Mark "Chopper" Read

Read was born on 17 November 1954 to a former army and World War II veteran father Keith Read of Irish descent and a mother who was a devout Seventh-day Adventist.[1] He was placed in a children's home for the first five years of his life. He grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood and Fitzroy.[2] He was bullied at school, claiming that by the age of 15 he had been on the "losing end of several hundred fights"[3] and that his father, usually on his mother's recommendation, beat him often as a child. Read had been molested as a child. Read was made a ward of the state by the age of 14 and was placed in several mental institutions as a teenager, where, he later claimed, he underwent electroshock therapy.[4]

When he was still young, Read was already an accomplished street fighter and the leader of the Surrey Road gang, a hardened street gang with notorious reputation for violence. He began his criminal career by robbing drug dealers, based in massage parlours in the Prahran area. He later graduated to kidnapping and torturing members of the criminal underworld, often using a blowtorch or bolt cutters to remove the toes of his victims as an incentive for them to produce enough money so that Read would leave them alive.[5]

Read spent only 13 months outside prison between the ages of 20 and 38, having been convicted of crimes including armed robbery, firearm offences, assault, arson, impersonating a police officer and kidnapping.[6] While in Pentridge Prison's H division in the late 1970s, Read launched a prison war. His gang, dubbed "The Overcoat Gang" because they wore long coats all year round to conceal their weapons, were involved in several hundred acts of violence against a larger opposing gang during this period. Around this time, Read had a fellow inmate cut both of his ears off in order to be able to leave H division temporarily. In his biography, Read claimed this was to avoid an ambush by other inmates by being transferred to the mental health wing. His later works state that he did so to "win a bet". The nickname "Chopper" was given to him long before this, from a childhood cartoon character.

Read was stabbed by members of his own gang in a sneak attack when they felt that his plan to cripple every other inmate in the entire division and win the gang war in one fell swoop was going too far. Another theory is that James "Jimmy" Loughnan, a longtime friend of Read, with Patrick "Blue" Barnes, wished to benefit from a contract put on Read's head by the Painters' and Dockers' Union. Read lost several feet of intestine in the attack.[4] At the time Read was serving a 16​¹⁄₂-year sentence after attacking a judge in an effort to get Loughnan released from prison.[7] Loughnan later died in the Jika Jika fire at Pentridge in 1987.[8]

In 1992, Read was convicted of shooting Sidney Michael Edward Collins in the chest. The incident took place in Read's car, which was in the driveway of Collins' residence at Evandale, Tasmania. The bullet was recovered from the back seat of the vehicle, and Collins named Read as the shooter. Pleading not guilty, Read was found guilty of committing an unlawful act intended to cause bodily harm, a downgraded charge from attempted murder, and sentenced as a "dangerous criminal" to indefinite detention.

An appeal against the conviction was rejected by the Court of Criminal Appeal on 24 August 1993.[9] A second appeal against the sentence was argued on 28 February 1994, with Michael Hodgman, QC, and Anita Betts appearing for Read, and Tasmanian Director of Public Prosecutions, Damian Bugg, QC, and Catherine Geason appearing for the Crown, on the grounds that it was manifestly excessive, and also specifically in respect of the "dangerous criminal" declaration. The second appeal was rejected on 10 March 1994.[10] In a subsequent review of the "dangerous criminal" declaration on 18 July 1997, Michael Hodgman, QC, succeeded in overturning the declaration.[11]

Read was granted parole early in 1998 and regained his freedom. In 2002, Read was again questioned over the disappearance of Sidney Collins, who is still on the Australian Missing Person list after going missing in suspicious circumstances. Read admitted to having murdered Collins in his last broadcast interview before death on the Australian 60 Minutes program aired on 20 October 2013. Read expressed no remorse for killing Collins, alleging he was "stupid" for being shot by Read on two separate occasions with Collins' own gun.

Read claimed to have been involved in the killing of 19 people and the attempted murder of 11 others. In an April 2013 interview with the New York Times, Read said "Look, honestly, I haven't killed that many people, probably about four or seven, depending on how you look at it."[12]

In the TV series Tough Nuts, Read also spoke of his mid-1980s to early 1990s rivalry with Alphonse Gangitano. Read explained that he had a disagreement with Gangitano regarding an elderly neighbourhood hero whom Gangitano admired. It is alleged by Read that Gangitano burst open a toilet cubicle door with a number of associates and began a serious assault on Read, who made his escape, but not before smearing his faeces into Gangitano's face.[13]

In 2001, Read was featured in an advertisement on behalf of the Pedestrian Council of Australia warning of the dangers of drunk driving.[14]

In 2005, Read embarked on a tour of Australia performing a series of shows titled I'm Innocent with Mark "Jacko" Jackson[15] and later toured Sydney in a stage show with a new co-star, former detective Roger "The Dodger" Rogerson and throughout Australia with comedian and friend Doug Chappel. Read even made regular guest appearance on Doug Chappel's Melbourne International Comedy Festival show in 2008 called 'Comics Live in your Lounge' where the two of them told stories on stage together.[16]

In 2006, Read appeared in another commercial speaking out against domestic violence. On 13 March 2006, he released a rap album titled Interview with a Madman. He also appeared in the 2002 Australian comedy Trojan Warrior.

Read allowed use of his name to a beer called "Chopper Heavy". The beer is produced in Rutherglen, Victoria, a town associated with Australia's most notorious outlaw, Ned Kelly.

He made the headlines again, on 15 December 2008, after being questioned by police about an alleged incident in Johnson Street, Collingwood. Read was attacked by a tomahawk-wielding man he said he had never met before. He said: "I ran to the panelbeater's and grabbed a pipe. I said, 'Come here now' and he jumped into a car and pissed off."[17] Read suffered a minor injury to his arm after being hit with the blunt end of the tomahawk. Read was questioned by detectives at Richmond police station before being released without charge. His alleged attacker has not been found.

A fictionalised version of Read was featured in several sketches on The Ronnie Johns Half Hour. In some of these sketches, such as "Harden The Fuck Up!", Read was portrayed by Heath Franklin. Read said that although the parody was not totally accurate, he found it funny.[19]

Science fiction author William Gibson based a character (Keith Blackwell) in the final two books of his Bridge trilogy on Read. In the second book of the trilogy, Idoru, Gibson wrote in his acknowledgments:

Anything I know about the toecutting business, I owe to the criminal memoirs of Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (Chopper from the inside, Sly Ink, Australia, 1991). Mr. Read is a great deal scarier than Blackwell, and has even fewer ears.[20]

Jim G. Thirlwell, in his 1995 Foetus release, Gash, wrote and performed a song titled "Steal Your Life Away" which included a somewhat Read-like persona and several quotes from Read's first book, including "I'm a garbage disposal expert", "You've got to stand at the edge of the grave for the rest of your life", "Me and my mental health don't agree most times" and "Why ask why?".

Chopper features on hip hop songs with artists such as Brad Strut, Bias B and Necro

Read married Australian Taxation Office employee Mary-Ann Hodge in 1995 while imprisoned in Risdon Prison in Tasmania for the shooting of Sidney Collins. The couple had one son, Charlie, and divorced in 2001.[22] On 19 January 2003, he married long-time friend Margaret Cassar, and they had one son, Roy Brandon.[22]

• Chopper: From the Inside (1991), ISBN 0-646-06543-2
• Chopper 2: Hits and Memories (1992), ISBN 0-646-10987-1
• Chopper 3: How to Shoot Friends & Influence People (1993), ISBN 0-646-15444-3
• Chopper 4: For the Term of His Unnatural Life (1994), ISBN 0-646-21014-9
• Chopper 5: Pulp Faction: Revenge of the Rabbit Kisser and Other Jailhouse Stories (1995), ISBN 0-646-25065-5
• Chopper 6: No Tears for a Tough Guy (1996), ISBN 0-646-29637-X
• Chopper 7: The Singing Defective (1997), ISBN 0-646-33923-0
• Chopper 8: The Sicilian Defence (1998), ISBN 0-9586071-0-9
• Chopper 9: The Final Cut (1999), ISBN 0-9586071-4-1
• Chopper 10¹⁄₂: The Popcorn Gangster (2001), ISBN 0-9579121-0-2
• Hooky the Cripple: The Grim Tale of a Hunchback Who Triumphs (2002), ISBN 1-86403-165-4
• The Adventures of Rumsley Rumsfelt (2003), ISBN 0-9579121-7-X
• Chopper 11: Last Man Standing: From Ex-Con to Icon (2007)
• Mark 'Chopper' Read: One Thing Led To Another (2010), ISBN 978-1-4050-4046-4[29]
• Mark 'Chopper' Read: Road to Nowhere (2011), ISBN 9781742611457[30]

• Interview with a Madman (2006)
• The Smell of Love E.P. – Chopper Read and The Blue Flames (1997) Newmarket Records (Catalog New 3003.2)

• Andrew Denton, Enough Rope interview 2007
• Mark Brandon Read on IMDb
• Mark Brandon Read's self-portrait at the State Library of Victoria