Chopper Unchopped (236 page)

When I was the best of my time it was because I didn’t care if I lived or died. That made me the most dangerous lunatic in the asylum.

The bomber you most fear is the one with the bomb strapped to him. If he is prepared to die to kill you, then you are in serious bother.

Back then I was unmarried and without kids. What I did was for my team and me. I was the General with a group of insane soldiers who would go anywhere and do anything.

But once you have kids, you don’t want to lose and then you can’t win.

Half these blokes got popped going home. They wanted to live the lives of family men and be killers as well. You can’t do both. Once I had kids, I was out of it.

I watched from the front row, but I would no longer get in the ring. That is for young men with no brains and no futures.

I would rather have a cup of tea and a good lie down these days. I knew when this started all I had to do was watch and wait.

I would be a winner without lifting a trigger finger.

We all think it was better in our day, but when fat wogs are getting people killed it’s time to pack up and become a Scientologist like Tom Cruise.

A fat Lebanese wombat with a taste in gold jewellery and a truckload of amphetamine chemicals, Tony started believing his own publicity and started acting like Doctor Evil.

Funny, after the Perth bikies bashed him in Lygon Street, he didn’t try to back up against them. The bikies from the Wild West tend to blow you up and your family with you, so he stayed around Melbourne where he thought he was the master of the universe.

He was making a fortune, but he wanted to be the puppet master and use Williams to do his dirty work.

They were doing all right at one stage because their men were getting knocked and a dead man can’t tell tales. But when they started recruiting older crooks, it was always going to end badly. They could do the crime but not the time and were certainties to roll over and become police witnesses.

Mokbel did a runner in 2006, but I always predicted they would get him in the end and he’ll spend most of his life in jail. No Ferraris, no French champagne. Just three bad meals a day and rancid tea in a chipped mug.

If I had been about, I would have shown him how good the paint job is on a Ferrari by putting him in the boot of one to reflect on his ways.

Funny thing is, his girlfriend’s family are very close to one of Victoria’s best stone killers and yet he has never been mentioned in any of the murders. I bet The Duke has his fingerprints all over more than one of the jobs.

Williams ran around taunting the coppers and posing for pictures in the papers. He should have spent more time learning history than being a show pony. Military killers wear camouflage not iridescent lime green. Ever heard of the stealth bomber? It’s not painted fucking hot pink, numb-nut.

If Carl had kept his head down and wiped out all his enemies, then he had a chance. But the longer it went, the less chance he had.

The police and the government couldn’t let this go on. When I was asked on TV how the police would go, I said they would get a new coffee machine, a new computer and some new cars and solve stuff all.

Well, that might have been a good funny for the six o’clock news, but I was wrong, and I’m happy to admit it. How was I to know that Carl would hire such give-ups as CIA? If you hire rats, they’ll give you the plague in the end.

Good luck to the coppers, they broke the code of silence that had lasted since it came off the convict ships more than 200 years ago.

The good old Aussie criminal code is dead and I’m glad I’m out of it.

I’ve noticed with a sense of personal shame that no Italians have turned dog during the years this war has been going on. No secret deals with the police, no evidence given in court by any Italians, no deals done by any Italians and no Italians applying for the witness protection program.

The Italians have been staunch, solid, stand-up guys, honest and true to their word. They have in a criminal sense conducted themselves during all the years of death and mayhem with honour. I write this with a real sense of personal shame as a true blue Aussie criminal or former criminal: that the only dogs in this fight have all come from the Aussie side.

Yes, Carl won the bloody war: at $250,000 a hit, cash up front, how could he not? But he only bought the deaths of his enemies; he didn’t buy the silence of the person who pulled the trigger.

The Italians, on the other hand, as a rule don’t hire hitmen. They get their nephews or their cousins or brothers or uncles or personal friends of the family to do the hit. The loyalty of the killer has to be without question before they even ask, let alone hand over any money. Loyalty and friendship has to be first examined very carefully before any business can be spoken of. Carl Williams on the other hand, was hiring any two-bob, over-the-hill, has-been junkie, police informer willing to say yes for $250,000 cash up front.

You idiot, Carl. You hired fucking wombats, losers, dogs and lying weak mice that took your money then sold you down the drain. It was your own fault and you’ll have more than thirty years to think about it.

Mokbel used his own family and they stuck fat. But he bought the loyalty of others. Slowly they took away that loyalty by seizing all his property and cash. Then they put a $1million bounty on his head. And it worked.

Money to crooks is like cheese to mice – they can’t resist it.

I was tempted to say, ‘Give me a passport, a map of Europe and a couple of handguns and I’d have a go at finding him myself.’ Was that reward for dead or alive?

Was I ever asked to get involved? Well, seriously, let me say if I had been, the answer would have been no.

I have been short of cash and declared bankrupt in 2006. (How embarrassing, being raided by an elite team of bookkeepers wearing cardigans and Hush Puppies and armed with calculators.) But no matter how broke I am, I will not hop back into the underworld.

If I had been asked back a few years ago it would have been over in a week. Bang, bang, bang. Don’t drag this shit out as it gives people too much time to think. Do it quick and clean and then we can go to the footy at the weekend.

But I can tell you police questioned me after many of the murders. I still don’t know whether they seriously thought I was a suspect, whether they were going through the motions or they were simply curious to have a chat with a true professional. Former professional, that is.

After all, as I said, I had done a spooky bit of forecasting by putting Jason’s grave on the back cover of one of my books years before he stepped in the hole.

When the police knocked on the door, it was almost comical. My wife had Tim Tam biscuits for them every time they came calling. I had to tell her to ease up on the Tim Tams. It was costing us a fortune and was playing havoc with my waistline.

My son from my first marriage, Charlie, came to Melbourne to visit me for my 50th birthday and met his little brother. Charlie loves his little brother and whenever I ring Charlie up, he always asks me how baby brother is going.

I’m glad the two brothers know each other because in time to come they will only have each other. Charlie is at the age where he asks me tough questions such as ‘Do I love baby brother’ more than him?

He has also started to ask me things like, ‘Dad how many people have you shot and killed?’ I have looked in all the advice columns in magazines and I have not found an answer for how to handle that curly question.

Now, I have been known to brag every now and again, but for the sake of my family I will have to start playing down my record. You can’t say to your kids, ‘I’ve shot nineteen people and iron-barred about another thirty so eat your broccoli if you want to grow up big and strong.’

I still haven’t given up hope of pulling the Father of the Year Award – after all, Bob Hawke won it once, so I’ve got to be a chance.

As Charlie and his little bro get older, the amount of people I’ve shot will become smaller and smaller. I can see the day where the amount I’ve shot will be the exact amount I’ve been arrested for: Johnny Carroll, Chris Liapis, Sidney Michael Collins – of which I was convicted but pleaded not guilty. And Sammy the Turk, who I was found not guilty of murdering.

Four shooting charges in one life isn’t a real lot at all, if you say it quickly. Hardly worth a second mention. I never thought I’d have to answer such questions put to me by my own young son and I must admit I found myself in a dilemma.

The last time I was a serious suspect for a murder was when the former President of the Outlaws Motor Cycle Club, Silly Sid Collins, went missing. Students of the Chopper series will remember that I was charged with shooting Collins in 1992 in Tasmania. I still can’t admit to that shooting as I’d get fifteen years for perjury.

It took a long time, but I knew Karma, armed with an untraceable handgun, would eventually catch up with Sid. He went missing in NSW in 2001 and has not been seen since – and I wouldn’t be holding my breath that one day he will wander out of the bush claiming a bad case of amnesia.

On the topic of Sidney Michael Collins – the former president of the Outlaws, I am reliably informed that I’m the only human being to have ever shot a motorcycle club president and lived to tell the story.

The fact that I still to this day maintain my innocence over this shooting – and the fact that Collins turned crown witness against me to get me put away under the Dangerous Criminal’s Act in Tasmania, is probably part of the reason I’m still alive.

Motorcycle club presidents are not meant to give people up in police stations and in courts of law over a shooting incident.

Collins broke the code of silence – and broke his own club code of honour – when he gave evidence against me in the Tasmanian Supreme Court.

Hence I am still alive to tell the story of how I did not shoot Sidney Michael Collins. Ha ha. Whether I did or I didn’t is all academic now. I was convicted over his shooting and I cannot write that I shot the dirty little tip-rat as that would mean a charge of telling fibs in court and we wouldn’t want that.

The fact that everyone takes it for granted that I really did shoot Collins is neither here nor there. I cannot help what people believe and if people wish to believe foul gossip and slander I cannot help it. All I can do is repeat for good legal reasons that I pleaded not guilty to his shooting and I will always maintain my innocence in relation to this matter.

I also had nothing to do with his death and disappearance in Casino, NSW. He was, after all, allegedly involved with the Russian Mafia – which is in fact the Albanian Mafia – in the importation of Russian brides.

That group would get Russian girls to marry men with Australian citizenship and bring them to Australia. The Russian ladies, all of whom happened to be physically beautiful, would be put to work in Australian brothels, which is one way to spend your honeymoon in an exotic foreign country, I guess. Collins somehow got himself involved – and, according to rumour – fell foul of the people he was dealing with.

When these people get cross, you don’t get one over your grave as you are buried in an unmarked one – in this case near a farm in country Victoria, it is said.

I can assure you all – it was nothing to do with me, although I might know some people who know some people who knew some people who sold some people a couple of Albanian shovels.

Remember ‘at the end of the day’ it’s night time. Ha ha. As for Sidney Michael Collins – what can I say – when the one great scorer comes to mark against your name, it’s not if you won or lost, but how you played the game. That’s one way of looking at it. Personally my ambition is simply outlive my enemies.

I was also questioned over Nik Radev and Victor Peirce and even asked about my knowledge of the murder of hitman and all round imbecile Christopher Dale Flannery in Sydney.

I should be on a retainer – or at least get my Tim Tams for nothing.

I asked the police how many times since 1971 have you questioned me for murder and they came back and said, ‘forty-five times, Chopper.’ I should get valet parking at the St Kilda Road police station and my own squad stubbie-holder.

I told them that even if my memory is fading in middle age I’m pretty sure I haven’t killed all those people. ‘We know that,’ was the reply. Then why are you here committing grievous bodily harm on my Tim Tams? ‘Because in each and every case you have known the victims’ they said.

I thought about it and they were right. I have known forty-five people who are no longer with us today.

In some of the cases I couldn’t care less, in others I am absolutely delighted and in some cases I am sad, as good friends have gone.

I see that list of dead and realise how half my life was wasted playing a game with real bullets and real blood. I see the list and am relieved I am not on it. Through a combination of bullets, balls, bravery, brains, bullshit and plain dumb luck I walked though a hail of gunfire and out the other side.

I’ve been questioned for thirty-three shootings in Melbourne where they have all lived and got to hospital without giving me up. I’ve been questioned for thirty-three: I only did about eleven of them myself. As for murders, if you want the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, all bullshit lies and leg-pulling aside, I’ve killed no more than four people personally and been present when another three were put off. All the rest are about what racing stewards call ‘prior knowledge’. Like Robbie Waterhouse and Fine Cotton.

Anyway, back to Williams. He won the war, but lost the chess game. He had the body count on his side, but the brain count was on Mick Gatto’s side.

During my war with Alphonse back in 1987, when Fat Al fled to Italy to escape me, Mick never had a harsh word for me. He knew it was not his war and that is where Carl made his great mistake. He thought Mick would come after him because of his blue with the Morans. He was wrong. Mick would have seen that Mark and Jason started it, so he would have let the bodies fall where they did. He was wise and Carl was a fool. And when Carl went after Gatto, it was a fat and sulky labrador up against a battle-hardened pit bull.