Chopper Unchopped (220 page)

JOHN Thomas Corral was once known in the underworld as ‘The Basher.' Then he met Mark Brandon Read and became known as The Limper. In 2001 Corral's fall to the bottom of the crime world was complete. He was found guilty of stealing six bottles of body lotion, two tubes of facial scrub and a packet of tea bags

‘The publicity that “Chopper” Read gets is sometimes just too much for my client,' his lawyer told the court.

‘Just this morning, for example, Chopper was on Bert Newton (Good Morning Australia),' Mr Pickering told Melbourne Magistrates Court. ‘He's everywhere.'

Corral also stole hairspray and kitchen sponges during his crime spree. Corral, 48, of South Yarra, had pleaded guilty to shop theft and theft from a motor car. Magistrate Noel Purcell sentenced him to 14 days jail, which he suspended for three months.

I FIRST met Johnny Corral in 1971 in Pentridge. He was a year or so older than me and was a young up and coming hood with plenty of friends and general popularity. He was also attempting to carve himself some sort of reputation as a street fighter, gunman and general hard man. For some reason he picked me out as an easy target. How did it end? Let me put it another way? Ever read any books by Johnny Corral? Ha ha.

For a young gangster in Melbourne to have a go at Chopper Read in 1971 would be like a Jew having a go at Adolf Hitler in 1921. He may have felt good at the time but the clock was ticking. An alarm clock.

Ya see, I wasn't just trying to carve myself out any sort of reputation for this, that or the other. I fully intended on becoming the most feared criminal figure in the 20th Century history of the whole Australian criminal world and that's all there fucking was to it. I aimed low and then got worse.

Years passed and by 1977 Johnny Corral had carved himself out a nice little reputation for himself. Meanwhile, I'd started the biggest gang war in the history of Pentridge Prison or for that matter any prison in Australian history. I was also in the middle of a gang war involving not only the Lygon Street Carlton Italians but the old Painters and Dockers as well. They were busy times for a young bloke.

Then I saw Johnny. He was in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda, early morning. He was wearing a powder blue, three-piece suit. He was standing in front of a hamburger shop with some hangers on and a few whores. I was in a car with my crew, whose names I need not mention. I was wearing a very fashionable overcoat and carrying a double barrel sawn-off shotgun. The rest of my crew all carried weapons, too, as you would.

Johnny Corral immediately recognised me. But he somehow forgot that I was the kid he had a go at all those years before. Wanting to impress his small group with the fact that he knew me, he asked me for a ride home.

So Johnny and two of his mates jumped into our car with me and my two mates. We got to his place and I walked him to his front door. Then I pulled out the shotgun and held it to his head. ‘What's going on Chopper?' asked Johnny. He may have had a nice suit, but we wasn't quick on the uptake.

‘You don't remember, do you?' I replied.

‘Remember what?' he said.

‘Remember this,' I said and, with that, dropped the shotty to his knee cap and went bang. I forget which leg, but it didn't really matter. I left the spent cartridge behind and my dad drove me back to collect it that night, abusing me all the way for my lackadaisical attitude. That's what dads are for. They want you to improve all the time and to do your homework properly. You might think they are nagging, but they really do care. Thanks, Dad.

Johnny stuck solid and didn't give me up, but enough other witnesses did and I got two years' jail. This sentence went in with the sentence I got for attempting to kidnap Judge Martin in the Melbourne County Court in 1978, January 26 – Australia Day. I was always a patriot.

My girlfriend at that time was an 18-year-old prostitute named Lindy. Her last name isn't important. She bumped into Johnny with his one good leg and he told her his sad story.

As my so-called girlfriend she felt sort of responsible and guilty in a strange way so Lindy and Johnny saw quite a lot of each other … and not just his crook leg either. A little bit north of his knee, if you know what I mean.

She visited me and told me all about it.

‘If you plan to fuck everyone I've ever shot, Princess, you'll be a very busy girl,' I said.

‘No, I don't plan to screw everyone you ever shot,' said Lindy. ‘But I felt sorry for him. I just felt so sorry for the poor bastard. One minute he's standing in St Kilda like little Caesar and the next minute he's getting around the place like Jake the Peg with his missing leg.'

I never knew Lindy had a sense of humour. I laughed. I wasn't angry. You can't have a hooker for a girlfriend then complain when people start rooting her. She only worked as a pro for two years, then turned into a born-again Christian. Only I could turn a girl off the game and onto God.

Gee, I loved her at the time. Like the old Dean Martin song ‘How many tears have I cried over you – a million and one or a million and two.' So I won't mention Lindy's last name. I know she is a mum now with a grown up son (not mine, I'd like to add). In the two years she worked in the sex industry she was a weapon. I think she screwed every friend I had at that time, including Mad Charlie on a prison visit. I think she even tried to pull the Jew on for size. But as the Jew would comically say ‘women are a poor substitute for masturbation.' Ha ha ha.

Anyway, getting back to one leg Johnny being shot by Chopper Read. It turned out to be a pretty good thing for him for a while, as I ended up with a lot of enemies and all my enemies looked after Johnny.

However after all, or nearly all, of my enemies died (at least those with money), Johnny fell on hard times but I'm told he still pulls the ‘feel sorry for me' trick.

‘Chopper Read shot me' boo hoo hoo. And I'm told it still works. However, I'm also told that the modern-day hooker isn't too interested in handing out a freebie to one of my victims. The modern-day hooker would rather hand one out to me. That's progress and who am I to stand in the way of progress. Ha ha ha.

The old ‘Please feel sorry for me, I got shot by Chopper Read' story should be set to music and turned into a song because Johnny isn't the only one to pull that stunt in court.

AS I write this a Mister Hedley Gritter rang me in relation to my taking part in a Melbourne crime movie named Trojan Warrior. I note since then that Warwick Capper reckons he has been offered a part in Trojan Warrior, too, although the film people are denying it. No wonder they don't want us on the same set. After all, I nearly shot him in the leg as a favour to Gilbert Besanko at the footy one day.

Great game, footy. They check your bag for beer cans but you can walk in with a sawn-off shotgun and no-one bats an eyelid.

I let my good nature get the better of me that day, but I can't guarantee that I will be able to restrain myself again if I see the bastard trying to act. He did enough bad acting in front of the goal square without wanting to get in front of a camera.

I can't get to the football regularly these days but I still take an interest. The West Coast Eagles were interested in pinching Daniel Chick from Hawthorn. My demented publisher ask me to intercede. I wrote a harmless note to the Eagles coach, Ken Judge, suggesting young Chick would be better suited staying at Hawthorn. I made sure the letter was delivered to his home address.

Chicky ended up staying at Hawthorn. A wise decision all around, I would think.

I slipped into Melbourne to shoot the movie (not Capper) and it was a great experience. Every scallywag in Australia had some sort of a walk-in role. I was a natural, I must say. So many star performances in the witness box prepared me for an acting career. I didn't have too many lines but I'm sure, having watched Eric Bana it will only be a matter of time before my name is up in lights. Sorry, it already is.

Maybe I will be strung up. Oops, I already have. I think you get the drift.

A company named Saatchi and Saatchi rang me about doing a ‘Don't Drink and Drive Campaign.' I did and it was released in NSW to the predictable media outrage. How dare they use Chopper Read, blah, blah, blah.

The hacks descended and wanted to know if I had been paid for the ad. I hadn't but they had to try and create the controversy. I couldn't care less. If it saves someone from getting pissed and killing someone then that's great. I have a lot of faults but I've never been mean with money, and always a soft touch for charity.

I was asked to donate a signed book for the Queen's favourite charity for kids with cancer in Britain. I sent it with a note telling her I had spent 23 years as a guest of hers, in her various prisons, so it would be churlish to deny her request. I also dropped a hint that the MBR wouldn't mind an MBE. You don't want to die wondering.

I have also been used as a model for some sunglasses. I should be rich but let me tell you, I'm not.

My life is a never-ending surprise to me, so being told that old one leg Johnny used my name to get out of the great tea bag robbery of the year 2001 came as no great surprise. As I often say to the bartender, ‘Please don't pass me any more nuts, I've had quite enough thank you.' Ha, ha, ha.

RHYS Muldoon is a Sydney-based actor who got in touch with me after the AFI Awards. He is a happy-go-lucky sort of bloke. A bit of an Aussie knockabout, full of shit, but a lovable scallywag and very serious about his craft. I think.

Once he heard that I had something going with J. Walter Thompson and Black Fly Sunglasses and a ‘Don't Drink and Drive' campaign as well as my being asked to take part in a movie by radio 3RRR legend Hedley Gritter, Rhys seemed to think I needed an agent or some sort of management. I said that, well, maybe an agent would be a good idea in case shit jumps up in the future that I can't handle.

The bloke went mad contacting agents and managers all over Sydney. Now these people all want to talk to me.

But I'm someone that no agent or manager really knows what to do with. I'm in the too hard basket or too fucking mad bin. Then Rhys rang to say he contacted Harry M. Miller. Jesus, the whole thing is getting too much for me.

I've sold almost half a million books and had a movie made about my life and the nation's media have spent more time up my arse than they have up the pub and all of a sudden I need an agent.

So far I've been getting ripped off quite nicely without an agent
(I heard that
–
Ed.)
When I talk to these razzle dazzle merchants they haven't got the faintest idea how to handle me or what the hell to do with me.

But, and not to be unkind, Harry M. Miller aside, all the rest of the snake oil merchants appear to be unemployed and very busy trying to find work for semi-unemployed members of the entertainment industry.

‘When in doubt, shoot everybody,' is a good motto. The more I'm tempted away from what I know I can do towards what I know I can't do the more paranoid I become. The name Chopper Read is so big, people just imagine that there has to be money involved.

This is far from reality. I agreed to co-write a film script with Rhys. What do I have to lose? But I have spent my whole life in a world of lies and disinformation and I can smell spin-doctors and a snake oil salesmen a mile away.

In the old days, when a man said to me here's the guns, here's the money, this is the target, I believed him. But when anyone said I'll pay you so much after the job is done I knew I was talking to a bullshitter or a game player. The Australian entertainment industry has more dreamers, conmen, liars and coked-out empire builders in it than the criminal world. In fact, in the criminal world I dealt with a better class of person, and that's saying something.

Of course, none of this applies to Rhys. I'm sure his heart is in the right place.

I don't want to become a freak, sideshow, novelty value only commodity within the so-called industry. Rhys and I will no doubt write our film script but already I know I would get dizzy and spin out if I had to try and live in the world these people live in.

Yes Rhys, we will do the things we spoke of but, for God's sake, mellow out.

Sydney people are all the same. If they aren't going at 100 miles per hour, they are generally dead.

Anyway, that's what I think. A wise man once said, don't let your life get kidnapped by well meaning madmen. I should know.

IT was the Australian film industry’s night of nights. They all got dressed up in their best clothes and just couldn’t wait to be seen – and that was just the cocaine dealers.

The starlets went to the hairdressers, the dress makers and the plastic surgeons. The blokes put on their tuxes and put socks in their undies so they looked like studs.

They all practised their surprised looks in case they won. They rehearsed their speeches so they could say they hadn’t prepared anything to say.

Most of them now have tatts and drug habits yet they never do jail time. Work that out.

For months I would skip to the letter box hoping for an invitation to the night. I thought I could go as Eric Bana’s date but they obviously forgot my address. For a while I thought of going and impersonating Eric like he had done to me. Would they have noticed?

Who knows.

I decided to watch it from home in Tassie. They put on their tailored suits. I put on my Kmart tracksuit. They grazed on sushi. I watched the cattle graze and ate nine steamed dimmies. They snorted some crack and coke. I cracked a Bundy and Coke.

Still, it was a good night and I was happy that the crew from Chopper did well. So they bloody should have, they had a great subject to work with.

Eric Bana won Best Actor, Simon Lyndon won Best Supporting Actor and ‘Doctor Strangelove’ Andrew Dominik won Best Director. Michele Bennett did not win Best Producer for the Best Movie. A pity, I thought she deserved it.

They gave the Best Movie to the Barbie doll film
Looking for a Bottle of Brandy
or some such forgettable stupid name. Who did she ever kill?

Fame today, forgotten tomorrow unlike
Chopper
who will ride off into the Stanley Kubrick sunset of a clockwork orange. J. Walter Thompson has just signed me up on behalf of their American client, Black Fly Sunglasses, to act as their Australian front man in a national publicity campaign. Black Fly is an out there, on the edge, plenty of attitude brand name, however in signing me they may have entered the world of mental illness. Ha! Ha! Ha!

MY life takes on so many twists and turns. It can roller coaster from week to week. Another artist, Andrew Hopgood, wants to paint my portrait for the Moran Prize. I wonder if that is the Mark Moran Prize because if it is they are painting the wrong bloke.

Suddenly artists and advertising agencies seem to like me. Julian Knight the Hoddle Street massacre man still drops me a line from time to time, keeping me in touch with the Victoria prison system. As if I needed to be kept in touch.

This time he included a photo of himself holding a
Chopper
book. Me think someone is hinting that this would be a good photo to use in my next book. Hint taken, Julian. Dominik ‘The Shark’ sent me a recent photo of himself sitting next to a dead man. I destroyed it as to blot out both faces would not conceal the fact that the man Dominik was sitting with was in fact dead. How dumb is he?

The photo simply read ‘Surf’s up!’

I received a similar snap shot sent by The Shark’s predecessors after the 1997 murder of Italian businessman Angelo Romeo. I was in prison at the time and destroyed that photo as well. This want or need of some to send me hints and snap shots hoping that I will record history or hint that so and so could have or may have or is rumoured to have done this or that to so and so is overwhelming.

Some view me as the official recorder of names and events that would otherwise go unnoticed. I don’t mind but I know that I am all so used by some in psychology of fear and disinformation campaign hoping that I will hint at incorrect information given to me by people working on behalf of the true guilty party.

For example the Angelo Romeo photo was sent to me by a person attempting to hint that Alphonse Gangitano did it or ordered it done. I knew it was a contract job involving big money players within the illegal abalone poaching industry and about 1000 miles removed from the world of Alphonse Gangitano.

I even traced the handwriting on the envelope down to a friend of Gangitano’s who had sent me another disinformation letter several years before. I forget the chap’s name now, as it was all so long ago.

This epilogue is included for the benefit of those readers left slightly puzzled by the content of this book and the message and or meaning within.

I’ve been so careful to blur fact, true real fact, into the fog of fiction, that some readers will be left to wonder if it is a fact or a fiction book. First of all it is a 100% fact book. Every true story is true and every lie is a lie.

All I’ve done is I have not separated the truth from the fine weave thread of lies I’ve run through the story. In the name of self legal protection and to show you in my own way just how the psychology of fear and the creation of lies, myths and stories in the making of a legend or the building of a reputation and or personal or professional image is done.

There will be those readers who will condemn me for trying to bamboozle them and other readers who will thank me for putting into words something they themselves have long suspected.

As I’ve said before, it’s only a book and not a greatly overpriced one. The reader can either believe or disbelieve, or if the reader is smart enough, possibly learn something.

From time to time I have made predictions relating to how long other people have to live and surprise surprise I’ve been right quite a few times.

The fact that I entered the valley of the shadow meant I was a fool to begin with. The fact that I survived to tell the tale simply proves the old Irish proverb that God protects fools and drunks.

Just because a fool is smart enough to survive doesn’t make him any less a fool and with age and an ego fast fading I can state with true honesty that I’ve led a foolish life, a wasted life.

I’ve salvaged the remainder of that foolish life with a pen in my hand and not a gun. But I can’t look back on my former life with any real sense of pride or achievement.

It was only when I put down the gun and took up the pen did my life turn around. In writing about my life and the people in it, I came to understand that some others might see my past as a blood-splattered painting of death and glory?

I am like ‘The Fool on the Hill.’ Yes, I got to the top, but at what insane cost? A cost I wouldn’t wish to have to pay all over again. I regret nothing. I continue to say ‘Je Ne Regrette Rien’. At the time I truly believed in that motto but deep inside how could any one other than a fool really believe such a thing?

As I grow older and I look at my young son, I know I would lay down my life for him. I would not wish my life on him or for him to follow in my footsteps and it is when I see my son that I know I do regret my past.

I guess I’m saying that the madman who first wrote the words and the motto of the French foreign legion ‘Je Ne Regrette Rien’ has grown old enough, wise enough and less foolish and honest enough to now admit that I regret so much.

THE
Chopper
movie is now all over the West End of London and throughout the UK. I’ve only one slight complaint. I think Vince Colosimo who played Neville Bartos in the movie was the forgotten star. I know Simon Lyndon won Best Supporting Actor at the AFI Awards, but personally I would have given Vince Colosimo my vote. He acted so very much like the type of people I really did enjoy shooting.

No offence, Vince, but for what it’s worth I think you did a fucking top job. I know that I’m not meant to mention the movie in my books but how can I help but not mention it.

Eric Bana will go on and on to bigger and better projects. You don’t have to be a fortune teller to predict that but I’d keep my eye on Vince Colosimo, too.

Anyway, that’s my prediction, for what it’s worth. As for Eric Bana, what can I say?

I can only repeat the old story about Elvis Presley entering an Elvis lookalike contest and coming third. Bana looked more like me in that movie than I did. Like I said to a local newspaper, had the role called for Eric to wear a dress he would have won Best Actress as well. That’s how good an actor he is.

Speaking of fortune telling and predictions, I feel I must mention the name of my one time friend, later turned enemy, Nick ‘The Greek’ Apostolidis and simply say that I have a very odd feeling that I will outlive him.

In fact, I’m convinced. I won’t put a time or a date to it, as I don’t want the prediction to be used against me. Let’s just say in the immortal words of Dr Martin Luther King, I had a dream. And that dream is to outlive the Greek.

Let’s just see if this prediction comes true. Who knows, I may be a fortune teller or, in Nick’s case, misfortune teller. I do get these odd feelings from time to time about people and the next thing I know they are dead.

Quite spooky, really. But, as I’ve said, it’s only a feeling. I may be quite wrong. Nick might outlive us all but I doubt it but for what it’s worth I’d thought I’d mention it. Anyway Nick if you are reading this you’ll forgive me for not sending flowers.

Tick Tock Tick, is that a clock ticking or is it a Ding-Dong Ding of bells? I won’t crack any distasteful jokes about Nick. I burnt his house down once. I should have got an award.

Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls because if I was to crack a comic remark I’d have to say it tolls for you my old cavalier Via Con Dios Greek. I love a sunburnt country.

Anyway as epilogues go I think I’ve written quite enough. It’s time to don my highway patrol Black Fly sunglasses and walk away. A small plug for my sponsor. I will leave you all with this small thought. All any writer has to do is to capture the imagination. The truth of his words is for the reader to believe or disbelieve as long as the imagination has been captured for the length of this book. What you decide to believe is up to you. Just because I have done foolish things doesn’t mean that I’m a fool and as far as the content of this book is concerned only a fool would swear to the truth of it. I’m happy enough to let the reader be the judge. Not guilty, I hope.