Chris is nineteen years old.
I am released full of hate and rage, sourcing weapons and soon involved in acts of violence not seen before. I am involved in a number of serious crimes, targeting elements of the state: financial institutions. Robbing them – not burglaries or thefts now.
When I entered Pentridge as a 17-year-old kid I looked up to the armed robbers of the day. I wanted to be one of them. And I get out and emulate exactly what I heard from them; I put it into practice.
I am very disturbed, very angry. I have been subjected to a lot of violence. And this is the thing: I have resentment towards the Office of Corrections and resentment towards police officers and the authorities because of what I have been subjected to. I have been tortured. I have been locked in isolation – and the anger when being released from isolation is extreme.
When I get out all I want is for them to pay. That is like compensation. Seriously. My main targets are state banks and government institutions. I didn’t want to get out and rob people, battlers or whatever. If I rob houses and stuff like that it will come out of people’s pockets and they will suffer a lot more. They aren’t the target of my crimes.
So I progress to armed hold-ups. And a number of shootings: true. The armed robberies are done solo. No back-ups for help. I am confident alone. I also purchase a stolen police bulletproof vest to wear during robberies.
I am so angry that I smoke pot to calm myself. But it doesn’t hold it in.
*
While having lunch with my girlfriend at an Asian diner in Footscray, I spot a prison officer from Pentridge. The Red Setter he is known as, a real nasty spiteful individual that works in D Division and had us all terrified: a bad basher he is.
At the diner he is with his wife, but that’s no barrier to me at all. The only thoughts running through my head are of the therapy he exacted on so many inmates and how ‘It’s your turn, fucker. Your dose now.’
At the first sight of him, I unleash a torrent of insults, much to the horror of all those eating in the area, my girlfriend included.
Not content with just a verbal assault, I pursue him and keep unloading an avalanche of profanity, much to the horror of his wife.
I follow him to K-Mart and when I am a few aisles away but drawing near, I select a carpet cutting knife from the shelf, and advance upon him with it clearly visible, while telling him I am going to cut him to shreds.
He takes off with me chasing. But I have no plans at all; I am just head-fucking him as he does to inmates.
As he is leading me towards the checkouts up front, I ditch the weapon, knocking a bunch of other items off a shelf with it, but he doesn’t notice, and I make out I still have it, lunging at him at times.
When we arrive at the checkout and are surrounded by security, all of a sudden he pulls out his prison badge – like a Starsky & Hutch move – and he tries to make a citizen’s arrest with the support of all the security.
He says that I have a concealed knife and tells security to arrest me. So I calmly unbutton my cardigan and open it up for everyone to see that I have no weapon. I just walk past everybody, telling them that I have no idea who he is.
They are lost for words.
The Red Setter decides to retrace our steps and locates the knife. The police are called in and he identifies me and hands the weapon to them.
I am questioned at Footscray police station.
Within days his house is petrol bombed and shot up. Or I guess it was supposed to have been, except whoever did it gets the address wrong, hitting his neighbours instead: it was number 15, not 13.
Needless to say, within a short time the police arrive at my house.
I get charged over the K-Mart matter, landing six months jail for it.
The Red Setter’s wife, I’m told, has a nervous breakdown over this, landing in a mental facility for four weeks and popping Valium like crazy. She still has not recovered.
This rage is a constant theme repeated with nasty staff I encounter on the outside. I chase and spit at them on the outside – regrettable at times, I say, if truth be told. I have chased them through red traffic lights, driving them close to getting hit by oncoming vehicles.
Inside I have thrown faeces at them, hot water, eggs; I’ve pelted rocks at them in their towers for fun: true.
Yet outside if they’re decent types I actually shake their hands, offer to buy them a drink and sit down for a coffee to show there are no hard feelings; if they showed no malice to me then there is none given in return.
I have also reached out to decent likeable rogue prison officers. Do unto others as they do unto you, is the motto I practise. No favouritism: I don’t see the uniform, just the character of the soul.
The Red Setter has since mellowed out, realising – I feel – that nothing good ever came out of his conduct and that his marriage suffered as a consequence of his attitude to us.
We have shared jokes about how we were fuckwits then, and the things that can happen.
Chris confessing his unsolved heists to detectives at Barwon Prison in 2015.
Cop: To say that you were prolific would be an understatement?
Chris: Yeah. Within months of my release I’d be jumping counters. How long’s it take me to do an armed robbery? I spot the target, I look at the target, I know the time patterns. Within a week or two. Not fuckin’ six months.