Chris is now aged 22.
I’m wound as tight as fuck. Fuelled by hate I run amok – me against the state. Within a week of getting out, I’m catching up with Kevin Miles. I decide to pair up and we scout his part of town – the Dandenong region – selecting banks to rob. I have the guns and a bulletproof vest.
Two weeks to the day of release, we raid the Commonwealth Bank at Glen Waverley.
Using a stolen motorbike, I drop Kevin at the rear exit and then ride along the bank and park at the front, leaving the bike idling.
We’re at each end of the bank.
We head in, both in helmets and overcoats, my automatic shotgun strapped over my shoulder by a modified holster, allowing me to let go of it and even ride the motorcycle with it dangling by my side.
*
We strike again within weeks, hitting a Westpac at Keysborough in Melbourne’s southeast, this time switching back to a car in order to vary the MO.
*
A few weeks after that I’m working solo once more, holding up the State Bank at Noble Park.
*
As Easter approaches I am short of money. I select my local Commonwealth Bank at St Albans, being familiar with the area and the branch – especially after that fruitless attempt a few years ago when they’d already locked up.
It’s a busy Friday when Kevin and I pull up out front – hard not to get noticed in balaclavas and overalls.
We park the car on an angle at the corner kerb, still running, and enter the crowded bank. Kevin starts clearing the tellers while I stay at the door to control the floor.
I spot a group of locals, older Slavic men – Croats, Serbs, Macedonians and others – who meet every Friday while their wives shop at the market.
They’re crossing the road from the bus stop to our car, trying to be heroes, trying to steal our car and shut us down.
This situation is hard to control. I have to keep an eye on Kevin and watch his back, but I’m also leaving the bank a number of times to shoo them away from the car.
So I yell to Kevin to abandon.
We return to my dad’s place in St Albans soon after, and he tells me about the robbery – as he too was caught up with friends there. It’s his social meeting spot. Turns out our next door neighbour was also in the group.
Talking about it with my dad, my dad straight away tells me I did it. I have a laugh with my neighbour when I get charged over it later on.
I have only been out of jail for about three months. I’m hectic, to say the least – involved as I am in high speed police pursuit on the Geelong Freeway.
Riding a motorbike, I deliberately overtake six police cars and exit the freeway soon after having lost them.
But Mick Doohan I’m not, smashing head-on at 140 k’s into a car parked on the nature strip.
I crawl to the closest house and lie under a carport, my knee wrecked, and can’t move when the lady of the house sees me. A crowd is gathering, having heard the smash. She rings an ambulance but the police arrive first. I can’t walk at all.
I’m arrested and they ask for ID. They don’t believe the fake name I give, and as I’m taken to Footscray Hospital for a knee reconstruction they call in cops from all surrounding police stations in the hope that someone will recognise me.
Eventually someone pegs me for Barry, but then he doesn’t have tattoos and I do, so they finally nail me as Chris.
*
While I’m still in hospital, Kevin drops by to plead for access to some of my weapons.
My arsenal is extensive and expensive, including pistol grip machine guns with silencers.
He tells me he has dramas with people in his area, and asks for something to protect himself with. So I reveal where they were buried in plastic plumbing pipes, telling him to just take one and leave the rest.
Unbeknown to me, outside in Kevin’s car is his junkie mate. Kevin knows I hate this mate with a passion. They go to the weapons cache, which is off along a creek and off a dirt track, and they take them all.
Plus, while they’re there, they decide to dump the guns used in the last robberies. Kevin was supposed to have destroyed them by now but instead here they are and he’s tossing the bag of them less than a metre from the riverbank, leaving them barely submerged.
The guns are found by the next person walking past – a guy giving his dog some exercise. He reports it to the police and they seal off the area.
Matters deteriorate even further when Kevin doesn’t even use the weapons for personal protection but gives my precious personal modified and silenced machine gun to his junkie mate to use in a bank robbery. The gun is highly recognisable on camera.
Hungry to score, the robber sloppily leaves his prints all over the car he uses, which, when it’s found, will direct the police to him and he will then lag everyone he can, including Kevin and me for the stick-ups that Kevin has told him about.
At the same time, Kevin, who still has my cache, selects an assault rifle for his protection at home, and leaves the rest with a friend.
Kevin has started a relationship with a local gang bang slut from the pub. Soon he wants to show off to her, so he talks her through all our robberies and even tells her about my recent solo job.
This is not how I operate, I should point out. My girlfriends of the past knew nothing of my business. Nothing at all.
Kevin and the gang bang slut have a drunken domestic; she shits herself, takes the assault rifle to the police and reveals everything she knows about both of our activities.
Now I have huge problems. Kevin gets in touch to say that he has a little heat on him and while he can’t return the guns he can tell me where they are.
So, on crutches and wearing a knee brace I hobble out and fill my car boot but then find fencing around the creek that I used before, so back home I go to rest my leg and think about what the fuck to do.
I don’t get long to think. The next morning, the Armed Robbery Squad raid me, wrench my knee to torture me, beat me in the face and head, and charge me with the solo job at the Noble Park State Bank. They also have my arsenal, including the machine gun that they know was used by the junkie they arrested just days ago.
I’m now facing sentences of several years, with a Major Offender classification. Very shitty territory on the flow chart.
I would like to add that I have nothing against gang bang sluts – the world is a better place with them – but not everyone is for talking business with.