Chopper Unchopped (243 page)

‘JUST because a man is sent to prison does not end his interests in the crime world. Certain drug kingpins and upmarket drug dealers still operate and control their business from behind bluestone walls. A host of bank robberies are planned, put together and ordered from behind bars and carried outside by friends or helpers.

The amount of crime that is carried out on the orders of men serving sentences is amazing. The amount of crime controlled from behind prison walls would stagger most people.’

‘I LOVE a good criminal war or battle situation and I am only ever consulted on matters of violence and death.’

‘I AM a bit lucky that the blows to the head I have received over the years have done something to my timing. I can be in jail for years and years and the time doesn’t seem to mean much. It is a bit worrying, but it may have done me a favour.’

‘THE Australian penal system is a sick, corrupt, drug-infested cesspit of mental illness, perversion and despair where violence is part of daily routine.’

‘BUT hard rules apply behind the bluestone walls. They may be sick and sorry rules, but they are rules of the wild. The strong rule and the weak cry. The criminal world, both inside and outside the jail, is ruled through strength. It is not a democracy.’

‘THE modern prison is a marshmallow compared with good old H. It was the last place from the old hard school and in my heart I preferred the old days to the system that we have now. A good flogging can concentrate the mind.

I did more than 10 years in ‘H’, the so-called blood house of the system. It wasn’t just my home, I owned the place. I owned it, I controlled it, I ran it. By ruling that division, we ran the jail. We were the most feared gang in the most feared division of the most feared jail in Australia and I was the commanding general.’

‘WE had a war in jail because I was alleged to have eaten too many sausages, a foul piece of slander indeed – although I must say they were yummy.’

‘THE Overcoat Gang War, which went five years inside Pentridge, was probably the bloodiest crime war in Victoria. But because it was waged inside jail very little was ever heard about it on the outside. ‘G Division … was the area kept in jail for the mentally unwell. I had obviously been put there by mistake, ha ha. I was actually sent there after I mislaid my ears. Obviously, those in power thought this was not the act of a well unit.’

I am confident that I hold the bashing record inside Pentridge and it will never be beaten because the jail is now structured differently.’

I would say the Overcoat War saw well over a hundred separate attacks over five years before some of us went to Jika and couldn’t get each other as often.

The war ended in 1980 because they sent some of us to Jika Jika when it first opened. There were a few half-hearted attempts to keep it going, but we just couldn’t get at each other any more.

Prisoner violence was considered the pastime of the 1970s. Back then, some of the screws and the governors encouraged it. They thought it was akin to a bloody good football match. It kept the prison population busy and gave them something to think about.

The jail governors today are a little limp-wristed when it comes to matters of violence. Since the 1980s drugs and violence have ruled the jail, but the class of men and the class of violence is very petty. Savage and evil, yes, but very petty.

In the 1970s, the jail was ruled by home brew and iron bars. The violence raged from one end of the place to the other. The press got told very little about it. The younger crims today simply find it hard to believe the stories of blood and guts that went on inside and outside jail.

These days, the so-called top crims are so full of junk, they couldn’t change their underwear. Outside it is the same. The gang bosses and the drug lords get rid of their enemies by ringing the police. They demand police protection if their own lives are threatened. The guts and courage have gone. The criminal scene is just a sea of vomit. But back in the days of the Overcoat War there was plenty of full-on guts and courage on both sides.

Our side was outnumbered, but we had some great tactical advantages. We had a spy network right through the prison and we had the moral support and the blind eye encouragement of a handful of the most Right-wing, broken-nosed, cauliflower-eared, hired-by-the-pound, knuckles scraping on the ground, leg-breaking screws any jail has ever seen. We also had one big bonus, the blessing of Jimmy Quinn, the Pentridge Governor of Security.

When the blood starts flying, I’ll do business with the Devil himself. Victory at all costs is the only thing. You can discuss the moral ethics as we bury the enemy. That’s how I got away with it all for five years: I had a friend in high places.

Governor Quinn died in the early 1980s. He was a grand old fellow, a man who would have a drink on any occasion. He loved to bet, a fight, and blood and guts – and he thought the world of me and I of him. In the 1970s, Jimmy Quinn once had his nose broken in a punch-on with a Painter and Docker who was my enemy in B division. So when the Overcoat War broke out, Jimmy Quinn took my side. My enemy already had a few high-ranking prison staff on side, but I had all the old-time blood and guts brigade. After all, it was a prison war between inmates, but we were fighting on the screws’ playing field, so some friends at court were needed on both sides. I think my enemy went through the whole war wishing he hadn’t broken the governor’s nose.

Through Governor Quinn I could get into other prisoners’ cells at night, get into other yards, and get prisoners transferred from one division to another, have my own men moved. The pull I had was quite unbelievable. Quinn used to send two security screws down to H Division early in the morning, handcuff me and bring me up to the security office and into his office. I’d be uncuffed there and the governor would sit down with me, his office door closed, and we’d drink coffee and eat Choc Royal bikkies and watch slides of his latest overseas holidays. Now and again, we would break out a small bottle of whisky or a can or two of beer. At the height of the Overcoat War, he once had me brought to his office and over a can of beer he explained to me that for every dozen or so bashings and attacks that Overcoat Gang did, only one would get mentioned on any report, and none, if any, on my personal records. It was getting a bit tropical and I had to ease it up for a while. The A Division bomb had just gone off and Quinn was under pressure. He then said that every twelve or so bashings, one would get a mention.

When I cut my ears off, Governor Quinn came to hospital to visit me. When I got stabbed, he also came in to see me. He was a good mate with my dad. He was not a corrupt man. He was just an old-style blood-and-guts boy, and a good war in jail gave us all something to do. He was a grand old fellow, and his death was a great sadness to me personally.’

‘ONE of Jimmy Loughnan’s favourite party tricks in H Division during the war was to get hold of chaps we felt had been ‘putting holes in their manners’. (Loughnan was Read’s right hand man until he turned on him, stabbing him in jail. Loughnan later died in a jail fire). We would grab the offending party and give him a touch up – otherwise known as a sound beating. Then we would stand him up. I’d put a butcher’s knife to his neck and Jimmy would put a razor blade in his mouth and he would be told to chew on it.

There would be a little protest at first, but it was a case of chew or die – and a mouth full of blood was better than a neck full of cold steel. So chew, it would be. If you’ve never seen a man chew a razor blade, you have never seen blood flow. There would be choking and coughing and blood – sometimes vomiting. It was a lesson once learnt, never forgotten. It must have been pain beyond description. But H Division in the 1970s was a blood-soaked mental hospital of violence and more violence – and only the truly ultra-violent could rule it. The list of weapons made and used in Pentridge goes on and on, and we used them all. There are iron bars, claw hammers, garden spades, homemade tomahawks, and ice picks, screwdrivers sharpened to pinpoint, nun-chukkas, meat cleavers and butcher knives from the kitchen.

My favourite was a razor blade welded into the end of a toothbrush with a cigarette lighter, or a blade with sticky-tape wrapped around one end. When it is held between the thumb and the forefinger, with a flash of the wrist you can open a man’s face up like a ripe watermelon.’

‘ONE trick we used that I can now admit was the soap scam. A dirty trick but it was a jail gang war, so all was fair.

I got a dozen bars of soap, soaked them in a plastic bucket of hot water for 15 minutes, then pulled them out and a slid a razor blade down the side of each bar. Then I left them out in the sun to harden.

I was in H Division number one billet at the time. My job was serving out the meals, cleaning the cells, the wing, the labour yard and the shower yard – meaning I had total run of the division. I removed all soap from the shower yards, and put six blocks of my trick soap in each shower yard.

Needless to say, without going into the bloody details, it worked a treat. My enemies were not only frightened to eat their food – for fear of rat poison or human shit in the stew – they couldn’t even use soap in the showers without fear. I was mentally destroying their will. I would leave dobs of jam under their beds to attract ants. I’d piss in their cordial bottles. Along with the bloody violence and physical beatings, these added touches reduced my enemies to tears – and total surrender.’

‘WHY did I have my ears chopped off? … I told them, “I will be leaving H Division, tomorrow.” They said, “No, you won’t,” and I said I would. So I went back and got Kevin to cut my bloody ears off. You reckon I didn’t leave H Division straight away? The classo board nearly came down and carried me out themselves.

The first time it happened, it was big news, then everyone started doing it, nothing to do with me. Then all the nutcases in here thought there was something to be gained out of this. I was the president of the Van Gogh club until Garry David cut his penis off. I wrote to him, “You can take over.” When the dicky birds start hitting the pavement, I thought it was time to resign.

Enduring a bit of pain is one thing, but that’s a bit much.’

‘THE man who cut them (ears) off was Kevin James Taylor, the chap doing life for shooting Pat Shannon. If a man tries to cut off his own ears, he will make a pig’s breakfast of the job, so I asked Kevin to do it for me. I went into the Number One shower yard of H Division, sat down, folded my arms and sat as still as I could.

Kevin had the razor blade. I said, “Okay, do it.” He started to do it really gently and slow, but that was very painful. I said, “Come on, you bloody fairy, rip into it,” and so he did.

I remember the sound, it was like running your finger nails down a blackboard at school, only it was going through my head, then I felt the warm blood bubbling in my ears. Then he did the second one. I thought Van Gogh had done it, so it couldn’t be life threatening. I decided to have a cold shower and all the bleeding would stop. But it just wouldn’t slow down at all.

The blood flowed and flowed after the ears came off, the rest of the guys freaked out. They thought I’d gone crazy. Kevin knocked on the yard door and the screws let me out. We all said I’d cut my ears off because we didn’t want to get Kevin in trouble. He’s out now, so it doesn’t matter.

The doctors didn’t believe me, but when I looked down on the ground at my fallen ears, I was sure I could see them doing an Irish jig. Maybe I was seeing things or maybe it was the nerves in the ears making them twitch.’

‘KILL me or cop it sweet, that’s the way I saw it. In or out of prison no-one could take more pain than me, no one could dish out more pain than me. I wasn’t about to stand in the shadow of any man who went before me.’

‘I’M already punch drunk in charge of limited intelligence as it is.’

‘AHH, Chopper, you old trendsetter. But as I said to the boys, if you really want to look like the Chopper, get them bloody ears off. The mention of a razor blade slicing through the ears soon separates the men from the boys.’

‘THERE is no evidence of psychiatric disorder in Mr Read. He clearly has a most unusual personality, but then, that would be expected of someone who is not uncomfortable about being regarded as a professional criminal.’

– From a psychiatric report on Mark Brandon Read.

‘SOME prisoners like to waffle on about the dark and lonely solitude of their damp and lonely cell and how they never forgot the sound of the cell door slamming for the first time. What a load of crap. One cell is the same as any other. When you have heard one cell door slam, you have heard them all. Jail life can be summed up in two words: petty and boring.’

‘AFTER the years that I have done inside, I would write a thousand pages on jail life. But men who have done it, lived it, bled it, cried and nearly died in it, couldn’t be bothered.

I’ll leave that all to one-month wonders, who can write a gripping thriller based on their blood-chilling adventures in Her Majesty’s Motel.’

‘IF you are a police informer or an offender against small children, you can buy yourself all the friends and supporters you want with a gram of heroin. Not like the old days when a child molester could look forward to having a mop inserted in his bottom and then be flogged to within an inch of his pathetic life.’

‘POLICE informers, crown witnesses, child killers and molesters openly running about the jails of the nation without a care in the world, and some of them swaggering about like gangsters … it’s enough to make you sick.’

‘I HAD a deep sense of friendship, but over the years the more knives that got stuck in my back and the more times I was betrayed, that sense of friendship becomes less and less.’

‘TO be stabbed by the same bloke that I tried to get out of jail is a terrible lesson, a good lesson, but a hard way to learn.’

‘IN my enemies’ rush to condemn me, to destroy me with venom and outrage they have, in fact, almost given me a legal licence to kill – in self-defence, of course. The plea of self-defence is rarely used in court and believed even less. In my case it is a simple case of some poor bastard trying to kill Chopper Read again (yawn) as these plots against me are considered commonplace. If I have so many enemies, who can I trust? As far as trust is concerned, the old saying that there are no friends in business applies hundred-fold in the criminal world.

In the name of self-interest and survival, most men will betray a friend to save their own skins, or further their own ends. There are a few men who are exceptions to this rule, even fewer in the criminal world.

Chopper’s golden rule is that when the shit hits the fan, keep an eye on the people closest to you. The graveyards are full of blokes who got put there by their friends.’

‘TEARS mean nothing when they are insincere. Even real tears can conceal a murderer.’

‘FRIENDSHIP is a funny thing. When the good times roll, everyone wants to rock and roll with you and when the shit hits the fan, you’re on your own.’

‘THE enemy of my enemy is my friend.’

‘AND I am a man with a long, long memory. Shallow people and false pretenders don’t have long memories. They will forget, but I won’t. I don’t have to shoot people to punish them. There are more ways to kill a cat than by wringing its neck. The cats in question used up their nine lives when they betrayed my trust and friendship.’

‘ANY fool could see that Alphonse was running red-hot and couldn’t be allowed to keep going. But then again. I’m no fool.’

‘ALPHONSE was a fool for trusting such a weak-gutted arse-wipe as Jason Moran. Jason was at best a woman basher and a two-bob bullyboy. He never fought anyone who could fight and never made a move against anyone who had real dash or guts.’

‘NOTHING that happens these days seems the same as it once was, and while I live in the present, I constantly miss the dead friends of old. All my life people have been coming into my life leaving their mark on my mind, heart and soul, and then dying on me or vanishing into the mists of time. It makes me sad and sentimental.’

READ was jailed for shooting Collins in Tasmania. The former president of an outlaw motorcycle gang, Collins was reported missing in NSW in September 2001 and his body has never been found.

‘No, 1992 certainly wasn’t Sid’s year. He got shot and married.’

(1994) ‘According to rumour, Sid is now involved in an area of work that, to put it politely, I do not agree with. All in all, his life is not filled with joy.’

‘I knew that Sid had an appointment with a bullet – it was just a matter of when.

‘Why did I know this? Because Sid had his own enemies.

‘Pumping a slug into someone’s leg or guts is no big deal in Melbourne or Sydney. If Sid needed a shot in the guts to teach him to pull up his socks, it was none of my concern.’

‘I cannot write that I did in fact shoot the Tip Rat – as that would mean a charge of perjury being laid against me – as I swore in the Tasmanian Supreme court that I didn’t shoot Collins.’

‘A MASS killer, a coward, an egomaniac … I leant over his shoulder, snatched the pair of scissors and stabbed him in the neck.

I later dipped my fingers in his blood and wrote on his cell door, “Sorry about that Alex.” But Alex did teach me to play chess – and for that I thank him.’

A GURU-LIKE criminal who inspired killings without actually committing them. ‘His was cowardly violence of a mindless nature directed against the weak without courage, style or flair.’

‘HE IS and will always remain a two-bob nothing little punk in a posh suit his mummy bought him. In spite of his acquittal along with others in the Walsh Street shootings he will remain involved in crime. He has lived off the reputation of his elder brothers for years.’

ESCAPED with Archie Butterly from the Melbourne Remand Centre on March 7, 1993, with the help of Gibb’s lover, prison officer Heather Parker. Gibb was recaptured and Butterly was shot dead.

‘I’ve known Peter Gibb for twenty years. He is an old hood who grew up in Prahran.

The first time he came to my attention was at a dance in Prahran, when a handgun dropped out of his pants and hit the floor. All eyes turned to see a somewhat embarrassed and sheepish Peter bend down to pick up the offending firearm and try to tip-toe out without drawing attention to himself.

He was always good at pulling the girls and little Miss Parker, if my memory serves me correctly, would be the third female prison officer to fall for Peter’s glib tongue.

They all gave Peter their hearts, as well as their panties.

He must have a good line of conversation because I have seen Peter in the showers, and believe me; he hasn’t got a big line in anything else. Ha ha.’

‘THE key to Palmer was that he couldn’t fight – which made him even more dangerous with a gun in his hand.’

ROBBER, adventurer and drug addict who spent years in jail with Read. He escaped, travelled the world before being recaptured and sent back to Pentridge. On his return Read wrote; ‘He had tears in his eyes. It was good to see him. He is an ultra-smart, good-natured, almost loving man and it is very hard not to like him. What can I say? His story and adventures would fill volumes.’

Read was right. Roberts’ massive book
Shantaram
is a worldwide best seller and has been sold to Hollywood. Hollywood star Johnny Depp is preparing to play the role of Roberts.

‘HE was told that I was out to kill him and I was told that he was going to kill me. We both felt that our first meeting would be in the streets with guns blazing … Now that we are friends, the only thing we fight about is when he puts too much garlic in our lunchtime curry.

He even won $15,000 on Tattslotto while on the run. Jesus Christ, I’ve shot people for less money than that.’

‘HE had a reputation as a tightwad … a man who could have a hundred grand under the bed and go out and pinch a rubbish bin rather than pay cash for it.’

READ attempted to take a County Court judge hostage in a doomed plan to force authorities to release Loughnan. Eventually Loughnan repaid Read’s misguided loyalty by stabbing him in a sneak attack inside Pentridge. Jimmy died in a prison fire in 1987.

When Read recovered from his stab wounds he finally ran into Loughnan inside Pentridge.

‘He couldn’t fight but he wasn’t a coward, so he stood his ground and braced himself for the expected bashing. I walked up and kissed him on the cheek and said “Don’t worry, Jimmy, I’m not going to hurt you. Your own life will destroy you.” He said, “Yeah, I know it will.”

As I walked away, he called out to me, “It wasn’t personal, Chopper.”

I kept walking and didn’t turn back. I had tears in my eyes … I wasn’t angry and I didn’t hate him; he just broke my heart.’

‘I burnt Nick the Greek’s house down. Big deal. If you met him, you’d want to burn it down too.’

‘POOR Dave was an intelligent teenager who ended up being probably the best secret hitman in Australia – and a man who liked to “experiment” on his victims in a way that made even me shiver.

He was convinced he was the reincarnation of the American Jewish gangster Bugsy Siegel. Now in times of high unemployment, this is not a good thing to put on one’s CV. Imagine it. Name: Bugsy Siegel. Occupation: 1930s US Gangster. References: Al Capone, Eliot Ness and Meyer Lansky.

Poor Dave, I love him. I often think back and see in my mind’s eye myself and the Jew sitting beside Squizzy Taylor’s grave (born June 29, 1888; died October 26, 1927) talking of the future. The trouble was that we were so hell bent on trying to control our destinies that we both forgot we had no control over our fate.

One of the strangest things about Dave, as the son of strict Jewish parents, was his constant reading of Adolf Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
. I asked him one day why he read such a book and he looked at me and replied quietly: “Know thy enemy”.

Dave has always been a deep thinker. He said, “Forgiveness and funerals go hand in hand and the only time to forgive an enemy is after you have seen him die”.

‘WHEN I came back from Tasmania I knew that I had wasted most of my life. Back with Margaret, I was determined to have one last go at not going back to crime. But old friends – blood loyal soldiers – wanted to claim me back. I had to cut them loose. If I had taken up with them again, we would have joined the war. We would now all be dead or in jail. They will never know that I saved their lives by turning my back on them.’