Chopper Unchopped (210 page)

The crims who have stolen this book will begin to understand but I suspect the rest of you will be struggling with it. Bear with me, it will all come together in the end.

People like things black and white. They don’t like to be taken through the valley of the shadow of grey and no one likes to be told that what they believe isn’t true or even isn’t quite true. People want to believe in life after death. That’s why the Bible is the best-selling book in the world.

No-one really believes it but with all their heart they want to believe it. So, too, with crime, the criminals, police, media and general public. They want to believe that a story, a legend, a reputation or a myth is true and so they dismiss anything other than what they want to believe. It is a mental, emotional and psychological weakness in all of us. I just know about it and can therefore use it against the rest. No-one is immune.

Now I’ve given everyone a nice headache, let us move along.

AFTER the 1987 Jika Jika fire in Pentridge Prison, in which five inmates died, the Russell Street bombing gang, along with myself and a handful of other maximum-security inmates, were moved back to the old H Division, my old home.

Believe this or not. I don’t care. The police were spending a fortune on witness protection for the main crown witness, a former member of my old overcoat gang, a weasel we booted out for cowardice in the face of the enemy, Paul Kurt Hetzel.

He has a full name change now and is living in a supposedly secret location interstate – so secret I could find him in the time it would take me to say Dave the Jew.

The police believed that the Russell Street bombers and their friends and contacts had the power to have Hetzel killed in 1988 – or was it 1989, I forget – but as their trial was under way I was approached by two members of the gang to see if I could arrange a handgun. Could I arrange a handgun? Could the Pope find some rosary beads?

Of course, I could arrange a handgun with a phone call. The code for handgun back then among my own contacts was Frankie. Could you get Frankie to meet so and so on Saturday morning etc etc. I wasn’t told why they wanted the handgun and ammo but you wouldn’t need to be a big thinker to work it out. It would cost a thousand dollars.

They didn’t have a thousand dollars, so no handgun. So let’s look at that, shall we. The police were spending a million or more on protecting Paul Kurt Hetzel and his de facto along with other witnesses from a gang and their friends and criminal contacts which, between the lot of them, couldn’t come up with a thousand dollars between them.

For a grand, maybe the history of the bombing would have been rewritten, or maybe the prosecution would have been blown to the shithouse.

I’ve never mentioned this before as I didn’t want to embarrass Craig Minogue, aka Fatty or Slim, who had done me a big favour in killing Alex Tsakmakis. But it was all years ago and, to prove my point, I will tell this story.

You see, as a direct result of disinformation and the psychology of fear, the Russell Street bombing gang were being treated like Mafia bosses in an Italian prison. It was widely believed they had vast criminal power and contacts.

However, in truth, they didn’t have a popgun or a grand between the lot of them. Now the disinformation was being put about by the crown witnesses to bolster their own situation with the police. The police in turn handed the same fearful disinformation to the media. The psychology of criminal fear used by the bombing gang itself was in the form of the bombing attack on police headquarters in Russell Street.

Everyone believed these blokes were the Aussie version of the fucking IRA, but in reality the whole gang would have run a poor second to the Bananas in Pyjamas. You could have put the star witnesses in a motel room in St Kilda, with a neon sign out the front flashing the words ‘Crown Witness Motel’ and the Russell Street bombers would not have had the criminal clout to organise a rock tossing contest through the motel windows.

That is the fact of the matter, but the fiction and the psychology of fear kept several teams of police busy 24 hours a day for several years, costing a fortune protecting witnesses from a phantom – a gang of wombats who couldn’t organise a three-seated shithouse without getting one of the pans blocked up.

I won’t make any friends by saying this, not that I ever had any friends to start with, just a couple of greedy publishers with a dodgy laptop and a lot of orthodontist bills.

Fatty Minogue is a good bloke who did me a big favour when he opened up Alex’s head but he is no Dr No, believe me.

You might be wondering how I can say that someone like Minogue is a good bloke. Here is a lesson in prison politics for the uninitiated. You don’t make too many judgments about what people have done on the outside; it is how they behave on the inside that matters.

Sure, I might have put the occasional broom handle up the bottom of the (very) odd rapist if they deserved it. It was a hobby of mine, a little like stamp collecting.

Of course, I did not like child molesters and such like, but it was not my job to be the judge of all the filth that floated into my division.

You make and then break alliances to keep control of the division. You are surrounded by some very seriously dangerous people (and that’s just the prison warders) so you need soldiers to protect the General’s back.

Churchill had no time for Stalin, either, but was prepared to back him when Hitler invaded Russia. He said he would make a pact with the Devil if the Devil was prepared to have a sneak go at Hitler. That’s what jail is like.

An enemy of your enemy is a friend. It’s been true for thousands of years, and will be for thousands more.

Alex Tsakmakis was a millionaire and a killer. He chucked a professional runner named Bruce Walker in the bay in 1978. Walker was a good runner, but not much of a swimmer, which was no surprise given that he was trussed up in chicken wire at the time.

Tsakmakis then set fire to Barry Robert Quinn in Jika Jika in 1984. Quinn had baited him about his girlfriend. It was a dumb move by Bazza. Alex squirted him with glue and then flicked matches at Barry. Whoosh! Barry was burnt alive. Not a good way to go. And the scorched smell was around for days.

There was a death notice the next day that was supposed to come from Alex saying, ‘Sorry, we always stuck together.’ Call me a cynic but I reckon there was a touch of ‘blue’ humour in that one.

I stabbed Alex in the neck once, while he was reading the
Financial Review
in the exercise yard. He wasn’t too tough when he was screaming around with blood pissing out where his collar used to be. He always was a pain in the n… Listen, for under 20 bucks you can cop the odd bad pun.

After that, Alex and I became allies, even though he hated me. We had another dangerous opponent so we stuck together. Remember, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But, much later, after Minogue joined the division, I heard that Alex had put a $7000 contract out on me. Now, that was a lot of money inside – for that sort of cash, I would nearly have done it myself.

I was saddened. Our alliance was over – although Alex didn’t know it. He came to me with the plan to kill big Craig. He had a leather punch spike he wanted to drive into Craig’s brain.

I warned Fatty Minogue about the attack. The big fella was to lose so much weight he was called Slim. Should have been called Jenny Craig Minogue.

When Alex went into the yard Craig was waiting with a couple of gym weights in a pillow case. He wasn’t looking for a workout. He swung them around and turned Alex’s brains to mashed potato.

I sat in my cell having a smoke. Sometimes Generals don’t have to fire the bullets, just move in the troops.

Slim was my friend. We both are still alive. Alex is dead. That’s how it works.

Churchill and Stalin. The Poms had no time for the Frogs, and vice versa, but they fought together in two world wars against the Hun. Enough lessons from the past.

If you don’t get it by now, pay for cable TV and watch the history channel.

IT is 7 July, 2000, as I sit at the kitchen table. Before we moved the kitchen table to where it is now, we hung Victor, our canary, in his cage from the ceiling. Now I get canary seed, water and feathers fluttering down on me as I write.

The
Chopper
movie is about to launch next month and the media frenzy is heating up. I received a nice letter from Eric Bana and some nice offers from all of those honest media people who don’t pay criminals. Renee Brack has made an appearance in my movie. They rang and asked me if I’d mind if she put her head in on it.

I told them I’ve got no problem with her head. No pun intended. Renee was a good scout and she always came prepared. But there were many other media types who dangled their careers off the end of my criminal record.

Let me put it another way. The amount of non-event, all dreams, no talent media bums that have latched on to me to get themselves started is astonishing.

They forget and so do the public, but the bloke with no ears has done more for more people than a lot of people realise or would like to confess to. Good luck to Renee Brack. I hope her bit part in my movie kicks her on.

The media ring me with ‘Chopper this’ and ‘Chopper that’. They come down to see me. They want photographs and autographs. The girls of the media strut in to see poor old Mark as if they are on the cat walk. All legs and push-up bras.

Then the cameras go on. Gone are the winks, the throaty laughs and the UDLs. Now it’s hair in a bun, judgmental comments about money from crime and the poor victims. Blah blah blah.

It’s all a show and I’m the dancing bear. I don’t mind because every time they slag me my book sales go up. The more they pretend to hate me the more the public want to know what’s going on.

I suspect the movie will enter the Kubrick world of
A Clockwork Orange
and be remembered by people who have never even seen it.

Billy the Texan once said to me that I was without a shadow of a doubt the greatest psychological manipulator of the media in Australian criminal history, but the same people dismiss me as not much of a crook compared to their great selves, of course.

My idea of a successful criminal isn’t much different from a successful anything else: someone who ends up with wealth, power, fame and long life.

Few crooks gain power, very few gain fame and even fewer gain long life. So a crook who has gained wealth, power, fame and long life is the winner – no contest.

Good crooks are never known. They have power and money without the fame. Serial killers get the fame with no power and no money and, usually, a lifetime behind bars. Violent criminals have a certain power, but only until they lose their strength, then they either reform or die. Some just get out of jail and become hairdressers like William John O’Meally.

I had fame, power and not much money. I can tell you that writing about crime is a hell of a lot better than committing it. That’s why crime reporters tend to live longer than the criminals they write about. Except if they die of mixed grill and beer poisoning.

I’m a forward thinker. I’m not so worried about today’s opinion but of tomorrow’s and I suspect new generations will view this no-eared freak with a kinder heart than the mice who roar at me today. History has shown us that.

SPEAKING of mice, one of Beethoven’s critics from the media, a name I forget, contacted a former Victorian Police Detective Inspector who, in turn, rang me. As a favour to the former inspector I rang the mouse, or mousette. She was doing an article on me, the movie and so on.

I tried to explain that all the money that was due to me from the movie had already been signed over to a children’s hospital cancer foundation, but she didn’t want to know this as the fact that I’d already given the movie money away to charity flew in the face of her ‘how criminals make money from crime’ articles. Again, it’s an example of how the truth is never believed. People would rather believe the lie.

All she wanted was a black story and so she didn’t want a white answer. She only wanted the legend, the myth and the lie – and anything that wavered from what she had already planned on writing was, to her, a lie.

She intended to turn her version into reality by printing it, then it would become the ‘truth’. That is, the truth to a vast number of her unsuspecting readers.

I was too polite to mention that the only person making any money at the time was her.

I wasn’t being paid for the interview and she was getting plenty. I’ve seen a lot of hypocrisy and dishonesty and a lot of rackets in my time, but I’ve never seen more hypocrisy and dishonesty than there is in the media racket. They’re geniuses at it.

I ONCE said to my publisher many years ago that when you jump on the horse you flog her ’til she drops. It is now July 2000 and, as I write this, the media storm over the
Chopper
movie is already beginning to break.

I said to my publisher over the phone, ‘Get off the piss and edit this book.’ Then I said, ‘Remember that horse I first mentioned to you – well, we are standing in the barn and the horse has bolted and no bastard is riding it.’

It’s too late, Frankenstein’s monster has left the castle and we are all hiding under the table. The myth that we created has escaped into the world of reality and nothing and no one can bloody well put the genie back in the bottle. Have I mixed enough metaphors for you? I don’t even know what a metaphor is but it sounds good, doesn’t it?

It was then that the psychology that I’ve often tried to explain truly hit home. It was like when I was in the Pink Palace, Risdon Prison in Tasmania. Inmates all around me are cutting off their ears, and there are riots, sit ins and stop works, suicides and unexplained insanity and the only quiet, polite prisoner in the jail was the only one they never blamed for any of it.

But I was the only one who could control it. That was mass psychology and you had to have been in a prison for many years to understand the thinking and to be able to use the psychology to your own gain. To control any situation, even a mass situation like a prison population, you must use psychology, not violence or force of arms. Yes indeed, violence and force of arms is a vital tool, but that’s all. Psychology is the guiding force.