Free Chopper Unchopped by Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read Page A

appears that the police hated Turkish George and thought his injuries were poetic justice. At my trial, the magistrate asked if there was anything I wanted to say. I said ‘Yes, I am only sorry I didn’t blind the bastard completely.’
    I pleaded guilty, and got two years. Big deal.
    I was told later in jail by a junkie who knew St Kilda well that the little blonde girl didn’t return to Fitzroy Street. It was well worth two years.
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    Sydney may have all the razzle dazzle but most of the deadly serious work gets done in Melbourne. There is no doubt it is the unofficial murder capital of Australia.
    In fact, I believe that in the State of Victoria there would be between 25 and 50 murders a year that never see the light of day.
    Australia is a big country and shovels are cheap. Victoria may be the garden state but if you dug it up, you would find a heap of bodies. The garden probably grows so well because of all the blood and bone that has been spread over it.
    If a crook goes missing in Melbourne chances are he isn’t on holiday at Surfers Paradise. Anybody who adds up the numbers over the last 100 years will see I am right. Victoria is the state of the big vanish.
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    It is generally believed that I got the nickname ‘Chopper’ because I cut my ears off, but that isn’t right. I got the name when I was a kid after a character in a cartoon strip. The name Chopper has nothing to do with my ears being cut off. The cartoon was called, Chopper and Yakkie. There was a big dog which used to protect a little duck from a fox. I was nicknamed after the dog. Few people know that.
    The other thing they don’t know is that I didn’t cut my own ears off at all. The man who cut them off was Kevin James Taylor, the chap doing life for shooting Pat Shannon. If a man tries to cut his own ears off he will make a pig’s breakfast of the job, so I asked Kevin to do it for me. I went into the Number One shower yard of H Division, sat down, folded my arms and sat as still as I could.
    Kevin had the razor blade. I said, ‘Okay, do it.’ He started to do it really gently and slow, but that was very painful. I said, ‘Come on you bloody fairy, rip into it,’ and so he did.
    I remember the sound, it was like running your finger nails down a blackboard at school, only it was going through my head, then I felt the warm blood bubbling in my ears. Then he did the second one. I thought Van Gogh had done it, so it couldn’t be life threatening. I decided to have a cold shower and all the bleeding would stop. But is just wouldn’t slow at all.
    The blood flowed and flowed after the ears came off, the rest of the guys freaked out, they thought I’d gone crazy. Kevin knocked on the yard door and the screws let me out. We all said I’d cut my ears off because we didn’t want to get Kevin into trouble. He’s out now, so it doesn’t matter.
    The doctors didn’t believe me, but when I looked down on the ground at my fallen ears, I was sure I could see them doing an Irish Jig. Maybe I was seeing things or maybe it was the nerves in the ears making them twitch.
    When I got to hospital I was in a state of temporary insanity. I remember being pushed on a trolley towards the operating table. I could swear that Billy ‘The Texan’ Longley, my good friends ‘Sammy’ Hutchinson and Johnny ‘The Face’ Morrison, who had been dead for years, were pushing the trolley. I asked who was doing the operation and Sammy said ‘Don’t worry, Chopper, I am.’ I screamed and then went into surgery. I saw a screw from H Division, Billy Parker. He was all in green with a mask on. I asked him who was doing the operation and he said he was. The next thing I woke up after surgery and I am glad to say most of it was a bad dream.
    Why did I have my ears lopped off? I had just been to the classification board and I said I didn’t want to be in H Division. And they said: ‘You will remain in H Division until you are released. You are not getting out of H