WORDS: Henry Longden
When asked what he was expecting from God, he reflected on the hand he was dealt, ‘I think if anything, I’m owed an apology. I don’t think he was very fair with me.
Mark “Chopper” Read, who died at the age of 58 on 8 October, was a self-professed murderer who caught the world’s attention with his mix of severe upbringing, unapologetic honesty and a skewed moral code. Without a murder conviction he spent all but 13 months in prison between the ages of 20 and 38. The 2000 film Chopper, starring Eric Bana, and a dozen autobiographical books inform us of his life, with commentators noting that much of this biography was accentuated, either by him or others.
Read was a dark product of the Melbourne suburbs and underworld culture of the 60s. As a child he was beaten both by his peers at school and his parents at home. He was first institutionalised by the state at the age of 14; he claims that he underwent several rounds of electroshock therapy in reaction to his supposed mental health issues. Upon returning to the streets, Read took up a life of gang-crime, rising to the top rank in the Surrey Road gang by his mid-teens. From robbing drug-dealers he progressed to kidnapping and torturing Melbourne’s most feared gangsters — notably removing digits with bolt cutters to attain hard cash. His exploits reflected his rationale that if crime was to be committed, it should be inflicted on other criminals. Later this view would inform his position as the self-elected hitman of Melbourne’s underground bosses.
Convicted of crimes such as armed robbery, firearm offences, arson and kidnapping, his next experience of gang conflict was conducted inside the four walls of Pentridge Prison. Never one to let the situation get the better of him, he resisted hits by starting a gang war and forcing a section transfer by making a friend carve off sections of his ears with a razorblade. Even when incarcerated in high security prison, Chopper let little get in his way of free choice.
His enemies finally caught up with him in the least likely of places. In the mid-70s Read was sentenced to 17 years for kidnapping a judge in an attempt to get the infamous Jimmy Loughlan released from prison. Unclear of motive, Jimmy subsequently stabbed Read multiple times in the torso. Defying death, Read lost several feet of intestine and incurred serious damage to his liver, a possible cause of the cancer that would finally get the better of him. Taking up the pen and paper, his correspondence with journalists John Silvester and Andrew Rule catapulted him into the public sphere. The memoirs which they released tracked his effective leadership of Pentridge Prison for almost 20 years. Revisiting the site a few years ago, he commented on the mix of emotions he felt standing on the other side of the gates, “That could be it. That could be the emotion I’m feeling: homesickness. That could be it.”
Later life saw a relative deceleration in his aggressive attitude and boastful claims. Following the success of his cinematic biography, Read donated all his earnings from the film to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital. His literary attention switched from tracing his notorious crimes to becoming a children’s author; he also released two misguided rap albums. However, he never departed from his philosophy, he did not owe anything to anyone. When asked what he was expecting from God, he reflected on the hand he was dealt, “I think if anything, I’m owed an apology. I don’t think he was very fair with me.”
With little remorse, and an estimated 19 hits to his name, Australia created a strange cultural figure — embraced for his frank attitude and open insanity — he showed the working of an alternative philosophy, rising to fame fiercely at the expense of so many others. For most he was just a sadistic killer, for others he is an iconic figure of Australia’s colonial and contemporary history, showing the alternative path one can be pushed to take with an institutionalised and felonious background.
