From the Inside: Chopper 1 (14 page)

Many of the Italian gangsters around town have big tickets on themselves. Those in the know will tell you they’re not even the biggest ethnic group in the crime world. I was once told by a Sicilian criminal that there were two sorts of Italian crims — Sicilians and the rest — and he said that as long as I didn’t mess with Sicilians I could do whatever I liked to the rest. I said: ‘Sure Tony’ . . . then I shot him.

THE FAIRY GANGSTERS

If the mafia had a comedy,
Then Melbourne’s the song they’d sing,
Led by a buttercup Vito,
Who likes to be the King,
He looks like a million dollars,
In slip-on shoes and shirt,
And rumour has it, after hours, he slips on a lady’s skirt,
He carries a gun, just for fun, and keeps money in his shoe,
So if you’re hunting for his wallet, I think the rumour’s true,
And with his gang of hangers on, they look a funny sight,
They love to bag The Chopper, every day and night,
They get down to the two-up, where they love to stand and meet,
The two-bob fairy gangsters,
The crew from Lygon Street.

Chapter 15

The Walsh Street cowards

‘Walsh Street was a shitpot murder. It was without honour or courage’.

On October 12, 1988, two young policemen, Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre, were on routine night patrol when they received a call to go to Walsh Street, South Yarra, to check reports that a white Holden sedan had been abandoned in the middle of the road.

The inexperienced pair had been set up — lured to their deaths by a gang of men who gunned them down in the street. Police believe the two constables were killed in revenge for the death at police hands of Graeme Jensen only hours earlier.

Jensen, a convicted bandit, was shot dead by police outside a Narre Warren shopping centre the day before the Walsh Street murders by members of the armed robbery squad.

In 1987, another associate, Frank Valastro, had been shot dead by police in his East Bentleigh home as he was mixing cocaine and sugar. Police said he was armed with an automatic pistol when he was shot.

Police and the community were stunned by the Walsh Street killings. There were grave fears that a ‘war’ would erupt between sections of the underworld and the police.

A special police task force working on the Walsh Street shootings eventually concluded that the slaughter was carried out by members of an underworld family considered one of the most vicious in Australia — the Allen and Pettingill clan.

Some members of the family, headed by former prostitute and brothel keeper Kathleen Pettingill, have been implicated in murder, armed robbery and drug matters.

Notorious members included Dennis Bruce Allen, a drug dealer, pimp, gunrunner, police informer and murderer who died of natural causes in April 1987.

Allen had a weekly drug turnover of nearly $100,000 in the mid-1980s, and was known as Mr Death. Chopper Read had bashed him in Pentridge years earlier and Allen vowed that no matter how long it took or how much money it cost, he would get Read killed.

When Allen died of heart disease he was waiting to stand trial over the murder of Wayne Patrick Stanhope.

Dennis Allen’s brother, Peter John Allen, was the smartest of the brood. He was considered a man with a good grasp of the law, although it hasn’t kept him out of jail.

Peter Allen is a convicted heroin dealer and former member of the top ten most wanted list in Victoria.

At one stage, he bragged on the telephone that he made between $30,000 and $35,000 a week. He was able to buy a house in Templestowe and pay it off in three months. Eventually the courts stripped him of all his assets, although he argued he should be able to keep Dennis’s old bulletproof vest for sentimental reasons.

The Walsh Street task force eventually arrested Peter Allen’s half brothers, Victor George Peirce and Trevor Pettingill. Also arrested were Anthony Leigh Farrell and Peter David McEvoy.

Another man alleged to have been involved in the Walsh Street murder plot, Jedd Houghton, was shot dead by police in a Bendigo caravan park on November 17, 1988.

The Crown alleged that the gang were friends of Jensen and decided to kill police at random as a payback for the death of their mate.

The prosecution claimed the gang had sworn a bizarre pact to kill ‘two cops for one crim’.

One of the key witnesses was Jason John Ryan, the nephew of Peirce and Pettingill. After a controversial six-week trial, a Supreme Court Jury acquitted all four in March, 1991, after six days of deliberation.

All those charged have maintained their innocence.

After being acquitted, McEvoy and Peirce yelled that they believed they would be killed. At one point McEvoy said: ‘I’m not afraid to die’.

Mark Brandon Read, no stranger to violence, gives his view on Walsh Street, and the men who were acquitted of the charge.

*

WHAT better way to die than to face fearful odds for the ashes of your family, and the honour of your Gods.

That sums up my feelings towards revenge. Revenge to me is a highly personal thing. Revenge is a dish best eaten cold, and it has no time limit.

No crim in Melbourne would dare speak of this topic; it is taboo. But I will. Walsh Street was a shitpot murder. It was without honour or courage.

Who did it is not the point. I couldn’t give a shit. Graeme Jensen was an enemy of mine who ran like a little puppy and couldn’t beat time with a bass drum, so his death didn’t concern me at all. But if he had been my friend and I thought revenge was in order, I would have watched and waited, smiled and acted in a friendly and polite manner while gathering the correct information on exactly who killed him. And then I would have hunted the men responsible, even if it meant walking into the places where they worked.

I would have faced them in the light of day and gunned them down like dogs. Then I would have pleaded guilty with my head held proud, blood for blood, revenge with honour. You don’t gun down babies in the dead of night and then run like dogs. That is not revenge. Revenge to me is a religion; it is a holy duty. If a friend dies, then the offender dies, blood for blood . . . not blood for nothing.

Every man knows what it is like to be stirred by the emotion of revenge. True revenge, while not legally condoned, is totally understood.

Innocent men died and lives were destroyed as a result of Walsh Street, just because a bunch of would-be gangsters didn’t have the guts to do the job right. If the men who had killed Jensen had been faced and killed in blood combat in the name of revenge, no cop in Melbourne would have called it cowardly.

A well-known criminal, Shane Goodfellow, gave evidence against me at my murder trial. Farrell and Pettingill and the one they call ‘Bubble Brain’ thought it was funny that he jumped the box against me. On the other hand Victor Peirce was heard to say that Goodfellow had done the wrong thing, but the other mice laughed.

They should remember that the friends of my enemy are also my enemies.

I first met Victor Peirce when he was 14 years old in 1974. Some would-be tough guys wouldn’t let him into the Graham Hotel in the city and I corrected their manners. At the time I was friendly with his brother, Peter ‘six shots rapid fire’ Allen, a young gunman and criminal serving time in B Division.

Victor was a harmless sort of kid, he was about 14 and I was 19 or 20. I belted some bloke, hit him once in the head, he fell and fell hard. He must have hit his head hard on the cement and the blood ran free. Poor little Victor had a look in his eye that was pure horror. I put my arm around young Victor and said, ‘It’s okay, Vic. You’re with me’.

Years later he was in H Division with his mate ‘Bubble Brain’. By then Victor was a big mover with a reputation and a power base of his own. But when he saw me he became that 14-year-old kid all over again.

Which goes to show that you can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can even fool all of the people some of the time, but in the world of blood and guts you don’t fool Chopper Read any of the time.

As for ‘Bubble Brain’, if he has ever won a fight then I certainly haven’t heard about it. The bald wimp used to drop his gangster facade real quick when he looked into my eyes. Ha ha.

He has a few rather nasty enemies in the criminal world as he has a reputation as a ‘lash’, a man who does not like to pay his debts, and a backdoor merchant who takes advantage of other men’s wives and girlfriends.

If you mix a man with a big mouth and a gangster complex who couldn’t punch his way through a lady’s lace hanky, you end up with a coward who is eager to impress. He swaggers around and if it wasn’t for his bubble brain bald head he would try to act like Robert De Niro. He is quite a comedy and not well-respected in the meaner circles of the criminal world. The Bubble has two brothers who are prison officers and this is a sore point with him. You wouldn’t even call The Bubble a real crim.

The Bubble used to nearly wet his pants when he saw me. The facts are that a limp wrist, two-bob pansy is a bum whether he beats a murder blue or wins a Brownlow medal. That lot are as heavy as feather dusters, Walsh Street or no Walsh Street.

In the world of hard men, blokes like Anthony Farrell and Trevor Pettingill don’t even rate a mention. All I can say about Pettingill is that he is a runt junkie in a flashy suit his mummy bought him. As a heavy and a gunman and street fighter, I’d say an angry schoolgirl armed with a tennis racquet would give him a flogging without raising a sweat.

As for Farrell, I had to act as a bodyguard for Mad Charlie once in 1987. Charlie had to go to the Cricketers Arms Hotel in Cruickshank Street, Port Melbourne, to meet Anthony Farrell’s dad, Tony Farrell, nicknamed ‘Mushie’ — an ex-pro boxer and petty crim — regarding a debt Charlie needed to collect.

Farrell paid up.

He was in the company of his young, pretty, baby-faced, blond-haired son, Anthony. He was there to add security for his father . . . ha ha.

I laughed and said: ‘Hey Anthony, you’d be better off getting a dress and becoming a drag queen’. He was not amused and flounced out of the pub like a little girl in a huff. It was all very funny. Even his dad, Mushie, saw the joke, as Anthony is not, and never will be, what his dad was. Not that Mushie was any great fighter, but at least he has some fighting skill and guts.

To be honest, that crew and I mix on a different social level within the criminal world. Victor Peirce’s OK. I’ve known him since he was a teenager and he’s harmless enough. But the rest are a spoilt, petty, evil-minded bunch of girls. I didn’t like Jensen. But I’ll tell you this — Jensen didn’t like Farrell or Pettingill, so what all the bullshit was about, I don’t know.

The ridiculous thing with that joke crew is that after Walsh Street, most criminals will not be seen talking against them. It is as if being critical of them means that you are on the police side. But everyone misses the point: that crew was a pack of petty crooks and wimps before Walsh Street and they haven’t climbed the social ladder since. They beat the murder blue, and so what.

I make no statement on who killed the two police in Walsh Street but if it was an act of revenge it failed. The police who killed Jensen are alive. What annoys me is that the joke crew have been elevated to heavy crims and that some crooks may give them respect they do not deserve.

The word was out after the acquittal that some members of this joke crew were going to get paid large amounts of cash by sections of the media to tell their stories. Alas, it turned out to be a false rumour. If they had made some wealth from it all they would have been spending it in wheelchairs as I know a few chaps who would have been quick to ask for a donation.

If I wasn’t walking away and retiring I would probably put that crew of fools in the boot . . . just for the fun of it. In 1979 I broke nearly every bone in Graeme Jensen’s head. At the time he was considered to be one of, if not, the best and most violent street fighter in Melbourne. I got him in the number two shower yard of H Division. He walked in a rooster and was carried out a feather duster. Jensen and his team of nitwits attacked me with iron bars in Bendigo jail in 1986. They attacked me like mad dogs — until I pulled out a tomahawk. Then they ran like French poodles.

Frankie Valastro was a psycho, a pint-sized Italian version of Squizzy Taylor. He would shoot the eyes out of your grandmother and rape her on the way down. I first met him in J Division in 1971. We were all having showers and I’m afraid that Valastro turned around to find the extra stream of warm water running down his back was Chopper relieving himself— all in the name of humour, you understand. I’m afraid the bad blood went on from there. He later hooked up with the Lygon Street crowd.

Valastro, Jensen and Shane Goodfellow were at Bojangles when I killed Sammy the Turk. There is no doubt they were waiting for me outside the nightclub that night. As for Sammy, I’d never met him. He must have been a friend of theirs.

The Melbourne underworld is a mass of shadows and dark tunnels. Some of the most cunning plots and plans the KGB and CIA have ever cooked up against each other would be considered commonplace in the Melbourne criminal world. It is a world of treachery, counter-treachery, betrayal and double agents.

The crews and gangs in Melbourne can often be interrelated. In fact, it’s a world of criminal incest. Some females in that scene have been girlfriend, wife and de facto to six or seven different crooks belonging to different gangs and, as a result of the children born, members of warring gangs can find themselves ‘related’.

For example, Sandra Faure was Keithy Faure’s wife and Graeme Jensen’s de facto and the two men were at war. One bloke had seven kids to five de factos, all sisters of crims. In Melbourne, the Allen family had kids to de facto wives, nearly all sisters of crims. A gang war can be a real ‘family feud’.

Jensen back-doored Keithy Faure with Keithy’s wife, Sandra. I am no great friend of Faure but that sort of thing shouldn’t be done. It causes ill-feeling, and people get hurt.

*

In my opinion, the only member of the Allen-Pettingill-Peirce clan with any guts and brains is Peter John Allen.

I’ve known Peter Allen about 20 years. He got the nickname ‘Six Shots’ after he and another young gunman called Allan Rudd were driving down the road in a hot car. They had a 12-shot .22 target pistol. Another car was trying to overtake them, Peter was driving and his mate was in the passenger seat with the pistol. The car tried to pass and Peter yelled: ‘Six shots rapid fire’, and the other chap blasted away. The nickname has stuck.

Peter Allen, Dennis and Billy Webb all got pinched in 1973 for robberies, rapes and shootings. In the early days, Peter used to conduct his own legal battles in court to great effect. I must say that without a shadow of a doubt he was Pentridge’s foremost jailhouse lawyer.

Before I went down to face the jury at my murder trial, I saw Peter Allen in another cell and he wished me well, and he meant it. He and I were very good friends in the early ’70s, but a fall out I had with Dennis destroyed my friendship with Peter. To be honest, although Peter and I became enemies, we never hated each other.

*

I fell out with Dennis Allen the way I have fallen out with most people . . . I belted him.