Chopper Unchopped (41 page)

I HAVE not been shown much kindness in my life, so I can remember nearly every time someone has done the right thing by me. As most people with a passing knowledge of the underworld scene would know, in 1978 I tried to abduct Judge Martin from the County Court in a hare-brained attempt to get my old mate Jimmy Loughnan out of jail.

One of the cops who grabbed me was Detective Sergeant Allan Pleitner. I think he was in the Consorting Squad at that time. I was off my head. I had just recently cut my ears off and I was deeply mentally disturbed.

I remember Mr Pleitner. He was very thoughtful and kind at the time. I think he was one of the police who escorted me to the Magistrates' Court. I never forgot his kindly attitude to someone a lot of people would have regarded as a dangerous psychopath and I was pleased when he was promoted to take over the arson squad.

When I went into the homicide squad to be charged with murder over the Sammy the Turk episode. Mr Pleitner must have been relieving officer in charge of the squad at the time. He stepped in front of me in front of all the other police, put out his hand out and with a big smile said; ‘How are you, Mark?'

We shook hands and after I was charged he let me ring my dad in Tassie. It mightn't sound much, but these little things stick in your mind. Many coppers aren't worth a second mention but Allan Pleitner is one from the old school, hard but fair.

SENIOR Sergeant Men Pickering was the President of the Victoria Police Association. He was a policeman for more than 30 years, working in the crime cars and the District Support Group. He retired in 1990.

BIG Merv Pickering was another giant of a man, one of the old-style coppers who ruled Greville Street, Prahran, with an iron fist. He once questioned me over three stabbings in Cromwell Road, South Yarra, and while I confessed nothing, I was glad when the interview was over.

I believe a mutual respect grew between us and what began as an angry and ugly meeting ended with a little trust. There should be more coppers like big Merv. Tough, hard, yet with the old-fashioned Aussie sense of fair play. In a world full of very forgettable coppers, he still stands out in my memory.

ONE of the interesting CIB identities in the Victoria Police Force was Chief Inspector Allan Taylor. This interesting older-style policeman retired as head of the crime squads in the 1980s.

ANOTHER old-time copper was Chief Inspector Allan ‘Diamond Jim' Taylor who, I think, had been an armed robbery squad detective. My dad introduced me to him when I was only 11 or 12 years old. I remember looking up and thinking what a giant he was. Years later I bumped into him again; it was 1979 and I was going to court, yet again, over some trivial matter of violence.

I was suprised to realise that he no longer seemed a giant. He was in fact about the same height as me, or maybe a whisker shorter. He didn't need to be a giant to be a good copper.

‘Diamond Jim' was respected and a little bit feared in the underworld for his thinking ability. He had a great ‘catch 'em and convict 'em' rate and he didn't rely on physical force. He was cunning and shrewd, and there aren't many to match him these days.

FRED Silvester was a young English bobby who decided to come to Australia on the toss of a coin in 1949. Many criminals and a few politicians wished he had bought a return ticket. Silvester was part of a team that exposed organised illegal betting cartels in the 1950s. He was one of the first Australian policemen to warn the public about the dangers of organised crime. He was the first head of the Victorian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence and the first Director of the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence. He retired with the rank of Assistant Commissioner in 1983.

FRED Silvester was not a copper I had anything to do with, but among the hard old crims, like Horatio Morris, Billy ‘The Texan' Longley, Vincent Villeroy and even Reggie Kane, his name was often mentioned.

I first heard his name when I was 15. He was respected and feared, not for violence or physical force, but for his thinking ability. He had a reputation as a clever copper who spent his time gathering evidence against you for at least six months before he would even bother to speak to you.

Some of the old heavies said he was more the Scotland Yard type of copper than the Russell Street CIB variety. It was generally believed that if ‘Scotland Yard Fred' was on your case, sooner or later you were going to jail. It was all done in a cold, hard, businesslike manner.

He was feared but, oddly enough, not hated.

Cops today want to be
Miami Vice
clones. Like a lot of young would-be crooks, they watch too much American television. Instead of being flash idiots they would be better off learning from the ‘Scotland Yard' types who are far more feared by the underworld. The only crook I ever heard speak ill of Silvester was a domestic killer, and he didn't count, as he wasn't a real crim.

Most detectives shouldn't have that title, because they don't really detect. They tend to rely on informers, they want to be told what is happening and they can therefore be manipulated.

Men who can solve a crime without the benefit of an informer are rare indeed. Silvester had that reputation.

TALK to any criminal or policeman in Victoria about Detective Senior Sergeant Brian Murphy and you will get an opinion. ‘Colorful' would be about the safest description. Murphy was known for his courage, contacts and eccentricity. He tended to run his own race. No one seemed to know where he would pop up next. In 1971 he was charged with manslaughter after Neil Stanley Collingburn suffered fatal injuries in the Russell Street police station. Murphy and another policeman were acquitted of the charge. Murphy retired in 1987.

THERE was only one policeman whose name could strike fear into most crims in the Melbourne underworld — Brian Francis Murphy.

Brian wasn't a big man and he was as bald as an egg, but he was a man to steer away from if you had even half a choice in the matter.

The old ‘bald eagle' is a living legend in Melbourne police and criminal circles. He got his respect and reputation through what could diplomatically be called ‘force of personality'. Let's just say that I did not go out of my way to get into his way, and I believe that Murphy had the same attitude towards me.

I believe he treated me as someone best left alone, provided I didn't rock his personal boat. And let me tell you, I had no intention of even going near his wharf, let alone his boat.

It was rumored for many years that the Kane brothers and ‘Putty Nose' Nicholls acted as informers for Murphy. The truth will never be known unless Murphy himself wishes to confess, and I somehow think that is unlikely. Mind you, if he did decide to put his memoirs together, it would make
Silence Of The Lambs
look like a bedtime story, and sell like beer at a wharfies' picnic.

The truth about Murphy is that while he might have picked up information from Nicholls and the rest, he was also well respected by the other side in the dockie war, including my old friend, Billy ‘The Texan' Longley.

I could never work out how Murphy, and only Murphy, seemed to be able to keep up friendly associations with both sides of the fence. I can only put it down to that famous forceful personality.

Longley once told me that in the late 1960s Murphy parked his car down at the docks while he was talking to Dougie Sproule and Putty Nose. Some young dockies who didn't know better broke into his car and stole his nice new golf clubs. Now, Murphy was not happy about this. He had words with Nicholls, and suggested it would be best if he got his golf clubs back. He was left in no doubt of Murphy's anger. He had the clubs back within days. It's London to a brick on that it was the first and only time hot property was ever returned at the docks.

But there was more to Murphy than his impeccable contacts on the waterfront and elsewhere. The Bald Eagle was an odd bird indeed. For sheer blind guts and rat shifty cunning, he could never be found wanting. One thing was for sure, even some of his ‘friends' feared him. He stood alone.

He retired a few years ago, untouched and unbeaten, an absolute legend. One interesting thing about him was that for a man who didn't mind mixing it with some of the worst crims about, Murphy was very churchy. He was raised a strict Catholic, and it is said he was more frightened of an angry priest than 100 angry crims. He only had to see a priest or a nun half a mile away and he'd take his bloody hat off.

GREGORY John Peter Smith was an armed robber with a difference. He went to a private school – Parade College, Bundoora – but left early to get a job in a factory.

He married and became a father while still a teenager. He went back to school, graduated and then went to Melbourne University. Older than most of the students he became a campus radical leader. His Left-wing politics, good looks and charisma made him a popular figure. He was involved in using and selling marijuana as part of the student culture. But later Smith became a heavy heroin user and needed money, desperately. He began to rob building societies and stores. He became known as the ‘Building Society Bandit' and was eventually charged with 26 counts of armed robbery, despite a total haul of only $38,000.

Smith was sentenced to 23 years jail, later reduced to 16. He was outraged. He felt he had been given a sentence longer than a killer could expect.

In 1980, Smith escaped from Pentridge and for the next ten years lived the life of a drug-crazed thrill seeker. He spent his time travelling through India, Asia and Europe, was connected with the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers terrorist group and helped the Afghanistan rebels in their war.

Eventually, after several close calls, Smith was arrested in Frankfurt, Germany carrying 272 grams of heroin. He was extradited to Melbourne and returned to Pentridge prison, from where he had escaped more than a decade before.

IN relation to Greg ‘Doc' Smith, he was a jail friend and was also a maniac junkie. I first met him in the cells of the Supreme Court in 1978 after I attacked Judge Martin in the County Court.

Greg Smith came from an upper middle class family and was an educated fellow who could speak several languages. He also had a black belt in karate. I found him to be a posh sort of crook, and, even though he wanted to punch heroin into his arm, I quite liked the guy.

He'd had some St John's medical training and got the nickname Doc as a result of saving the lives of assorted junkies who had overdosed.

I received some assorted postcards from him now and again, from Germany, France, Italy, Spain, India and London, just signed Greg, ‘Doc' ‘or ‘travelling man'.

We had heard that while he was on the run he had worked as a volunteer medic for the freedom fighters in Afghanistan. Nothing would surprise me with him. When he came back to Pentridge after some 11 years on the run, he had an accent from speaking foreign tongues for so long.

Greg threw his arms around me in the H Division laundry and greeted me like a long-lost brother.

He had tears in his eyes. It was good to see him. He is an ultra smart, gentle-natured, almost loving man and it is very hard not to like him. What can I say? His story and his adventures would fill volumes.

Greg once told me he had a drug problem. ‘I just can't get enough of the stuff.'

STEPHEN Donald Sellers was a safe breaker, bank robber, drug dealer and extortionist. He was also a bad driver.

Sellers was one of the main witnesses in the Beach Inquiry into the Victorian police in the 1976. Police were criticised in the inquiry for accidentally pushing Sellers from a third floor flat in South Yarra. In 1979, he was blasted with a shotgun as he answered a telephone call in a motel in South Yarra.

In 1988, he was killed when the car he was driving left the road and hit a tree near Orbost in far-eastern Victoria.

STEVE Sellers was a well-known criminal until he ran into a bit of bad luck – and a gumtree – when his car crashed in the bush between Melbourne and Sydney.

Steve was popular and a feared big-money gangster with a giant reputation. His arch enemy in the Victorian police force was Big Garry Schipper. But I wasn't a wrap for Sellers either, which is how I came to almost drown him in a massage parlor bubble bath.

I had known Sellers off and on during the 1970s, but it was in this particular St Kilda massage parlor that I really got to know him. I was standing over the parlor at the time and, being young and foolish, I fell for the trick of agreeing to come back and collect the money later. You don't have to be told: when I went back to the place to pick up the cash I found someone waiting for me. It was Steve Sellers, and he was extremely angry.

The fight was fast and furious, and we found ourselves falling into a large, soapy, hot bubble bath. Whereupon, I thought it wasteful not to take the God-given opportunity to hold silly Stephen's head under the water for quite a long while.

When the bubbles stopped coming out of his mouth and when he stopped struggling I dragged him out. He must have swallowed half the bathwater. Two ladies wearing high heels, worried looks and not much else saved his life with mouth to mouth and all that first aid business. Steve spewed up soapy water and vomit and coughed and gasped and spluttered. It was all very embarrassing from his point of view, and funny from my point of view. I've seen some funny sights in massage parlors, but this was a classic.

Sellers might have come off second best with me – and that gumtree – but while he was around he was considered a sharp operator by some. He had more moves than a chess board when it came to making a dishonest dollar. He was involved in blackmail using both prostitutes and homosexuals, and was known in the criminal world as a ‘poof rorter'.

In fact, it was widely known Sellers was involved in some sort of relationship with a prominent member of one of Melbourne's grand old retailing families. This chap was a millionaire and a homosexual and was supposed to be in love with Sellers and to have put up a lot of ‘dark money' to back Sellers' ventures into the Melbourne massage parlor scene. Sellers and his millionaire were often seen together, and when Sellers fell out with him the millionaire shot himself. Call it a lovers' tiff.

Incidentally, Sellers' paranoid hatred of the policeman Garry Schipper dated back to the Beach Inquiry, when he gave evidence against Big Garry. Personally, as I have written elsewhere, I have always liked Garry. While it is not quite the done thing for a copper and a crook to be matey, I suspect had it not been for our different career paths we could have been good friends. All in all, I'm just as happy that it was Sellers who pranged his car, and Big Garry who didn't.

JOHN William Palmer has a feared reputation as a strongman in the Victorian underworld. He was involved in the armed robbery of the Car-O-Tel motel in St Kilda in 1974 where two men were murdered. Barry Robert Quinn was convicted of the double murder. Quinn himself was murdered in Pentridge in 1984 when he was set on fire by another inmate.

Palmer was convicted over rapes and sentenced to 13 years. He was released in 1986, but later arrested and convicted of nine armed robberies in the northern suburbs and sentenced to 12 years jail. The court was told he had committed the armed robberies because he was a drug addict.

For more than five years from 1975 Palmer and Read were at war in Pentridge after Palmer claimed Chopper had eaten all the sausages for the H Division Christmas dinner.

JOHN William Palmer, nicknamed ‘Piggy' Palmer, came from an old painter and docker family. In the 1970s he was a young, rising star on the Melbourne criminal scene, earning himself a feared reputation as a gunman and standover man.

The key to Palmer was that he couldn't fight – which made him even more dangerous with a gun in his hand. He was a basher of prostitutes and did all his fighting with a gun. He stood behind an army of loyal friends and hangers-on, who fought all his fights when Palmer found himself in jail. The cherry on top of the cake reputation-wise was when Palmer was acquitted on the Car-O-Tel motel murders in St Kilda, the crime of which Barry Quinn was convicted.

It was Palmer who really started the war with me in Pentridge and then stood back and allowed Keithy Faure to fight his fight for him, resulting in the five-year bloodbath that became known as the ‘Overcoat War'. Faure now looks upon Palmer as gutless human filth. Palmer's last bodyguard in jail was Paul Brough, who died of a drug overdose in 1987 after some shifty scallywag handed him some pure heroin. Drug addicts are dead easy to kill. It could be called ‘self-inflicted murder', and it is the perfect crime. Agatha Christie would turn in her grave because drugs have taken all the mystery out of murder.

I once saw Palmer bash an old man in the D Division remand yard with a scrubbing brush. He turned into a violent and vicious sadist when he had a weak and helpless enemy. Little did he know that day that his turn was coming …

Palmer is one man I never killed who I should have, and not killing him has been a constant source of regret on my part. However, what goes around, comes around … drugs and the needle have driven the once-rising criminal star to the very bottom of the ladder. The beginning of the end for Piggy came in 1977 in the H Division number one shower yard, when at last I got my hands on him. Without going into the details, he left the shower yard in tears.

A GOOD friend of Read's while in jail was the so-called ‘Anti-Nuclear Warrior', John Dixon-Jenkins.

Dixon-Jenkins was sentenced to 12 years jail in 1991 over kidnapping seven people in Bendigo Jail. He was extradited from the US to face the charges after he had jumped bail while on a world lecture tour.

He was sentenced to six years jail in 1984 over a series of bomb hoaxes he'd made in Melbourne to highlight the peace cause.

He has told friends he will die in custody.

MY old mate John Dixon-Jenkins is at it again, demanding a humane death and to be allowed to die for peace. He writes to anyone he can think of to express his views. If he doesn't get what he wants then he says he will have a prolonged hunger strike until he dies, poor chap.

I think what worries him most is not the state of prison food but the state of the USSR or whatever it's called now. With the break-up of the Soviet Union there seems to be little or no immediate threat of the nuclear holocaust, and this has really kicked the arse out of the old anti-nuclear warrior. The world has seen the end of the cold war and the nuclear threat is no longer a problem, so where does that leave an old anti-nuclear campaigner? Up shit creek without a fission rod. Ha ha.

While I do like old John, the poor fellow is barking mad, that much is quite obvious. But he is a serious man, and any threat he makes should be treated seriously. Bless him.

JAMES Edward ‘Jockey' Smith was one of the big name armed robbers of the 1970s. Uncompromising and cold blooded, he was eventually considered to be public enemy number one. Smith, born in Geelong, was involved in stick-ups in Melbourne and Sydney. He once escaped from Pentridge using a borrowed visitor's pass.

Smith was arrested in Sydney as a suspect for the murder of a bookmaker, Lloyd Tidmarsh. When Smith was approached by police he produced a .38 revolver and attempted to shoot Detective Inspector Robert Godden. Godden lunged and stuck his thumb between the hammer and the firing pin before the gun discharged.

Smith was convicted of the attempted murder of the policeman. He was released from jail in February, 1992, and shot three times two days later. He lived.

THE death of the Kanes tore the arse out of one half of the criminal world, while the death of Ray Chuck tore the arse out of the other half. For some reason men like Russell Cox and James Edward ‘Jockey' Smith worked better while ‘Chuckles' was around. Not a lot has been heard about Jockey Smith in quite a few years, but in his day he was the bank robber's bank robber.

It was one of Jimmy Loughnan's proudest boasts, before he died in the big Pentridge fire of 1987, that for a short time he worked with Jockey in the ‘banking business'. Loughnan would re-tell some very funny stories about Jockey, and judging from similar stories from men who also worked with Jockey I think it is safe to say that while Jockey was a top mechanic in the banking business – one who had amassed and lost several fortunes – he had a reputation as a tightwad … a man who could have a hundred grand under the bed and go out and pinch a rubbish bin rather than pay cash for it.

Ray Chuck described Jockey as a top bloke ‘but not a great one for dusting the cobwebs off his wallet'. In fact, he reckoned Jockey would bite the head off a shilling, he was so tight. But in the armed robbers' hall of fame Jockey Smith is a living legend. The big money bank robbing crews are gone and almost forgotten, and so Jockey Smith is becoming a memory of the past.

Bank robbery was once a highly skilled occupation. However, the junkies tore the arse out of that. Now every needle freak with a stocking mask is in on the act.

PETER Croft was former amateur heavyweight boxing champion and something of a scallywag in the Melbourne underworld. I say ‘something' because the truth is he was more a drunk and a punch merchant than a crook. However, he did get mixed up with, and broke the law with, some big-name crooks. He was great mates with Russell Cox and Ray Chuck, to name a couple of big names, and there were others. Peter's only problem was he thought that in time of trouble his enemies would put on the gloves and hop into the ring with him. He got himself badly shot up as a result of this attitude.

Peter was a good-natured bloke, if a bit on the slow side – a touch punch drunk, in my opinion – but I liked him. In the early 1970s (I forget the exact year, but not because I'm punch drunk) Peter gave me and Cowboy Johnny Harris a lift in his cherry red Ford Falcon GT about 10.30 one night. He took off up St Kilda Road at 110 miles an hour – blind drunk – then put his head out the driver's window and proceeded to vomit. He had both hands on the wheel, and his big ugly foot flat to the floor. There was nothing we could do. My whole life passed before my eyes. It was a truly frightening experience.