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You would be pretty hard pressed to find an Aussie who doesn't know the name Mark Chopper Reid, the convicted criminal, has been the subject of his very own movie, played by the incredible Eric Banner in a performance that anyone would find difficult to fault.

Chopper became a best selling author telling tales of his life in and out of jail.

He toured the country telling his story, was a subject of comedian Heath Franklin's impersonations, and has written himself into the law of Australia's criminal past like no other except for maybe Ned Kelly.

Born in nineteen fifty four in Melbourne, Chopper Reid spent only the equivalent of a single year out of prison between the age of twenty and thirty eight.

He'd spent his first five years and at children's home, and then made a ward of the state at fourteen.

He was a street thug.

Running with a gang of other young men, eventually learning to steal from drug dealers instead of ordinary citizens because it was much more profitable.

He'd created a persona a sort of Robin Hood type if robinhood On his stole from criminals and then kept the prophets himself.

A life like this obviously would lead to being regularly arrested, and in the mid seventies Chopper was sentenced to seventeen years in Melbourne's notorious Pentridge Prison after a kidnapped attempt, a seemingly clumsy plan to get a mate of his out of the clink.

Inside, he would.

Learn to read and write, how to perfect his standover man tactics, how to make connections, whether they be beneficial or not, and how to tell a tall tale.

He would get caught up in behind the prison walls gang warfare.

The legend of Chopper born after he cut the tops of his ears off to get a transfer out of the prison wing he was in where he was fighting for his life.

As he cycled through the Victorian prison system in the seventies and eighties, he would collect stories from his fellow inmates.

Then, with an embellishment here and a slight twist of the truth there, he would repackage them as his own exploits stories.

The Australian public.

Soaked up like a sponge in a water, with titles like Hits and memories and how to shoot friends and influence people.

We lapped up the tales of life as a career criminal, all the people he'd supposedly influenced, those he'd reportedly violently attacked.

Others he'd claimed to have murdered.

But while he profited from his notoriety, he would also do things that surprised us, like donating the profits he made off the two thousand Eric Banna film about his life to the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne.

He was a collision of entertainer and criminal, and hero and villain.

So which one was the true Mark Brandon Reid.

I'm Claire Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations, a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them.

Joba Reid was feared by some, despised by others, revered by many, and sought out by those who would want to profit by his proximity to the ces under belly even I met him once while working at a radio station in Port Lincoln, at tiny town in regional South Australia.

He was during the country with Mark Jacko Jackson, the pair telling stories of their lives Jacko on the Footy Field Chopper of his time behind bars.

Now, don't really remember any of the conversation, but what I do remember is the feeling of energy and zap in the air, and the chaos that comes with having a personality like that in the room.

People were scared of saying something that might make Chopper remember who you were.

There were rumors that he would single you out and make a fool of you, or maybe he'd make life difficult for you if he wanted.

Now, none of that eventuated.

Of course, whether any of that was even true was also debatable, but the presence of a man who talked a very big story can't be denied.

Did we glamorize that life that he led?

Absolutely, and our next.

Guest has no qualms about admitting that during his time as a magazine writer, he cashed in on Chopper's notoriety.

Two.

Mark Dappan is the author of The First Murderer I Ever Met, a collection of stories about the criminals he spent time with over the years, including one Mark Chopper read, even making it into one of Chopper's books himself.

Even if the story wasn't quite true, Mark joins us Now, Mike, I'd love to kick off with if you could just describe to me the day that you met Chopper Read and what your first impressions were of him, and then what impression you were left with at the end of that encounter.

Yeah, I think I'd better explain how our meeting came about.

So at the time, I was editor of Ralph Magazine.

Which for anyone under the age of thirty probably doesn't remember now but has a quick idea of what Ralph Magazine was.

If a lad's magazine, it was a genre that lived for a very short time, a magazine aimed at kind of convincing twenty five year old middle class men that they are actually eighteen year old working class boys.

At the same time of Muma Mia Faint, in fact, was in a.

Cosmo one two floors below us, several floors below us.

Anyway, I had read Chopper Read's first couple of books, and parts of them seemed to me to be probably untrue.

And I spoke to some people who were characters in those books who chop Out had attacked, not necessarily attacked physically, but attacked their reputation, or they felt he had attacked their reputation, and I got some journalists to interview them for Ralph specifically, I've got someone to interview a guy called Billy the Texan Longley, who was a painter and Docker's hit man on the Melbourne waterfront back in the day.

Chopper had said in his first book that he had protected Billy Longley in jail.

Billy objected to the thought he might need anyone to protect him because he was this big, tough painter and Docker we ran an interview in Ralph magazine saying that Bill had not been protected by Chopper, and I received, to my astonishment, really after he was published.

I've seen this long letter handwritten entirely in capitals as I remember, from Chopper.

So it was headed with Mark Brandon, Red Chopper whatever, and his Chopper's phone number and his address in Tasmania where he was living at the time, and then it was Billy Longley's address and Billy Longley's phone number, and basically Chopper said, I can't remember the exact words, but yeah, Billy's a real hard man.

Sure I'm soft.

Yeah, if he came to it, Oh, I'm terrified of Billy Longley.

If you want to talk more Jimmy call.

So I gave him a caall.

I mean, mainly what I wanted to talk about was why I should give him some money.

This was a bit of a recurring theme.

He agreed eventually to give me an interview if I gave him I think it was five hundred dollars.

This wasn't the last time that he asked me or and did that.

I gave him five hundred dollars.

So I flew down to Hobart, and I guess my first impression of him was he was I mean, he was very imposing certainly, and fearsome looking.

There's also a bit tamp you could kind of be mentioned a chopper float at the Mardi Gras, with all these scarred guys in leathers sort of done, I'm not sure how they would have done throwing punches.

Yeah, because he had sort of an inadequate inadequate supply of the dentistry, didn't have any teeth and certainly not many real ones.

He had a slight list, which of course kind of also added to the camp equality, but not not at which was to say, wouldn't have been terrifying to have him come forward at you, I wasn't initially going for him.

I wasn't saying, like, the books aren't really true, are they, although that became a theme as we talked, and he was basically saying that the books are entertainment.

As entertainment, yes, maybe none of it's true.

He was constantly Chopper's quite unusual amoung criminal memoirists because most of the time they deny crimes that they have committed, that that's the point of the books.

Often, whereas in Shopper's case, he was admitting to crimes that not only had he not committed, he'd never even been accused of, but he knew he knew it would sell books.

He was I mean, Shoupa was a storyteller, a bubble, and a lot of crims are really good storytellers.

The reason they are really good storytellers is that's all they do.

Like when you're inside, there's basically nothing to do, which is disgusting, and you know they should be.

There should be educational there should be cultural programs, There should be all that, and there are in some of the better jails, but in Penridge, certainly in h Division, there has nothing to do but fight and walk up and down the yard and tell stories.

That's what prisoners do.

They tell each other the story of their lives with their offenses.

They turn around at the end of the yard and they tell it again.

When new people come in, they tell it again.

They polish their stories, they work on the punchlines.

They see what makes people laugh and they keep that bid in.

They see what makes people drift away, and they cut that bid out.

So Chopper, who'd done so much of his adult life in prison, had spent so much of his adult life storytelling, so he was very good at it.

And he also but he's come to believe that it wasn't necessary to tell true stories.

They're just telling entertaining stories, and stories in a way that would protect him.

Like if he convinced everybody else that he was too hard to be touched, then perhaps no, but you would touch it.

I think that's a jail philosophy.

I think it's a philosophy that Chopper took outside with him as well.

So I'm listing to his stories.

I got him to take his shirt off, or perhaps my photography did, and he's got this criss cross network of scarring all over his chest.

He's got scars all over the place sort of prison tattoos, things that looked like school tattoos to the ordinary tattoos, bynation in professional tattoos.

We talked about his tattoos, and we talked about his scars, and I suspect that, you know, they were pretty much all self inflicted mm hm, which is a tragedy in itself.

And then Dropper introduced me to his mate, Shane.

I wouldn't have picked Shane as a cream It's kind of a flash, not particularly big, good looking.

I suppose fair head bloke.

And it turned out Shane a strip club in Hobart called Men's Gallery, and Chopper wanted to take me to Men's Gallery, and there was some it wasn't clear whether Chopper had a financial interest or not in Men's Gallery, but the sort of influence was that he did.

But the influence was also that he'd put gas through the air conditioning at some stage, which isn't necessarily the best way to promote your own business.

Anyway, Chopper took me beneath Men's Gallery, the strip club.

There was like a family steakhouse, so at first me and Chopper had steak and be as at a family steakhouse.

Shoper was drinking quite a lot then bb VB VB, and I was too when people kept coming up to him.

I had this steakhouse, you know, ordinary Hobart folk who were there with their families.

So new Chopper reader, they want their picture with him.

It was days before camera phones, and they wanted to They wanted it to autography.

They wanted that won of them wanted him to come home and meet his wife, and Chopper agreed to it.

Like he's saying, it would be like a really good natured celebrity with like the top half of his ears and miss, I mean, perhaps there's something I should say as well.

He got often talked about having no ears.

He didn't really have no ears.

He had kind of rudimentary ears, Like he did have parts of ears, just not the parts that perhaps you would want to put classes on, for instance.

So Chopper played the you know, good natured local celebrity.

He played it well, and then we went upstairs to the strip show.

It was lap dancing or scrip shows were called lap dancing for that brief period.

And the lap dancers were were a trio and they were Shane's wife and Shane's wife two sisters.

So it's kind of like a sort of Tasmanian family business.

Yeah, and the sisters did what lap dancers do a little bit around Chopper himself, and then we I don't remember much about that part of the evening, and then we went into the dressing room, chatted a bit more.

I think they started rolling joints, and me and Chopper left.

We've got a taxis.

Home are separate ways.

Chopper was living in rural Tasmania and I was staying in a pub in hober And yeah, that was the sum of our first encounter.

You had been warned that Chopper was quite a different person sober than he was after a few beers.

Did you witness that change over that day?

He certainly became He got sadder.

He started complaining about the modern age and how he didn't fee into it.

And you know, he'd been in jail his whole life, but when he got into jail he didn't he didn't really appreciate the hands off nature of lap dancing.

He longed more for sort of the golden age of lunging at strippers.

I think, so he'd gone about that kind of thing, and it's a bit, yeah, it's a little bit uncomfortable and then he and he starts going on at me and he goes, yeah, never smile, and like, I don't really I'm smiling now, but I'm making an effort.

Will you talk about this in your book, don't you?

Because he said, as you drink, if you don't find something funny, you're not going to laugh at it.

Yeah, and he must have insensed him a.

Little bit that you didn't find him as hilarious as he obviously found himself.

Well, he The thing is, he was funny, but he wasn't, not necessarily when he thought he was being funny, Like, he was clever, and he was sharp, and he was incisive, and his non rehearsed repartee was really quite impressive.

But I'm not you know, it's not funny talking about brutally murdering people.

Whether you actually did it or you didn't, it's still not funny.

It's not funny picking some guy talking about sticking some guy in a cement mixer.

And I'm not going to pretend it is.

So I would I would listen to these stories and just sort of stare like this, and he's getting gradually more annoyed with me.

Yeah, that's my smile, what's wrong with you?

And I'm just going right, well, I'm definitely not gonna smile now, m m.

But you did flare up into anything, and you know, you get you drink, you drink all day, and you reach a stage where you're aggressive, and then you reach a stage where you're passive again if nothing happens, and just kind of slump a bit.

And then as I say, we went upstairs to the dressing room or undressing room or whatever you'd call it.

I think what a lot of ouss is don't get a grasp on is what made Chop a read Because we know Chop of readers this big personality in this character who kind of came in built with this criminal career.

But something had to have created that character in your time researching and understanding him.

What do you think created a character like Mark Chopper read?

All criminals have the same story.

They're all abused children.

I know violent criminals, and I know that sounds pat but it's true.

I've yet to find a violent, twisted man who did not have twisted violence performed upon him as a child.

Chopper.

I think Chopper's father was violent.

I think although Chopper blank blamed his mom for whatever reason there was.

They were all the family was seventh DA Adventist and his mum was very religious.

At the time I met him, I think he was about to reconcile with his mom, if I remember rightly.

Chopper's mom had committed him to various institutions.

I think he had.

He says he had electric shock therapy.

In your book, you mentioned that she was very concerned about his mental health as a kid.

Yeah, I means she thought he was maybe had ADHD.

I think that's probably the case with a lot of these kids back then who ended up in Juvie.

Now they'd be ADHD and they've been medicated.

Back then, I think they thought they were perhaps pathologically injecting criminals.

So, yeah, his his mum worried about him.

She had him committed to institutions, came out, he started committing crimes.

He ends up in juv juv back in the day was a terrible place to grow up.

I would question whether men grow up anyway outside of the company of women.

They just constantly reproduce the politics of the playground.

And in the playground, you know, the biggest, the toughest, the hardest guy runs it and wins.

And I think people who go to juvi rather than transition to adding the outside world where there's women as well, end up with that mentality their whole lives.

So I mean a combination of I guess domestic and institutional abuse is probably what made Chopper Chopper.

Wouldn't say that Chopper?

Would you say that?

He was the way he was?

And you know often he appeared proud of it.

This is something you're so touched on in the book, and you do speak about other known criminals, not just Chopper read in the book, but they seem to often have that common story where they do some misdemeanors as a kid, they end up in juvie and that's when they start to learn how to become a real criminal.

And then they graduate to like big boy jail and they meet even harder criminals and that teaches them even more illegal ways to live, and then they kind of graduate at the end if they're ever let free to sort of take that out on society.

Do you find that's a pretty similar story for a lot of the well known criminals we know here in Australia take.

It out women perhaps, yes, yeah, as that is the way that their lives run.

I mean, there's some there are some very serious points to be made about giving children a peer group made up entirely of a party of older children who are institutionalized, sometimes for criminal offenses.

You can't remember.

Back in the day, though, you could be institutionalized for almost anything.

You know, institutionalized were playing true you could end up in juvie because you were uncontrollable.

What uncontrollable meant was your parents couldn't control you.

There could be any number of reasons why the state thought they couldn't control you, including the fact that your mother was a one parent family, or your from an alcoholic So you could end up essentially in juvie because your parents had splat up, because your dad has shot through said, there's these kids who are terrified with no protector, in an atmosphere where the older kids who've been preyed on themselves pray are the predators.

You know, it's a horrific way to grow up, and it should have been quite pervious to people back in the day, even and you know, you can't criticize historical figures for living in a different time period.

You're listening to true crime conversations with me Claire Murphy.

I'm speaking with Mark Dappan about one of Australia's most infamous criminals, Chopper read Up.

Next, Mark tells us about Chopper's time in Petridge Prison, where extreme isolation and brutal conditions pushed him to the edge.

Who were the characters that would shape Chopper read in prison?

Who did he associate with?

What influence would they have had on him?

Perhaps the hardest man or people talk about the hardest man in the Victorian prison system back then, a guy called Frankie Wacorn.

I'm not sure Frankie Wacorn was particularly bright guy, but he was respected as a fighter.

Chopper talks about Frankie Wacon in his books.

Do the books have a lot of means of a guy called, you know, mad Charlie, Hey Gali, let's how you pronounce it.

I think maybe Chopper Frankie met Charlie whatever sort over some of the younger blokes in Pentridge.

That's what people say.

And you know, Job was Choppers in Chail a long time.

You end up meeting maybe everybody, you end up hanging out with whoever's around, particularly when you may be in h division one day or Jaiko one day.

Chopper.

I suspect Chopper craved some kind of intellectual company, not necessarily done academically intellectual, but but the bride and more articulate people, because he certainly wasn't stupid, and a lot of crims are.

He made friends with Greg Smith, Greg Roberts, the guy who wrote Chantan.

He was fully allied or for some time allied with Ted Eastwood, who twice kidnapped coach Ledge of children.

He fought a war the Overcoat wawide in age divisions, so cold war prison bust up with painters and dockers, and on his side were a number of non painters and dockers, violent criminals in age division.

So yeah, over the years a lot years, a lot of people bumped into Chopper, and perhaps more people say they bumped into Chopper than ever did.

But some people, yeah, have quite nice memories of him, Like I spoke to the two guys recently, a guy called Bocam Brown who was young when he went into Penridge, and he said Chopper helped him out with relationship advice.

And which is a column I would have like to see in Cosmo back in the day.

Yeah, There's also times he said that he because he was kind of well connected, would sometimes reach out to other inmates families to let them know they were okay and he was taken care of them.

It has been set in one case perhaps would in one case, whether or not though that at the same time Chopper was planning on killing that guy's father, I wouldn't necessarily want to make a comment.

He might have had ulterior motives for that.

Maybe I haven't discussed this with the question, but certainly I have read it since fair.

Enough, so, you mentioned that Chopper is in Age Division at one stage in his incarceration, and the potentially that's not because of the the nature of the crimes that led in him in prison, but more for his own safety at the end of the day.

Yeah, I mean, you could be put in Age Division for serious infractions of the rules in Pentridge, if you tried to escape, for instance, you were put in pretty much automatically.

But H Division had this reputation as a tough division for professional criminals and people who would not bow down, you know, people who are try and escape OAT or were respected back in the day.

It has been said that Choppel was in H Division for his own protection.

There were also prisoners in H division who had to be protected from the general population who were actually safer among the escapes and professional criminals in that division.

And also true that he worked, I mean there's a word of him being a police informant at one stage, but that he worked alongside prison authorities to help kind of police the inmates.

Chapel was an enforcer for the screws.

There's no doubt about it.

There's no attic.

And in his own books, you know, he alludes to his allyship with the security governor of Penrich.

What happened was way back there was a more intensified form of batching to keep inmates in line, you know, an H division.

You go there, you'd be stripped and you face the reception biff as it was affectionately.

No you get so this is just on your arrival, you're automatically stripped and beaten by.

To go down into the punishment.

When so, I say automatically automatic, you wouldn't.

That would not hap to you if you were there on protection from other inmates, but done something against the.

Like try to escape, for.

Which you very much found a part in the prison system.

We do something like that.

They strip you and they'd beat you, and they would pretty much keep on beating you when they go when they had the chance, until such time as you folded.

There there were riots, the so called rebellions against this kind of treatment, involving people like my friend John Killick and other people like Christopher Dale Flannery.

They said no more, and to a degree they they got no more.

The beidings that the worst of the prison officers used to inflict upon the prisoners in the nineteen sixties, by the seventies and early eighties were being inflicted on the prisoners by prison officers proxies like Joppary.

Do you think he was a violent man by nature?

Like was that who he was?

Or do you think it was just that that was the circumstances into which he found himself in a way, you know, to make a name for himself, or to be seen and to be heard and protected.

I don't think you can make a judgment on what somebody is in essence without taking into account what they went through.

You know, perhaps if he'd been brought up in a monastery, he'd have been a monk.

It'd have been very big, big guy, monkey enough to fear, but yeah, it's not like all big people turned out the monsters.

Can you tell me a bit about and you've kind of mentioned this Jiker, which is the section of the prison that Chopper was moved to after age division, and it has copped a lot of scrutiny over the years due to its kind of solitary confinement levels.

Can you tell us a little bit more about what it was like for chopping in that area of the prison in Jiker.

I think a lot of people there was a sort of craze I suppose for isolating what were considered dangerous or perhaps even mentally ill inmates in a system, in a confinement I could almost be described a sensory deprivation.

But it wasn't intended that way.

But that's the way the prisoners felt.

Not only would I isolate from the mainstream population, they're trying to keep to a minimum contact with other people through anybody in the jail.

Your meals are pushed through hatches like on TV.

Prisoners actually appreciate getting together in the yard and chat.

I say, it's the only thing they do.

They do pull ups, they do press ups, they take drugs.

They're not supposed to have and they talk and they talk and they talk and they talk.

You know, you need a kind of rotation cuts of audience to talk to.

And if you haven't got that, as they were deprived of in Jiker, I think they just got more and more and more depressed and you know, get to see the outside world in the way that is a tiny way that you do in jail.

Generally.

I think Choppers really tried hard to get out of Jiker, as did pretty much everybody that was in Jiker.

Is it true?

And I mean I could probably ask you is it true?

Is it not true?

A billion stories about Chopper, But when he was in Jacker, there's a story about him attacking another inmate and then writing an apology to him on his cell door in his own blood.

Is that true?

Yeah?

Wow, I was really surprised the attacked A guy called and I might say this is wrong, that the name wrong Alex tes Marcus, and he afterwards wrote in Alex's blood on his cell door, sorry Alex.

A prison officer confirmed that to me, everybody believes it's try.

I also believe he's true.

I mean, he did have a macabre sense of humor, and you know, Alex, for what it's worth, was a serial killer.

He really had killed for more people than chop up.

Alex was in the end killed by another massacre.

That's the kind of people you meet in Bendridge back.

Yeah.

Right, you've spoken to prison officers who were working when Chopper was incarcerated.

What was their opinion of him?

Because I mean, he essentially worked for them at times, but then you know he would have been a pain in their blood at times too.

I imagine I didn't.

Chopper changed a lot.

Chopper changed his opinions like he grew up in jail, like he didn't.

He didn't stay the same person throughout.

Well, I don't think he's necessarily sickly rational.

It often seemed to like a lot of criminals, he just did the first thing that came into his head.

It's very difficult to dissect choppers motivations any given moment.

And so some of the prison officers liked him, some of the prison officers hated him.

Some of the prison officers used him, some of them avoided them.

But there was some some real affection for him, and not just as a comrade, but as an inmate.

Yeah, comrade in arms against some other prisoners, but as an inmate who had a sense of humor that they could yarn to, because again, prison officers want to talk as well.

It's boring.

It is so boring being in jail and someone like Chopper and actually rutting things up for some people, whereas at the same time as darping in the lives of others.

Well, I've heard stories and you mentioned this in your book two about Chopper's creative use of bodily fluids whilst being in jail too.

Yeah, yeah, I mean you probably wouldn't want him cooking your dinner, believe if it's always pretty funny to contaminate the food.

But again, why what's the point Like some people entertainment?

Yeah, and like I'm a prison people who were professional criminals because they wanted money for nothing.

Couldn't really understand the motivations of as somebody who's cantaminate their food, not even because they were their enemies, but just for no reason at all, because as you say, for his own entertainment.

Yeah, he didn't come out and open a restaurant or anything.

I only would have had many clients.

I think what's really funny is I mean, there's a story.

You're telling your book about the fact that when he started releasing books, they would become some of the most stolen items from bookstores.

But what do you think it was about Chopper's retelling of his tales?

And we have established that he has taken credit for a lot of crimes that he didn't actually commit, including a lot of murders.

What about that appeal to the average Aussie?

Because it wasn't just criminals who were consuming those stories.

No at all.

No, And I suspect it's far far more women than people created as well.

They were books sort of aimed at men.

They were books that looked like they should be sort of sold in surveys rather than bookshops.

But I think a lot of women were Chopper fans.

I think what you accuse me of not smiling had a sense of humor.

If you like Rodney Rude or someone of the books are funny, even if you don't, Yeah, there's moments in them.

And I think also the books that often had the early ones appendices that would talk about either criminals at chopper Yuke or who's who in the zoo, and Chopper would talk about him as if he knew them.

Where sometimes he didn't even know them, but once you'd read those profiles by Chopper, you could talk about those people and if you knew them.

But it was there was a sort of candid window into the underworld before the days of Underbelly, and I think people, Yeah, there was a people into a secret society, an unknown world.

How do you think Chopper felt about how he's received?

I mean, Eric Banner obviously did that amazing performance of him in the movie about his life and experiences, and there's been a comedian who pretends to be Chopper and there's you know, his takes of him on Australian comedy shows.

Like how do you think Chopper felt about how he was received and then imitated after his kind of exploits were written down on paper.

I think he was quite at the way Eric Banner played him.

Eric Banner was a beat Chopper than Chopper was, like he was.

You know, that's such an amazing performance.

It's so beautiful.

If you've met Chopper and you sort of Eric Banner in the Chopper movie, it's an extraordinary either and I think Chopper thought that too, and Chopper obviously helped coaching for it.

Chopper told me actually before it was announced that Banner was going to play, and I didn't believe him.

I tended to dismiss a lot of what he said, but per absolutely more was true than I gave him credit for throughout.

But beyond that, I mean he or he just tried to get money off people.

He thought that if you impersonated him, you know you should pay him, because you know he's Shopper Read and you're making money out of pretending to be chopper Read.

So slippers a quid mate, And it's not a strange attitude at all for people who spent their life in jail.

You know, they're always looking for a quick He would have stood over them if we could these people, but when he couldn't, he'd, like, you know, appeal to their charity.

I guess, yeah, so he need just wanted to quit out of it.

He liked the notoriety.

Do you think other criminals got annoyed him for stealing their stories because he takes credit for a lot of crimes that other criminals obviously committed.

Do you think they can or do you think.

It's like a well, he's kind of removing the suspicion from me in this situation.

I think one one someone to went up to a crime that you'd committed and got away with.

It's probably really great deal of gratitude towards Chopper.

In certain circles, a lot of criminals I think became angry and alienated by the idea that Chopper read was a big Underworld figure.

It's like, this is very much what's he ever done?

You know the name of bank that he's robbed, and yeah, he was not a great harm robber, and arm robbers were the criminal aristocracy of the time.

Like he was in jail for a long period in part which in part because he'd attempted to kidnap a judge to get his mate out of jail, which wasn't really considered the dynamic adventure that he might have been, because he wasn't thought to have had much chance of success.

Chopper wasn't a gang leader, he wasn't a big criminal.

On the outside.

People would say I never heard of him, which basically, whether they had or not, just means there were nobody And I think that's where the hostility towards him came from.

Initially, when the books came out from the Underworld.

Did that motivate other crims to try and write their own tale.

Yeah, Teddy's would write a terrible book following sub Chopper work with sub Chopper chapters about other people in jail, including the ted Eastwoods take on Chopper.

And there were self published books by other crims people said they were going to write books but didn't who were involved in the Overcoat Wars, according Base Division on the side against Chopper.

But yeah, but it opened the floodgates for Underbelly.

You know, the Chopper books were edited by my friend Andrew Rule and John Sylvester to very very good journalist, and they contemporaneously were putting together the Underbelly books, which were basically compilation crime yards that led to the Underbelly TV show that really made household names of small time Melbourne criminals like Alphonse Gangitano in the same way that Chopper's books had.

Next, Mark tells us how he ended up in one of Chopper's books.

You ended up in one of Chopper's books, eventually, didn't you.

Yeah, I think I'm in Chopping nine and a half maybe.

Nine and a half.

Yeah, it's definitely a conraction in it.

So yeah, Choppers said he was referring back to in Men's Gallery, and he said, I can't remember the exact words.

He'd left me with the strippers in the dressing room, and you know, you can only imagine what our Lads mag editor might get up to in circumstances.

But that's not what happened.

As I say, we had left the club together.

So the next time I'd spoke to him a few times in between then and the next time we met, he gave me a racing tip once he wanted some money because someone else had mentioned him in Ralph.

But then I interviewed him for Cinny Morning Herald.

In fact, I was freelance.

This is when he was doing the speaking engagements.

Right, him and Mark Jackson and on and off Warick Kappa and Roger Rogerson were doing this kind of traveling working men's club, cabaret working.

Man for those who don't know, the ex footy players who are also known to be a bit sluggish on the field and a corrupt police.

Officer corrupt New South.

I was police officer.

Yeah, so basically it seems even stranger.

Yeah, but yeah, so.

They were doing this speaking to around sort of large country pubs and r s ls, so they were I think I interviewed initially Stopper and Mark Jackson together and like I went into Mark, I want to see what would happen.

And I said, why do you lie about me in your book?

And Mark Jackson had no idea what I was talking about, obviously, and I I said, you know, I didn't you needn't leave me with The strict was why did you say that?

And Chopper double said, how do you think my girlfriend haven't read that?

And I shouldn't feel anything because she doesn't read chop of books.

And he said, no, I left you there with a bitch on one arm and a bomb in the other.

And then things got things started to get out of hand.

Up Jackson tried to calm things down, and Chopper tried to get them by going back up again.

And it was there's this kind of train wreck, car crash interview that none nless I recycled time and time again.

Now it worked for me, it worked for Chopper Shul it really worked for Mark Jackson.

But it goes to show the way that we fed off him.

The media feeds off him, he feeds off us.

The conflict is, you know it makes good copy.

Chopper always made good copy and he made great photos as well, tinued out, I knew that.

Well, that's the thing.

Would Mark Chopper read have been the Chopper read that we know without the influence and support of the Australian media.

Would he have been that?

In his private life?

He would have been a little known street sug I would imagine with a confused reputation in Joe.

But he, as I said, Chopper was a master masters storytellers creature.

He was a very good story he did have.

Does a master story stealer by the sounds of it, rather than a story storyteller.

But you know, stories are stolen and have been in oral cultures since I will guess the beginning of time.

You know, I didn't write the Odyssey like he did, perhaps, but you know the the Bible, they're all oral traditions written down there.

They talk, They talk of archetypes.

The chops his own almost creation of redemption stories.

He yeah, he stole people's stories.

Other people stole other people's stories.

Other people's stories probably weren't through either.

In an oral society like jail and people are you know, constantly adapting their stories to see their aldience.

Anyway, I think stealing stories perhaps was the least of his crimes.

When you met him, he was living in rural Tasmania and he was essentially a farmer kind of by then.

I honestly cannot imagine Chopper read out feeding the chooks every morning.

But like, what were his later years like?

Well, he married this woman called Mary Anne Hodge, who again had a Seventh Day Adventist background, who had visited him in jail, and he later said that he'd married her to get out of jail.

Who knows whether that's true.

They had a son together, and he was apparently abusive ro son.

They got divorced and Dropper married his childhood sweetheart, his adolescent sweetheart, Margaret Khazzar, and they had a son as well.

I met Margaret and her son at DeLong Jail late last year.

They were at remembrance of Ronald Ryan Day last Man hun and the son was very impressive, quite formal guy.

Margaret was back friendly than she would have been issu'd have known who I was.

Wow, And yeah, he left out his final years with them.

The thing he mentioned about his later years too, Chopper, is that he managed to kind of walk around fairly uninhibited, like he never seemed scared that maybe there was retribution coming his way when he was out in the public.

Why do you think that he kind of lived out his later years fairly unencumbered by any old debts from prison.

I think a lot of people who he had crossed were dead.

He did it's very best to make you, and he made any reason who was in the Marine family were for no good reason.

He did speak out against people who with whom he had no apparent beef.

I think some people thought he was a joke, some people were frightened of him, and some people were dead the time the days of that particular gang, of all whatever standoffs in Melbourne were over.

By then, the center of organized crime had very much moved towards drugs and various other families that quite well known.

Now Chopper was pretty much in your elegancy.

So he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in twenty twelve and passed away in twenty thirteen.

But before he did so, he did an interview with the Channel nine where he kind of did a deathbed confession to a few murders.

I mean, knowing what we know about Chopper, how true do you think they are?

I doubt where he may have done one of them.

I don't think.

I don't think there's any more truths to the confession he made on his deathbed than the confessions that he made and prompted throughout his life in order to sell his books and nhance his reputation.

Since Chopper's passing, is there ever anything that you think about or dwell on that you would have liked to have asked him and maybe get an honest answer about before he passed away.

When I was writing about him exploiting once again our very brief acquaintanceship, if that's a word.

I did wonder how devoted he was to his children.

I did wonder whether fatherhood really had softened him.

I did wonder what he thought about bringing up children, really after the way that he had been brought up.

I did wonder how he would feel if he knew that one of his kids was basically following in the footsteps.

I wondered a lot about what Chopper's ideas, how Chopper may have changed in those last years, how fatherhood had affected him, and how he hoped what kind of a life he hoped for his sons.

So I sorted to finish up on in your line of work, You've met and spoken to and spent time with a few different career criminals.

Do you think there's anyone that can compare to Chopper.

Read he's a kind of chop is a sort of caricature of all violent.

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean a lot of people are vaguely liking.

There's people with their sense of humor.

There's more charismatic than people.

I'm thinking of John Killick here, the guy who somehow conspired with his Russian girlfriend to hijacker helicopter and have him airlifted out of Silver Worder jail in nineteen ninety nine.

I mean successfully, he did get out for a bit.

Get out.

He didn't get out of Australia.

Yeah.

John's funnier and more charismatic and a better rider than Chopper, But he doesn't He's not that thug end of the scale.

Yeah.

As I said, I think he's Choppers was a conscious caricature of a lot of similar people.

Thank you to Mark for helping us tell the story.

You can read more about his book, The First Murderer I Ever Met at the link in our show notes.

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True Crime Conversations is hosted by me Claire Murphy and by Tarlie Blackman, with audio designed by Jacob Brown.

Thanks so much for listening.

I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.