After the death of Australia’s most colourful, thoroughly frightening and perverse criminal Chopper Read two weeks ago, 60 Minutes have aired Read’s chilling final TV interview.
In the interview aired last night with presenter Tara Brown, Read brazenly confessed to four murders – a surprisingly candid confession considering the 58 year old had never, among his repertoire of virtually every other crime, been convicted for murder. Even so, the reality of Read’s sordid past certainly isn’t shocking, considering that he confessed with similar candor earlier this year in the New York Times. “Look, honestly, I haven’t killed that many people,” Read said, vaguely settling on, “probably about four or seven, depending on how you look at it.”
However, Read spilled precious details of each of his murders, telling Tara Brown that his first murder came at the disturbingly tender age of 17. The murder in question left Desmond Costello a casualty of the “waterfront wars” of the 70s, shot and beat by the young Chopper Read. In his lax approach to detailing abhorrent crimes, Mark Read said he didn’t have “the faintest idea” as to why he killed him.
Read continued to boast the murders that studded his life as an Australian outlaw, telling of his second murder in 1974 – a prison kill against the convicted sex offender and child murderer Reginald Edward Isaacs, justifying the murder by saying, “Anyone that would kill a child in such a manner didn’t deserve to live”. Read’s third murder was against Siam ”Sammy the Turk” Ozerkam, a shot to the face which Read confessed was wrongly charged against him as “self defense.”
Read’s fourth murder was in 2002, ending a long feud between him and Sidney Michael Collins. Telling Brown of his ambush on Collins, Read recounted the incident, “[Then] I got him, I hopped in his car, going back to his place, bang bang bang. I shot him the last time with his gun.”
Read stood sternly by his no regrets, no remorse attitude in the interview, closely aligning with his passionate spoken word performance in September. “To the human filth I have bashed, belted, iron barred, axed, shot,
stabbed, knee capped, set on fire and driven to their graves, I can only
quote from the motto of the French Foreign Legion, ‘Je Ne Regrette
Rien’ … I REGRET NOTHING.”
Watch Chopper Read’s final interview at 60 Minutes.
Via SMH.
