Chopper Unchopped (207 page)

The media will gobble it up as an underworld war. They will never know it is an extermination program. With any luck some of those on the list will blame others on the list for some of the deaths and start to kill each other.

It has happened at least twice in the last few years. Saves us the effort if they do it to themselves.

When it’s all over, the same three original thinkers will meet at the same pub in Collingwood and raise glasses of Irish whiskey and just nod. There will be nothing that will need to be said. That is if they haven’t turned the old pub into a poker machine dump or a coffee shop for trendies.

If they can put a man on the moon, you can kill him when he comes back to earth then you can say, ‘Shit, I just shot the man on the moon.’ You might get put in a mental hospital but no-one will ever believe you enough to send you to jail. That is the beauty of a death list so large. Who is ever going to believe it?

So there it is, the blueprint for a 20-year gang war hidden by a sea of bullshit, put together by the greatest criminal psychologist in the game, funded by cocaine dollars and heroin money handed over willingly by the new style of young Turks waiting to take over a criminal world and drug empire still ruled by men from the 1970s. Oh, I’ve forgotten the meth-amphetamine money.

The young drug dealers knew that if the dinosaurs of the criminal world fought then the ants may rule. But they didn’t for a moment know the size of the plans.

The three original thinkers didn’t take a penny of this cash. Every cent was spent on outside help, arms, ammo, travel, accommodation, logistic support, intelligence and counter intelligence. Spies and networks of spies, all working for controllers on a need to know basis within the various enemy camps.

It is the greatest military criminal operation ever launched in Australian criminal history.

Why, you ask? To which the answer is: For the best reason of all … Why not?

IF you sit by a river for long enough you will see the bodies of all your enemies float by. I said that years ago. I forgot to mention that they will float past a damn sight quicker if you have a couple of mates upstream pushing the bastards in for you.

Eventually the bodies float down to the sea … and the surf.

So, now, dear reader, we have our boards and we are about to enter water and if you can’t swim, don’t worry. Uncle Chopper will reach out a hand and pull you back up. Would I tell a lie? Ha ha.

PLANS, like all plans of mice and men, can go wrong. One of the three original thinkers, the man given the job of providing a smother of disinformation and providing psychological tactics and strategy, got himself locked up over yet another shooting charge in 1992, so a replacement was invited to sit at the table.

The list of 20 names provided by the man now in jail was quietly replaced with a new list, which was put up by the new man. After all, fair is fair.

The new man, being an Italian criminal, had his own personal agenda and at least four of the names on his list matched the list of the third original thinker, now in prison. So we have the third original thinker in prison in 1992 saying Via Con Dios amigos to his two old friends and the new man, who was also an old friend. He was not plucked out of the personal columns in the paper. Whatever role he could play from behind bars regarding psychological, tactical and strategic help and advice he would give. It would be invaluable, as sometimes you can see better from a distance, even if there are bars in the way. I did some of my best planning while inside and I could see the mistakes that others were about to make.

However, his ability to provide the massive smother of disinformation via his police and media contacts had been cut to shreds. You can hardly call a press conference from H Division, although I did come close.

A new tactic of ‘Chinese Whispers’, starting with one small truth along with one small lie into the ear of one small policeman and one or two crime reporters, had begun.

Being able to predict the deaths of underworld personalities shortly before their demise was a massive help in providing very believable disinformation. The crime reporters would believe everything you said if you gave them a tip on a murder about to happen. In the end you could guide them where you wanted them (which was usually up their own bottoms).

You would talk to them. They would buy you a beer and a bad Irish feed cooked by a Chinaman from Footscray. Then they would bodgie up their expense accounts to make a profit. I have found that what they lack in honesty they make up for in insincerity. And, as the great Groucho Marx should have said, if you can do that you’ve got it made.

I mean, if you can predict a man’s death a month before it happens then who will call into question the rest of your story? You then give former policemen and rival newspaper and TV reporters the same story knowing that they will then spread it for you.

You can turn a lie into the truth within a month. Police investigations are launched on the basis of one body and one lie. They then proceed to go no place. Into the valley of the blind and in any war it is always good to pop off for a few non-event bastards who have nothing to do with anything other than the fact that they knew a few of the real targets.

It is a totally one-sided war, but it must appear to look like a gang war. In a gang war both sides know who they are up against but, in this war, only one side is getting hit by an enemy they cannot see and do not know.

It creates paranoia and, in some cases, friends turn on friends and kill each other. Once that starts to happen within the criminal world, your enemy will actually begin to kill himself for you. It could be suggested that the death of Mark Anthony Moran in June 2000 was clear evidence that the psychology of fear and paranoia had forced the enemy to proceed to kill themselves the way that a wild animal caught in a trap chews off its own leg to escape, only to bleed to death later on. What has been set in place cannot be undone.

Forty more to go.

Whether they do it to themselves, which could be the case in some areas, or whether the men who drew up the original list do it, for them nothing can stop it now.

It’s like Dr Frankenstein’s monster: once something is created it is very hard to control it. The whole thing can take on a life of its own, leaving the original thinkers to sit and wonder about it all. Wonder or marvel at the monster they created and. But, like Dr Frankenstein, the creators must be aware that the monster can turn on them at any time.

So the best idea is to quietly withdraw, watch and wait and simply allow the game to continue, directing play from time to time with a good hit or two and a few good lies just to keep the players interested.

Fantastic, isn’t it? Quite simply outrageous and truly unbelievable. However, where are the revenge killings, where are the arrests and convictions. There are none. War, what war?

The police and the media all sense they are watching the biggest gang war in Australian criminal history but they can’t quite understand the logic of it. And, for the police and the media, if it doesn’t make sense they simply can’t accept it. They look at each death in isolation or as a small group – a spate of murders over months or a couple of years. None look at all of them. They can’t see the big picture, but only because no-one looks.

When the three original thinkers all got together, none of it was meant to make any sense – after all, when you allow your enemy to know what is happening you also allow your enemy to counter attack.

The three men with a small crew of helpers can’t stand in the cold light of day and fight 30 men and expect to win. It has to be a war of shadows and smoke fought in the valley of total bullshit and darkness.

I must also add that by the time this book comes out, the three young hitmen, code named the Beach Boys, will almost certainly be very much dead. However, the catchcry ‘Let’s Go Surfing’ will be very much alive. Killing the killers is a key part of overall protection, although of course you don’t tell the youngsters at the time. Too much information tends to destroy their enthusiasm for the task at hand.

You must remember that the three original thinkers spent their criminal lives in a never ending state of blood war, and blood war is the only reason they ever got involved in crime in the first place. Money and conventional power had nothing to do with it.

The original thinkers took criminal violence to an almost Zen level. They are the river, therefore they and only they will control which way the river flows.

For the original thinkers, it is a game of chess and they are the masters. They will either win the game or destroy the whole criminal structure as it stands. It is as simple as that. Either way they win.

You can believe this or disregard it as nonsense. I personally don’t give a shit. I’m Mark ‘Chopper’ Read. I’ve written nine best sellers and had a movie made about my life. Do you really think I give a shit who believes me or not? If you don’t, you can always buy a newspaper and read how the media know all and claim that police know who did this, that and the other and are hoping for an early arrest. And they reckon I’m the one who’s pulling people’s legs.

We have now jumped on our surfboards and are heading out to meet our first big wave. Don’t get seasick just yet.

SOMETIMES a story doesn’t start at the start or finish at the end. I will simply toss the name of Liu Szu-Po into the pot and say no more. If war funding has to be provided and the Asians and their various crews are not part of any criminal culture, other than their own, the total destruction of the established order can only benefit their own ends.

I will repeat that name for the doubters reading this: Liu Szu-Po, a gentleman from Thailand. One of the original thinkers in charge of funding visited Thailand. Let’s put it this way. I’m not the only man in the world with no ears and the fact that the chap in charge of funding also had no ears impressed Mr Liu Szu-Po to follow his way of thinking.

Any team of men who could carry out such savagery upon their own persons for reasons known only to themselves, were men to financially support in any conflict. Mr Liu Szu-Po is an international criminal thinker and is willing to fund criminal wars in cities all over the world between the various local factions if it means his own international network can slide into the play like a black snake on a dark night.

The original thinkers simply want to rid themselves of enemies made over decades, not to mention the relatives and friends and hangers on of those enemies.

If it takes 15 to 20 years it doesn’t matter. The original thinkers will be in their sixties and by then an Asian wave will dominate a vast section of the international crime scene anyway.

Why not silently team up with the Triads? They at least have a sense of honour and the rare ability to keep their word along with their silence. So while we start to surf, let us remember the name LIU SZU-PO and on that topic I think I’ve said quite enough. He may not be able to surf but he surely can hire the boards.

Let us now turn to probably the most two bob nothing murder in Melbourne in recent times, the shooting of Richard Victor Mladenich at St Kilda’s Esquire Motel in May, 2000.

This was a straight Beach Boys hit. However, within moments disinformation was put about that Mladenich was shot by error, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

His life as a standover man was nickel and dime stuff with street level junkies and whores. He couldn’t fight to save himself yet he had built up a violent and crazy reputation. In fact, he was a big heap of shit with the heart of a split pea – a homosexual rapist in prison who found himself on the wrong side of the Rumanians. It is not a good place to be. His name wasn’t even on the list. In fact, it was a case of someone having not a lot to do on the night in question, so they decided ‘let’s go and shoot him anyway.’

His death was a (very) red herring tossed into the pot to further bewilder and spin-doctor the minds of the already paranoid. Again, I don’t feel the death of such a wombat should warrant too much writing time.

It was rumoured that I once put the blade of a garden spade through the right side of his skull, nearly killing him in H Division at Pentridge in 1989, but Richard stuck staunch and told police nothing.

The two prison officers who witnessed it told police nothing either. That’s how H Division ran back then. Ah, the good old days.

THE murder of Mad Charlie was for me a great personal sadness. I even named my son after him. He was, in spite of fallouts from the past, an old and dear friend.

A cunning campaign of disinformation was set into place to smother details of his death – details such as who might have done it, for instance. And why. All the wider world knows is that Charlie copped it in the front yard of his home in South Caulfield in November, 1998, and that a .38 calibre weapon was involved. Apart from knowing that Charlie didn’t die in his sleep of old age, the police seem to have no idea what really happened. Either that, or they’re not that interested.

His name was never on the original list. However, his friendship with the three original thinkers meant that Charlie was starting to figure certain things out.

Now Charlie was mad, but he was also smart. For the original thinkers the worry was that Charlie would put it all together and tell someone. He had some friends in the police force and the thinkers couldn’t take the risk that he would get chatty.

Charlie was killed by a friend, a man who didn’t want to kill him but could see no other way out of this particular problem.

Charlie had always said, ‘When my time comes, let it not be at the hands of a laughing enemy but at the hands of a crying friend.’ He got his wish. I can tell Charlie that the tears over what had to be done were flowing before his death and are still flowing. The same disinformation program was brought into play. No more need be said on that topic.

Via Con Dios Amigo

‘Rest In Peace’

Charlie Hegyalji

23/11/98

‘May God go with you’

THE Beach Boys acted as logistic support on that hit, but a killing of such a personal importance, not to mention sentiment, had to be carried out by a friend, not an enemy.

I had intended to name this book ‘Surf’s Up’ or ‘Let’s go Surfing’ but the Beach Boys crew are a team that I’m sure will be dead by the time this book comes out and therefore it would be poor taste. They were to be killed by the men who created them or they may even be simply added to the overall psychology of fear when their bodies are found.

If you give dogs the taste of blood you might have to kill them before they turn on you. So I’ve decided to call this part of the book ‘Psychology of Fear’, as basically the whole insane campaign relies heavily on this very psychology and the fact that the ordinary man will dismiss this story as the work of a madman, whose whole life and the stories he tells have all been quite unbelievable.

That is my defence. I can write it all down in the comic knowledge that none of you will believe a word I’m writing. The only safe way to tell the truth is when you know people are convinced you’re lying. Like when I told the police I killed Sammy the Turk, they just didn’t believe me. Sammy did. But, sadly, he was in no condition to corroborate my story.

It was the confession and the story that went with it and the fact that police did not act on a confession that ultimately helped the jury come to the wise decision that I was not guilty of murder.

But then, what would I know; after all, I am the greatest liar on earth. Would I tell anyone the truth?

So a wall of disbelief protects this whole story. Don’t you think these tactics have ever been used before?

Hitler once said ‘The greater the lie, the more people will believe it.’ Do you think that the truth is a weapon ever used in war?

John F. Kennedy. Martin Luther King. Do you really believe that disinformation wasn’t the greatest weapon used before and after their deaths? The list goes on and on.

Just read history, military history, political history, any sort of history.

The people either don’t want to, or simply will not believe the truth, so a lie must be created for them. When a writer writes about lies, how can he ever be sued or charged for telling the truth?

I feel I sit here writing this with a certain legal safety. I will repeat, you can either believe it or not, I will not confirm nor will I deny. You be the jury.