Chris dislikes Julian Knight, an inmate serving time for his 1987 killing of seven people and wounding of nineteen on the August night that he decided to shoot at traffic, bystanders and police around Hoddle Street, Clifton Hill.
Chris has lived alongside Knight, initially in H Division of Pentridge, where Chopper Read had let the mass shooter join his club, the Overcoat Gang.
He’s a fucking rat, a little coward, a fucking rat. He’s lucky he’s alive, he really is.
I had a few verbals with him down in H Division. He was in Chopper’s gang, basically.
After Chopper left there was Slime Minogue [aka Craig Minogue, one of the Russell Street police station car-bombers]; Mr Stinky [rapist and double murderer Raymond Edmunds], Greg Brazel [serial killer, arsonist and former soldier], Olaf Dietrich [aka Hugo Rich, a con man, armed robber, drug mule, and later a murderer], and Dane Sweetman [Neo-Nazi and murderer]. And Julian Knight.
They were the skunks, you know. The Mutley Crew, I used to call them.
What’s happened is Julian Knight starts getting smart one day in the yards and I say, ‘Hey don’t worry mate I’ll catch ya.’
Within a couple of days they were doing a movement in the wing and at the bottom of the wing there’s a tunnel that used to lead out to the yards. The first, closest yards on the right-hand side were the shower yards and everybody had to use those shower yards. Whoever was in the yard at the time would go there.
They were escorting him out and I spotted him. I jumped over the screw’s desk, landed at the top of the stairs that lead down to the tunnel and ran about eight leaps, or bounds, on top of him. I’ve gone fucking bang with a big right hand to the back of the head – knocked him to the ground.
He’s sprawled, he didn’t know what the fuck hit him. I’m standing over the top of him and you could see he’s dazed, like, ‘What the fuck?!?’ He didn’t see it coming, you know. And I say, ‘Hey, won’t get fucking smart now, will ya, ya little cunt.’ He’s lucky I didn’t start jumping on his fucking head. ‘Got something to say now, fuckhead?’ That’s when the screws jumped on top of me. After that it’s on my file, there’s now alerts, and now I can’t ever be where he is.
He was in Port Phillip Prison’s back units one time and so I couldn’t get out of management – they weren’t prepared to put me in the back units with him being there. I can’t get anywhere near him. He’s just a coward, just a weedy little fucking rat. A little coward. Shooting fucking innocent people: women, older people, anyone on the road. And when he come up against the police he shit himself, surrendered himself, handed in the gun and cowed like a fucking little coward rat.
A lot of people hate him.
Well, more so before. Now they tolerate him, accept him. The system’s totally different now. Before inmates used to have more morals and principles. The drugs have really fucked things up: eroded the ethics, depleted the gene pool. It’s depleted, mate, from all the ice and all the other stuff, the bupe [Buprenorphine]: very similar to methadone but in tablet form. They’re all on that, and if they’re not on that they’re on the ice.
Drugs have fucked everything. Julian Knight wouldn’t have lasted before. They’ve let him out into certain sections of certain jails, controlled areas where he’s under supervision, where the screws control that area with a lot of informers, and there’s no real threats to him. Anyone that poses a threat to him they remove or they remove him. He’s basically a protection prisoner. He’s safe.
He’s safe and he doesn’t give a fuck about the people he shot. He’s a fucking rat.
One sunbaked afternoon in Sunshine North, I crack a beer with Barry, who can’t help but know a thing or two about the underworld and prison life.
Barry shares Chris’ assessment of Mr Hoddle Street: ‘You’re a weak cunt if you gotta hide from a distance and kill people with a gun.’
‘But people want him in their club?’ I say. Yet what a club. Something that’s puzzling me is that within jail’s pecking orders, I would have assumed that Knight would rank pretty low.
‘How did he get to be in Chopper Read’s gang? How does he fit with the others?’
‘Well, Chopper Read is dead but the rest are alive. You’d have to ask Fat Minogue or Greg Brazel,’ says Barry, who’s not really into gossip. ‘Both of those despise my brother because my brother absolutely hates them.’
I nod, wondering if, since Chris got dumped in endless solitary with too much time on his hands and no option of face-to-face blueing, these notorious killers have copped onslaughts of what Chris calls – with a chuckle – his ‘poison pen’ habit. Some very hardcore prisoners have eventually had to shuffle off to management to ask that Chris not be allowed to send them letters anymore, so inflammatory, condescending, and sometimes deranged they can be.
‘Like Chopper and Minogue actually worked within criminal networks, right, and they act the part,’ I say. ‘Just don’t see how Knight’s like that.’
‘He’s not,’ says Barry. ‘But who knows what goes on behind a cell door. Maybe Julian Knight’s a closet faggot. I don’t know. Maybe he was sucking ’em all off, I don’t know. Shit like that happens in there.’