‘JUST because a man is sent to prison does not end his interests in the crime world. Certain drug kingpins and upmarket drug dealers still operate and control their business from behind bluestone walls. A host of bank robberies are planned, put together and ordered from behind bars and carried outside by friends or helpers.
The amount of crime that is carried out on the orders of men serving sentences is amazing. The amount of crime controlled from behind prison walls would stagger most people.’
*
‘I LOVE a good criminal war or battle situation and I am only ever consulted on matters of violence and death.’
*
‘I AM a bit lucky that the blows to the head I have received over the years have done something to my timing. I can be in jail for years and years and the time doesn’t seem to mean much. It is a bit worrying, but it may have done me a favour.’
*
‘THE Australian penal system is a sick, corrupt, drug-infested cesspit of mental illness, perversion and despair where violence is part of daily routine.’
*
‘BUT hard rules apply behind the bluestone walls. They may be sick and sorry rules, but they are rules of the wild. The strong rule and the weak cry. The criminal world, both inside and outside the jail, is ruled through strength. It is not a democracy.’
*
‘THE modern prison is a marshmallow compared with good old H. It was the last place from the old hard school and in my heart I preferred the old days to the system that we have now. A good flogging can concentrate the mind.
I did more than 10 years in ‘H’, the so-called blood house of the system. It wasn’t just my home, I owned the place. I owned it, I controlled it, I ran it. By ruling that division, we ran the jail. We were the most feared gang in the most feared division of the most feared jail in Australia and I was the commanding general.’
*
‘WE had a war in jail because I was alleged to have eaten too many sausages, a foul piece of slander indeed – although I must say they were yummy.’
*
‘THE Overcoat Gang War, which went five years inside Pentridge, was probably the bloodiest crime war in Victoria. But because it was waged inside jail very little was ever heard about it on the outside. ‘G Division … was the area kept in jail for the mentally unwell. I had obviously been put there by mistake, ha ha. I was actually sent there after I mislaid my ears. Obviously, those in power thought this was not the act of a well unit.’
I am confident that I hold the bashing record inside Pentridge and it will never be beaten because the jail is now structured differently.’
I would say the Overcoat War saw well over a hundred separate attacks over five years before some of us went to Jika and couldn’t get each other as often.
The war ended in 1980 because they sent some of us to Jika Jika when it first opened. There were a few half-hearted attempts to keep it going, but we just couldn’t get at each other any more.
Prisoner violence was considered the pastime of the 1970s. Back then, some of the screws and the governors encouraged it. They thought it was akin to a bloody good football match. It kept the prison population busy and gave them something to think about.
The jail governors today are a little limp-wristed when it comes to matters of violence. Since the 1980s drugs and violence have ruled the jail, but the class of men and the class of violence is very petty. Savage and evil, yes, but very petty.
In the 1970s, the jail was ruled by home brew and iron bars. The violence raged from one end of the place to the other. The press got told very little about it. The younger crims today simply find it hard to believe the stories of blood and guts that went on inside and outside jail.
These days, the so-called top crims are so full of junk, they couldn’t change their underwear. Outside it is the same. The gang bosses and the drug lords get rid of their enemies by ringing the police. They demand police protection if their own lives are threatened. The guts and courage have gone. The criminal scene is just a sea of vomit. But back in the days of the Overcoat War there was plenty of full-on guts and courage on both sides.
Our side was outnumbered, but we had some great tactical advantages. We had a spy network right through the prison and we had the moral support and the blind eye encouragement of a handful of the most Right-wing, broken-nosed, cauliflower-eared, hired-by-the-pound, knuckles scraping on the ground, leg-breaking screws any jail has ever seen. We also had one big bonus, the blessing of Jimmy Quinn, the Pentridge Governor of Security.
When the blood starts flying, I’ll do business with the Devil himself. Victory at all costs is the only thing. You can discuss the moral ethics as we bury the enemy. That’s how I got away with it all for five years: I had a friend in high places.
Governor Quinn died in the early 1980s. He was a grand old fellow, a man who would have a drink on any occasion. He loved to bet, a fight, and blood and guts – and he thought the world of me and I of him. In the 1970s, Jimmy Quinn once had his nose broken in a punch-on with a Painter and Docker who was my enemy in B division. So when the Overcoat War broke out, Jimmy Quinn took my side. My enemy already had a few high-ranking prison staff on side, but I had all the old-time blood and guts brigade. After all, it was a prison war between inmates, but we were fighting on the screws’ playing field, so some friends at court were needed on both sides. I think my enemy went through the whole war wishing he hadn’t broken the governor’s nose.
Through Governor Quinn I could get into other prisoners’ cells at night, get into other yards, and get prisoners transferred from one division to another, have my own men moved. The pull I had was quite unbelievable. Quinn used to send two security screws down to H Division early in the morning, handcuff me and bring me up to the security office and into his office. I’d be uncuffed there and the governor would sit down with me, his office door closed, and we’d drink coffee and eat Choc Royal bikkies and watch slides of his latest overseas holidays. Now and again, we would break out a small bottle of whisky or a can or two of beer. At the height of the Overcoat War, he once had me brought to his office and over a can of beer he explained to me that for every dozen or so bashings and attacks that Overcoat Gang did, only one would get mentioned on any report, and none, if any, on my personal records. It was getting a bit tropical and I had to ease it up for a while. The A Division bomb had just gone off and Quinn was under pressure. He then said that every twelve or so bashings, one would get a mention.
When I cut my ears off, Governor Quinn came to hospital to visit me. When I got stabbed, he also came in to see me. He was a good mate with my dad. He was not a corrupt man. He was just an old-style blood-and-guts boy, and a good war in jail gave us all something to do. He was a grand old fellow, and his death was a great sadness to me personally.’
*
‘ONE of Jimmy Loughnan’s favourite party tricks in H Division during the war was to get hold of chaps we felt had been ‘putting holes in their manners’. (Loughnan was Read’s right hand man until he turned on him, stabbing him in jail. Loughnan later died in a jail fire). We would grab the offending party and give him a touch up – otherwise known as a sound beating. Then we would stand him up. I’d put a butcher’s knife to his neck and Jimmy would put a razor blade in his mouth and he would be told to chew on it.
There would be a little protest at first, but it was a case of chew or die – and a mouth full of blood was better than a neck full of cold steel. So chew, it would be. If you’ve never seen a man chew a razor blade, you have never seen blood flow. There would be choking and coughing and blood – sometimes vomiting. It was a lesson once learnt, never forgotten. It must have been pain beyond description. But H Division in the 1970s was a blood-soaked mental hospital of violence and more violence – and only the truly ultra-violent could rule it. The list of weapons made and used in Pentridge goes on and on, and we used them all. There are iron bars, claw hammers, garden spades, homemade tomahawks, and ice picks, screwdrivers sharpened to pinpoint, nun-chukkas, meat cleavers and butcher knives from the kitchen.
My favourite was a razor blade welded into the end of a toothbrush with a cigarette lighter, or a blade with sticky-tape wrapped around one end. When it is held between the thumb and the forefinger, with a flash of the wrist you can open a man’s face up like a ripe watermelon.’
*
‘ONE trick we used that I can now admit was the soap scam. A dirty trick but it was a jail gang war, so all was fair.
I got a dozen bars of soap, soaked them in a plastic bucket of hot water for 15 minutes, then pulled them out and a slid a razor blade down the side of each bar. Then I left them out in the sun to harden.
I was in H Division number one billet at the time. My job was serving out the meals, cleaning the cells, the wing, the labour yard and the shower yard – meaning I had total run of the division. I removed all soap from the shower yards, and put six blocks of my trick soap in each shower yard.
Needless to say, without going into the bloody details, it worked a treat. My enemies were not only frightened to eat their food – for fear of rat poison or human shit in the stew – they couldn’t even use soap in the showers without fear. I was mentally destroying their will. I would leave dobs of jam under their beds to attract ants. I’d piss in their cordial bottles. Along with the bloody violence and physical beatings, these added touches reduced my enemies to tears – and total surrender.’
*
‘WHY did I have my ears chopped off? … I told them, “I will be leaving H Division, tomorrow.” They said, “No, you won’t,” and I said I would. So I went back and got Kevin to cut my bloody ears off. You reckon I didn’t leave H Division straight away? The classo board nearly came down and carried me out themselves.
The first time it happened, it was big news, then everyone started doing it, nothing to do with me. Then all the nutcases in here thought there was something to be gained out of this. I was the president of the Van Gogh club until Garry David cut his penis off. I wrote to him, “You can take over.” When the dicky birds start hitting the pavement, I thought it was time to resign.
Enduring a bit of pain is one thing, but that’s a bit much.’
*
‘THE man who cut them (ears) off was Kevin James Taylor, the chap doing life for shooting Pat Shannon. If a man tries to cut off his own ears, he will make a pig’s breakfast of the job, so I asked Kevin to do it for me. I went into the Number One shower yard of H Division, sat down, folded my arms and sat as still as I could.
Kevin had the razor blade. I said, “Okay, do it.” He started to do it really gently and slow, but that was very painful. I said, “Come on, you bloody fairy, rip into it,” and so he did.
I remember the sound, it was like running your finger nails down a blackboard at school, only it was going through my head, then I felt the warm blood bubbling in my ears. Then he did the second one. I thought Van Gogh had done it, so it couldn’t be life threatening. I decided to have a cold shower and all the bleeding would stop. But it just wouldn’t slow down at all.
The blood flowed and flowed after the ears came off, the rest of the guys freaked out. They thought I’d gone crazy. Kevin knocked on the yard door and the screws let me out. We all said I’d cut my ears off because we didn’t want to get Kevin in trouble. He’s out now, so it doesn’t matter.
The doctors didn’t believe me, but when I looked down on the ground at my fallen ears, I was sure I could see them doing an Irish jig. Maybe I was seeing things or maybe it was the nerves in the ears making them twitch.’
*
‘KILL me or cop it sweet, that’s the way I saw it. In or out of prison no-one could take more pain than me, no one could dish out more pain than me. I wasn’t about to stand in the shadow of any man who went before me.’
*
‘I’M already punch drunk in charge of limited intelligence as it is.’
*
‘AHH, Chopper, you old trendsetter. But as I said to the boys, if you really want to look like the Chopper, get them bloody ears off. The mention of a razor blade slicing through the ears soon separates the men from the boys.’
*
‘THERE is no evidence of psychiatric disorder in Mr Read. He clearly has a most unusual personality, but then, that would be expected of someone who is not uncomfortable about being regarded as a professional criminal.’
– From a psychiatric report on Mark Brandon Read.
*
‘SOME prisoners like to waffle on about the dark and lonely solitude of their damp and lonely cell and how they never forgot the sound of the cell door slamming for the first time. What a load of crap. One cell is the same as any other. When you have heard one cell door slam, you have heard them all. Jail life can be summed up in two words: petty and boring.’
*
‘AFTER the years that I have done inside, I would write a thousand pages on jail life. But men who have done it, lived it, bled it, cried and nearly died in it, couldn’t be bothered.
I’ll leave that all to one-month wonders, who can write a gripping thriller based on their blood-chilling adventures in Her Majesty’s Motel.’
*
‘IF you are a police informer or an offender against small children, you can buy yourself all the friends and supporters you want with a gram of heroin. Not like the old days when a child molester could look forward to having a mop inserted in his bottom and then be flogged to within an inch of his pathetic life.’
*
‘POLICE informers, crown witnesses, child killers and molesters openly running about the jails of the nation without a care in the world, and some of them swaggering about like gangsters … it’s enough to make you sick.’