Chopper Unchopped (36 page)

SOLLY is Melbourne’s bonfire king. He is a torch, an arsonist who comes from a wealthy Jewish family involved in the interstate rag trade.

Solly is more a friend of Dave the Jew’s than mine. He used to get around with the Surrey Road gang a bit in the old days. In the 1970s Dave the Jew and I were standing around watching a large fire when Dave said, ‘Good Golly, it’s Solly.’ There was Solly talking to one of the firemen as Solly’s mate’s factory burnt to the ground.

Solly is now a millionaire involved in a legitimate business. But, so I’m told, he’s still busy after hours. He is the Chopper Read of the fire insurance industry.

He has never done a day’s jail and I doubt that he ever will. He is the classic quiet achiever.

REÇen observer of the small, but growing group of Right-wing criminals who call themselves neo-Nazis.

The two criminals with alleged neo-Nazi sympathies who have grabbed the public attention have been Phillip Grant Wilson and Dane Sweetman.

Wilson, a 200-centimetre tall giant, wanted to rule the underworld. He began a protection racket and was allegedly involved in the murders of drug couriers Lina Galea and Ricky Parr. He was involved in planning armed robberies and other crimes and had his ‘soldiers’ carry out the raids.

Wilson claimed to have been a mercenary in Rhodesia before setting up a factory in Melbourne. Police believe he planned to kill a Melbourne policeman by dropping him from a light plane as revenge after his best friend, Thomas Messenger, was shot dead by police during a raid on his Wantirna house in 1985.

Wilson was shot dead in South Yarra in August, 1987. The killing has never been solved.

Dane Sweetman is not a good looker. He was sentenced to 20 years jail for the murder of David Noble in April, 1990. The Supreme Court was told that Sweetman and another man had been celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday when they killed Noble.

Sweetman is not eligible for release until November 18, 2005.

I’M not one for commenting on politics, as a rule. But I really must say that all these neo-Nazis getting around are in poor taste and have bad manners, and should be dealt with accordingly. And, believe me, they will be handled rather severely if they make the mistake of sticking their shaved skulls into the real crime world. The fact is that the ‘Nazis’ are a little bit of a sick comedy and a bad joke.

The late but not lamented Phillip Grant Wilson, the so-called ‘Iceman’, was one of the better known neo-Nazi nitwits to come into the scene. He was an enforcer with the strength of a bull and the heart of a sparrow. He was a pretender: a vegetarian who ate meat, a non-drinker who drank, a white racist who loved Asian prostitutes, a man who said he hated drugs but snorted speed and smoked hash.

Wilson was a classic criminal Walter Mitty. He once spoke rudely to a mate of mine in the South Yarra Arms Hotel. I followed the big fool into the toilet and punched him repeatedly. He fell to the ground, cowering and whimpering and I relieved myself on his fallen body. He was a coward — a wet coward.

He was looked upon by the mainstream criminal world as a dangerous fool and a dreamer. The only dangerous thing about him was that he actually believed his own lies. He was involved in drugs as he wanted the money to arm his own band of Right-wing mental cases. He really did believe he was Adolf Hitler reborn. The man was in reality not a heavy thinker and he was used as a front man by others who really pulled the strings.

It was known for sometime that ‘Phil the Dill’ was about to die. I was offered $8000 to do it myself but the money was not forthcoming. I was also asked to get rid of the remains of Lina Galea and Rick Parr, but I refused.

It was rumored for some time that there was police involvement in the murder of Wilson. This is something I do not believe. There were people close to Wilson who believed he was a big mouth who had served his purpose and was drawing too much attention to them.

I found out that a member of Wilson’s gang had put up the money and set up Wilson. Phil had been mouthing off that this person was a police informer and that he intended to kill him. Wilson telegraphed his punches, so he got hit first.

The man who pulled the trigger on Phil is known to me and is a bit of a nitwit himself, and the price for the hit was $5000. Set up by a junkie and killed by a semi-retard for peanuts. That about sums up how the Iceman got melted.

You’d think the other idiots would learn from what happened to Wilson. But you can’t tell some of these would-be Hitlers. Pentridge has a growing neo-Nazi population — and a fool called Dane Sweetman is one of the better-known of these fools. Neo-Nazi, the way they play the game, doesn’t mean Right-wing, it just means right off.

It takes more than a couple of swastikas tattooed on your body to make you a tough man. These mental pygmies march around Pentridge, poking their right arms into the air screaming ‘Heil Hitler’ to every bugger they see. They stick needles into their arms and they justify it because Hitler was an amphetamines freak. The two most Right-wing nations in the world, in my opinion, are Israel and South Africa. Now I am Right-wing, so Right-wing that I make these neo-Nazi nit wits look like bleeding heart liberals.

These bald baboons think it’s smart to act like Nazis, but the are really just kids fantasising after watching too many ABC documentaries. Bloody halfwits.

For all I know Dane Sweetman may not be a bad chap at all but he really is a lightweight. As someone who has read
Mein Kampf,
 I think it’s safe to say dear old Dane wouldn’t have had the mental capacity to make the short list for Uncle Adolf’s SS. I think Himmler would have stuck him in a large bottle of metho and put him on display in the Heidelberg University. There are few neo-Nazis in Australia who would have read
Mein Kampf
, let alone understand it. It’s pretty heavy going.

I didn’t know Dane that well, but we did jail together in Pentridge’s H Division in 1990 and 1991 and I know that he is a registered member of the Ku Klux Klan.

He got married in the H Division contact visit area, with his bride wearing Doc Martens boots, and the female version of neo-Nazi high fashion. I believe the marriage celebrant didn’t know whether to read from the bible or
Mein Kampf.

Dane is a bit of a fearsome-looking fellow at first sight, with his shaved head and and swastika tattoos, and he is seen by the public as a dangerous monster. But the real hard men in the system think of him and his type as an amusing comedy. Mind you, there are plenty of impressionable idiots behind bars, and he does have a small and growing following inside.

Why this fascination I don’t know. Personally, I have always found the neo-Nazis to be boring and brain dead. Their only topics of conversation are Hitler and Right-wing nonsense, and the fools sucked in by the Nazi crap are just young people with nothing and no-one, looking for something and someone. Hitler said that people will more readily accept a large lie than a small one and he might be right, at that. I think most politicians would secretly agree.

Ratbag political movements first stir the ratbag criminal class and work their way up. While they are no real danger at the moment, the neo-Nazis should be watched.

ONE of the favorite tricks of any self-respecting standover man is to try and get a dollar out of the trendy nightclub scene. After all, it always looks to be ripe for the picking. Lots of glitter, money, drugs. No-one in that scene wants their boat to be rocked because they are making too much money.

But it is not as easy as it may first seem. The Kanes tried it in the 1970s and after a few small victories, failed to make a mark. Others tried it and came a cropper as well.

In 1987 I had a go at it and had 100 per cent success — but I picked my targets with great care and never got greedy. But my success was only in the short term, so I suppose I failed as well.

We all try to get a piece of the action, but always from the outside. It was from the inside, from the so-called security business, that the money could be made. While the outsiders can create a stir for a short time, it is actually the security people, the old-fashioned bouncers, who control the club. And it is, of course, the security firms who control the bouncers.

Now, many of these firms are well respected and beyond reproach but some have strong underworld links. One of Melbourne’s top men in the nightclub security business also acts as the personal bodyguard to an Italian underworld identity from Carlton who is a major illegal gambling identity. And this security man is connected with a firm that has a piece of the action in many Melbourne nightclubs.

A big trick with some clubs is rorting the cover charge money. While the tax man can keep his eagle eye on the bar takings the cover charge money is anyone’s guess. Out of that money comes the payoffs to officials who turn a blind eye over parking, overcrowding and other matters, as well as the payoffs to certain criminal interests. Anyone who needs to be sweetened with a sly sling gets a whack out of the door takings.

This may not go on in every case, but it is widespread, believe me.

I always found that when I spoke to a nightclub owner or manager in private about the need for Chopper Insurance, they might stamp their feet and scream blue murder at first, but after a little straight talking they would see the sense in what I was saying.

After all, business is business . . . and, besides, we all have to do our bit to keep money in Australia. Those nightclub owners just waste it on imported luxuries.

EVERY dog has his day, and the old underworld monster known as the Victorian Federated Ship Painters and Dockers has become a faded phantom that no longer applies in the real criminal world of today. Most of the dockers’ real hard men are dead and gone and their criminal big thinkers have had second thoughts.

They still have a reputation — but that is all they have these days, and I doubt that they will re-emerge as a force on the Melbourne crime scene. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am.

I have written a poem about the decline and fall of the dockies, and it goes like this . . .

Ha ha. The dockies, in my opinion, were only ever the mice who roared. Now they can’t even do that.

USING fear correctly is a skill, even an art. Its correct use, I believe, is to instill fear in your targets with a wink and a smile — using courtesy and a friendly, polite attitude. Only small boys and schoolgirls lose their tempers.

After all, as our mothers taught us, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. Which is another way of putting the old saying: ‘Honey catches more flies than vinegar.’

I only raise my voice in anger at Mr Nibbles when he has chewed up one of my good shoes. I may lose my temper when I am trying to change a flat tyre and the jack slips. I may go red in the face when some dirty rotten greyhound or racehorse has robbed me of several thousand dollars. But I do not, as a rule, lose my temper with humans.

I will admit that on occasions I have spat the dummy towards friends who have put holes in their manners or have been acting stupidly. But I have picked it up, dusted it off and whacked it back, in a flash. I regain my self control fast.

However, in matters of business, only a fool loses his temper. Why would a man carrying a loaded gun, who is fully prepared to use it, need to be cross with anyone? The choice for the other party is clear: the money, or the rest of your life in a wheelchair. All in a nice, quiet voice.

That’s why I could never rob a bank. ‘Excuse me, Sir. I would like you to give me $50,000’ just doesn’t sound right. Somehow, it doesn’t have the sense of urgency and terror that stick-up men favor in their line of work. I could never run into a bank, screaming and yelling like a drunken Indian and yip, yip, yahooing all over the place.

People don’t think when they let their anger take control. I wait for the anger to subside before I act. Then I just talk to them, and their fear takes over. A frightened man is putty to control. I let them keep what they like to call their pride. I explain to them that it will be our little secret, that the rest of the world, their family and friends, need never know.

They must know that to others they remain the hero … while at the same time paying up to me on the quiet. No business can be done unless the other party knows he will be killed if he does not comply. It is a matter of reasoning with people, but stupid human pride is my worst enemy.

In most cases, I work on a person so they don’t lose face to others. There is no need to humiliate someone just to stand over them. In fact, that can be counter productive.

But it is almost as though some men demand their blood be spilled before their stupid pride will allow them to part with money. These people do not see that the money is not worth it. For them it is not business, not a simple mathematical equation. If you were to ask them in the sober light of day, what was more important, a relatively insignificant amount of money or an immense amount of pain, I’m sure they would be sensible. But some of them sometimes get hot-headed, stubborn and stupid. Then Doctor Chopper has to help them see the error of their ways.

Understanding human nature is one of the most important elements of the psychology of fear. Some men simply have to be faced with the facts; others have to face their own impending death. Each man is a complex mystery, but it seems to me that men involved in crime, who use violence as a weapon, are simple to understand. They fear pain and death more than an honest man.

This personal stupid, blind courage of honest men outweighs the personal courage of bad men. Why? Because bad men hold very little dear to their heart, whereas the honest man will often risk life and limb fighting with an intruder over a bloody television set or a video.

The bad man would not risk his neck for the life of his granny. So my psychology of fear, while it works to perfection in the world of evil men, would not work well in the world of the honest man. His righteous indignation and stupid personal pride would send him screaming to the police — or wanting to attack me with a golf putter.

You would have to kill the silly bastard just to shut him up. To be quite truthful, honest men scare the shit out of me. You just can’t reason with the mad bastards. It’s useless. To kill is always the last resort, but an honest man would scream so long and loud it would have to be the first resort. And where would be the profit in that?

I have a rule: never rob a ‘square head’. It is not worth the fuss. To approach an honest man over matters such as this is bound to fail. Their sense of outrage dooms any such plan from the beginning. His pride takes control, this is just common sense but so many criminals fail to see it.

The criminal class has a lower sense of self esteem. It is a rough generalisation but while most crims will not fight for pride alone, an honest man will die for his honor.

There are other aspects of the psychology of fear but I cannot reveal them. Otherwise every bugger would be standing over every other bugger.