From the Inside: Chopper 1 (16 page)

Chapter 18

A headache for Alex

‘He was just a total, ruthless crazy bastard who always wanted to kill.’

Ruthless businessman Alex Tsakmakis entered the world of heavyweight crime when he was convicted of the murder of professional runner Bruce Walker in 1978. He went on to burn fellow Jika Jika inmate Barry Quinn alive in 1984.

According to Read, Tsakmakis boasted of being involved in several unsolved murders. They include the 1978 Manchester Unity St Patrick’s Day massacre of jewellers Paul Pace, Robert Waterman and Keith Hyman, and the murder of prostitute Margaret Clayton, found shot twice in the head in a North Fitzroy massage parlour in June, 1979. Tsakmakis also claimed credit for the murder of Willie Koeppen, owner of The Cuckoo restaurant in Olinda, who disappeared on February 26, 1976, and whose body has never been found. Tsakmakis told Read he killed National Gallery curator Brian Finemore, whose body was found in his East Melbourne flat on October 24, 1975, 80 minutes before he was to meet Princess Margaret to guide her through the gallery.

Tsakmakis was killed in H Division by the Russell Street bomber, Craig Minogue, in 1988. Minogue swung a laundry sack containing two gym weights, each weighing 2.25 kg, and hit Tsakmakis over the head at least three times.

Tsakmakis didn’t stand a chance. His head was pulped, and he died from massive brain injuries.

*

I FIRST met Alex Tsakmakis in H Division in 1980, just before Alex, Ted Eastwood and I went to Jika Jika. I was the first into the division, Ted was next and Alex third. We were sent to the maximum security section of Jika. I remained there for three solid years of total madness.

The time was filled with violence and physical and emotional torment. Eastwood was sent to another division after a period of weeks, leaving Alex and me behind.

To cut a long story short, Tsakmakis and I had words, resulting in me having to teach Alex some manners with a pair of scissors in the back of the neck. He lived and ran screaming with blood pissing from the wound. I pleaded guilty, but I said I was provoked and got a short sentence.

Tsakmakis and I became blood enemies until years later, when we called a halt to our hatred and joined forces to fight a common enemy.

We were a powerful team for a while. Tsakmakis was a millionaire, a wealthy businessman on the outside who was willing to put his money where his mouth was in relation to getting the job done. I took care of tactics. However, he was a power-mad psychopath who gave me word-for-word details of his part in the Manchester Unity murders and assorted other killings. He had a hit list inside and outside jail and had ordered, paid for and planned crimes of violence on the outside while he was still in jail.

He told me about some of the people he killed, including Margaret Clayton. He claimed she was the only woman he had ever killed. There was the old couple he shot at the Tatts Lotto agency in Hawthorn, but they lived, so I suppose he was right.

He went into some detail about one bloke he killed who was connected to the market garden industry, some wealthy old bloke well known at the Victoria Markets. Tsakmakis said he had been killed in the dark in the early morning.

Another fellow he killed, a wealthy businessman, won a large amount of cash from Alex in a card game. Alex flattered himself he was a great card player, and so anyone who beat him was a cheat as far as he was concerned.

He also told me he had killed a bloke in the automotive industry. Tsakmakis owned a company which made car ramps and he was ruthless with competition. He was well-known when he was out and feared in certain circles in the automotive industry. He had a reputation as a man who would burn out his opposition.

He was just a total, ruthless crazy bastard who always wanted to kill. In jail his main topics of conversation were money, cards and revenge. He was always talking about the murders he hoped to commit.

He used to talk so much about all the violence it went in one ear and out the other. Or so to speak . . . I don’t have any ears.

Alex had trouble hiding his light under a bushel. He would tell you what he did, but he wasn’t stupid. He would always keep back certain details which could prove he did it in a court of law. He was, by nature, a true coward, but also a sadist with a massive ego. I didn’t think I would ever meet anyone with an ego as big as mine, but I can laugh at myself, whereas Alex took himself very seriously.

A coward, a sadist and an egotist is a very, very dangerous mixture. He would not act out of courage or bravery, but as a result of feeling threatened or frightened, or as a result of hurt pride or damaged ego.

I remember in Jika Jika, before I stabbed Alex, I had a fight with another prisoner in Unit 2, a chap called Mick Windsor doing life for murder. I beat the bugger half to death, mainly with knee blows to the face and head. There was blood everywhere. I ended up with fluid on the knee as a result of the blows I gave the bloke as he lay helpless on the floor.

Alex, who was standing well out of the way, ran forward with a gleam in his eye, bent down and broke the fellow’s arm at the elbow. I mean to say, I belted the poor chap, who I didn’t have a thing against personally, as a favour to Alex, as Alex didn’t have the guts for hand to hand combat. Tsakmakis wanted to kill him because Mick had drunk some water out of his cup. That’s how crazy the mad Greek was, he wanted to kill over a cup of water.

While the poor chap lay helpless on the floor with his left arm broken at the elbow, Alex wanted to kill him. This was in full view of some prison officers. I stepped in and lifted the half-conscious fellow up, tossed him against the door and signalled to the prison officer, who was watching the whole thing while eating a piece of fried chicken, to push the remote control button. This was to open the door so that I could push the poor devil out of harm’s way.

But Alex wanted more blood. He was by now in a killing frenzy. I thought to myself, ‘I’ll handle this Greek’ and whopped a half-a-dozen more uppercuts into poor Mick. Then the screws opened the door in a hurry and I was able to push him out, away from Tsakmakis. What the poor bastard wouldn’t know is that I probably saved his life, although I doubt that he would thank me.

I was charged and punished over it, and I even took the blame over the broken arm. Alex would have lost visiting rights and I didn’t have any at the time, so what the heck. But Alex is dead now, and I don’t like the idea of people thinking that I would do anything as cruel and sadistic as that. I don’t carry on with violence against a whimpering, fallen victim. To kill an opponent in combat, fair enough, but to torment, torture and kill for no sane reason after your opponent has already fallen, that is not the act of a man.

Just because you are going to kill a man is no excuse for bad manners. I belted that poor guy because he drank out of Alex’s cup, which was a no no. Alex wanted to have his revenge but, to be honest, Mick Windsor would have punched ten shades of shit out of Alex. Had I not agreed to act, Alex would have killed him from behind — and I didn’t need that bullshit over a cup of water, so I ripped into Windsor and gave him a touch up. But for big, brave Alex to break his arm was a cowardly thing.

Why did I later stab Alex and not just punch his head in? Because when the big pair of scissors came into the yard Alex claimed them as his. So here I had a mass killer, a coward, sadist and egomaniac walking around with a big pair of scissors. One day he had his back to me, standing up reading the
‘Financial Review’
— Alex had it sent in for him, the posh bastard. Anyway, he was leaning over with a hand on either side of the open paper, and the scissors beside his right hand. I walked up behind him saying, ‘What have you got there, the funny pages?’ I leant over his shoulder, snatched up the 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.

I suspect he killed more people than anyone knows. He was killing from about 1973 onwards. He said he was the person behind the murder of that German restaurant owner up in the hills, the bloke whose body has never been found. I remember Tsakmakis said the bloke owed him money, and there was a falling out. I think it was him who got the bag of lime funeral. Alex was into that murder up to his neck. He was proud as a peacock over that one.

He told me he killed a poof well-connected in Melbourne social circles. Some bloke connected in the art world. He was found murdered in a flat. The bloke was connected to the art gallery in St Kilda Road. Alex had some stolen art work he was trying to sell, two statuettes and a painting, but this bloke was honest and was going to tell. Alex 100 per cent took credit for that murder.

He was, in my opinion, an ultra-violent character with a Napoleon complex.

He saw himself as a truly great man, and had no sense of humour to go with it. He was an insufferable personality. While we were on the same side I knew that one day he would turn on me. I knew that my attack on him some years earlier in Jika Jika was not forgotten or forgiven and sooner or later he would seek revenge.

We had done a lot of jail together. I knew him too well and I knew too much about him; sooner or later I would have to go.

When Craig ‘Slim’ Minogue, the Russell Street bomber, entered H Division Alex and I arrived after the Jika fire. In H Division I again teamed up with Alex. He was called the barbecue king as a result of burning Barry Robert Quinn to death at Jika.

Although I had teamed up with Alex, I had also become friendly with big Craig. It was about this time I learned that Alex had been offered $7000 to stab me. The offer was made by a drug dealer I had fixed on the outside. I waited, thinking that Alex would tell me of the contract. However, Alex was a money-mad bastard who was also power crazy. Revenge over my stabbing him was long overdue, so here we were, supposedly a team, with one planning to kill the other. I had a small problem.

It was at this time that Tsakmakis came to me with a plot to attack and kill Craig Minogue. This was typical: his whole life was made up of violence and plots of violence. He saw Minogue as a future threat to his own power base, so he put Minogue on top of his hit list. I agreed, knowing that my agreement to help kill Minogue would help postpone the plot to kill my good self.

Alex had a very fine leather punch spike, and planned to hit Minogue in the back of the neck, hitting the central nervous system. Death with a single blow. I was to mix with Minogue and his team in their yard and check that they were unarmed, at ease and relaxed. I was to clear out of the yard and tip Alex that it was all clear.

I agreed. But when I got into Craig’s yard, I warned him of the attack. Alex had planned the attack for months in advance and intended to claim it was self-defence. Here was Alex, planning with me to kill Craig and at the same time planning with a third party to kill me. He had also accepted another contract to have a B Division prisoner, Trevor Jolly, killed. And I was warning Slim Minogue. It was an ultra-dangerous game of human chess. One wrong move could mean death.

I was the laundry man. I was working in the laundry yard. I mixed with Craig and his crew for a few hours in the morning in the exercise yard.

Craig used to come down to the laundry yard to see me daily, as did Alex. I placed one of my boys, Joe ‘The Boss’ Ditroia, in Craig’s yard to mix with him and his crew. Joe was armed with an ice pick most of the time. He worked with me in the laundry yard as a rule but I had him mix with Craig’s crew to guard me against counter treachery from that quarter. Craig’s right hand man Peter Michael Reed didn’t like me. So you have the picture: a total nest of vipers, treachery and counter-treachery.

Alex was the food billet. Craig had a bad habit of allowing Alex to stand behind him after Alex put the food down. It was at lunchtime that Alex planned to make his move on Craig. But on the day I warned Craig it was coming, then got out of the yard and went back to my cell about 20 minutes before Alex was due to take the lunch tray down. Alex came to my cell and asked me through the trap door if everything was sweet. I said yes, that they didn’t have a weapon in the yard and they suspected nothing. I then borrowed two cartons of smokes for Alex and laid on my bed and watched television. Half an hour later I heard all the fuss, then a screw opened my door and smiled and said: ‘You shifty bastard Chopper’.

Maybe it was because I came up from the exercise yard early or maybe he just guessed that I might have known what had just happened. Alex stepped into that yard ready to kill and he made his move on a man who was totally prepared.

Alex was a truly dangerous bastard, but what I still can’t understand was his logic — or lack of it. He was a tactical retard. He allowed his wellbeing and personal safety to be placed in my hands; the hands of a man he was plotting to kill.

Poor old Alex plotted and planned to kill every day. He was a total nutcase, and his mistake in placing me in his confidence over his planned attack on Minogue cost him his life. Considering that he planned to kill me, I thought it was the Christian thing to do. Ha ha.

Alex’s death was the end of an era in Pentridge. To allow him to have killed Minogue would have meant that I would have been next. He saw himself becoming the undisputed king of Pentridge. He was the financial backing behind drug sales in B, A and D Divisions. He was pulling in about $1000 a week profit for himself after wages and expenses. He arranged bashings from one end of the jail to the other. He would set them up and collect payment. He saw Minogue and then myself as the last two stepping stones he needed to reach his own insane glory. None of us in H Division saw Alex’s death as anything other than an act of God.

God bless the name of Craig Minogue. Killing Tsakmakis should get him to heaven, all sins forgiven.

Tsakmakis had an evil mind. Myself and Slim Minogue were gentlemen of the old school compared with him.

My warning to Minogue forged a bond between us, something I learned to appreciate later when another party approached him in H Division in relation to killing me. Minogue alerted me. Not only that but he’s a brilliant jailhouse cook. I put on two and a half stone in H Division over 12 months eating food he cooked.