MARK Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read is a self-confessed killer and standover man who may spend the rest of his life in Tasmania’s Risdon Prison for a crime he declares he did not commit. He was sentenced to an indefinite term ‘at the Governor’s Pleasure’ in 1993 over a shooting near Launceston the previous year.
Read has spent most of his adult life in prisons – including more than ten years in Pentridge’s notorious H Division. After his release from Pentridge in 1990 he became a best-selling author, publishing three volumes about his life and crimes.
Read’s success sparked outrage, and even threats to legislate to stop criminals from profiting from writing autobiographies. He sought permission from prison authorities to write a fourth book, but it was officially denied. He was further angered when denied permission to marry his fiance, Mary-Ann Hodge. He threatened to take the issue to the United Nations but then decided to revert to type and smuggle out material for the book under the authorities’ noses. Chopper Read now faces punishment, including possible solitary confinement, for refusing to buckle to the order to stop writing.
Read says himself: ‘The last bloke who got his jollies burning books was a little Nazi called Adolf, and it didn’t get him too far.’
The criminal predator who abducted and tortured drug dealers for a living, maintained he’d retired from crime when he went to Tasmania in 1990. He could have lived a comfortable life with the royalties from his books, but virtually all the money has been spent on a lengthy legal campaign to have him released. But while he has lost his liberty and his money, the irrepressible Read has maintained what he calls his ‘scallywag sense of humor’ and his telling observations of an underworld sub-culture that most people never see.