Chopper Read

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mark Brandon Read
Born November 17, 1954
Melbourne, Victoria
Alias(es) Chopper Read
Conviction(s) Armed robbery
Assault
Kidnapping
Spouse Mary-Ann Hodge (divorced) (1995 - 2001)
Margaret Casser
Children tomBold text
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards.
Please improve this article if you can. (May 2007)
For other uses of the word, see Chopper.
For The Ronnie Johns Half Hour Character, see The Ronnie Johns Half Hour.

Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (born November 17, 1954), is an Australian former-criminal, author, and celebrity. Convicted of many crimes including armed robbery, firearm offenses, assault and kidnapping, Read spent a mere 13 months outside prison between the ages of 20 and 38, then went on to become a successful author of crime novels, selling in excess of 500,000 copies of his works. More recently, he has also found success as a recording artist.

In 2005, Read embarked on a tour of Australia performing a series of shows titled I'm Innocent with Mark "Jacko" Jackson [1] and later toured Sydney in a stage show with a new co-star, former Detective Roger "The Dodger" Rogerson.

Read married Australian Taxation Office employee Mary-Ann Hodge in 1995 while imprisoned in Risdon Prison in Tasmania for the shooting of his friend Sidney Collins. The marriage produced one child, Charlie. They later divorced in 2001. On January 19, 2003, he married long-time friend Margaret Casser. They have one son, Roy Brandon.

In 2001, Read was featured in an advertisement on behalf of the Pedestrian Council of Australia warning of the dangers of drunk driving. Read is seated at a kitchen table and undoes his shirt, and while pointing to the numerous scars and injuries on his body, says:

“ When I was in prison… I got slashed in the face… my ears cut off…..my eyebrows trimmed and a butcher’s knife here, an icepick here - NOT FUN AT ALL, etc… If you drink and drive and you're unfortunate enough to hit somebody, you ought to pray to God that you don't go to prison. ”

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

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

He contracted Hepatitis C during his time in prison through using a blood-stained shaver.[2]

Contents

[edit] Read's Criminal Life

 This section does not cite any references or sources. (October 2007)
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Read was born to an ex-army father and a mother who was a devout Seventh-day Adventist. He was placed in a children's home for the first 67 months of his life, as his mother was either unwilling or unable to care for him. Read grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood, Thomastown, Fitzroy and Preston. He suffered from bullying at school, claiming that by the age of 15 he had been on the "losing end of several hundred fights" and his father, usually on his mother's recommendation, beat him often 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 was apparently subjected to both Deep-Sleep and Electroshock therapy.[citation needed]

By his mid teens, Read was already an accomplished street fighter, and the leader of the Surrey Road gang, made up of himself, 'Dave the Jew', Cowboy Johnny Harris, Terry the Tank and various other affiliates. Cowboy Johnny was killed in a street fight, protecting Chopper, during this period. Read and Dave The Jew had him cremated and sprinkled his ashes in a local swimming baths after closing time, in accordance with his wishes. Dave the Jew is the only ally from this period of his life who Read does not go into personal detail about in his books, stating only that Dave is a slightly-built, upper-class Jewish man who suffers from several undiagnosed mental conditions, and despite being a ruthless toecutter and murderer, is completely unknown to the police. Chopper remains good friends with him to this day.[citation needed]

Read's criminal career began with the robbing of 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 before killing them (Hence the slang term "Toecutter", used for Headhunters).[citation needed]

While in Pentridge prison's H division in the late 70's, 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. Whilst in his early biographies Read claimed this was to avoid an ambush by other inmates, his later works state that he did so to "Win a bet". Several other members of Read's gang also cut off their own ears in a similar fashion after this incident. Read was ambushed and stabbed by members of his own gang in a sneak attack, when they felt his plan to cripple every other inmate in the entire division and win the gang war in one fell swoop was going too far. Read lost several feet of bowel and intestine in the attack. Ironically, one of the attackers was James Loughlan, a longtime friend of Read's. Read was, at the time, serving a seventeen year sentence after attacking a Judge in an effort to get Loughlan released from prison.[citation needed]

The nickname 'Chopper' was allegedly based on the protective Bulldog from the cartoon series Yakky Doodle, due to Read's habit of protecting the small and innocent from harm. Read once claimed to have served two years for GBH in 1978 after attacking a local pimp and drug pusher who was attempting to force a 13 year old school girl into prostitution, claiming "It was worth it".[citation needed]

Described variously as witty, charismatic, sadistic, and frightening, Read admits to being involved in the killing of 19 people and a further 11 attempts. Many of his associates in the underworld claim that Read is prone to making up numbers to increase his own notoriety and the sales of his books. Read himself has stated on numerous occasions that he would "never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn."[citation needed]

[edit] Bestselling author

Read's first book Chopper: From the Inside was collected from letters he sent while incarcerated in Melbourne's Pentridge Prison. It contains tales and anecdotes of his criminal and prison exploits in 1991. Further biographical releases followed in a similar vein. However, with the advent of Chopper 5: Pulp Faction, Read began writing fictional tales based on his experiences of criminal life. Attempts were made to ban a children's book written by Read titled Hooky the Cripple.

The 2001 film Chopper, starring Eric Bana as Read, was based on stories from Read's books and independent research, leading to events portrayed on screen which somewhat contradicted Read's version of events. For instance Read claimed in early books to be vehemently anti-drugs, however the film portrays him as a casual drug user. Chopper stated that "You have to hate something if you have tried it".

[edit] Bibliography

(ref: [1])

May 02nd 2008 - Eric Bana has agreed to again play the part of Mark Brandon 'Chopper' Read again in the sequel to 'Chopper', the real Chopper Read has also refused to deny reports that he will have a cameo in the film.

[edit] Discography

[edit] Public commentary and political views

 This section does not cite any references or sources. (October 2007)
Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

Read has made public comment about a number of criminal cases, including the Ivan Milat backpacker murder and the Port Arthur massacre. He has frequently appeared on radio and television talk shows to promote his books and discuss his views on many issues. For a short period of time, he also had a column in Ralph magazine. He also was a regular columnist for the British lad magazine FHM. He currently has a column in Zoo Weekly. His success in selling tales of his criminal past, and a number of recent attempts by other criminals to do likewise, has prompted widespread calls to amend the Federal Proceeds of Crime Bill (2001) — which confiscates the proceeds of drug deals and robberies — to also apply to indirect proceeds of crime, including book sales, TV appearances, and the like. Read has described his political beliefs as "to the right of Genghis Khan". In his book Chopper 2, he lists American conservative G. Gordon Liddy, of Watergate fame, and Bruce Ruxton, a critic of Australia's immigration policies and leader of the Victorian RSL, as his political heroes. He also remarks that he makes a certain Neo-Nazi acquaintance (axe murderer Dane Sweetman) look like a "gay commie." He believes in capital punishment for child sex offenders.

[edit] Cultural references

A character named Chopper Read recently featured in several sketches on The Ronnie Johns Half Hour. Some of these sketches, such as Harden The Fuck Up! have gained a kind of cult following amongst Chopper fans in Australia and across the world. Chopper was portrayed by Heath Franklin.

Acclaimed science fiction author William Gibson based a character (Keith Blackwell) in the final two books of his Bridge trilogy on Mark Brandon "Chopper" 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." [3]

[edit] References

  1. ^ News and Gossip
  2. ^ I have Hep C, Chopper Read reveals | Herald Sun
  3. ^ Gibson, W. (1997). Idoru. United Kingdom: Viking Press. ISBN 978-0140241075. 
 This article needs additional citations for verification.
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2007)

[edit] External links