Mark "Chopper" Read
Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (17 November 1954 – 9 October 2013) was an Australian career criminal and author renowned for his violent involvement in Melbourne's underworld as a standover man and enforcer.[1][2] Read accumulated convictions for armed robbery, assault, kidnapping, arson, and firearms offenses, resulting in approximately 23 years of imprisonment across multiple terms, including a 14-year sentence for an attempted judge kidnapping in 1978.[3][1][4] Despite never being convicted of murder, he publicly claimed responsibility for up to 19 killings, with a deathbed confession specifying four, though police investigations yielded no corroborating evidence for these assertions.[1][5] Post-release, Read authored a series of semi-autobiographical books, beginning with Chopper: From the Inside in 1991, which detailed his criminal exploits and propelled him into media celebrity, culminating in the 2000 biographical film Chopper starring Eric Bana.[2][6] He died from liver cancer at age 58.[1][7]Early Life
Childhood and Family Background
Mark Brandon Read was born on November 17, 1954, in Carlton, a working-class suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to a strict ex-army father and a devout Seventh-day Adventist mother.[8] [9] The family resided in Melbourne's industrial northern suburbs, including areas like Collingwood and Fitzroy, where economic hardship and rigid parental discipline shaped a disciplinarian household environment.[2] Read spent his first five years in a children's home, separated from his parents, before reuniting with them amid ongoing familial difficulties.[2] [10] This early institutionalization, combined with a strict paternal influence from his father's military background and his mother's religious detachment, exposed him to an upbringing emphasizing harsh authority and limited emotional support.[2] At school, Read faced persistent bullying in the rough Melbourne suburbs, which, alongside home tensions, contributed to frequent behavioral issues and rejection of institutional authority.[2] His formal education was curtailed early; by age 14, he was made a ward of the state, placed in psychiatric facilities, and subjected to electroconvulsive therapy, leaving him with minimal literacy skills that he later developed in adulthood.[2] These experiences instilled a pragmatic self-reliance rooted in navigating violence and adversity from a young age.[2]Initial Involvement in Crime
Read's entry into criminality occurred during his adolescence in Melbourne's impoverished northern suburbs, including Collingwood and Fitzroy, where he grew up amid familial violence and school bullying that fostered a combative disposition. By age 15, he claimed to have participated in over 300 fights, establishing himself as a proficient street fighter and informal gang leader among local youths. These experiences, compounded by institutionalization in a mental health facility at age 15—where he underwent approximately 60 electroconvulsive treatments—contributed to his gravitation toward delinquency as a means of asserting control in a hostile environment.[9] Initial offenses centered on opportunistic petty crimes such as theft and vandalism, typical of adolescent gang activities in the era's rough urban enclaves, rather than premeditated organized schemes. At age 17 in 1971, Read faced his first imprisonment for these minor infractions, signaling a departure from juvenile mischief toward more deliberate antisocial behavior. This early incarceration, lasting initially for petty offenses, exposed him to hardened elements of Victoria's underworld, including figures from the 1960s-1970s criminal milieu who emphasized violence and intimidation for status.[9][11] By his late teens and early twenties, Read escalated to assaults and burglaries, reflecting a calculated shift from impulsive acts to crimes offering personal empowerment and financial gain, such as targeting vulnerable individuals in the drug trade who avoided police involvement. His first documented convictions for serious offenses came in 1975 at age 21, when he was found guilty of two counts of armed robbery, marking the transition to using firearms for dominance in Melbourne's gang landscape. These choices were driven less by economic desperation—given his working-class background—than by a pursuit of notoriety and respect within peer groups idolizing underworld archetypes.[11][12]Criminal Career
Imprisonment and Prison Violence
Read served a total of 23 years in prison across multiple facilities, with the majority of his incarceration occurring at HM Prison Pentridge in Melbourne, Victoria, commencing in the mid-1970s following convictions for armed robbery and related offenses.[1][6] Pentridge, operational from 1851 until 1997, was renowned for its punitive regime, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, when overcrowding, minimal rehabilitation programs, and lax oversight fostered an environment of unchecked inmate-on-inmate violence.[13] Within Pentridge's H Division—the segregated wing designated for Victoria's most violent and unmanageable prisoners—Read ascended to a position as an informal enforcer by the late 1970s, leveraging physical confrontations to establish dominance in the inmate hierarchy.[2] H Division's conditions exacerbated brutality, with cells often holding multiple inmates under 23-hour lockdowns, limited access to guards, and a culture where personal vendettas and power struggles supplanted official discipline, compelling prisoners to adopt aggressive survival strategies absent reliable state intervention.[14] Read positioned his actions as adaptive responses to this vacuum, targeting those deemed violators of unwritten codes, such as informers or individuals convicted of child sexual offenses, whom he claimed preyed on vulnerable inmates without consequence.[2] Documented incidents include Read's 1978 stabbing of fellow inmate Keithy George, a convicted child offender, using a knife fashioned from prison materials, an act that solidified his reputation amid H Division's Darwinian dynamics.[15] He sustained counterattacks, such as being stabbed in the stomach by inmate Greg "Bluey" Brazel in August 1979 during a yard altercation, resulting in the loss of several feet of intestine—an injury that underscored the reciprocal nature of prison violence but did not deter his role.[16] Read later described these engagements not as gratuitous but as calibrated enforcements to deter predation and impose order, reflecting a pragmatic calculus in a facility where formal authority proved inadequate against internal threats.[2]Standover Tactics and Kidnappings
Read emerged as a prominent standover man in Melbourne's underworld during the 1970s, specializing in the extortion and robbery of drug dealers whom he targeted for their unwillingness to report crimes to authorities. Operating in areas like Prahran, where dealers frequented massage parlours, he employed threats and firearms to extract cash and valuables, positioning these acts as predatory enforcement in unregulated criminal economies dominated by narcotics trade.[1][17] This approach yielded immediate financial returns but relied on a reputation for unrelenting violence to deter retaliation, reflecting a calculated risk in environments where state protection was absent for illicit operators.[11] By the late 1970s, Read's tactics escalated to outright kidnappings, culminating in a high-profile attempt on April 13, 1978, when he accosted County Court Judge Bill Martin outside the Family Court in Melbourne, pressing a sawed-off shotgun into the judge's back while demanding the release of imprisoned associate Jimmy Loughnan. The botched operation, involving accomplices and a getaway vehicle, ended in Read's immediate arrest after Martin escaped, leading to a conviction for attempted kidnapping and a sentence contributing to his extended incarceration.[6] Such incidents underscored the short-term pecuniary incentives—ransom demands tied to underworld debts—but amplified exposure to law enforcement, as judicial targets drew disproportionate scrutiny compared to anonymous dealer shakedowns.[10] Throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, prior to prolonged imprisonments, Read refined his kidnapping methods against criminal debtors and rivals, incorporating torture tools like bolt cutters to sever victims' toes or blowtorches for coercion, aiming to compel payments from drug networks and other illicit earners in Melbourne's fragmented gangland. These operations filled power vacuums left by weakened syndicates, enforcing informal "protection" through intimidation rather than affiliation, though they often provoked cycles of reprisal from figures navigating similar predatory niches. Convictions for kidnapping, alongside related assault and armed robbery charges, accumulated during this period, totaling over two decades of imprisonment and highlighting the tactic's inherent unsustainability amid intensifying police focus on organized extortion.[11][18][19]Notable Incidents and Self-Mutilation
In late 1977 or early 1978, while incarcerated in H Division at HM Prison Pentridge, Read arranged for a fellow inmate to sever both of his ears using a razor blade, an act intended to secure a temporary transfer out of the punitive isolation unit by exploiting prison medical protocols and garnering external sympathy.[10][2] This self-mutilation succeeded in prompting his relocation to a less restrictive environment, demonstrating a calculated manipulation of bureaucratic incentives rather than impulsive pathology, as Read later described it in biographical accounts as a means to evade ongoing threats and harsh conditions in H Division.[2] The incident, while yielding short-term relief, amplified Read's reputation for unpredictability, which he leveraged for deterrence in underworld dealings. Another notable incident occurred on January 11, 1978, when Read, armed with a sawn-off shotgun, stormed into a County Court courtroom in Melbourne during a hearing, pointing the weapon at Judge Bill Martin in an abortive bid to negotiate the release of associate Jimmy Loughnan from custody.[16] The stunt, involving no actual discharge but high tactical risk of escalation in a public judicial setting, underscored Read's willingness to employ extreme intimidation for leverage, resulting in his immediate recapture and additional charges for firearms offenses and assault. Such acts empirically bolstered his standover persona, deterring rivals through perceived recklessness, though they prolonged his incarceration without achieving the intended prisoner exchange.[16]Legal Convictions and Murder Claims
Documented Convictions
Read's documented convictions encompassed a range of violent offenses, including armed robbery, assault, kidnapping, arson, and firearms violations, primarily occurring between the 1970s and 1990s. These resulted in cumulative sentences totaling approximately 23 years of imprisonment across multiple terms, during which he spent only 13 months at liberty between the ages of 20 and 38.[20][5][21] Despite facing extensive charges related to more severe crimes, Read was never convicted of murder in any court proceeding.[3][5] Key convictions included:- 1975: Two counts of armed robbery, leading to initial imprisonment in Pentridge Prison's H Division.[11]
- 1978: Attempted abduction of County Court Judge David Martin at gunpoint on January 26, aimed at securing the release of associate Jimmy Loughnan; convicted of related assault charges and sentenced to 13–17 years as a dangerous offender.[10][17][2]
- Additional terms: Convictions for grievous bodily harm (downgraded from attempted murder in one case), arson, and firearms offenses, contributing to extended incarceration under Victoria's "dangerous criminal" provisions.[22][3]