply runners, tracksuits and soap powder. Higgsy was able to use his own gear while he was inside. Obviously a business genius.

HE WAS once one of the toughest men in Australia. Known as ‘Hollywood’ he was the heavy in the background for Higgsy. But he got on the gear himself and the needle did what other gangsters couldn’t. The curtain came down on Hollywood in 1992 from a drug overdose.

HERE is a real case of beauty and the beast. She is the light of my life. Without her I would be back in jail. She married me when I was in jail and she stuck with me through thin (when I got out of jail and was on a vegie diet) and thick (when I got on the piss and porked up).

She boxed my ears (ha) when I got banned from the Richmond Arms and entered the twilight zone of the demented when she was pregnant but we get on well together and now have a son, Charlie Vincent.

Chopper: husband, father, straightman. Who could believe it?

AN OLD enemy. We fought for years over the great sausage war in Pentridge. When he got out he popped down to Tassie for a visit. Once I would have wrung his neck, but now I wish him no ill will. I understand he is now going straight. It looks like some of the old leopards are finally losing their spots. Good luck Keith, hope you don’t run into any ‘snags’ in future.

THE man who got to play me in the movie. I used to watch him on television and thought he had the necessary degree of insanity to play me. Comes from Melbourne and the northern suburbs at that, so is no Nancy Boy trying to be a tough guy. He came to Tassie to visit and we got on the piss together. One disappointment was that he didn’t get those ears off for the role. Whatever happened to method acting?

THE best crim I ever met without a proper surname. A jailhouse lawyer and cool customer. We fell out in jail but I still respected him. Part of the Pettingill clan but the only one with balls, brains and a handshake agreement with sanity. He ran a big drug syndicate from inside jail using five TAB accounts. After I left the system he ran the joint. He made nearly 18,000 phone calls from jail when he still ran his drug syndicate. He was released in July 1999 and I reckon it’s time he pulled up.

HEROIN dealer, killer and dog. I should have killed him in prison in the 1970s and saved a lot of people a lot of trouble. He didn’t seem a bad kid then but he must have been. As he got more power he turned into an evil bastard. He used to masturbate while killing people. You shouldn’t do that because you can go blind. Died in 1987. No loss.

AMOS is one of those blokes that I’ll never forget but I must leave behind. He was one of the overcoat gang who backed me in Pentridge and he held thirty people hostage in the Melbourne Italian Waiters’ Club trying to get me released from jail. It was a dumb plan. I hope he had the veal parmigiana there, it was really quite yummy.