Hits and Memories: Chopper 2 Read Online Free PDF Page B

many people owed me big money, and I was a bloody easy mark — a scapegoat.
    The fact that the gun was found hidden under a log in my back yard three days after the shooting — when all I had to do, if I knew it was there, was tell Margaret to toss it in the river — proves it was a set-up. After all, I spoke to Margaret five times between the time of the shooting and the time they found the gun.
    I am naturally shocked at Trent and the victim, Sid. However, people continue to shock us all the time, don’t they?
    I’m starting to wonder if I will spend the next 20 years of my life being dobbed in, loaded up and set up for this, that and the other by various nitwits who see me as the perfect scapegoat. Tasmanian police only have to hear my name mentioned and I feel they suspect the worst. I was told by a Tasmanian detective that my name gets mentioned in police stations regularly by individuals who have been arrested, and who then try to offer various wild stories in relation to Chopper Read to try and lighten their own load.
    The Tasmanian police force is not Scotland Yard, by a long chalk. There is a small town mentality running through Tasmanian thinking — and a naive logic. If the ‘smoking gun’ is found in your letter box then you must be guilty. I’m sure it’s because of the book that they brought in the heavyweight himself, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Damian Bugg, to do the prosecuting on a grievous bodily harm charge.
    About two months after I was arrested for the shooting of my former friend Sidney Collins, a local chap by the name of Ronald Jarvis went missing, believed murdered.
    A month later the police arrived at Risdon Jail to interview me in relation to the Jarvis matter. Police had been given information that I was either behind the Jarvis incident, had ordered it done, or knew the people involved.
    I’d never heard of the fellow. Dropping my name in police stations over various crimes has become a statewide pastime.
    When a Launceston man was beaten with a baseball bat and relieved of $6000, I was under suspicion. Just because the guy was a suspected drug dealer, I was the bloke in the frame. When another so-called toughie was seen with facial scars and a badly cut face, it was rumored that I had pistol whipped him. Launceston is a large country town and so is Hobart. Rumors, gossip and whispers have become a way of life here.
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    On May 14, 1992, police seized from Read’s Launceston home a cache of arms. They took a Ruger 10-shot .22 carbine, a Savage .22 bolt action rifle, a Stirling .22 bolt action, a Sportco .22 bolt action, a .303 rifle, a Stirling .22, an Ace .22, a Baikal .22, a Boito single barrel, sawn off 12 gauge shotgun, assorted ammunition, two rifle scopes, a pair of nunchakus and a revolver shoulder holster.
    WHILE on the subject of how I have been treated down here, it’s interesting to look at the property seizure receipt which lists the weapons taken from my home in Launceston after I was arrested.
    Apart from my Ruger carbine and Mark III .303 they only listed the lightweight weapons I used as wall decorations.
    It seems this bloody Sid Collins fiasco has cost me a lot. The amount of guns I have lost over my lifetime would arm a small military unit. It’s a crying bloody shame.
    I have plenty more guns, but I did love the particular range of weapons taken, and I feel quite sad at their loss. I wonder if they will ever be returned.
    You can have nothing in your wallet, and nothing in the bank, but if you don’t own a gun, you’re really broke. Take my money, take my wife, you may even try to take my life — but leave my guns alone.
    On my solid brass belt buckle there are the words: ‘I will give up my gun when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers.’
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    IT seems to me that my whole life has been a battle, fighting the never ending forces that pit themselves against me. A good fight is a delight, I just love to wage war. A mental and physical battle against