Chopper Unchopped (53 page)

FRANKIE Waghorn’s mum rang Margaret with the terrible ‘news’ that I had been bashed in Risdon prison. This is about the 20th time I’ve been the alleged victim of violence most foul behind the walls of the Pink Palace.

Ages ago, Anita Betts came to me most concerned over reports that I was being picked on by the bigger boys. I was even the victim of a stabbing in my cell, according to one wild story. I was the unlucky victim of a kicking attack, and I’ve had my head punched in so many times that I would get a thick ear, if I had one left, just listening to it all. How these wild rumors and stories start I do not know. But I seem to be the sad victim of all these fantasy attacks. I wish the numb nuts who think up all this rubbish would let me win one or two. According to the gossip and rumor mongers, I haven’t won a single round. Is this a psychological campaign to talk me to death? Is it all a case of wishful thinking, or do people have such a good time thinking all this sort of crap up?

I go out of my way to avoid three things: manual labor, physical exercise and fisticuffs. While others engage in all manner of combat training, pumping iron, punching bags, kicking each other, huffing and puffing and sweating like pigs in an effort to build themselves into fighting machines, I prefer to avoid all that hard work.

I do all my fighting with a gun in one hand and a cup of tea in the other. While the world is full of people who could bash me, the world is not full of people who could bash me and live to talk about it. That’s why God invented razor blades, butcher’s knives, iron bars, meat axes and guns that go bang – so blokes like me don’t get bashed 10 times a day before breakfast.

If people want to try and bash me that’s fine, as long as they don’t mind spending the rest of their lives in a wheelchair or being led around by a seeing eye dog.

If they really want to rock and roll, then it would be a coffin for them. The only thing I get bashed with these days is bullshit. Shoot me, but for goodness sake, don’t shit me, as the old saying goes.

There have been many and various rumors floating around Tassie and it would appear they are never complete unless they include my good self. I heard that I was filthy rich from money from book sales. I just wish it was true. I was supposed to have bought Anita a new car from the proceeds. Fat chance. She already drives a Mercedes. The book wouldn’t have paid for one back wheel.

One great local rumor was that I had put out a $20,000 contract on the life of Trent Anthony, fetch and carry boy and general lackey turned Crown witness.

Naturally, Micky Marlow had his name thrown into the ruck.

The CIB questioned a bloke by the name of Dennis Carr over the matter. It was rumored that young Dennis, an alleged criminal identity in Tasmania, was seen parked outside a police safehouse with another gent who looked a little like old Mad Micky. Dennis told me this wild story, when he popped into the remand yard, before getting appeal bail over a small matter.

It seems the police are prepared to believe the wildest yarns where my name is concerned.

I guess my Crown witnesses, God bless them, will be seeing hitmen in their dreams for years to come, and the police will believe any dreamer with a good Chopper Read yarn to tell.

Ha ha.

HEROIN seems to have a worse effect on ladies than on men. It will drive a man to crime, but it seems to take women’s souls. It sends them to the streets and the parlors. Women are not very good at armed robbery and violent crime and the quickest and simplest way to pay the bills and support their drug habits is to lay on their backs with their legs open.

Not all ladies in this area and in that life with a drug habit are lost souls. I have seen a few dive head first into it, swim around for several years and then I have seen them years later, alive and well, healthy and happy.

They have danced with the devil and escaped by some freak or fluke. Maybe they were stronger than smack, but the few who have pulled themselves out of it are rare indeed. The love of a child can do it, or sometimes the love of a man. Love seems to be the magic that has saved them. I have seen others give away the world for heroin when they seemed to have everything on their side.

I don’t know the answer. I have seen some escape, but most go under. Those who have survived are the freaky few.

I’D LIKE to clear up one point, if I may. I get mail from some people who see me as some sort of Robin Hood, a crusader who has set himself up to clean the world of drug dealers. I am not an avenging angel and I do not see myself as one.

There are two main reasons why I target drug dealers. First, they are the ones with the big money. One is hardly going to make a big profit from kidnapping and torturing men who pinch washing machines for a living, so it’s simply a matter of logical economics. Secondly, a drug dealer is in no position to tell on you, that is, if he lives to tell any tales at all. The general public does not give a toss what happens to drug dealers, fair or foul.

Judges take a dim view of it but juries, as a rule, are far more sympathetic.

I don’t want people to get the wrong impression. I don’t take from the rich and give to the poor. I keep the money myself. My life will never be made into a Disney movie. I don’t like drug dealers, that much is true, but it is really beside the point.

It is business. It is not and has never been some sort of holy crusade. But it can be fun, and quite profitable too.

A STORY of death and violence was told to me by my old friend Vincent Villeroy. A good bedtime story for the kiddies – if you want them to grow up to be psychos.

Vincent was part of a crew who grabbed a payroll bandit. They cut off his toes with a pair of hedge clippers, just as a warm up, and when the poor fellow later asked who was torturing him, Vincent told him not to be so nosy. Ha ha.

They kept hitting him with a cattle prod by pushing it into his nose and giving him a zap with the electric volts which went straight into his brain.

Vincent and his mates kicked a big goal with that one. There was only $30,000 involved and it was hard to go four ways.

They disposed of the body by chopping it up and feeding it to the pigs. I always think of it when I have an egg and bacon sandwich.

Getting animals to eat the remains of a murder victim is a good trick. Pigs are great and chickens are wonderful. I have known chaps to go through the chain feeder on a chicken farm. It not only gets rid of the evidence, but makes the yolks nice and yellow.

In Tassie, there is no need to use domestic animals as accessories after the fact. Just leave the body in the bush and the Tasmanian devils will do the rest. They have extra strong jaws for crunching bones. They feed in packs and will eat anything at all, a bit like armed robbery squad detectives. Wonderful.

KYM Nelson was a well known lady in the Melbourne criminal world during the ’60s, ’70s and even the ’80s. Kym was a top looking lady in her day, smart and tough to go with it. She was a gangster’s girl with boyfriends like Joey Hamilton and old time gangsters like Bertie Kidd, to name a few. Tracy Warren used to work for her. I was too polite to ask what Tracy did, but no doubt it was something in the public relations field.

A famous feud broke out between Kym and old Granny Evil herself – the old bat who gave birth to the greatest group of creeps, no hopers and police informers in Victoria’s history. Granny Evil was one of the biggest figures in the crime world and she didn’t like Kym at all.

Anyway, one day the old whore went to see Kym, taking her number one son along for the ride. But they didn’t see eye to eye about things, no pun intended. Whatever happened that day, the old bag had her eye shot out and Kym lived to fight another day.

Naturally, I have no idea what happened that day, although the old bitch in question has always remained rather one-eyed about her opinion of Kym.

I saw the whole fiasco as the very height of good humor and rolled around the floor laughing when I heard. Kym was one tough chick that the family couldn’t kill. Nevertheless, she would be well advised to keep an eye out for them.

The police had a secret operation into the old one-eyed bag and her family. They called it Cyclops. Who said coppers didn’t have a sense of humor? The old woman had such a full life they should make a movie about her, and call it For Your Eye Only.

AS OUR friends in the Mafia movies are fond of saying, business is business and it is not personal. That is my motto regarding any act of violence. Once you start to take these things personally, that is when you will lose the game.

If you are motivated through anger, grief, fear or any other emotion, you have lost the edge and that is the touch which makes the difference. It is a cool head, not hot blood, that make the best people in the business of death.

I always look at it this way: once he is dead, he won’t remember the pain. So in the scheme of things, it doesn’t matter, does it? The pain is only business and the death is the end of pain. Business, then business is over. Quite simple.

Anita Betts asked me why I seemed so calm and totally without anger when I was found guilty of the Sid Collins matter. She wanted to know why I remained so peaceful when the judge announced that I was sentenced to Governor’s Pleasure. It was because it was only business.

Instead of ranting and raving, rolling about and sooking at the injustice of it all, I simply look at this way: it is never checkmate until I’m dead; until then, it is just another move on the board.

They make their move, I make mine. I don’t take it personally and I hope they don’t either.

By getting angry I would lose my edge. Wars are won by men who are willing to fight them for a long time.

WHEN I look back on the jelly beans I have shot, stabbed, bashed, iron-barred, axed, knee-capped, toe-cut, blow-torched, killed, and generally up-ended, I look at it like this: If I hadn’t done it, then somebody else would have. I am not the only lion in the jungle, but I am the only one with no ears and a smiling face,

Believe it or not, I have retired, but it doesn’t mean I have changed. When I get out, and get out I will, I will still have my guns. People might think that because I will have guns I won’t have left the crime world. That is not true — it’s just that I don’t want to leave this mortal world just yet awhile.

I have too many enemies ever to just relax. I have gone too far to turn the clock back. Others will never allow me to change. A good-looking woman should not walk down the street naked and a former headhunter should not walk around without guns. I will never walk with my eyes closed through a sea of rattle snakes. No-one knows better than me the treacherous nature of the underworld and I will not fall victim to it.

So, while I have given up crime, I have not given up life. Any threat to my life or my loved ones will be seen as a declaration of war.

There will be wiseguys who will want to build a reputation by putting me in my grave. I am hated and bitterly resented. What I have done plays a big part, and the books and the notoriety has added to it. Jealousy is a factor. I would be a retarded fool not to maintain a strong guard.

If you were me what would you do? How would you handle it?

I HAVE a relative who I won’t name, because I love him dearly and he is a good old guy. He is a Mason and a member of the RSL. He is a gun collector who believes Australia is being taken over by wogs, greenies, the homosexual lobby and vegetarians. He has gone through roughly 14 television sets in the past 10 years. The evening news and current affairs programs upset him.

He has this old World War 2 German Luger 9mm and pulls it out and blasts away at the TV screen.

It is probably just as well that it is just the TV screen and not the real people. He only watches black and white televisions. He, like my father, only watches black and white because he believes color television puts out infrared rays which send you blind or give you cancer. If he had a color television then perhaps I could get him a remote control. He could then just turn the bloody thing off or change the channel rather than shooting the box every time. It would save the ammo bill and give the neighbors a break.

I am a picture of mental health compared with some of my relatives that I could name, but won’t. Bless their mad hearts.

THE criminal world is populated by three basic types – social spastics, mental retards and brain dead junkies. There is also a smattering of freaks and flukes.

If you are a social spastic, a mental retard or a brain dead junkie, or even a freak, and you haven’t been caught or jailed, then you are definitely a fluke.

Let me explain a freak to you. A freak in the criminal world is anyone who can lay claim to having half a brain. The rest of the criminal population see such an individual as an intellectual giant possessed with almost God-like intelligence. The rest of the poor slobs, being without the brains of your average dung beetle, see the crook with half a brain as having the IQ of a rocket scientist.

Anyone with a full brain is seen as a freak genius — or a psycho with no ears. Ha ha.

If you don’t believe me, spend two weeks in any jail in Australia and you will begin to feel like Albert Einstein.

WHEN a man can admit to himself and others that the world is full of men, twice his size and half his size, who could beat him in a fight, then he is well on the way to never being beaten.

I learnt that a long time ago.

Streetfighters are a penny a truck load. Good street-fighters are somewhat harder to find and freak street-fighters are one in a million.

What separates the run of the mill from the freaks is more than a physical thing. It is mind control and thinking ability. Any fool can spend half their life in bars getting into drunken blues with a belly full of Dutch guts. Any drunken mug can whiz out the old Mexican boxing glove and stab an unarmed man in the pub car park.