Chopper Unchopped (85 page)

WHEN I used to go to the Hobart Supreme Court every day for my two trials and my various appeals, I would always look out the prison van window as we drove down Collins Street. (Hang on, I’ll just get up to my window and yell out and ask one of these ratbags what bloody street it is I’m talking about.)

Back again – I’m told it is Liverpool Street – as we would drive along Liverpool Street we would drive past the Alabama Hotel. I became quite fascinated with the name of this little city pub. I thought to myself that come the day I am shot to death in some wild gun battle, wouldn’t it be good if I got blown away in the bar of the Alabama Hotel. I mean can’t you just see it in your mind’s eye, ‘Shoot out at the Alabama Hotel’. Ha ha.

I’ve never been in the place in my life and from time to time I see this bloody stupid hotel in my dreams. There is something about the name of this silly little pub that stirs my dramatic instinct.

I’ve always been a bit of a show pony with a flair for the dramatic, that’s what separates criminals who are remembered from the crooks no-one ever remembers. The crooks who are remembered by history have a flair for the dramatic. Look at Ned Kelly: you can’t tell me that a man who punched two holes in a tin bucket and sticks it on his head hasn’t got a natural flair for the dramatic.

So there I was off to court every day looking at this little hotel as we drove past and thinking to myself wouldn’t that be a great place to be shot to death in and, leaving aside the insanity of that sort of thinking, you have to admit that it does show a natural flair for the dramatic.

I’m quite taken with the names of some of the pubs in Hobart – The Dog House Hotel, The Errol Flynn Hotel – but you must admit if you had to shoot some bugger or get shot you couldn’t go past the ‘Alabama Hotel’.

One of my American Wild West gunslinger heroes was a little known gunman and in spite of the fact that he isn’t well remembered by history, his reputation during his lifetime was deadly and feared. His name was Curly Bill Brochus, the master and inventor of a move called the Highwayman’s Roll.

It was the sneaky art of taking out your handgun and handing it, butt first, to the sheriff or marshall while a gun was being held on you – in other words the law had got the drop on you and you were handing your weapon over – and in a lightning flash and with a flick of the wrist Curly Bill Brochus would flick that gun, so instead of butt first it would spin around and BANG.

He was the sneakiest gunslinger in the West. A back shooting, dry gulching son of a bitch. Curly Bill Brochus killed more men that Doc Holiday, Wild Bill Hickok and Billy the Kid put together.

Curly Bill once rode 300 miles to kill three men in the Red Dog Saloon. I myself would have taken a taxi. Which brings me to a matter of financial concern. If you were a professional killer, could you write off cab fares like that as a tax deduction?

Surely a hit man could claim guns, bullets and such like as business expenses. It seems only fair. You must agree with me that the Alabama Hotel sounds wonderful. Can’t you see yourself with your trusty Colt Peacemaker .45 calibre in hand facing down all-comers in a hail of lead and a blaze of glory, in the bar of the Alabama Hotel?

Well, I certainly can! Ha ha. Where’s your sense of adventure? Have you no flair for the dramatic? That’s the trouble with Australia and Aussies. There’s not a lot of imagination going on and very little flair for the dramatic.

No wonder we idolise a bloke who ran around country Victoria with a tin bucket on his head.

ONE never-ending topic of conversation within the walls of this place never ceases to amaze me … and that is the childish topic of who can beat who in a fist fight.

I stopped talking about that shit a thousand years ago, but in Risdon it is a topic that keeps coming up. So and so is a good fighter, he can beat so and so in a fight.

I remove myself totally from these nitwit conversations by openly telling one and all that at nearly 40 years of age I'm no longer involving myself in any who-can-beat-who in a fistfight contest, and I readily accept the fact that the jail is full of people who could punch my head in.

Thus, I remove myself and my ego from these insane debates. Who can beat who in a fist fight is a squarehead topic. You never hear it spoken of in the criminal world: no-one ever ran around saying watch out for Ned Kelly, he's a bloody good fist fighter, or be careful of Squizzy Taylor he fights like ten men, or look out here comes Billy ‘the Texan' Longley, gee he can fight good. Al Capone never had no black belt in karate.

In all my years in Pentridge I never heard the topic spoken of in any seriousness, as it never applied in the world of real life and death.

And if you think this contradicts everything I've written about street-fighters I have known, it doesn't. Credit is always given and given in good grace towards any individual who is an outstanding street fighter, but we would give the same credit with good grace to someone who was an outstanding football player, swimmer, runner, boxer or poker player.

But in the true world of criminal ‘bang bang you're dead' violence it doesn't matter how well you can fight, or play footy. If your number comes up you are off tap and that is that. Dead as a bloody mackerel, no questions asked.

I keep forgetting that the prison population at Risdon is basically made up of squareheads.

They aren't real criminals, just poor buggers who get into a bit of bother with the police now and then.

Most of them are little better than teenage kids and I guess who can beat who in a fist fight is still a big thing in their little brains. But I really do get sick of listening to this shit.

So far all I've heard these buggers talk about is who can beat who in a fist fight, pinching motor cars and gang banging sheilas.

It's a very young prison. There is only a dozen or so blokes my age and older in the place. And I'm not 40 yet.

IN SIX years between 1980 and 1986 Victorian Police shot dead four people. In the following eight years they killed 28 and another man died seven months after he was shot by police and left a paraplegic. Four police have been killed since 1986 and one was accidentally shot dead during a raid
.

Police claim there has been a marked change in attitudes since a car bomb went off outside the Russell Street police station on Easter Thursday, 1986, killing policewoman Angela Taylor
.

Police are now more heavily armed and better trained in the use of firearms. They have shown that they are more likely to kill than ever before
.

In May 1994 Paul Ronald Skews planned to rob a Melbourne real estate agency with another man, Stephen Raymond Crome
.

Skews, who had been released from jail in January after serving two and a half years for armed robbery, was suspected of robbing a service station, hitting a suburban jewellers and attempting to rob a butcher
.

What Skews didn’t know while he was planning his next raid was that he was the subject of an armed robbery investigation, code named ‘Short Time’
.

Skews told friends he was prepared to shoot it out rather than be arrested and he intended to rob a payroll from one of several factories in Springvale
.

When Skews and Crome arrived at the real estate agents, five members of the Special Operations Group were waiting in an unmarked van
.

The bandits, wearing balaclavas and gloves, were running into the shop when they were confronted by the police. Police and witnesses said Skews pointed his shotgun at the SOG members
.

It was the last thing he ever did
.

Four of the five SOG members fired 17 shots from their automatic pump action shotguns. They were hit by at least 12 blasts. Both bandits were dead when they hit the ground. The police were uninjured
.

IT’S a Saturday morning as I write this and the cold wind and rain is blowing down and all around. Great sheets of it pouring down on the jail and I am in my cell snug as a Bugg (Damian, QC) in a rug. When it rains on the weekend there is nowhere else to go but your cell. But when you get there the only thing you read about in the papers or hear on the radio is bloody police shootings.

It seems that whenever I pick up a newspaper these days the good old Victoria Police Force has Swiss cheesed yet another malefactor to kingdom come or bashed the barrel of a .38 calibre police special up the date of some scallywag.

As I write this the great debate in C Yard is the death of Paul Skews, who got blown away with a mate when he was about to commit an armed robbery. Or, as the Victorian Police like to politely call it, a tactical arrest in the name of the law, otherwise known as ‘Get a bit of this into you’.

You can just imagine it. ‘Is the suspect under arrest?’ yells a chief inspector. The young policeman looks up from the lifeless corpse and says earnestly, ‘He certainly looks like he’s under arrest to us, sir.’

Another young policeman gives the corpse a little kick to test it and says, ‘Yes sir, definitely well under arrest.’ The chief inspector walks up to the fallen offender and looking down says, ‘My goodness, now there’s a fine example of a man under arrest.’ Ha ha.

Well, that’s the comedy of my mind’s eye but it’s close to the truth. It’s all part of the cops and robbers game. I keep telling the boys that it is no use whingeing about it, because the Aussie crook took it on his own head to follow the American role model. They all want to be Yankee gangsters. Well, welcome to America, boys.

The crooks set the pace and the trend. The cops simply play follow the leader.

When I grew up all the Aussies looked to England to set the example. All police saw themselves in the same light as Scotland Yard and red-blooded true-blue Aussie crooks saw themselves in the same light as the East End villains.

Then, in the early 1970s everyone went American mad. All the crims desperately began to follow the insane American role model and the police followed along behind them.

The crims armed up, so the cops armed up. The crims let rip, so the cops let rip. The only problem was the police let rip with more man power, more fire power and more smarts.

‘Unfair, unfair,’ cried the crooks. Well, what’s unfair? If you want to party on, then rock and roll or piss off out of it. I mean, that’s the game, isn’t it – cops and robbers. You can’t complain that you only pulled your weapon out to frighten the policeman and that you weren’t really going to use it. If you pull a weapon out on someone to scare them, then you stand a bloody good chance of scaring them into blowing your bloody head off.

Silly bastards. The more crims and nutters who get blown away by police and the more police who get blown away by the crims and nutters, the more paranoid and frightened both sides become.

So welcome to America. It’s what Australia wanted, to copy America. But whereas cats have nine lives, copycats get only one.

I’m gun mad. I love them, but unlike most of the crims I’ve come across, I know how to use them. I also know that it takes me a full two weeks to sight a particular handgun in and practice with it to the point where I can shoot a beer bottle at 20 to 25 paces and a full month of practice until I can hit six beer bottles at 30 paces, with six shots in six seconds, which I do before I bother carrying that handgun on me as my personal weapon.

It stands to reason that your average young kid policeman or policewomen should have a far greater skill with a handgun than your average idiot crook or nutter. I also know that in my own heart, regardless of my love for guns, I still hold to the old English tradition.

I don’t want to kill a copper. The police don’t put you in jail. Bad lawyers put you in jail. An arrest only means a court case and at court the police play little or no role in anything, so when the police say, ‘Stop, you’re under arrest’, it’s no big deal. It means I wouldn’t kill to stay out of prison, or kill to get out of prison.

You may as well stand me on a street corner and tickle me under the arms with a feather duster for all jail means to me. I’ve got no doubt that if the police tried a tactical arrest on me and I was armed I’d empty my clip before I died, meaning, ‘Here lays Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read: killed by people he didn’t know over something that wasn’t important.’

All this needless violence is caused by too much television, if you ask me. Bloody Aussie land is going mad, and in my opinion the whole bloomin’ country could do with a valium, a good cup of tea and a nice lie down. But the great Victorian Police shootings debate rages on, regardless, encouraged by the psychologists and criminologists and the rest of the lounge chair, guesswork warriors are giving their learned thoughts and opinions on the pros and cons of it all.

And what a shower of shit they rain down on us. Raving on about re-enactments and Royal Commissions, and disarming the police. What a lot of flapdoodle. It’s the way the game is played. A point totally forgotten by all is that, probably through no fault of their own, police are being pushed into a situation where they are fast becoming a part of their own problem.

It goes like this. I can foresee the day when some silly kid or squarehead or petty crook will be caught red hot in the act of scallywag misconduct. The policeman or woman will reach for his or her gun and begin to draw it out but the offender panics, gets in first and drops the police officer and lives to get to court, then pleads not guilty to murder on the grounds of self-defence, claiming that when he saw the police officer go for the gun, that he knew he was facing almost certain death.

In that moment of less than the blink of an eye he no longer saw a police officer, but he saw his own death, and the natural human instinct for preservation of life took control and he fired his weapon – not to kill, but to live. And the day will come when such a person will be found not guilty by a jury of good citizens who have grown slightly sceptical of the amount of ‘tactical arrests’ resulting in deaths.

If that happens, the police will realise that in the eyes of the public they are no longer seen as dragon slayers but as a part of the dragon they are trying to slay. Instead of being the solution to the problem, they will have become half the problem.

Wise men will sit and ask why the attitude of the general public towards the murder of a police officer may no longer be one of all heads bowed for a minute’s silence and black armbands with flags at half mast – but more an attitude of ‘now, come on boys and girls, no crying in the ranks, you’ve shot a damn sight more of them than they have of you, so take it on the chin and stop trying to play on the public heart strings’.

And if it comes to that, it will not be a good thing for the police or the ordinary public they protect.

Paul Skews may have been a nitwit running free range, who got himself and his young mate killed in fair combat in the eyes of God and man. But police aren’t the only ones who leave grieving loved ones behind. Police aren’t the only ones with children, wives, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers. Even Ned Kelly had a mother.

It seems to me that at present when a cop and a crim die, the tears that flow from the eyes of the policeman’s mother are the only tears the media and general public focus on.

But things are changing as the death toll mounts. You watch, the police are being pushed into becoming their own worst enemy through no fault of their own.

I HEAR on the news that the police who blew Paul Skews and his young mate away may be called upon to do a full re-enactment of the whole thing. That will be a monumental waste of time.

I recall a conversation I once had with the late Detective Sergeant John Hill of the Homicide Squad in Melbourne. He believed guilty people who planned to plead ‘guilty’ didn’t need to do re-enactments. But he’d much prefer that the guilty people who planned on pleading ‘not guilty’ do a full re-enactment.

He went on to say that anyone involved in the premeditated death or the accidental death of another had at best a jumbled recall of events and could only recall what they felt happened, what they believed happened, filling in the blank spots with guesswork.

Like the man who killed his wife in the bedroom, yet was convinced he killed her in the kitchen. His mind had wiped out all memory of anything happening in the bedroom.

And the woman who vividly remembers stabbing her husband once and once only, yet he was stabbed 50 times.

The man who recalled firing his gun over and over again, yet only one bullet wound was found. Another man remembered firing one shot when there were six shots in the body.

People can be ready and more than willing to confess to the murder of a family member or loved one or business partner. Yet at the re-enactment they are unable to relive the event correctly in action and have to be prompted by police who had already taken a previous statement.

Re-enactments were a fiasco according to Big John Hill, and in most cases the only reason they did re-enactments was to cover themselves in case the accused changed his mind and pleaded not guilty at court, or to try to get someone who ‘claimed’ it was an accident to trip himself up.

But even then, death seemed to leave large blank spots on the human brain which made re-enactments a bit of a joke.

Speaking for myself I can back that up. Once the guns come out the blood jumps through the veins at a 1000 miles per hour, the heart and the brain are screaming together. Don’t get me wrong. It’s a fantastic rush.

I love pulling the trigger, when it’s called for. But the rush of it all does leave blank spots on the brain. The same thing seems to happen to the memories of people who witness a shooting, the shock or rush of it all leaves blank spots on the brain. One second seems like ten seconds, ten seconds seems like 60 seconds. Three shots can seem like six.

The rush, shock, fear, nerves – call it what you will – blanks large and important parts of the memory out so you have to fill in the blank spots with what could have happened, or what you felt, or believed happened.

But instead of saying, ‘Shit, that part’s a bit of a blur in my memory’, they say, ‘Yes, yes, I did this. I stood here. I fired this way’, and make it up as they go along, frightened of looking foolish or guilty or whatever and come across looking like lying ratbags.

Yet somehow no-one who has been involved in the murder, or killing, of anyone has ever confessed to anything less than total recall.

What a lot of shit unless they are using the old ‘I don’t remember a bloody thing defence’. The truth is, at best you can recall 80 to 90 per cent but there will always be parts of it that play havoc with the mind and memory.

That’s the way it is. Re-enactments are highly questionable. Some courts seem to love them, lawyers carry on over them as if they are the point of truth. We’ve all watched too much television. I’d much rather watch
Debbie Does Dallas
than
Julian Does Hoddle Street
. Ha ha.

WHILE on this subject, I read in the newspapers that the former Victorian State Coroner Mr Hal Hallenstein has given the Victorian Police a bit of a bagging over the police shootings, and Father Peter Norden has also been screaming his lungs out.

I’ve never met Hallenstein and don’t wish to meet him. I have sent a few clients to him, but that is another story. I do, however, know Father Norden. He took over as the Pentridge priest from Father Brosnan.

I always found Father Norden to be a classic left-wing bleeding heart. A nice fellow in himself and very caring and kindly and well-intentioned, but not in touch with the reality of the prison, the criminal world or the men he was dealing with. He is a Roman Catholic priest, Society of Jesus, Jesuit. I used to have many religious and political debates with him.

The Jesuit order, Society of Jesus was founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534. He was a Spanish soldier turned priest who acted as an informer and inquisitor for the Spanish inquisition, a small point the modern-day Jesuit order don’t like to mention. He was an ultra-political animal – a sly, treacherous bastard who climbed over the bodies of a thousand men. He could have been a politician, if he’d had better superannuation, a gold travel pass, and free tickets to a Gold Coast brothel.