Mark "Chopper" Read

Lore & Background

Read was born in Melbourne to Keith Read, an army veteran, and a devout Seventh-day Adventist mother. He was bullied at school, beaten by his father, molested as a child, and made a ward of the state by age 14. As a teenager, he was placed in mental institutions and claimed to have undergone electroshock therapy. He became leader of the Surrey Road gang and began his criminal career robbing drug dealers, later graduating to kidnapping and torturing underworld figures, often using a blowtorch or bolt cutters to remove victims' toes. Between ages 20 and 38, he spent only 13 months outside prison, convicted of armed robbery, firearm offences, assault, arson, impersonating a police officer, and kidnapping. While in Pentridge Prison's H division, he launched a prison war with Jimmy Loughnan, leading the 'Overcoat Gang.' Read had a fellow inmate cut off both his ears to be transferred to the mental health wing, claiming it was to avoid an ambush or to win a bet. In 1978, his associate Amos Atkinson held 30 people hostage demanding Read's release; the siege ended when Atkinson's mother hit him with her handbag. Read later attempted to kidnap a judge to secure Loughnan's release, receiving a 13-year sentence. He was stabbed by the Overcoat Gang, losing several feet of intestine. In the 1990s, he had a rivalry with Alphonse Gangitano. In 1992, he was convicted of shooting Sidney Collins and sentenced to indefinite detention as a dangerous criminal, though the declaration was later overturned. He was paroled in 1998. Before his death, Read admitted to murdering Collins and claimed involvement in up to 19 killings.

Reader's Guide

Mark 'Chopper' Read remains a controversial figure in Australian popular culture, known for his extreme violence and later transformation into a published author. His semi-autobiographical crime novels sold over 500,000 copies, and his children's book *Hooky the Cripple* faced attempts at a ban. Read's life inspired the 2000 film *Chopper*, which cemented his status as a cultural anti-hero. He also appeared in public service advertisements against drunk driving and domestic violence, released a rap album, and toured with stage shows. Despite his notoriety, he declared bankruptcy in 2007. Read's legacy is complex: he is remembered both as a brutal criminal who admitted to multiple murders and as a self-mythologizing author who blurred fact and fiction. His accounts of his own crimes often varied, as seen in his conflicting claims about the number of people he killed. His life and work continue to provoke debate about crime, celebrity, and the Australian underworld.

Did You Know?

• In 1978, a hostage siege demanding Read's release ended when the hostage-taker's mother hit him with her handbag.
• Read's nickname 'Chopper' came from a cartoon dog in *Yakky Doodle*, not from his criminal activities.
• He admitted to murdering Sidney Collins in a 2013 *60 Minutes* interview, expressing no remorse.

A Childhood Forged in Violence and Neglect

Mark Brandon Read entered the world on 17 November 1954 in Melbourne, the son of Keith Read, a World War II and army veteran of Irish heritage, and a mother whose faith in the Seventh-day Adventist church shaped the household. The family settled in the working-class suburbs of Collingwood and Fitzroy, where young Mark's schooling became a daily ordeal. He described himself as the target of relentless bullying, claiming that by his fifteenth birthday he had found himself on the receiving end of several hundred physical confrontations. Home offered little refuge either; his father, acting on his mother's suggestion, subjected him to frequent beatings. Beyond the visible violence, Read later disclosed that he had been sexually molested during his childhood. The cumulative weight of these experiences led the state to take him into its care as a ward by the time he was fourteen. As a teenager he was shuffled between several mental institutions, where he underwent electroshock therapy. These formative years of abuse, institutionalisation, and chronic violence laid the groundwork for the combative, rule-defying identity he would carry into adulthood.

King of the Streets and Warden of the Yard

Read's criminal trajectory began in the Prahran district, where he targeted drug dealers operating out of massage parlours before escalating to far more brutal enterprises: abducting and torturing figures from Melbourne's underworld, sometimes using a blowtorch or bolt cutters to remove victims' toes as leverage for payment. By his late twenties he had already accumulated convictions for armed robbery, firearm offences, assault, arson, impersonating a police officer, and kidnapping, spending a staggering total of only thirteen months outside prison between the ages of twenty and thirty-eight. His most notorious chapter unfolded inside Pentridge Prison's H division in the late 1970s, where he waged a prolonged war against Jimmy Loughnan's faction. His own crew, the Overcoat Gang, concealed weapons beneath long coats worn in every season and carried out several hundred violent acts against a numerically superior rival group. In one extreme act, Read had a fellow inmate sever both of his ears so he could be temporarily transferred out of H division. The moniker "Chopper," however, predated all of this, tracing back to a cartoon dog from the children's show Yakky Doodle that he adored as a boy.

The Collins Case and a Life Behind Bars

In 1992, Read was convicted of shooting Sidney Michael Edward Collins in the chest inside his own car, parked in the driveway of Collins' home in Evandale, Tasmania. The bullet was recovered from the vehicle's back seat, and Collins identified Read as the shooter. Pleading not guilty, Read was found guilty of an unlawful act intended to cause bodily harm—a charge reduced from attempted murder—and declared a "dangerous criminal" with indefinite detention. Two appeals, in 1993 and 1994, were both dismissed. It was not until July 1997 that his lawyer Hodgman succeeded in overturning the dangerous-criminal designation, and Read received parole in early 1998. Collins, however, had vanished in suspicious circumstances and remained on Australia's Missing Persons list. In his final broadcast interview, aired on 60 Minutes on 20 October 2013, Read admitted to killing Collins and expressed no remorse, dismissing the victim as "stupid" for allowing Read to point a gun at him twice. In that same sitting he referenced the 1971 shooting of union leader Desmond Costello, the 1974 death of Reginald Isaacs, and the 1987 killing of Siam Ozerkam, while claiming involvement in the deaths of nineteen people and the attempted murder of eleven others.

The Man Behind the Myth: Author, Performer, and Public Figure

After his release, Read reinvented himself as a writer, penning a series of semi-autobiographical crime novels alongside children's books, and lending his story to the 2000 feature film Chopper, which brought his life to a wide cinema audience. He also became a curious and sometimes controversial public figure. In 2001 he appeared in a television advertisement for the Pedestrian Council of Australia, using his notoriety to warn viewers about the dangers of drunk driving. In 2005 he toured the country with comedian Mark "Jacko" Jackson, performing a series of live shows under the title I'm Innocent. His media appearances, however, were not always measured. In 1998 he showed up drunk on a live television program hosted by Elle McFeast and, to the fury of many viewers, recounted in colourful detail the story of feeding a man into a cement mixer. In an April 2013 interview with the New York Times, he attempted to recalibrate his violent résumé, quipping that he had probably killed "about four or seven, depending on how you look at it." Read died on 9 October 2013, just weeks after his final 60 Minutes interview, leaving behind a legacy that oscillated between literary curiosity, infamy, and self-mythology.