Chopper Unchopped (27 page)

WHEN I got to Tasmania and settled in it didn’t take me long to run into a group of rogues, rednecks and renegades, who, like me, feel naked unless they have a gun in one hand and a stubbie in the other.

Many of them were former members of major motorcycle gangs. There was my now well-known former friend Sid Collins, a former president of the Outlaw Motorcycle gang, Black Uhlans Larry and Big Josh Burling, the president of the Tasmanian chapter of the Outlaws.

Now I have known bikers for 20 years and have always kept in close contact with one member of the Hell’s Angels, known as ‘The Lawyer’ because of his great knowledge of matters legal and financial. I would often talk to him and he was able to set me right on who to trust in the bike world.

When I got out of jail and went to Tasmania I found that I was walking into all sorts of private bikie politics. In fact I was asked to kill Sid Collins.

Here I was, out of jail for just two weeks and the word was about that I had come to Tasmania to do a hit on Mr Sid Collins.

Now, he was a rather formidable fellow in his own right so it was obvious I would have to settle this and quickly. I needed all this bullshit like a hole in the head and I knew that if I didn’t settle it quickly someone was going to end up with a real hole in the head.

I was starting to wonder whether retirement in sleepy Tassie was worth the bother.

I went down there with the idea of getting a pipe and some slippers and enjoying the fresh air. But some of those leather-bound fatheads couldn’t get it through their crash-helmeted skulls that I was an ex-headhunter. That I was not for hire, and didn’t want a piece of their inter-gang rivalry.

I felt like Dame Nellie Melba (without ears) being asked to make a comeback. No, no, no, I would say. Yes, yes, yes, someone would reply. And besides, they never named a dessert after me.

I had only been out of jail six weeks and half the mad bikies of Tassie seemed to hate me. Was it my aftershave, I asked? Now, I was used to the mafia and a few Melbourne drug dealers hating me, but this was going too far.

So I rang ‘The Lawyer’ in the Hell’s Angels for advice. He told me the truth about some of the characters, including The Groper, Sid Collins and Black Larry.

I went out of my way to meet all of them to try and settle matters down. I told them that I had retired and had come to Tasmania to live the quiet life and not to take on any hits.

We had a million drinks and things seemed to settle down. At first I was treated with suspicion and distrust. But in the end, they seemed to accept me.

We formed the hole-in-the-head shooting club – a humorous, but clearly mental group with access to firepower which would put to shame the various crime groups and drug cartels from the mainland.

We would meet socially as many of us, sadly, did not have full time jobs and we would decide it was time to have a meeting of this refined group of gentle sports shooters and gun aficionados. It was then time to fill the sky with lead.

After a few beers one day we were having a shot when a bullet ricocheted and hit one of the crew in the leg. No problems. We were able to dig it out and there was no harm done.

A LOT of people have asked me if I miss Melbourne. The night clubs, the wog shops, the card games, the massage parlors, escort agencies, the night life, the street life, the blood, the guts, the money and the excitement.

They ask me how I have settled into the quiet life of Tassie. People forget that 17½ years in Melbourne was spent in jail. The night life in Pentridge isn’t too lively, believe me. Watching cockroaches run up the wall is not a big night out.

The point is that I am a gun freak and for me, Tassie is heaven. I have fitted in well here as a responsible member of the Tasmanian community. I love shooting and hunting, blowing the heads off native wildlife like the locals. Ha, ha.

Your average gun-toting Sydney or Melbourne crook couldn’t hit the side of a barn with a shovel full of wheat whereas I could blow your nose off at 100 paces.

As for night life, forget the disco scene. I prefer to walk through the bush with a sporting model .303 and a bottle of whisky and a lackey carrying the spotlight. That is all the nightlife I need.

Of course I also like to go to the casino and play roulette when I’m not hunting. Screw Melbourne, a city of plastic gangsters, smacked-out whores and bad shots.

I love Tassie.

BUT I’m now sad to say that the hole in the head shooting club is no more. Whoever fired the shot in the chest of Sid Collins, fired the shot that finished the shooting club.

Trent Anthony was put under police protection after the shooting, along with the Ford Fairlane I gave him as a gift. Another member is hiding under his bed while his wife cruises around Launceston in the car I gave him as a gift.

The rest of the crew seem to have made up their minds about my guilt and don’t want to know me.

Of course, Big Josh Burling, Mad Micky and Mad Mike have stuck by me. The Sid Collins shooting has taught me a thing or two about the guts and dash of the rogues of Tassie. It doesn’t exist.

How did I get involved with them? I can’t even ride a scooter without falling off. Whenever I foolishly allow myself to trust I am betrayed. Perhaps I will have to become a hermit to be safe.

SINCE I have been in Tassie, I have been approached by many and various odd-bods, who have read the first book and feel that they are free to approach me on all matters of violence.

I am constantly amazed at how blood thirsty the average member of the public really is. I have been approached in relation to killing this one and that one.

There seems to be a never ending stream of people out there who would like to see their next door neighbors, hairdressers, doctors, accountants, wives and husbands knocked off.

As a retired member of the crime world I treat these discussions of murder and contracts as the height of good humor. But many of these people are serious. Deadly serious.

One day a very old timber man, a wood cutter of the old school, approached me and asked whether I would be interested in killing the Tasmanian independent ‘Green’ politician, Dr Bob Brown.

He said he would show me where he lives. He said Dr Brown had a place in the bush where I could pick him off easily.

I was polite and respectful to the man. After all, he was nearly 80, and it would not be polite to laugh off the offer of a political assassination. So I asked him, ‘What sort of money are we talking?’ He said ‘I’ll pass the hat amongst the boys. I think I could get $500, which is nothing to sneeze at.’ Pretty bloody small hat, that’s all I can say.

The sad thing was, the old boy was serious, bless his heart.

IT took Read exactly six months and 450 kilometres to turn the full circle. He was back in a prison cell charged with the attempted murder of his friend Sid Collins, the former Melbourne president of the Outlaw motorcycle gang. As Collins lay near death in the Launceston General Hospital Read was enjoying his continuing love affair with the gaming tables at the nearby casino.

Around midnight on May 13 Read was leaving the casino in a taxi when he was surrounded by ten police, all with guns drawn. He was ordered out of the cab. Read responded: ‘What’s this? A tax assessment?’

Read’s dry humor fell on deaf ears, for his driver and mascot Trent Anthony had already made a statement identifying Read as the shooter. Strangely, Collins himself originally stated that he was shot by an unknown man outside his house in High Street, Evandale.

Days after Read was charged, Collins changed his story. He said he had been sitting in the back seat of Read’s Ford sedan when the former Melbourne hitman turned from the front passenger seat and shot him in the chest.

The charge of attempted murder was later dropped to grievous bodily harm. Police alleged Read shot Collins in the car and that Anthony and Read then drove the badly wounded man to hospital. The weapon, a .9 mm Beretta pistol, was later found hidden in the backyard of Read’s home.

Collins later claimed that just before the shooting Read had said to him: ‘Do you want one in the brains?’

The bullet entered Collins’s chest, deflected off a rib and passed through his colon and — according to medical evidence — damaged one kidney ‘like taking the top off a boiled egg.’

Read had been close to Collins and claimed he had paid for the ex-bikie’s fiance’s wedding dress. Just before the wedding Read wrote to Collins from Risdon jail: ‘Dear Sid, I regret to inform you that I will be unable to attend your forthcoming wedding celebrations due to pending legal matters. Wishing you a speedy recovery. Regards, Mark’

MANY years ago the old former boxer, merchant sailor and standover man Vincent Villeroy told me he thought I would die in jail or on the gallows. I was highly offended and asked him why, and he just replied: ‘Because, young fella, that’s just the way you are. A man is what he is and all the preachers, school teachers and the best-laid plans in the world won’t change what you are.’

Then Vincent told me a story I still remember 15 years later …

The scorpion and the bullfrog were on their way home and both came to the edge of a raging river. The scorpion couldn’t swim, but the big bullfrog was a powerful swimmer. The scorpion said: ‘let me climb on your back and you can swim me across the river.’ The bullfrog replied, ‘you must think I’m stupid; if I let you ride on my back, you will sting me and I will die.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said the scorpion, ‘if I sting you we will both drown.’

The bullfrog thought about it for a moment and then replied, ‘yes, of course, I see your point. OK, you can ride on my back.’

So the scorpion hopped aboard the frog’s back and the bullfrog started to swim powerfully across the flooded river. But as the bullfrog reached the middle the scorpion lashed out with its poisonous tail.

The frog cried out, as the venom began to paralyse its hind legs, ‘why, why, why now? Now we will both drown.’

‘Why?’ said the scorpion as it was swept away to its death, ‘because that’s just the way I am.’

That old story is coming back to haunt me now. For years I refused to believe it, but a man who won’t face reality is a fool, so I must face it.

I have tried so hard to change, to leave the sordid life I have lived, to turn over a new leaf, but shit happens. And I always end up cold as a stone in a cell only fit for an animal. The result always seems to be the same.

If my life is worth anything it is as an example to others of what not to do and how not to live. There is no glory in crime, just blood, tears and misery.

Some people look up to me. I think there are fools, but they can go home to their warm beds and their families and I am left in hell.

In spite of my smiling face and outwardly happy nature I have cried a sea of tears. The only reason I don’t suicide is that it would please too many arseholes.

But I often ask myself, why do I bother?

A YOUNG crim in Risdon Prison said to me, ‘Chopper, you’re a living legend.’ I thought about that. Yes, I thought, I’m a ‘living legend’ who blew every penny at the race track and casino and gave it away to sob stories and hard luck tales. I’m a living legend who, after 17 years in jail, got out and together with the woman he loved set himself up in a beautiful home full of lovely furniture and things, a large legal gun collection, two cars, a driver, a bodyguard, friends, parties, barbecues, clubs, pubs, racetracks and casinos, fine food and booze.

My life was looking a million dollars. I may not have had a million dollars — but I lived like a millionaire. All I did when I went out was shake people’s hands and sign people’s books. And, yet, here I sit once more in a prison cell, my life in tatters, and Margaret back in Melbourne.

In a blood and guts gang war, gun-in-hand situation, I’ve been called a criminal genius. However, in normal living of day-to-day life outside, living like normal people live, I am a social retard. And in money matters I’m a total fool.

It broke my heart to see Margaret walk out the prison gate in tears. She loves me. But after ten years she couldn’t – and I wouldn’t want her to – go through this bullshit again. That’s why I pleaded not guilty on the charge of attempted murder. However, win, lose or draw, I am guilty of putting myself in a foolish and stupid position, which has put me back inside a prison cell. After a lifetime of reading men and studying tactics and strategy, I fell victim to the ‘smiling face’ routine myself – and trusted false, fairweather friends. What a fool I am.

To anybody young or silly enough to think otherwise, the criminal world is a not a wonderful fairy tale world of money and magic. It is not populated by a fine, fair-minded body of men. And while I may offend the feelings of some so-called friends and so-called experts, they should know that what I have revealed about the underworld has come from the heart. You can fool some of the people some of time, but in the long run people won’t keep spending money on a book that talks shit. And like it or not, for better or worse, I don’t talk shit.

Here I sit in Risdon Prison, Tasmania, otherwise known as the ‘Pink Palace’, facing many more years in jail.

I can’t be trusted with money. I either spend it, gamble it, or give it away to others, as I am a natural sucker for a sob story. I did try, but it seems that in spite of my best efforts my life is what it is and I am who I am, and whether I am innocent or guilty I can’t seem to wash the blood from my hands …

As Oscar Wilde lay dying, a priest asked him, ‘Do you renounce Satan?’ Wilde replied: ‘I hardly think this is the time to be making enemies.’

I don’t know why that thought about Wilde came to me, other than he did some of his best work while in prison, spent a fortune while he was alive yet died a pauper. But don’t forget, the opera ain’t over ’till the fat lady sings.

As I have maintained from the beginning in this shooting case, it was a set-up. Not the police, mind you. Too many people owed me big money, and I was a bloody easy mark — a scapegoat.

The fact that the gun was found hidden under a log in my back yard three days after the shooting — when all I had to do, if I knew it was there, was tell Margaret to toss it in the river — proves it was a set-up. After all, I spoke to Margaret five times between the time of the shooting and the time they found the gun.

I am naturally shocked at Trent and the victim, Sid. However, people continue to shock us all the time, don’t they?

I’m starting to wonder if I will spend the next 20 years of my life being dobbed in, loaded up and set up for this, that and the other by various nitwits who see me as the perfect scapegoat. Tasmanian police only have to hear my name mentioned and I feel they suspect the worst. I was told by a Tasmanian detective that my name gets mentioned in police stations regularly by individuals who have been arrested, and who then try to offer various wild stories in relation to Chopper Read to try and lighten their own load.

The Tasmanian police force is not Scotland Yard, by a long chalk. There is a small town mentality running through Tasmanian thinking — and a naive logic. If the ‘smoking gun’ is found in your letter box then you must be guilty. I’m sure it’s because of the book that they brought in the heavyweight himself, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Damian Bugg, to do the prosecuting on a grievous bodily harm charge.

About two months after I was arrested for the shooting of my former friend Sidney Collins, a local chap by the name of Ronald Jarvis went missing, believed murdered.

A month later the police arrived at Risdon Jail to interview me in relation to the Jarvis matter. Police had been given information that I was either behind the Jarvis incident, had ordered it done, or knew the people involved.

I’d never heard of the fellow. Dropping my name in police stations over various crimes has become a statewide pastime.

When a Launceston man was beaten with a baseball bat and relieved of $6000, I was under suspicion. Just because the guy was a suspected drug dealer, I was the bloke in the frame. When another so-called toughie was seen with facial scars and a badly cut face, it was rumored that I had pistol whipped him. Launceston is a large country town and so is Hobart. Rumors, gossip and whispers have become a way of life here.

On May 14, 1992, police seized from Read’s Launceston home a cache of arms. They took a Ruger 10-shot .22 carbine, a Savage .22 bolt action rifle, a Stirling .22 bolt action, a Sportco .22 bolt action, a .303 rifle, a Stirling .22, an Ace .22, a Baikal .22, a Boito single barrel, sawn off 12 gauge shotgun, assorted ammunition, two rifle scopes, a pair of nunchakus and a revolver shoulder holster.

WHILE on the subject of how I have been treated down here, it’s interesting to look at the property seizure receipt which lists the weapons taken from my home in Launceston after I was arrested.

Apart from my Ruger carbine and Mark III .303 they only listed the lightweight weapons I used as wall decorations.

It seems this bloody Sid Collins fiasco has cost me a lot. The amount of guns I have lost over my lifetime would arm a small military unit. It’s a crying bloody shame.

I have plenty more guns, but I did love the particular range of weapons taken, and I feel quite sad at their loss. I wonder if they will ever be returned.

You can have nothing in your wallet, and nothing in the bank, but if you don’t own a gun, you’re really broke. Take my money, take my wife, you may even try to take my life — but leave my guns alone.

On my solid brass belt buckle there are the words: ‘I will give up my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.’

IT seems to me that my whole life has been a battle, fighting the never ending forces that pit themselves against me. A good fight is a delight, I just love to wage war. A mental and physical battle against a worthy foe is all part of the great chess match of life.

The sad thing is the betrayals that you face along the way. You may place so much faith in someone, only for them to let you down when you need them most.

People just don’t stay the same, they can change sides, turn under pressure and go where they think the strength is.

My good friend Cracker Phillips left my side because he felt it was the wise thing to do. I am still godfather to his eldest son, Jarrod Brandon Phillips. The old hole-in-the-head shooting club is split into two.

How did it happen? My refusal to kill one man saw another man shot. I left jail and came to Tasmania to leave a life of violence and now I have a new flock of enemies.

I must now face it that this is my lot in life. Mahatma Gandhi I ain’t. Any rate, I’d look pretty silly walking into a pub dressed in a towel. Where would I hide the gun?

I walked away from crime in Melbourne because I wanted a peaceful life. Now I wonder what I have walked into.

‘Let me have men about me who are fat, sleek headed men, such as sleep at night. Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look, he thinks too much, such men are dangerous.’ This is a verse from Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
, and where does it leave me?

The only friend I have who is fat and bald is Frankie Waghorn, and he’s in jail.

I have always found it hard to trust people. The correct selection of a friend is a difficult task. I mean, what is a true test of friendship? Shoot them a few times in the arse and see if they remain solid or tell on you would seem to be fair, but I suspect you would run out of friends before you ran out of bullets.

My old mentor, gunman and hard man, Horatio Morris, once said to me, ‘Young fella, never grow to love anyone too much, because you never know, one day, you may have to kill them.’

Those words once chilled me to the bone, but as I get older. I am haunted by them. It now appears to me that I can only trust someone when I have a loaded gun stuck in their mouth.

It seems to me that every time I drop my guard with people and try to relax it all goes wrong. As soon as I place faith in someone or believe in their word of honor, I get dumped on.

Face to face, people seem to be as good as gold, but once I walk away and leave them to it. I get betrayed, lied to, conned and robbed. While there a few exceptions to the rule, it seems that I will have to travel through life with the cynical attitude that all the people I come in contact with are traitors waiting to happen.

How can you find if females will stay loyal. I know about Margaret — she has stood blood loyal through everything that has happened, but it is very difficult to judge some women.