Chopper Unchopped (238 page)

It creates paranoia and, in some cases, friends turn on friends and kill each other. It’s like Dr Frankenstein’s monster: once something is created, it is very hard to control it. The whole thing can take on a life of its own, leaving the original thinkers to sit and wonder about it all. Wonder or marvel at the monster they created. But, like Dr Frankenstein, the creators must be aware that the monster can turn on them at any time.

So the best idea is to quietly withdraw, watch and wait and simply allow the game to continue, directing play from time to time with a good hit or two and a few good lies just to keep the players interested.

Fantastic, isn’t it? Quite simply outrageous and truly unbelievable. However, where are the revenge killings, where are the arrests and convictions? There are none. War, what war?

The police and the media all sense they are watching the biggest gang war in Australian criminal history, but they can’t quite understand the logic of it. And, for the police and the media, if it doesn’t make sense, they simply can’t accept it. They look at each death in isolation or as a small group – a spate of murders over months or a couple of years. None look at all of them. They can’t see the big picture, but only because no-one looks.

For the original thinkers, it is a game of chess and they are the masters. They will either win the game or destroy the whole criminal structure as it stands. It is as simple as that. Either way they win.

You can believe this or disregard it as nonsense. I personally don’t give a shit. I’m Mark ‘Chopper’ Read. I’ve written ten best sellers and had a movie made about my life. Do you really think I give a shit who believes me or not? If you don’t, you can always buy a newspaper and read how the media know all and claim that police know who did this, that and the other and are hoping for an early arrest. And they reckon I’m the one who’s pulling people’s legs.

I CAN write it all down in the comic knowledge that none of you will believe a word I’m writing. The only safe way to tell the truth is when you know people are convinced you’re lying.

Like when I told the police I killed Sammy the Turk, they just didn’t believe me. Sammy did. But, sadly, he was in no condition to corroborate my story.

It was the confession and the story that went with it and the fact that police did not act on a confession that ultimately helped the jury come to the wise decision that I was not guilty of murder.

But then, what would I know; after all, I am the greatest liar on earth. Would I tell anyone the truth?

So a wall of disbelief protects this whole story. Don’t you think these tactics have ever been used before? Hitler once said, ‘The greater the lie, the more people will believe it.’ Do you think that the truth is a weapon ever used in war?

John F. Kennedy. Martin Luther King. Do you really believe that disinformation wasn’t the greatest weapon used before and after their deaths? The list goes on and on.

Just read history, military history, political history, any sort of history. The people either don’t want to, or simply will not believe the truth, so a lie must be created for them and when a writer writes about lies, how can he ever be sued or charged for telling the truth?

I feel I sit here writing this with a certain legal safety. I will repeat, you can either believe it or not, I will not confirm, nor will I deny. You be the jury.

TEARS mean nothing when they are insincere. Even real tears can conceal a murderer. As you know, the deep thinkers who put Mad Charlie off still miss him greatly, but sometimes things have to be done. The sentimental gangster will die or spend his life in jail. Only the cool heads and the cold-hearted survive.

There is an old saying that property makes cowards of us all. It’s true, even in the criminal world. The up and coming gangster is the most dangerous because he has nothing to lose. Once he has made a mark, settled down with a family and begun raking in the cash, he is terrified. Frightened someone will target him, take his spot, take his money, tell the cops, and ruin his party. Most of the time he is right.

In that world, you can’t afford to let a man live just because he might be a good bloke and might not be an informer. Might not means that he also might be. Only death will make sure he isn’t. Simple as that. You are the Weakest Link – bang! It takes the guess out of the guessing game.

IT is also true that most of the top drug criminals in Melbourne and Sydney have some form of relationship with some police. So it is not hard to convince a paranoid drug boss that so and so is an informer because he thinks to himself, ‘Well, I’ve got my police that I talk to, why should he be the odd man out.’

The fire is already set, you just have to find the right match. It’s simply a matter of knowing thy enemy and know him very well. Are you seeing now how the original list of sixty men to be killed over a fifteen to twenty-year period wasn’t really so far-fetched at all?

Think of the murders that remain unsolved. Freddie the Frog lost half his head in the docks back in the 1950s. His mate, Big Normie, fell out of the sky not long after. The Ferret went swimming in his Valiant. It wasn’t roadworthy, let alone sea worthy. Painters and Dockers painted themselves into dark corners, drug dealers went on missing lists and crooks retired into shallow graves. The police didn’t try too hard. Many thought the crims got their right whack.

The coppers, meanwhile, were trying to solve murders of innocent people. When they deal with crims who either won’t talk or talk bullshit, they lose interest pretty quickly.

LET us now return to November 12, 1979, and a man by the name of Raymond Patrick Chuck, head of the crew that carried out the Great Bookie Robbery on the Victorian Club in Queen Street on April 26, 1976.

The papers said between $1million and $12million was believed taken. I have always believed it was $6million, but some very good judges, who know about how much bookies were holding and how much they owed, calculate that it was less than that.

In any case, it was still plenty of money for those days, so who’s counting?

Ray Chuck was shot dead as he was escorted through the Melbourne Magistrates Court. The rumours put about were that the late criminal gang leader and standover merchant, Brian Kane, pulled the trigger as a payback for the death of his brother, Leslie Herbert Kane.

Whispers were then heard that professional hitman, Christopher Dale Flannery, nick named ‘Rent-A-Kill’, did the job, setting in place probably the greatest disinformation campaign ever conceived. If Ray Chuck was killed by Flannery, then the answer to who killed Flannery is too fucking easy.

Who was Ray Chuck’s best friend in the world? I won’t name him, as he is still alive and remains one of the best crooks in Australia. He isn’t a bad bloke at all and certainly doesn’t deserve to do a life sentence over a maggot like Flannery.

To add punch to the party, you had all these razzle-dazzle Sydney gangsters either bragging that they shot Flannery or that they knew who did. So the disinformation campaign put in place to protect the true identity of the man who did kill Flannery wasn’t hard, but it was massive, and went on for years.

It’s hard to come back and say, ‘Oh, by the way, to prove my point on the psychology of criminal gang warfare, fear and the sheer power of disinformation, I’d now like to confess that I invented 90 per cent of the crap people now believe to be fact surrounding the Flannery case.’ That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?

Now, it is true that the team carrying out the inquest into the death of sad old Chris did come down to Risdon Prison in sleepy Tassie to have a chat with me. They asked me a great number of questions. I can understand why they would want my views on such a serious matter. After all, with due modesty, I do possess the greatest criminal mind of any (living) underworld identity. Which proves mainly that there aren’t that many heavy thinkers in criminal ranks.

Anyway, so they rocked down for a chat. I spoke for a great deal of time. They listened, took more notes and nodded gravely. I nodded gravely. They asked more questions and took more notes. Each one of them got more than a grand a day for asking questions. I got bugger-all for answering them. They went back to their five-star hotels to mull over what I had said with the help of a cheeky Pinot and a local lobster. I had rissoles for tea washed down with some prison hooch. You work it out.

They seemed happy. I was happy. Did I feed them some disinformation? Perish the thought. As a law-abiding citizen – not – I did my best to help, but no-one (including me) has done a day’s jail over Chris, who, rumour suggests, may have given a white pointer shocking heartburn.

I KNOW of several investigations, still unsolved, where police scientific investigators mistook a gunshot wound from a .22-calibre magnum handgun as that of a 38-calibre.

The slug passed straight through the body and was never found, so the whole homicide squad is busy, busy, busy sorting out the disinformation on murders they will never solve, beginning with scientific evidence, sending the investigators in search of the wrong weapon. How do I know that? Maybe I made it up, or maybe I know the killer. Maybe I know the killer very well.

I won’t start on police scientific investigators. Remember the Azaria Chamberlain case. Blood spots, which turned out to be paint spots when they enter the courtroom. It’s a nice trip up the yellow brick road.

Scientific evidence doesn’t have to be 100 per cent spot-on any more. The introduction of DNA evidence means that all that is needed now is to be pretty close, not 100 per cent. But a fair chance and that’s that, you’re guilty.

Add that crap to police evidence based on several years of disinformation along with police ballistic experts who can’t tell a .22-calibre magnum head wound from the head wound of a .38. I can think of several fellows, although very guilty of a hundred other unsolved crimes, who didn’t do the ones they are in prison for.

Quite comic really, in a poetic justice sort of way. Life all seems to equal itself out in the end. Just ask Alphonse. His equalled itself out a little earlier than he’d hoped. Never mind, if he believed in reincarnation, perhaps he’ll get a longer tour of duty next time.

But I’m getting off the track.

Remember Victor Frederick Allard, a former painter and docker turned drug dealer? He was shot to death in February 1979, in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda. And Michael Ebert, who was shot to death on April, 17, 1980, outside a brothel off Rathdowne Street, Carlton? Both unsolved. Police and media all think they know the answer, but if they know so fucking much, then how come no arrests or convictions?

Did Shane Goodfellow really die of a drug overdose in 1992 or was it a hotshot murder? The same with Tony MacNamara – but, again, I digress. I tend to do this.

‘MENTALLY speaking, it’s pretty hard to pull your socks up when you’re only wearing fucking thongs.’
Frankie Waghorn – H Division legend and the hardest puncher in the underworld.

I’M not the only one to use the psychology of fear or to weave a web of disinformation to conceal the truth.

Take the case of Santo Ippolito in December, 1991. Santo was bashed to death in his home in Springvale. Case unsolved. Disinformation claimed within underworld circles that a member of my crew hired through me was paid to do it. I’ve never heard of the bloke in my life. And if I had heard of him I wouldn’t tell you. I didn’t get all this way to lag myself back into jail. Twenty-four years is enough for anyone.

The case of Vietnamese drug dealer Quock Cuong Dwong, killed on January 30, 1992. The story put out about it was a torture job again. Again, baseless rumours that members of my old crew were close to the scene. There was even one yarn that had me actually involved. Again, never heard of the bloke. I am offended by these slanders against me. But the best was when the dagos killed Rocco Medici and his brother Giuseppe Furina and dumped them in the Murrumbidgee River after cutting their ears off. I’m unsure of the date, but it was back in the ’80s and it may have been May 5, 1984, at a spooky guess.

It was during the height of the Pentridge Overcoat Gang War and a membership drive of the Van Gogh club, which is far more exclusive than the Melbourne Club. Members of my crew, on the outside, were rumoured to have been paid by the Italians to carry out the murders, and the ears were a comic touch. A sort of Van Gogh signature.

In all of the history of the Italian criminal culture, ear cutting has never been a part of the play. That bit of disinformation lasted about two days until a few wogs were told that the next lot of ears to come off would be their own. End of disinformation program, but they are still unsolved murders.

And, now, if I may quote myself from an earlier work regarding these matters:

‘If you have a dead body in the bottom of your swimming pool and the police are on their way over to interview you about a missing wristwatch, then the only thing you can do is toss dirt into the pool and muddy the water. What people can’t see they won’t worry about. The police may remark on your dirty swimming pool but for the time being, that’s it until the next move, which is hopefully out of the fucking swimming pool.’

To which I would add a thought from Sherlock Holmes: ‘Ninety per cent of all criminal cases solved are the direct result of information received. The remaining ten per cent belong to the investigating criminal detective and nine per cent of those cases are bungled by forensic fools. The impossible one per cent are totally unsolvable. The per cent remaining is then handed to us, my dear Watson.’

WHAT the media, police, writers and movie directors call the underworld they never truly understand. The logic is to ignore logic, which means you have to unlearn what you have been taught.

People, including police, think too much. They start by saying, ‘If I was the crook, I would have done this.’ They give most crooks too much credit for planning and logic. Dennis Allen shot a bloke for putting the wrong record on in his lounge room. Work that out – he would have been a shocking DJ.