Chopper Unchopped (4 page)

The Surrey Road gang didn’t muck around. Cowboy Johnny wouldn’t eat the smokes or drink the ouzo or take his beating so Dave shot him in both legs with a sawn-off .22. We dug the slugs out with a potato knife. Johnny then went to hospital. No slugs, no police.

Terry the Tank refused his punishment once and the three of us attacked him. Had Terry carried on and entered the criminal world full on, he would have been a force to be reckoned with. Physically, he was as strong as 10 men. However, we got him in the end. Dave was mad keen on shooting him in the legs, but Terry agreed on the standard pack of lit smokes, ouzo and a sound flogging.

A crew can’t expect to dish it out if it can’t take it as well, and we were a top crew. Violence and street combat was our religion. I was the general, and I ruled with an iron fist. Great days.

My 19th birthday party was going to be a big event in my life. To be honest I never had a proper birthday party. Seventh Day Adventist birthday parties for children in the Read home ended up as prayer meetings. So by the time I was turning 19 and not living at home I wanted a real one to make up for all the other years.

I set about getting ready for the big day. I had a one bedroom flat in Williams Road, South Yarra. I emptied most of the furniture out. Then I rang the Thomastown Boys via ‘Satchmo’ and the Croydon Boys via ‘Bernie’. I notified ‘Terry the Tank’ and his mates, ‘Mad Charlie’ and his crew, Horatio Morris and his old South and Port Melbourne mates, and Vincent Villeroy and his friends. I told them all to bring the biggest sluts they could lay their hands on. But I didn’t tell any of the crews I’d invited that other crews were coming.

The big night had come. All was set. I had spent several hundred dollars on grog and the bath tub was full of ice. I put Cowboy Johnny Harris up on the roof of the flats next door with a walkie talkie and a 30-30 lever action hunting rifle so he could let rip if any gatecrashers dared to pull up outside.

No one came.

Only my dear old dad, ‘Satchmo’, a few of the Thomastown boys and Robyn the policeman’s daughter.

It turned out that bloody ‘Terry the Tank’ had rung around and every crew in Melbourne knew the other crews were coming. It was decided behind my back that my 19th would be a bloodbath. I’ve never tried to toss a party since.

Our gang kept a supply of weapons hidden in the toilets of the South Yarra Arms, the Morning Star hotel and later the Bush Inn hotel. We stashed one sawn-off shotgun, one tomahawk, one meat cleaver and one iron bar in each pub — an idea I got from what the Kray brothers did in London. We also had a very high-powered cattle prod stolen from the Newmarket cattle yards. When we got hold of the leadership of rival gangs, one blast of the cattle prod on the lower guts and their bowels dropped out — shit everywhere.

The Surrey Road gang was feared. We had blues with the Richmond boys regularly, but as there weren’t many of us, we would go to the home address of our enemy and get him as he walked out, at his own front door. These are the same tactics used by the IRA. We once bashed a rival gang leader as he left the cemetery after his mother’s funeral. Another time we broke the legs of the brother of an enemy — then caught the one we wanted in the waiting room of the Alfred Hospital. It was another IRA trick learnt from my reading of military history.

Terry the Tank is now a well-to-do honest member of the community with wife and children. Cowboy Johnny is dead. Dave the Jew is living in South Yarra in relaxed comfort with his trust fund. And I’m where I am. That’s the Surrey Road gang now … a memory of my teenage years.

MY dear old Dad, Keith Alfred Read, served in the Australian Army for 24 years, the merchant navy for two years, and was a professional welterweight boxer for a while. As a result of his time in the ring he became friends and remained friends with the great Eddy Miller until Miller’s death in the late 1960s.

During the 1939-45 war Dad served on the island of New Britain, then he went to Indonesia, Rabaul and other islands, then to Japan, where he saw Hiroshima first hand.

Later, he joined the merchant navy for two years, then rejoined the army and served in the K Force in Korea.

On leaving the army the second time he worked for Apps funeral directors. Apps had the Government contract picking up all the homicide and suicide jobs.

My Dad is well known to all the crims who know me. He has withstood gossip and slander in the streets where he’s lived and countless death threats, all because of me. The stress and strain of my 20-odd years of police, prison and criminal trouble have taken their toll on Dad. However, he has stood with me rock solid and loyal through thick and thin. He would stand in front of me and take the bullet meant for me if he could. His love and loyalty is without question. What else can I say?

All my life Dad has slept with a gun beside his bed. And after his divorce from my mother he took to sleeping with a fully-loaded pump action alongside him in the double bed, barrel pointing down towards his feet. But I got him out of that. It now goes under or alongside the bed on the floor. Getting up at night to go to the toilet, with my old Dad and his trusty pump action in the next room, meant yelling out: ‘Going to the toilet, Dad’ so he knew who was walking around.

‘Right, boy’ he would yell back. One thing, with the old soldier in the next room, armed up, I slept well.

Once, when he was young, Dad got the idea that the next-door neighbours were mistreating their family pet. Every time he looked over the fence the animal seemed to be getting thinner and thinner.

He complained to the neighbours, and said he hated cruelty to animals. Every time he asked them if they were feeding the dog, they swore they were. But it seemed skinnier than ever, and one day Dad could take no more. He jumped the fence, threatened the neighbour with a beating, then took the dog and drowned it to put it out of its misery.

It was the first time he had seen a greyhound.

Old time gunman Horatio Morris introduced me to an old Melbourne bookmaker we’ll call Bert, a dark horse, behind-the-scenes man and quite a nice chap. And there was another fellow, a bookie called Pat. I met Pat years later in South Yarra in 1977. He was very close to Brian Kane. On the night in question Kane had pulled up outside an address in Rockley Road, South Yarra, to speak to a chap who had been roughing up Pat’s lady friend. The address was right next to where my Dad and I lived.

I grabbed Dad’s pump action shotgun — the old Bentley — loaded it with heavy shot and ran down and bailed Kane up. Having met him at the Morning Star hotel in Prahran a month or so before in the company of police regarding a matter concerning Billy Longley, I was convinced he was in Rockley Road to kill me, and I had the barrel of the gun in his mouth.

My Dad rushed out and calmed things down, allowing poor Brian to explain that he was on a mission of mercy regarding Pat’s lady friend being belted by the chap in the address near us in Rockley Road. Whereupon, we all went in and spoke to the offender in question.

It was a close call. Dad saved me a lot of bother … and Brian Kane an early funeral.

Margaret is the only real girlfriend I’ve ever had. She has stuck by me with love, loyalty and devotion since 1983. Don’t ask me why, as I can’t understand it myself.

Once, she was questioned by the homicide squad over me for five hours — and stuck rock solid. She was questioned by the Internal Security Unit three times running for hours at a time over me — and remained rock solid. She has withstood death threats too many times to count — over me. She sat through my murder trial. She has never failed me, let me down or betrayed me. She’s got more heart, guts and dash than any man I’ve known.

I cannot explain how I really feel about this woman. I’m not a great romantic or a playboy. I’m not the hearts and flowers sort of man — and until Margaret I strongly believed that love of a romantic nature was never to find me. I was a lone wolf all my life until I met Margaret. To say that I love her seems a feeble way to describe my feelings. I owe this lady more than I could ever pay in 100 life times. If I could put my finger on one reason for why I am really walking away from it all, Margaret would be the reason.

But a love affair with a crim with a price on his head is not all hearts and flowers, sometimes it’s more like a war movie than a romance. Being covered in tattoos and hated by half the underworld has its drawbacks. Like when you want to go swimming, for instance.

Margaret and I used to love going to the beach — but we had to pick nice out-of-the way spots, as I am covered neck to ankle in tatts. And then there’s the matter of security, which is why we had to take along quite a bit of hardware.

That consisted of a .25 calibre automatic handgun in Margaret’s beach bag — along with a .32 calibre five-shot revolver, a .32 calibre automatic pistol, a .410 sawn-off shotgun, a .357 magnum revolver, a .44 magnum revolver, a .38 automatic pistol — and a .22 calibre 30-shot fully automatic cut-down machine gun fitted with a silencer.

That’s eight firearms. I used to carry all I could with me, so ‘beach time’ was ‘paranoid time’. I used to have a small esky that floated on the water. I’d pop some ice and beer cans in it along with the cut down machine gun and take it out with me and swim and dive around near it.

I took no chances at all. Margaret had been taught to use the .25 automatic pistol. God, she looked great in her teeny weenie bikini. I loved taking her to the beach. However, if anyone else came to the beach I’d swim back and get ready for battle. Beach time could have turned into a nightmare, and I wanted to make sure no-one was going to gun me down without a fighting chance.

If something had happened, I had full faith that Margaret would have blown them to hell. Like all Maltese women, she has a terrible temper. The first reaction of the Maltese female when angered is to head straight into the kitchen to the knife drawer. Once I had to run out the front door into the street with dear little Margaret in hot pursuit, carving knife in her hand and screaming at me.

I used to have to hide my guns after she picked up my .32 revolver and tried to pull the trigger on me. However, it was a stiff trigger and she couldn’t make it work, thank God. Throwing heavy objects at me was another favourite. Mind you, I was always in the wrong, and no doubt needed telling off. But her temper was quite frightening. Once, while Margaret was driving me down Sydney Road, Brunswick in thick traffic, with me carrying several guns and a bag full of assorted other guns and ammo, we had an argument. She stopped the car in the middle of the traffic, got out, took the keys and stormed off down the street — leaving me sitting there, paranoid, expecting to be arrested any moment, and with other cars blowing their horns at me. Luckily, she took pity on me and came back. I’ve always found it wise never to anger little Margaret too much.

Her bad temper — and blood loyalty — were part of the reasons I love her so much. That and her teeny weenie bikini.

Two more friends I have to mention are ‘Mad Micky’ and his wife Lynn. They have shown me great kindness and friendship. When I got out of jail in November, 1986, and went to Tassie to see my old Dad, Lynn took me to the Launceston casino.

It was the first time I’d ever been into a real live legal gambling place. She showed me how to play roulette and I gave her the dough and she played for me. I was shocked to see her winning. We had a great time. I kept going back to the casino day after day — and winning a few hundred each day. I thought I must have had some magic touch, so I took my Dad with me to show him what a great roulette player I was — and blew $2000 in front of him. He stood there, shaking his head and looking at me as if I was a complete idiot. And I felt a complete idiot. That will teach me for showing off.

Mick is a great bloke — and also a friend of Craig ‘Slim’ Minogue’s, and still keeps in touch with him today by post. A loyal chap, our Micky. He is nicknamed the ‘Man John West Rejected’ after getting arrested in Launceston for hi-jacking a truckload of frozen prawns. There was big money involved — but the comedy of being arrested over a lorry load of prawns is something he may never live down.

Once we brought Micky over to Melbourne for a bit of nightclub life — me and Amos Atkinson and Mad Charlie and a few of the boys. We had plans to take Micky and do all the clubs. But at the first hint of bloodshed Charlie stayed at home. Charlie is more a telephone gangster — lying under his doona in his big double bed making phone calls. And Amos bailed out as well, after meeting Mad Micky. So it was me and Micky and a nut case crew of boys from the western suburbs.

We all had guns as normal. However, when we offered Micky a nice little .32 calibre revolver for the night out he said no. Off we went — to the Chevron first, then Bojangles. Back in 1987 Bojangles was the biggest bloodhouse in Melbourne. We all knew there would be trouble on the night, but thought we wouldn’t tell Micky.

As we expected, there was a large crew of Italian gents at Bojangles who had let it be known they would deal with me when they saw me next …

A .44 magnum can be a great weapon when used to pistol whip. At first when the two teams met there was a Mexican standoff — until I got proceedings under way with a sneaky pistol whip across the head of the leader of the other crew. Guns were produced all round. I rested the magnum on the shoulder of one of our crew, another Tasmanian named Andrew, and pulled the hammer back.

That was it. All guns out on both sides in a crowded nightclub, and everyone set to shoot each other. Poor Mick, being empty handed, felt awful. He was standing there like a Chicago gangster with his hand in his coat pocket pretending he had a gun. We backed out of the nightclub, guns in hand, with poor Micky in front, using him as a shield. He still had his hand in his coat pocket with his finger pointing out.

The funny part was, we were told later, the other crew was worried about Mad Micky. We couldn’t see it, but his eyes were blazing and he had a crazy face on — and they all thought he had a gun in his pocket. The redheaded guy in the long overcoat and mad look on his face had them bluffed.

Poor Micky. Invited out for a night on the town, then used as a cover to back out of a Mexican standoff in a nightclub. He didn’t have much luck that night. He picked up a great-looking blonde at the Chevron … only to learn ‘she’ was a drag queen. But his sense of humour didn’t leave him. ‘Bugger Melbourne’, said Micky. ‘I’m going back to Tassie’.

When I see Mick again I suspect I will be the victim of some foul practical trick to repay me for the Bojangles debacle.