From the Inside: Chopper 1 (24 page)

Vic Allard, the great fat hoon, was the one who smashed me over the head in the George Hotel. I punched and kicked the big wombat out of the pub and into the street, but he nearly killed me with the iron bar. I got terrible headaches for more that a year or so after that. Then Prison Officer Mick Millson smashed his baton over my head when Jimmy Loughnan and Johnny Price broke out of H Division in 1979 and climbed up on the A Division roof. Mick broke the baton over my head; he hit me between 15 to 20 times before it broke. I should thank him for it because after that, the headaches just stopped.

Allard was a dockie and some sort of crook, but mainly he was just a drunk who sold a bit of drugs.

The nitwit got himself murdered some time later in St Kilda.

Thomas Wraith

Thomas Wraith was a man with a reputation. He was involved in violent crime and drug distribution. He was suspected of killing a woman, Grace O’Connor, in England in the 1970s. Her body has never been found.

Wraith eventually lived in a de facto relationship with Mrs Rae Elizabeth Collingburn.

Mrs Collingburn was the wife of Keith Collingburn, a criminal who died after he had been in police custody in 1971. Two policeman were charged and acquitted of the manslaughter of Collingburn.

Wraith died in 1983 when repeatedly hit over the head with a tomahawk by Mrs Collingburn in their Brunswick home. She said Wraith had a gun and threatened to kill her. She said she had given him her pension cheque and some heroin.

*

TOMMY Wraith was another two bob gangster that Jimmy Loughnan got hold of in Pentridge during the 1970s.

We had him on his hands and knees barking like a dog. He had put a hole in his manners with Jimmy and despite Tommy’s so-called tough reputation with the help of me and my tomahawk, Tom was eager to get down on all fours and bark like a dog.

We sent him on his way with a moderate touch up. Funny thing was he didn’t have much luck with tomahawks. His wife chopped him to death as he slept in bed. She used a tomahawk too. Ha ha.

Robert Trimbole

Robert Trimbole was Australia’s most wanted man. He was a key figure in the Griffith Mafia and wanted in connection with the murders of anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay and drug couriers Isabel and Douglas Wilson. He avoided arrest for years and died in Spain in 1987.

*

ANYONE who has been to the Melbourne or Caulfield Cup would have seen Aussie Bob Trimbole standing in the betting ring with a fist full of money. Putting his bets on and losing heaps. I didn’t know him but I had been introduced to him in the early 1970s. He struck me as a fat drunk and a man who was a born idiot and had lost ground ever since.

I think it was Vincent Villeroy who introduced me to Aussie Bob at the 1973 Caulfield Cup. He was introduced as a professional punter, but he looked more like a professional drinker. The fact that such a bum could climb the criminal ladder and have such financial power and pull is in itself, proof positive that the Australian underworld could be flogged into total defeat by an angry troupe of Girl Guides wielding tennis racquets.

When one considers Aussie Bob Trimbole, in the cold light of day, and look at him logically, it is quite laughable. Why he was never grabbed and his shoe size shortened is beyond my power of understanding. From a drunk when I met him in 1973 to the Godfather of the Australia underworld. If Aussie Bob can do it, I shudder to think what the Japs can do once they set up shop here. For me, staying alive hasn’t been too hard in the underworld. Dying of laughter has been my only real concern.

Chapter 24

An unfortunate life

‘I’d rather die in bed in my own home of old age, than in a pool of blood in a cold concrete gutter in middle age’

I HAVE survived dozens of murder attempts, three gang wars and Slim Minogue’s jailhouse cooking.

But I know that in the end, if I continue living as I always have, that I will end up being murdered. Death itself doesn’t frighten me but I don’t want to be shot in the back by some town drunk.

In the world of true blood and guts I am a big name, I have walked over many bodies to get that reputation, but in the end, what does it all mean? Any one of those murder attempts against my good self could have killed me. I have had luck on my side. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a reformed character who has found God. I don’t weep for my fallen opponents. As far as I am concerned the world is a better place without them, as they were all scum. But I am a man who knows that his luck cannot run forever. The fact that I have lived as long as I have is an indictment on the mental and physical abilities of my enemies.

At the moment I am working towards my third generation of enemies, Miami Vice style police and plastic yuppy gangsters with car phones and coke habits, who call themselves crooks. None of them ever intend to face each other on the field of combat. Bugger them all, that is why I want to go home, go to Tasmania and leave them all to destroy themselves.

*

If I remained in the world of crime where I have been for 20 years I would be spitting in the face of my own logic. I’ve read military tactics and strategy all my life; to walk away and never look back is the smart move. It is the only logical tactic left to me — for every Napoleon there is a Wellington. I intend to walk away before I find myself in the field of combat at my own Waterloo. To do otherwise would be to ignore a lifetime of study. When a man starts lying to himself he is finished. I am no longer as physically big, strong or as fast as I once was. It is true that I have forgotten more shifty tricks than 1000 crooks would learn in a lifetime. However, what happened to Wild Bill Hickock sticks in my mind. And, as they say, Jesse James was shot in the back by Charlie Ford, the coward of the county.

My life is a spinning coin: heads I die, tails I lose, and the coin hasn’t landed yet. Tactics tell me to get to safe ground before it does. I’d rather die in bed in my own home of old age, than in a pool of blood in a cold concrete gutter in middle age.

There are those who will not believe me, those who think it is an elaborate subterfuge and that I will return to the mainland to wage war. But that would be to ignore one important fact — if I do not change my ways I have only jail and death in my future. There will always be someone who wants to kill me, because I have made too many enemies over the years. There are too many men who fear the name Chopper Read, and a frightened man is a dangerous one.

The gung-ho types that get around armed to the teeth, the big tough fellows who go to the gymnasium and have half a dozen black belts and bulging biceps and walk around with a knife in their teeth, they’re no problem. You can see them coming a mile away.

It’s the quiet, insipid little rat of a character who sneaks around the place, lurking outside with his little sawn-off .22 and dreams of blowing away Chopper Read and getting his name in the paper. That’s the one to look for.

Think about it. The bloke who kills me can write his own ticket. He would never have to buy another beer for the rest of his life. There would be pubs he could walk into where he could get a counter lunch and a beer forever. There would be massage parlors in Melbourne where they would write his name on the wall and say if this man enters here he is to pay nothing. There would be Italians who would get pizza shop owners to provide this man with pizzas until he could eat no more. Free sex, beer and food until he was old and grey.

What choice have I got. I have to bail out.

I’m not 26 anymore, and I feel about 66. You don’t age gracefully in jail. I’ve got more injuries than the average 60-year-old man. You spend 18 hours a day locked in a cell. I’ve spent 10 years in H Division, and there are blokes who come down here and scream their heads off after two nights. I was the first prisoner who ever set foot in Jika Jika. I spent three years there. So that’s 13 years maximum security, and some people reckon that wasn’t enough. That’s not to mention the rest of the jail I’ve done. And it’s not as if I do relaxed prison, because there is always someone to watch out for. There is always someone with his eye on Chopper. It’s the same on the outside. I can’t stand at a bar and have a relaxed beer; I can’t sit in a restaurant and have a relaxed meal.

Life gives you two choices, you either cry your bloody eyes out, or laugh your head off. The thing is, I’ve got nothing to laugh about, but I refuse to cry. You have to see the funny side of some very black situations. But if you were to really look at my life, at what I have done and what I have become, there is nothing to laugh about.

*

There are young men who look up to crooks and criminal identities; I know I did when I was younger. But to all the up-and-comers out there with hearts full of dreams and heads full of shit about criminal glory, there are some bad old boys out there watching and waiting for blokes like you. When you’ve made enough money from the drugs and climbed high enough up the ladder to be worth the bother, one night someone will be waiting.

You will be in a crowded nightclub in your expensive clothes, with gold jewellery and a gun in your pocket. You will have a couple of chicks on your arm, plenty of cash in your pocket and you will not sense the danger. You will be feeling on top of the world when you walk out into the early morning air to catch a cab or walk to your posh car . . . that’s when some mad smiling psycho will walk up behind you and tap your shoulder.

When the gas bottle is lit, it will be too late to walk away. And if the bloke has curly hair, big blue eyes and no front teeth then, young fella, you are in big trouble. All you can do is give him what he wants and plead for a quick death. The bloke doing the job won’t be me and he may not have my medical expertise; you may even bleed to death before you can make a deal. Either way, if you call that criminal glory, you’re madder than I am. You won’t like the smell of your own feet burning. No-one ever does.

*

To all the parents and teachers who want to punch their personal beliefs down the necks of the children, be careful.

To the police, never get so arrogant and self-confident that you think you are the smartest cop in Melbourne.

To all the bullies in the school yard, the little boy you pick on today may not be the same little kid tomorrow.

To all the kids who read gangster books and go to gangster movies — don’t get involved in real life. If you do then one day you may lose your life.

To the kids who think that going to jail will make you tough, consider this. Only every 10 or 20 years does a really tough one come along. The rest of you will only be bare bums in the shower watching your backs.

To the judges: don’t forget that you all started as lawyers and each of you fought and lost cases convinced your client was an innocent man. Not everyone who steps into the dock is guilty.

To the young cub reporters, the police media liaison office is not the burning bush or the Holy Grail. Get out into the streets, the pubs and the racetracks and find out yourself.

And to the crims who think they are better than the rest, so was Wild Bill Hickock and you know what happened to him. Shot in the back by the town drunk.

I will reveal something no-one knows. In Jika Jika in 1987 before the fire, I got punched on the jaw when I wasn’t paying attention and knocked to the floor by a poof, a jail poof. The fact that the offender now lives his life in constant fear is beside the point. The point is that Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read — one of the meanest, treacherous, bloodiest bits of work to emerge in the Melbourne underworld this century — got decked by a two-bob poof. There is no excuse. I dropped my guard. And one day it could be a bullet instead of a fist, and I don’t want my tombstone to read: ‘Here lies Chopper Read, shot by a drunk when he wasn’t looking’.

I could tell a hundred stories of violence that in the end would mean nothing. Inside jail I have come face to face with the fact that my life, the sum total of my life, has been a wasted effort.

Since I was 20 I have been on the outside for about 13 months. The rest of the time has been spent doing jail. It hasn’t been a good life, it’s just been a bloody waste.

I’ve done nothing. When was the last time I saw a sunset or took the time to be normal? The only time I can remember relaxing was on the plane ride from Launceston to Melbourne. I could enjoy the ride. I now want to be able to walk away and for the first time, relax. All I have ever had is tension and stress.

To live a life where there has always been violence, attacks against me and hatred has finally gotten to me. I have friends that go back 20 years but in the end, I always end up alone in a prison cell. I don’t want to be an old man with a ripping yarn to tell. I want to live a life that is a little normal.

It is time to leave the criminal world and try and salvage something in my remaining years so that it is not all a waste.

*

I know I have said that I regret nothing — but the truth is that I regret plenty. I regret my whole life. I regret not continuing at school. I regret spending half my life behind bars. I regret not spending more time with my dear old Dad. I regret my poor Margaret having to suffer the torment of having to visit me in jail for eight years. I regret the sad deaths of some true and loyal boyhood friends who died because I, in my blood lust, ordered them into street battles they could never win. I regret that in my single-minded madness to get at my enemies that some non-combatants have fallen by the wayside.

I regret not having lived a real life, not being able to walk the streets of the city I love without having to look over my shoulder. Every time I sit down, it has to be with my back to the wall and facing the door.

I regret that once you’ve built a reputation in the criminal world you have two choices: die or vanish. I regret that all the grand old fellows I have mentioned in this book never bothered to pull my coat and never bothered to explain to me the real horror of it all.

I regret that I have not been close to my mother or sister. I regret the death of Cowboy Johnny, who took a broken bottle in the neck to save my life.

To the young blokes out there who look up to me, and I know there are a few of you sneaking around, stay at school. And if you have made up your minds to be gangsters, then get yourself a briefcase and become a gangster in the boardrooms of the nation, because that’s how the real gangsters do it.

Je ne regrette rien. ‘I regret nothing’. What a sick joke. I regret everything.