Hits and Memories: Chopper 2 Read Online Free PDF

For years I refused to believe it, but a man who won’t face reality is a fool, so I must face it.
    I have tried so hard to change, to leave the sordid life I have lived, to turn over a new leaf, but shit happens. And I always end up cold as a stone in a cell only fit for an animal. The result always seems to be the same.
    If my life is worth anything it is as an example to others of what not to do and how not to live. There is no glory in crime, just blood, tears and misery.
    Some people look up to me. I think there are fools, but they can go home to their warm beds and their families and I am left in hell.
    In spite of my smiling face and outwardly happy nature I have cried a sea of tears. The only reason I don’t suicide is that it would please too many arseholes.
    But I often ask myself, why do I bother?
    *
    A YOUNG crim in Risdon Prison said to me, ‘Chopper, you’re a living legend.’ I thought about that. Yes, I thought, I’m a ‘living legend’ who blew every penny at the race track and casino and gave it away to sob stories and hard luck tales. I’m a living legend who, after 17 years in jail, got out and together with the woman he loved set himself up in a beautiful home full of lovely furniture and things, a large legal gun collection, two cars, a driver, a bodyguard, friends, parties, barbecues, clubs, pubs, racetracks and casinos, fine food and booze.
    My life was looking a million dollars. I may not have had a million dollars — but I lived like a millionaire. All I did when I went out was shake people’s hands and sign people’s books. And, yet, here I sit once more in a prison cell, my life in tatters, and Margaret back in Melbourne.
    In a blood and guts gang war, gun-in-hand situation, I’ve been called a criminal genius. However, in normal living of day-to-day life outside, living like normal people live, I am a social retard. And in money matters I’m a total fool.
    It broke my heart to see Margaret walk out the prison gate in tears. She loves me. But after ten years she couldn’t – and I wouldn’t want her to – go through this bullshit again. That’s why I pleaded not guilty on the charge of attempted murder. However, win, lose or draw, I am guilty of putting myself in a foolish and stupid position, which has put me back inside a prison cell. After a lifetime of reading men and studying tactics and strategy, I fell victim to the ‘smiling face’ routine myself – and trusted false, fairweather friends. What a fool I am.
    To anybody young or silly enough to think otherwise, the criminal world is a not a wonderful fairy tale world of money and magic. It is not populated by a fine, fair-minded body of men. And while I may offend the feelings of some so-called friends and so-called experts, they should know that what I have revealed about the underworld has come from the heart. You can fool some of the people some of time, but in the long run people won’t keep spending money on a book that talks shit. And like it or not, for better or worse, I don’t talk shit.
    Here I sit in Risdon Prison, Tasmania, otherwise known as the ‘Pink Palace’, facing many more years in jail.
    I can’t be trusted with money. I either spend it, gamble it, or give it away to others, as I am a natural sucker for a sob story. I did try, but it seems that in spite of my best efforts my life is what it is and I am who I am, and whether I am innocent or guilty I can’t seem to wash the blood from my hands . . .
    As Oscar Wilde lay dying, a priest asked him, ‘Do you renounce Satan?’ Wilde replied: ‘I hardly think this is the time to be making enemies.’
    I don’t know why that thought about Wilde came to me, other than he did some of his best work while in prison, spent a fortune while he was alive yet died a pauper. But don’t forget, the opera ain’t over ’till the fat lady sings.
    As I have maintained from the beginning in this shooting case, it was a set-up. Not the police, mind you. Too