Chopper Unchopped (23 page)

He was expelled from school when he went to classes drunk at the age of 13 and soon graduated to stealing cars. By the age of 18 he was serving eight years in Pentridge for armed robbery.

He teamed up with Read and took part in a war which raged behind the walls of Pentridge for five years.

In 1979, he cut off his ears to become a member of the Van Gogh Club in Pentridge a year after Read lost his own.

In 1978, Atkinson held 30 people hostage at gunpoint in a Melbourne restaurant, The Italian Waiters' Club, in a failed bid to have Read released from jail.

Atkinson said that if Read was not released within 24 hours he would begin to kill hostages. The siege failed after four hours and Atkinson was arrested. Atkinson fired shots at police during a wild cab ride outside the club before the siege began.

He was convicted and sentenced to five years for the offences.

But Read and Atkinson were later to fall out. Read said Atkinson failed to warn him he had been earmarked to be killed in a knife attack inside H Division.

Read no longer considers Atkinson an ally.

I SUSPECT that Amos Atkinson started to dislike me way back in the early 1980s in Jika Jika. He was in unit two, side two and I was in unit two, side one.

Amos had been sent a beautiful electric clock radio, he went out to sign for it and took it out of the box. I was standing at the glass doorway watching. Amos had a look of almost childlike wonder on his face, he was so delighted with the new clock radio. I yelled out in front of the screws, ‘Amos, white man make big magic in little box. Ha ha.'

Amos smashed the lovely clock radio on the cement floor and went to his cell, the bloody sook. Some people just can't take a joke.

When I got out of jail in November 1986, I found Amos living in a de facto relationship with a white girl. She was a nice enough young lass, but I found the relationship distasteful. In the wee hours of the morning in 1987 I pulled up outside Amos's house, blind drunk, stood on the front lawn and let off three shots to awaken the household. Then, at the top of my voice I proceeded to sing that old country and western classic:

‘Oh there's one thing I can't figure and that's a white girl with a nigger.'

Amos yelled out the window, ‘Piss off you mad bastard' and I ran to my car and sped off, firing shots in the air, laughing my head off as I went.

I suspect the rot set into the friendship after that. Amos was not amused. I, however, felt it was the very height of good humour.

At one stage I planned to stuff Amos head first into a tree shredder but I decided against it. I hope that one day I don't regret my Christian kindness.

Painter and Docker, Billy ‘The Texan' Longley, was one of the hard men who ran the Melbourne docks when the docks were the centre of the underworld.

In 1971, he stood for election as President of the Victorian branch of the union. The election was held and Longley was confident he had won, but a short time later the ballot box was stolen and there was a fire in the office.

When the result was announced it was Arthur Morris who was elected President.

The secretary of the union, Pat Shannon, was gunned down in the bar of the Druids Hotel in South Melbourne, on October 17, 1973.

The Texan was charged with the murder. The Crown alleged that he paid another man, Kevin Taylor, $6000 to kill Shannon.

Longley served 13 years for the murder, always claiming he was innocent. Shannon was a popular man and from the day of the murder The Texan had to mind his back.

Longley was no stranger to courts. He had been charged with the murder of his first wife, Patricia, in 1961. He was found guilty of manslaughter but was later acquitted on appeal.

Allegations of organised crime and corruption made by Longley to The Bulletin magazine resulted in the then Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, setting up the Costigan Royal Commission.

Longley told the Commission that since 1958 between 30 and 40 Painters and Dockers had been murdered as part of a union civil war.

Longley broke the traditional Painters and Dockers code of silence. Many police believed Longley would be killed by union supporters. But Read decided he would protect, and if need be, kill, for The Texan.

In the years Longley served for the murder of Shannon, no enemy got past Read to complete the act of revenge. Longley was released in 1988.

But while Longley has left the scene there are many criminals who still hate Read because he stood between them and the man they call ‘The Texan.'

MY friendship with The Texan started as an odd one. Some of the plots and plans that we put together in the late 70s I could never write about. Let's just say that Putty Nose Nicholls and Bobby Dix weren't on our Christmas list. Had I been supplied with the weapons as promised in 1976, then when I got out in 1977, the Victorian Branch of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers would have drowned in a sea of their own blood and I would not have supplied life boats for the women and kids.

I was told to contact a chap re fully automatic weapons, but the party I was told to contact lost his guts, cried over the phone and pleaded with me to walk away from it all.

Within a week of my release I had a car load of dockies looking for me and unfortunately for them, they found me. But without the promised automatic weapons and hand grenades, I could not fully correct the situation.

In relation to the old Texan, the grand old man of the Melbourne criminal world, the wrong done to him at the hands of certain members of the union executive should not go unpunished. But had the automatic weapons been forthcoming, the 1977 dockies' Christmas party would have been a blast in every sense of the word, let me tell you.

Around that time a team of dockies were looking for me with a bag of lime and a shovel in the car. They found me, but I pulled out a meat cleaver and a sawn-off shotgun. They didn't even get out of the car; they just drove away with me laughing at them. Plastic gangsters.

Longley to me was in a way a second father, an uncle. If I had been Italian I'd call him my Godfather, not only a man of respect but a man I respect. In many ways the Overcoat Gang was there to protect old Billy, although old Bill never really knew it.

But it was generally known that any move towards Longley in Pentridge meant killing Chopper Read first, and whatever else I am, I'm not easily killed. The friendship between myself and Longley began in H Division labour yards in 1975-76. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. As a result we became friends and remain friends.

Longley was my mentor. He taught me tactics, strategy, patience, he taught me that one man can bring an army to its knees if he just watches and waits.

William John O'Meally was the last man legally flogged in Australia. He was convicted of killing police constable George Howell in 1952, and sentenced to death, but this was commuted to life in jail.

He was flogged for attempting to escape and spent 12 years of his 27-year sentence in solitary confinement.

O'Meally was portrayed as one of the toughest, most dangerous men in jail. He claimed he was ‘the man they couldn't break' and stated he was behind prison riots and much of the violence inside Pentridge.

In later years O'Meally mellowed and became involved in writing poetry.

Although his papers were marked ‘never to be released' he was freed in 1979.

Read remembers a very different O'Meally from the hard man image he had cultivated in prison over three decades.

ONE chap who had a big reputation but that I found very forgettable was Bill O'Meally. I first met him in B Division in 1975. He was an odd old chap with a sad complex about his hair falling out. He once tried to colour his grey hair with Nugget (shoe polish) and went out into the exercise yard to sunbake, but the sun was hot and he started to sweat. The Nugget began to run, and when he noticed it, he rushed off back into the division.

There are a host of people who have, in pride of place above the fire place or in the dining room, an oil painting signed by William O'Meally. The fact is that any old crook who was in B Division when old Bill was there will tell you that Bill couldn't paint a fence with a spray can.

He soon gave up painting, but it didn't give him up … jail is overcrowded with promising artists, all of them unknown and not able to sell their work for a good price. But with Bill's name on the bottom a painting could be sold for $1200 or $1500. Bill used to be called in to write his name on the bottom of various works of art.

Christ, I even sold an ‘O'Meally' after it was given to me by a prisoner who owed me money.

The Pentridge painting trick was a great giggle. But there was a better one. At HM Prison Geelong the boys were turning out Pro Harts by the dozen, then sending them out to be sold as stolen property. No-one was going to buy them if it was claimed they were legal, because buyers would have checked them and found they were fakes. But if it is a pile of two or three ‘stolen' Pro Harts, then it's quite different. They can go for two or three grand each, bought by the greedy, stupid yuppie class.

It wasn't hard. Paints, canvas, paint brushes, check out Pro Hart's style in an art book and away they went. Who's going to know the difference? It was a great old trick.

Greedy yuppies … where would the crooks be without them? Coke, speed and hot property: they love it all.

Peter Lawless was one of the big names of crime in the 1970s. He was a star witness in the Beach Inquiry into the Police in 1975. Lawless was sentenced to life for the murder of Christopher Fitzgerald. In 1987 he was released after serving more than 14 years. He was then implicated in an attempted robbery of a National Australia bank in Ringwood later that year and sentenced to a further seven years.

PETER Lawless won't sue me. I'd punch his head in if he tried. I've known the bloke for 20 years; during the Overcoat Gang war in Pentridge he sat on the fence in H Division trying to be mates with both sides. He is a top jailhouse lawyer, nowhere near Peter Allen's level, but very skilled nevertheless.

Peter is known in jail as a non-tubber. In other words, he doesn't mind walking past the shower room, but not a lot of people can remember him stepping inside. He hasn't been seen taking his clothes off and hopping under the water.

There is a standing giggle in Pentridge and criminal circles that the only way for the police to get Peter Lawless to sign a confession is not to try threats of force or violence but to threaten him with a large bucket of hot, soapy water. It is said that Peter would sign his own Granny up if he was threatened with the content of said bucket.

Of course, all this is said in jest, a bit of criminal mirth and comedy. However, all mirth and comedy is based on fact, and the fact is if a new prisoner asked Peter where the shower room was he would be in real trouble trying to offer the right directions.

Dave Dominguez was a nice guy who fell victim to the modern epidemic of drug abuse. He was serving a short sentence for burglary when he died of a drug overdose in Pentridge's B Division. He was found dead in another prisoner's cell in April 1985. Heroin was found in his blood stream, a puncture mark in his left arm. But no-one ever found the syringe he was supposed to have used to inject himself.

Police said that a number of inmates refused to cooperate with their investigation into Big Dave's death.

‘BIG Dave' Dominguez was a six foot, two inch, 22-stone lovable jolly giant who had befriended me in Geelong Prison in 1974. I spent 10 very happy months in that jail before being moved back to H Division, as it was thought I was standing over half the Geelong prison.

It wasn't true. If fellow prisoners wish to give me money and gifts it would be impolite to refuse, and I'm nothing if not polite.

Big Dave, however, had a drug problem, and that problem almost created a falling out between myself and my old friend Frankie Waghorn.

Big Dave would borrow money from other inmates and ‘forget' to repay it. I would see to it that his debts were paid or cancelled. However, the drugs had taken their hold and Dave's word became totally worthless. I repaid his debts to the tune of several thousand dollars. It was only after I got out of jail in late 1984 that I came to understand that a large part of his friendship toward me was so he could stand behind my name, as he was a marked man.