Chopper Unchopped (190 page)

She was no longer working in brothels and had become Mad Charlie’s personal private dirty girl while still living with Danny. I believe she died of a heroin overdose about a year later in a brothel in Carlton after both Mad Charlie and Danny boy had dumped her.

The point of the story being Danny Mendoza and his Russian whore girlfriend were the ones who introduced Mad Charlie to the Romanian criminal world. Every crime story generally involves a girl and they are generally left out of every story. I try not to do that. After all, fair’s fair.

IT is often said that wisdom comes from the mouths of babes and I guess the most profound remark made to me in recent times came from the mouth of a babe. Alison Downes (aka Candy) sat in the kitchen of her pub in Hobart eating an apple. She made Eve look like some fat slag in a brunch coat.

I was watching TV with her business partner, who could also be her boyfriend and/or husband. I don’t quite know their personal arrangements and I am too polite to ask. In the old days I used to be more curious about people’s situations and I would often inquire of Melbourne drug dealers concerning their financial arrangements, although it would be difficult to hear their answers when I was wearing a welder’s mask and they invariably mumbled due to a pair of socks stuffed in the mouth.

But I digress. I’ve known Shane Farmer since his time at the Chevron Nightclub in Melbourne in the 1970s and he was a seriously wild man. How he ended up in the company of Alison all these years later had me stuffed, and her too, probably. Alison munched away at her apple and said ‘You know, Chopper, all you have really done is to make the best of your situation.’ I thought about that remark then looked back at Alison who was sitting on the couch trying to tuck the longest legs I’d ever seen since I can’t remember when up under her chin while munching on fruit. Oh, she just banged her chin on her own knee cap while chewing on a Jonathan.

‘What did you just say. Ally?’ I asked. ‘I said all you have really done Chopper is you’ve made the best of your situation and that’s all any of us can do really isn’t it?’

I nodded not wanting to let her know that it was probably the most down-right profound comment I’d heard in a long while. Imagine, a philosopher with a chest that was beyond belief.

You spend your time looking at strippers not knowing that some of them are looking back.

She was right, of course, we all just try to do the best with what we’ve got. Alison was drop dead gorgeous so she gets paid a truck-load of money to let people look at her. If she didn’t blokes would still perve at her, except they wouldn’t pay.

We all try to make the best of every Vesta situation.

I guess that’s all that Norm Lee ever did. The Great Bookie Robbery dim sim money man. I should say the late Norm Lee — and not because he had a broken watch. All he ever did was to make the best of his situation.

Like Romanian Danny, Norm was only a bit player in a much bigger production. He just happened to live a wee bit longer than most of the other bit part players. Norm is dead, but before he died, he big-noted himself to various people, including his lawyer Phillip Dunn QC that he, Norman Lee, was part of the actual six-man team that carried out the Great Bookie raid.

I know that what the police and the media believe becomes folklore and is believed to be the truth, and my opinion will fly in the face of that folklore, but this is my opinion. Believe it or bash it up your bum. I couldn’t give a shit, but I did time with these blokes so I reckon I can have my say.

I won’t spend much time on this, as like the Flannery matter, it is yesterday’s news for me, but I think it is worthwhile getting history down in the interest of accuracy. Otherwise half the crap that has been spoken about crime will be regarded as fact in a few years. Maybe Ned Kelly was just an idiot with a good publicist, who knows now?

Now settle down, pull the doona up to your chin and let Professor Manning Chopper give you a quick history lesson.

Remember the name Marko M …  and if it’s not mentioned by anyone claiming to know the truth of the Great Bookie Robbery, then the person telling the story has been told a lie.

I knew Marko and he was part of the six-man team. He had more sheer guts than all of ’em, bar Ray Chuck himself. Who else told me that Marko was part of the six-man crew other than Raymond Patrick Chuck Bennett himself, not to mention Tony McNamara.

Both Tony and Ray were part of the team and they are no longer with us. But some of the team survive — one of them I shall only call Brian. He was the seventh man of the team but wasn’t even at the Victoria Club when it all went down. He was in H Division Pentridge when the job went off, but still got his cut. Another man on the team I will call Russell. Both these men confirmed their involvement in the job to me after they found out that I knew Marko and that I was a friend of both Ray Chuck’s and Tony McNamara.

So now we have Ray Chuck, Tony McNamara, Russell and Brian the seventh man. So that’s three of the six who went through the door. Marko M makes four. Marko went back to Yugoslavia after the job and has never been heard of since. He may return either to kill me or sue me, but I doubt it.

It was Mad Charlie who introduced me to Marko; there weren’t many Yugoslav criminals Charlie didn’t know. Oh, by the way, the two remaining names are Jimmy ‘Jockey’ Smith and Ian Revel Carroll. Leslie Kane and Brian Kane and Laurie Prendergast had little to do with it. They came in after the event as part of an ongoing war between the Kanes and Ray Chuck.

As for Norm Lee, he was Ray Chuck ‘dog’s body’ helper and gofer and never part of the six-man crew. There was one other name I should mention — Stan James who, like so many of that time, is now dead. When I mentioned to Tony McNamara the Ian Carroll story (as told to me by Ray Chuck) Tony smiled and said ‘you don’t expect Chuckles to tell you all the truth do you, Chopper?’

It was then that he tossed in the Stan James story. Whatever the truth I’m sure I’ve named the whole crew without fully naming the two still living members — Brian and Russell, who may want to come down to Tassie for a chicken dinner.

Careful readers who can add up will note that Stan James makes a list of seven — Ray, Tony, Russell, Marko, Jockey, Ian and Stan — of which six went through the door, with Brian not able to get to the church due to a previous engagement with a prison cell. And the real figure was six and a half million dollars.

Remember the name Marko M. A clue: his surname sounds like a cross between a mountain and a trick. His name is the key; anybody who doesn’t know it in relation to the bookie robbery is talking shit. Anyway, what do I care? I never got any dough out of it even though I later ended up with one of the Owen machine guns used in the robbery. The funny thing is, the slide bolt on the Owen was seized up and had been for at least ten years, which means that at least one of the six machine guns used in the robbery didn’t even bloody work.

Hardly matters though, does it? A gang of bookies on the port wine eating stilton cheese in the Victoria Club were hardly going to overpower the gang even if they had only been armed with tuning forks. Half the money was black, so what were they going to do any rate?

I will say, however, that having known three members of the six-man team very well and the other three fairly well that you could write what they all knew about firearms on the back of a postage stamp.

In other words, the Owen gun with the rusted and seized-up slide bolt didn’t surprise me. It only took two hours to fix but no-one in that crew knew how. I was dumbfounded but I won’t bag them over it. They got the cash and I got the old gun, so who was the dummy?

I was given the seized-up Owen gun in 1977 without ammo. So, you clever scallywags may well ask, how do I know it was used in the robbery? Well, smart Alecs, Marko dropped it off for me at my dad’s place before he left Australia so I think it’s safe to put two and two together and come up with four. Or even six and half million.

I could be wrong but I doubt it. Like the Flannery story it’s my opinion — and you can believe it or bash it up your arse. You’ve already bought the book and no doubt you’ve probably spilled Milo on it so you can’t take it back. Take it up with the bimbo behind the counter at the bookshop.

FOR almost a hundred years the bookies of Melbourne met at the old Victoria Club at 141 Queen Street to settle up on the first day of business after a big weekend metropolitan race meeting. The biggest movers in the racing world in Victoria turned up there to whack up the take. The system had stood the test of time, and no-one took much notice of it. But the fact was that vast sums of cash arrived on settling day by armoured car — however, once inside the club there was almost no security at all. More a matter of habit than common sense.

A similar set up went on at the Melbourne Club between grand old gents with knighthoods and political titles. In private betting arrangements, cash of up to a million or two changed hands but that arrangement vanished shortly after the bookie job went off. Just as well, because they were next on the list.

Everything worked on trust and the bookies all worked on trust. This in itself was insane, as it was an old bookie who first put the idea to an old member of the Victorian Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union as a nice little earner. The nearest thing to security was that the old Victorian Police Consorting Squad had an informal arrangement to pop into the Victoria Club for a drink on settling day. If you knew the old Consorters you would know that was no surprise. They were known to pop in for a free drink just about everywhere in Melbourne. I think they invented the drink card.

The story of the bookie robbery has been told and retold until it’s almost become a fairytale. A Melbourne bedtime story with a twist in the tale. The twist was, for those who don’t know, that it just so happened that the consorting crew didn’t show up on this particular day.

The cash from 116 bookies was delivered by Mayne Nickless armoured truck at seven minutes past midday on 21 April, 1976. Ray Chuck and the crew hit. Thirty one people were ordered to lie on the floor, one smart guard went for his .38 revolver and got belted with the butt of a machine gun. Ray Chuck did that. The two phones were pulled out and the eight Mayne Nickless cash boxes cut open with bolt cutters. One hundred and eighteen cash bags were removed and stuffed into seamen’s duffle bags. Three duffle bags in all. One man raised his head to see what was going on. Ray Chuck yelled out: ‘On the floor, hit the fuckin’ deck, everyone down!’ But old Ambrose Palmer, the famous boxing trainer who took Johnny Famechon to a world title, raised his head to see what was going on and one of the bandits yelled out: ‘You too, Ambrose.’ Old Ambrose had known Tony ‘Veggie’ McNamara since he was a young kid and Ambrose recognised Tony’s voice. Old Ambrose stuck staunch and said nothing to the law but confided in a few people close to him that the words ‘You too Ambrose’ were uttered by Tony.

Well, if you confide in one you confide in a million and the word soon got out — not to the police but to the Kane Brothers, which was probably worse in the long run. The Kanes knew Palmer and while the grand old man of boxing had kept his mouth shut to the police he had unknowingly started a gang war that would see the Melbourne underworld torn in half.

‘You too, Ambrose.’ Three little words that brought the biggest job in Aussie history undone and cost the lives of almost every man involved. What not many people know is that Tony knew straight away that Ambrose had recognised his voice. As they drove away with millions in three bags Tony wasn’t smiling. He felt sick. So sick, in fact, that Ray Chuck thought Tony was suffering some sort of aftershock.

‘What could I do?’ Tony explained to me later. ‘Tell Chuckles what I knew, and Ambrose would have been shot to death next day.’ Tony was a thief, not a killer.

Then again, what would I know? I’m just the fat farmer in the white t-shirt. Believe it or bash it up your bum. I don’t care. You could check with Tony but you’d have to do it with a psychic because that’s the only way he’ll be answering the phone.

Fact is, Anthony Paul McNamara died of a heroin overdose at a house in Easey Street, Collingwood, in 1990. I spoke to the Veggie shortly before his death. It seems his address book with my name and address and phone number in it, my dad’s address and phone number and other personal details relating to me fell from his pocket. The two blokes he was with stopped and one picked it up and handed it to Tony.

As luck would have it, the book had fallen open at the spot where my name was written. Not much was said. Not much needed to be said. I’d shot both the chaps he was with in the guts many years earlier. Tony said he wasn’t concerned but, for a bloke who reckoned he wasn’t concerned he went to some bother to contact me over the fallen address book matter.

I was in H Division Pentridge at the time. I’m not saying one thing related to the other but it wasn’t the first time mates of mine had paid the price for running with two crews at the same time. In Melbourne there can be no shades of grey, only black and white. A lot of people I knew from those days are now maggot mulch.

The lies told by cops and robbers are legend. Sometimes it is better all round for the public to believe the myths while the truth remains hidden forever. I guess I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone else in the real know. If a fairytale, folklore yarn is told for long enough then it becomes truth and a good bloke can walk off into the sunset of life a free man. I reckon anyone silly enough not to be able to work it out for themselves deserves to be told a lie. For example, who shot Ray Chuck inside the old Melbourne magistrates court building in 1979 will never be known for sure. But if so-and-so really did Ray Chuck then you’d need to be almost mentally retarded not to work out who did so-and-so. And if I can help keep a good bloke from a life sentence then so be it.

If you’re quick on the uptake and able to read between the lines the truth threads its way in and out of every yarn.

It’s like the bloke who is writing this book. He has got ears …  you just can’t see them.