Episode 262: Mark Chopper Read: The Ultimate Aussie Criminal
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On this episode of the Sofa King Podcast, we talk about the most famous prisoner in all of Australia, Mark “Chopper” Read. Chopper Read had claimed to have killed 19 people at his height, and he had done everything from kidnap a judge to cutting the toes off of heroin dealers. He ran a street gang and a prison gang, was involved with the mob, and lived with a strange sense of honor that saw him only killing and harming drug dealers, mobsters, and scumbags. Ultimately, he became a bestselling author, rapper, painter, and stand-up comedian before he died in 2013.
Chopper Read’s past was nothing but abuse. He had a mentally disturbed father (a PTSD World War Two vet) and a crazy religious mother. Allegedly, he was sexually abused when he was five, lit fires, got in fights, and was declared mentally ill three times when he was still young. At the age of 17, he took his first contract killing and shot a union boss in the face outside of a bar.
By his twenties, Chopper was in the worst prison in Australia. Inside, he ran a gang called the “Overcoat Gang,” and he started a prison war to end the flow of drugs in the prison and clean the place up. Eventually, this went too far, and his own gang members tried to kill him to collect a contract on his life. Also, while he was inside, Chopper Read figured out that if he cut his ears off, they would consider him crazy and let him out of the notorious H Division of the prison. He did. So, the earless gang leader kept up his life of crime.
Every time he got released, he was put right back in prison. All the while, he kept taking money from dealers, killing people, and being otherwise crazy. Eventually, he was done in by a bad liver. First, it was liver damage due to Hepatitis C he contracted in prison, and then it was liver cancer. Once he was finally down to only three weeks left to live, he gave a final interview for 60 Minutes in which he confessed four murders nobody ever busted him for. So, which of his crimes seemed legit and which were his famous exaggerations? How did he become a bestselling author? Why did he start filming commercials in Australia? How did he start his life as a stand-up comedian? Was his rap album any good? Listen, laugh, learn.
Chopper Read’s Ghost: Stay till the end for a creepy sexual comment.
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