Mark "Chopper" Read

Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (17 November 1954 – 9 October 2013) was an Australian convicted criminal, gang member and author.

Read wrote a series of semi-autobiographical fictional crime novels and children's books.

Read was born on 17 November 1954 to a former army and World War II veteran father Keith Read of Irish descent and a mother who was a devout Seventh-day Adventist.

He grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood and Fitzroy.

He was bullied at school, saying that by the age of 15 he had been on the "losing end of several hundred fights" and that his father, usually on his mother's recommendation, beat him often as a child.

Read had been molested as a child.

Read was made a ward of the state by the age of 14 and was placed in several mental institutions as a teenager, where he stated he underwent Electroshock therapy.

When he was still young, Read was already an accomplished street fighter and the leader of the Surrey Road gang, which had a notorious reputation for violence.

He began his criminal career by robbing drug dealers based in massage parlours in the Prahran area.

He later graduated to kidnapping and torturing members of the criminal underworld, often using a blowtorch or bolt cutters to remove the toes of his victims as an incentive for them to produce enough money so that Read would leave them alive.

Read spent only 13 months outside prison between the ages of 20 and 38, having been convicted of crimes including armed robbery, firearm offences, assault, arson, impersonating a police officer and kidnapping.

While in Pentridge Prison's H division in the late 1970s, Read launched a prison war.

"The Overcoat Gang" wore long coats all year round to conceal their weapons, were involved in several hundred acts of violence against a larger gang during this period.

Around this time, Read had a fellow inmate cut both of his ears off to be able to leave H division temporarily.

In his biography, Read claimed this was to avoid an ambush by other inmates by being transferred to the mental health wing.

His later works state that he did so to "win a bet".

The nickname "Chopper" was given to him long before this, from a childhood cartoon character.

In 1978, while Read was incarcerated, his associate Amos Atkinson held 30 people hostage at The Waiters Restaurant in Melbourne while demanding Read's release.

After shots were fired, the siege was lifted when Atkinson's mother, in her dressing gown, arrived at the restaurant to act as go-between.

Atkinson's mother hit him over the head with her handbag and told him to "stop being so stupid".

Atkinson then surrendered.

Read was stabbed by members of his gang in a sneak attack when they felt that his plan to cripple every other inmate in the division to win the gang war in one fell swoop was going too far.

Another theory is that James "Jimmy" Loughnan, a friend of Read, with Patrick "Blue" Barnes, wished to benefit from a contract put on Read's head by the Painters' and Dockers' Union.

Read lost several feet of intestine in the attack.

Read was serving a 16½-year sentence after attacking a judge to get Loughnan released from prison.

In the TV series Tough Nuts, Read also spoke of his mid-1980s to early 1990s rivalry with Alphonse Gangitano.

Read explained that he had a disagreement with Gangitano regarding an elderly neighbourhood hero, whom Gangitano admired.

It is alleged by Read that Gangitano burst open a toilet cubicle door with a number of associates and began a serious assault on Read, who made his escape but not before smearing his faeces into Gangitano's face.

Loughnan later died in the Jika Jika fire at Pentridge in 1987.

In 1992, Read was convicted of shooting Sidney Michael Edward Collins in the chest.

The incident took place in Read's car, which was in the driveway of Collins' residence at Evandale, Tasmania.

The bullet was recovered from the back seat of the vehicle and Collins named Read as the shooter.

Pleading not guilty, Read was convicted of committing an unlawful act intended to cause bodily harm, a downgraded charge from attempted murder and sentenced as a "dangerous criminal" to indefinite detention.

An appeal against the conviction was rejected by the Court of Criminal Appeal on 24 August 1993.

A second appeal against the sentence was argued on 28 February 1994, with Michael Hodgman, QC; Anita Betts appearing for Read and Tasmanian Director of Public Prosecutions, Damian Bugg, QC and Catherine Geason appearing for the Crown, on the grounds that it was manifestly excessive and also specifically in respect of the "dangerous criminal" declaration.

The second appeal was rejected on 10 March 1994.

In a subsequent review of the "dangerous criminal" declaration on 18 July 1997, Hodgman succeeded in overturning the declaration.

Read was granted parole early in 1998 and regained his freedom.

The 2000 film Chopper is based on his life.

In 2002, Read was again questioned over the disappearance of Sidney Collins, who is still on the Australian Missing Person list after going missing in suspicious circumstances.