Chopper Unchopped (8 page)

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 is just wouldn’t slow 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 into 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.

When I got to hospital I was in a state of temporary insanity. I remember being pushed on a trolley towards the operating table. I could swear that Billy ‘The Texan’ Longley, my good friends ‘Sammy’ Hutchinson and Johnny ‘The Face’ Morrison, who had been dead for years, were pushing the trolley. I asked who was doing the operation and Sammy said ‘Don’t worry, Chopper, I am.’ I screamed and then went into surgery. I saw a screw from H Division, Billy Parker. He was all in green with a mask on. I asked him who was doing the operation and he said he was. The next thing I woke up after surgery and I am glad to say most of it was a bad dream.

Why did I have my ears lopped off? I had just been to the classification board and I said I didn’t want to be in H Division. And they said: ‘You will remain in H Division until you are released. You are not getting out of H Division.’

I was the head of the Overcoat Gang and we were at war with virtually the rest of the jail at the time and they didn’t want me in the mainstream of the jail.

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 nut cases 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.

YOU will notice that I have not written about the horrors of prison life, or the conditions, hardships, treatment and so forth, because men reading this book who have been to jail will be bored to tears and people who haven’t been to jail can bloody well come in here and find out for themselves.

I may have had a niggle here and there along the way but I haven’t gone into vivid detail. Most of the time it is a very boring place. 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.

The day-to-day regulations are petty and drawn up by head office nit wits. After the years that I have done inside I would write 1000 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. Who mentioned Derryn Hinch? Most of the men who have written about prisons would be frightened by a day trip to the Old Melbourne Jail and most of the people who write about crime and punishment wouldn’t recognise a criminal if they got shot in the arse by Ned Kelly.

Some of these so-called experts make me laugh. They are a veritable font of knowledge. They wouldn’t know what they are talking about. They wouldn’t know a crook if they woke up to find Marlon Brando trying to put a horse’s head in their bed.

I suspect that the only knowledge one of them has is that he has read every crime book that has ever been published and he knows Bob Bottom on a first name basis. Another one once spoke to Julian Knight. Well, let me tell you, I’ve also spoken to Julian and it is not one of the great insights into the criminal mind.

God save us from all the experts.

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 businesses 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. Most drugs deals outside are done over the telephone, so what’s the problem? Over the years half the nut cases in Melbourne have consulted me in prison re killing this one or that one, how to make a body vanish, arson, kidnapping, extortion and a host of other serious crimes. I might add, I won’t enter into anything, or advise anyone unless it is related to the criminal world itself.

There are petty criminal vendettas and gang wars going on all the time and sooner or later one of the sides comes to me. I have advised both sides on how to kill each other without either side knowing it. I only enter into these things every now and again and I find it to be a good mental exercise and nine times out of ten there is a good drink (payment) in it for me.

The average crook involved in these criminal war situations has no flair or imagination. If they are prepared to listen and follow my advice I’ll help.

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

I do believe that anyone stupid enough to be convicted of murder deserves to hang. However, for all the limp wrists who think that hanging is a barbaric page of history from the dark ages some conditions should be made.

I believe the penalty should be re-introduced for anyone offending against children. Anyone who has kidnapped, raped or murdered a minor, if convicted should be hanged. No question. Anyone who disagrees with that, in my opinion, bears watching. Anyone who would not applaud the death penalty for such offences is suspect.

It appears that the murder, rape and abduction of children has become the Australian national past-time. The hangman and only the hangman can bring an end to this foul practice.

Just because I am a criminal, or should I say a retired one, doesn’t mean I agree with the actions of the human filth who offend against children. As for the hangman, if I had been convicted of murder I would have saved him the trouble and necked myself.

I am the only crook I have heard of who believes in hanging. On my right forearm I have these words tattooed, ‘who dares wins’, ‘Kamikazi’ and ‘Bushido’. A host of so-called tough guys say they believe in these words, but will not live up to them.

I have always kept suicide as my final option, the final laugh at my enemies who feel that they have defeated me. A man who doesn’t fear death, who holds his own life as an option, a man willing to take his own life in the face of final defeat, cannot be beaten.

My enemies have fallen, weakened and run because they have placed more importance on their own lives than I did. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t want to die. I want to live as long as God allows. But I don’t fear death. As long as my death has a certain amount of style, flair and dash involved, I don’t mind.

A life sentence in jail is to my mind, the final defeat, the final laugh on me and I couldn’t take that. I would have no way out except to take my own life. I would welcome the hangman. I don’t think there is a sadder, more lonely lost sight than the face of a man who has just been given a life sentence. Everyone I know in the criminal world will disagree with me here but as far as I am concerned the hangman is kinder than old age in prison.

I haven’t spoken much about jail and the mental and emotional effect that long years in H Division and Jika have had on me. It has numbed my senses, no-one could ever judge what I am feeling from the expression on my face as I would smile at my own mother’s funeral.

A smile is just my natural look most of the time. I have found myself carrying on conversations with myself and the screws and other inmates sometimes catch me at it much to my embarrassment. The worrying thing is that I quite enjoy these personal chats with myself; there is no possible chance of disagreements and I always make a lot of sense.

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.

Violence is accepted as part of life inside. The RSPCA would put down animals if they had to suffer the kind of mental and physical torment I’ve seen some of the poor bastards in here go through.

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

In my opinion, the prison system is lost. No government body can rescue it. All ideas have been tried and all have failed. I have always believed that criminals sentenced to penal servitude are a sad waste of manpower. I once wrote to the then Minister of Defence, Mr Jim Killen, putting forward the suggestion of a punishment battalion. It would work along these lines: any convicted male prisoner sentenced to longer than five years, providing he was in fair health, would serve, or could volunteer to serve, his time in a para-military punishment battalion.

Prisoners from all around Australia would be transferred to the battalion, which would be stationed in outback Northern Territory. Any escape in that heat, with no towns for about 300km, would mean death.

France once had a punishment battalion. Throughout history, various countries have had punishment battalions. Australia needs a fighting edge, and a punishment battalion would give it one — a savage one, at that.

I think that such a battalion should be run on strict military lines. There would be no provision for any outside visitors. I believe that under the rules a prisoner would be able to write and receive letters, and could make a phone call when granted permission.

Corporal punishment, including the use of the birch or cane, would be used. Each man would be given a uniform clearly identifying him as part of the battalion. Each man would be drilled and trained and any breach of standing orders or discipline would mean a sound thrashing with a cane and a day in the hot sun.

They would be under the training of military personnel and knocked into shape, trained in bush survival, physical fitness and combat. All weapons would be locked away when not needed for training. Any attempt at revolt would result in death before a firing squad. The matter would be heard, not by a civil court, but a punishment battalion court martial.

Any area where there was a sign of trouble, the government could send the punishment battalion. You may think they would desert — but in the Foreign Legion, desertion meant death from the enemy, or court martial and death if caught by your own side.

It may sound harsh, but any man who volunteered for the punishment battalion would sign his life over in writing to abide by the rules and regulations.

When this group was put into action, the natural blood lust would take over, they would know they couldn’t run and hide so they would fight and kill and create chaos and havoc. It would be their only option.

The Defence Department wrote back saying it was a good idea but was too savage and would cost too much. No doubt they were fobbing me off as just another nut case, which maybe I am.

However, a battalion of desperate criminally-minded men armed in a combat situation, in a foreign land, have proved through history to conduct themselves in a blood crazy manner. No army likes to think of a punishment battalion on the other side against them.

Killers, rapists, thieves and armed robbers — trained, armed and placed in the frontline of combat — would prove a blood crazy force of butchers. When cowards have no place to run, they will drink the blood of 1000 heroes to survive. Those words were used to describe the Foreign Legion 100 years ago. A punishment battalion is a sound idea, like it or not. It would give a hard edge to the Australian Army and solve a social problem.

A life sentence could be changed to ten years in the punishment battalion.

It’s obvious that when war comes it will come as a shock to this disbelieving nation, and we will be caught totally off-guard.

If we become an independent republic we had better be able to defend ourselves. As it is now we had better give all the girl guides a pocket knife each, for if we don’t do something, that is all we’ll end up with.

I may be a crook, but I’m a patriotic crook.