Chopper Unchopped (239 page)

We had a war in jail because I was alleged to have eaten too many sausages, a foul piece of slander indeed – although I must say they were yummy.

Nothing makes sense and when you understand that, everything falls into place. There is no logic in shooting someone outside a crowded nightclub, cutting your ears off and baseball batting various fat wombats in front of witnesses. But, believe me, it happens.

There is no master plan, just a sea of human filth trying to get to the surface for a breath of pure air. I have known of crims on their way to a million-dollar heroin deal who have shoplifted a coat on the way. If they had been caught, the deal would have gone sour. Why did they do it? Because they could.

MANY years ago a very well-known radio type, later to become a TV personality, was debating the rape issue on talkback radio with a high profile lady in the women’s movement. She stopped him dead by saying, ‘Well, it’s a waste of my time debating this point with you. You have never been raped – I have.’

The next day, the radio personality shocked his listeners by breaking down and tearfully confessing that he had been the victim of sexual molestation as a child at the hands of his uncle. Game, set and match to him. He had not only won the debate but gained the sympathy of a whole new audience.

The only evidence that what he said was true was his own word. But why would a man say such a thing if it weren’t true? Why indeed! Think of the psychological advantage. Another famous personality comes out and confesses to being homosexual, then writes a best seller on the topic. The truth was he was really straight and just pretending to be gay.

I HAVE shot a few and a few have died – big deal. But, in reality, Chopper Read was a less-than-average criminal who used greater-than-average violence for less-than-average money. But Chopper Read could spin a greater-than-above-average story and he could get people laughing. I’m a self-made man with an unmade face and an unfilled grave. It has now reached the stage that fact can no longer be separated from fiction.

That’s what a true legend is. A legend is a myth. It is a lie welded together with the truth and used as a cosh to beat the unsuspecting around the head. I’ve done it and now I’m telling you, believe nothing except what you yourself believe to be true while all the time being aware that you could be wrong.

I will take a little mental rest now. My doctor warned me not to get into these spinouts as I start to waffle and I suspect I’m starting to rave a little. Then again, sometimes the truth of a situation can be clearly seen only after talking to a total mental case.

I must go and find one.

WHO created Chopper Read? Well, first of all, I did it myself with some big help from the police. Then, of course, the media got in for its chop, if you know what I mean. Chopper Read’s image is largely a media-created package. A virtual reality, multi-media package with no ears and a heap of tattoos, tied up in a bow …

Chopper Read is who and what you think he is because he told you he is. Others have confirmed my reality because I told them it was so. Maybe I don’t exist at all. How many of you have seen me in the flesh? Only a few dozen people of the hundreds of thousands who have read the books and seen the movie.

AN enemy of your enemy is a friend. It’s been true for thousands of years, and will be for thousands more.

Alex Tsakmakis was a millionaire and a killer. He chucked a professional runner named Bruce Walker in the bay in 1978. Walker was a good runner but not much of a swimmer, which was no surprise given that he was trussed up in chicken wire at the time.

Tsakmakis then set fire to Barry Robert Quinn in Jika Jika in 1984. Quinn had baited him about his girlfriend. It was a dumb move by Bazza. Alex squirted him with glue and then flicked matches at Barry. Whoosh! Barry was burnt alive. Not a good way to go. And the scorched smell was around for days.

There was a death notice the next day that was supposed to come from Alex saying, ‘Sorry, we always stuck together.’ Call me a cynic but I reckon there was a touch of ‘blue’ humour in that one.

I stabbed Alex in the neck once while he was reading the
Financial Review
in the exercise yard, the pretentious bastard. He wasn’t too tough when he was screaming around with blood pissing out where his collar used to be. He always was a pain in the neck.

I was kicked out of the section for that, which I thought was a bit harsh, so I wrote to the Classo Board:

(As for the newspaperman who said he was writing a book about me. I wonder how he feels now. You had your chance, you fool.)

Eventually we were placed back in the one division.

After that, Alex and I became allies, even though he hated me. We had another dangerous opponent so we stuck together. Remember, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

But, much later, after Russell Street bomber Craig Minogue joined the division I heard that Alex had put a $7000 contract out on me. Now, that was a lot of money inside – for that sort of cash I would nearly have done it myself.

I was saddened. Our alliance was over – although Alex didn’t know it. He came to me with the plan to kill big Craig. He had a leather punch spike he wanted to drive into Craig’s brain.

I warned Fatty Minogue about the attack. The big fella was to lose so much weight he was called Slim. Should have been called Jenny Craig Minogue.

When Alex went into the yard Craig was waiting with a couple of gym weights in a pillow case. He wasn’t looking for a workout. He swung them around and turned Alex’s brains to mashed potato.

I sat in my cell having a smoke. Sometimes Generals don’t have to fire the bullets, just move in the troops.

Slim was my friend. We both are still alive. Alex is dead. That’s how it works.

Churchill and Stalin. The Poms had no time for the Frogs, and vice-versa, but they fought together in two world wars against the Hun. Enough lessons from the past.

If you don’t get it by now, pay for cable TV and watch the History Channel.

Billy the Texan Longley once said to me that I was without a shadow of a doubt the greatest psychological manipulator of the media in Australian criminal history, but the same people dismiss me as not much of a crook compared to their great selves, of course.

My idea of a successful criminal isn’t much different from a successful anything else: someone who ends up with wealth, power, fame and long life.

Few crooks gain power, very few gain fame and even fewer gain long life. So a crook who has gained wealth, power, fame and long life is the winner – no contest.

Good crooks are never known. They have power and money without the fame. Serial killers get the fame with no power and no money and, usually, a lifetime behind bars. Violent criminals have a certain power, but only until they lose their strength, then they either reform or die. Some just get out of jail and become hairdressers like William John O’Meally.

I had fame, power and not much money. I can tell you that writing about crime is a hell of a lot better than committing it. That’s why crime reporters tend to live longer than the criminals they write about. Except if they die of mixed grill and beer poisoning.

I’m a forward thinker. I’m not so worried about today’s opinion but of tomorrow’s and I suspect new generations will view this no-eared freak with a kinder heart than the mice who roar at me today. History has shown us that.

Speaking of mice, one of Beethoven’s critics from the media, a name I forget, contacted a former Victorian Police Detective Inspector who, in turn, rang me. As a favour to the former inspector I rang the mouse, or mousette. She was doing an article on me, the movie and so on. I tried to explain that all the money that was due to me from the movie had already been signed over to a children’s hospital cancer foundation, but she didn’t want to know this as the fact that I’d already given the movie money away to charity flew in the face of her ‘Why criminals make money from crime’ articles. Again, it’s an example of how the truth is never believed. People would rather believe the lie than the truth.

All she wanted was a black story and so she didn’t want a white answer. She only wanted the legend, the myth and the lie – and anything that wavered from what she had already planned on writing was, to her, a lie. She intended to turn her version into reality by printing it, then it would become the ‘truth’. That is, the truth to a vast number of her unsuspecting readers.

I was too polite to mention that the only person making any money at the time was her. I wasn’t being paid for the interview and she was getting plenty. I’ve seen a lot of hypocrisy and dishonesty and a lot of rackets in my time, but I’ve never seen more hypocrisy and dishonesty than there is in the media racket. They’re geniuses at it.

THERE are basically three sorts of crime. Unorganised Crime – lawless activity by individuals; Disorganised Crime – lawless activity by gangs; and Organised Crime – lawless activity by gangs, crews, teams, cartels, syndicates, call them what you will.

The Mafia is a continuing, never-ending tree of criminal conspiracy to gain economic power via physical force and private corruption. It is kept alive with the falling leaf attitude. Each member is only a leaf, the roots of the tree are in place and so is the trunk. The leaves that do or don’t blow off (or get blown away) won’t affect the health of the tree itself. I’ve chainsawed big trees down and watched new trees grow ten metres away from the stump: new trees that sprang from the old tree’s original root system.

Any organised criminal group that has not been cut down within its first generation of life will never be cut down, as the root system after the first generation has taken hold. Any group that can trace its roots back 300 years or even thirty years is cemented in place.

Leaves may fall but the tree will remain. Any police or media remark to the contrary is flapdoodle, pure and simple. We should also remember that some police and the (very) odd journalist has been a member of a crime family or two.

I’m not saying that criminal activity is a myth or nonsense, it is all very real, dangerous and deadly serious, be it unorganised, disorganised or highly organised or spur of the moment thoughtless madness.

You are just as dead if you are shot by some idiot with a crime fantasy and a stolen .22 pea rifle as you are if blown away by a marksman hired by a crime cartel using a state-of-the-art, high-powered sniper rifle that can take out a buffalo at two miles.

What I’m saying is that this psychology of fear is an important tool used at all levels of criminal activity and, one day, the crime fighters and people who report on crime will come to understand this tactic.

I feel at times the police and the various news media do to a certain agree understand the fear myth I’ve outlined and they themselves use this very tactic to frighten governments via the general public.

Budget funding relies heavily on public demand for more police to fight serious crime. The news media is not a public charity – the more the media can frighten the public the more newspapers they can sell and viewers they can attract.

TV news and current affairs and crime documentaries rely heavily on this same psychology. The old Chinese proverb of killing one to scare ten thousand is very true and much used by all parties involved: cops, robbers, reporters and the humble spectator.

They shiver in fright and vote with their minds, hearts and wallets to protect themselves from a monster that is largely a phantom of disinformation.

People fear what they don’t understand and keeping the general public in a state of semi-ignorance is an important tool in the battle plans of both the good guys and the bad guys.

We work together to keep the squareheads in the dark. Politicians win because they get votes from being tough on crime, coppers win, because they get more money and influence, and the media wins because they have more stories to tell and sell. The crooks win, in a way, because they become more feared.