The first thing people noticed about Mark “Chopper” Read was his ears.
Or rather, what was missing from them.
The tops were gone.
Sliced off.
A permanent reminder of one of the strangest acts in Australian criminal history.
According to the legend, he had cut them off himself.
Not for money.
Not for revenge.
Not even to escape prison entirely.
Just to get transferred to a different section of prison.
The story sounded insane.
Which was exactly why people loved it.
Because nothing about Chopper Read ever sounded ordinary.
That was the secret to his success.
Long before social media.
Long before influencers.
Long before reality television turned criminals into celebrities.
Mark Brandon Read understood something that would eventually define modern culture.
Attention was currency.
And nobody in Australia spent that currency better than Chopper.
The problem was that almost everything people thought they knew about him came from Chopper himself.
And Chopper was one of the most unreliable narrators who ever lived.
That didn’t stop millions of people from buying his books.
Watching his interviews.
Attending his stage shows.
Or quoting his stories as though they were historical fact.
Because whether the stories were true was almost beside the point.
The stories were entertaining.
And Chopper understood entertainment better than most professional performers.
The strange reality is that if Mark Brandon Read had lived a different life, he might have become a comedian.
Or an actor.
Or a writer.
Instead, he became one of Australia’s most famous criminals.
Or at least one of its most famous storytellers.
Born in Melbourne in 1954, Chopper’s childhood was troubled almost from the beginning.
He spent much of his early life in institutions.
His parents struggled.
Particularly his father, whose violence would leave deep scars.
The family belonged to the Seventh-day Adventist church.
His mother was intensely religious.
His childhood was chaotic.
By his teenage years, authorities had already labeled him a problem.
What today might have been diagnosed as behavioral disorders or ADHD was often treated very differently in the Australia of the 1960s.
Difficult children were frequently institutionalized.
Sent away.
Removed from their families.
Placed into environments that often created more problems than they solved.
For many young offenders, juvenile detention became an education in crime.
Not rehabilitation.
Not guidance.
Education.
Young offenders learned from older offenders.
Violence rewarded status.
Intimidation created power.
Fear became currency.
The lessons stayed with them.
And few students absorbed those lessons more completely than Mark Read.
By his twenties, he was already moving through Melbourne’s criminal underworld.
Not as a master criminal.
Not as a gang leader.
More as a street-level enforcer.
A thug.
A hustler.
A man learning that intimidation could be profitable.
Especially if directed toward other criminals.
Chopper eventually developed a version of himself that he loved presenting to the public.
A sort of outlaw Robin Hood.
A criminal who preyed on criminals.
A man who robbed drug dealers instead of ordinary people.
A vigilante operating outside the law.
The image was attractive.
The reality was considerably messier.
Because Robin Hood traditionally gives money away.
Chopper preferred keeping it.
His criminal career eventually landed him where so many careers like his ended.
Prison.
And not just any prison.
Pentridge.
One of Australia’s most notorious correctional facilities.
A place that shaped generations of offenders.
A place that became central to the Chopper legend.
A place where storytelling mattered almost as much as survival.
For most people, prison means isolation.
For career criminals, prison often becomes a society of its own.
A strange world with its own rules.
Its own heroes.
Its own villains.
Its own myths.
And its own audience.
That audience mattered.
Because prison offered one thing Chopper loved more than almost anything.
People willing to listen.
Every day inmates walked the yards.
Back and forth.
Hour after hour.
Repeating stories.
Telling tales.
Retelling them.
Improving them.
Editing them.
Sharpening punchlines.
Removing boring details.
Adding dramatic ones.
Stories evolved.
They grew.
They became legends.
And Chopper became one of their greatest collectors.
The hinged truth about Mark Read wasn’t that he was the most dangerous criminal in prison.
It was that he was arguably the best storyteller.
Over time, he absorbed stories from dozens of inmates.
Armed robbers.
Murderers.
Drug traffickers.
Career criminals.
Each possessed stories worth telling.
And Chopper listened carefully.
Then something interesting happened.
The stories gradually became his.
Not literally.
Not always intentionally.
But in the retelling, details shifted.
A fight involving someone else became a fight involving Chopper.
An incident witnessed by Chopper became an incident experienced by Chopper.
A rumor became fact.
A fact became legend.
And eventually nobody could tell where reality ended and performance began.
Not even Chopper himself.
Prison also introduced him to violence on a scale most people struggle to imagine.
Pentridge was brutal.
Especially divisions like H Division.
Isolation.
Punishment.
Constant tension.
Violence simmered beneath everything.
In that environment, reputations mattered.
Being perceived as dangerous often mattered more than actually being dangerous.
And nobody understood reputation better than Chopper.
The ear story helped.
So did the scars.
So did the tattoos.
So did the rumors.
Each became part of the performance.
Part of the character.
Part of the brand.
Because long before personal branding became a buzzword, Mark Read was building one.
The irony was that many hardened criminals didn’t necessarily view him the way the public did.
To ordinary Australians, Chopper was becoming an underworld king.
A criminal mastermind.
A feared enforcer.
To some actual criminals, he was something else entirely.
A storyteller.
A promoter.
A guy who talked bigger than he acted.
Some respected him.
Others mocked him.
Many simply rolled their eyes.
The disconnect became even more obvious after his books exploded in popularity.
Titles like Hits and Memories and How to Shoot Friends and Influence People became bestsellers.
Australians couldn’t get enough.
Readers devoured stories of shootings.
Bashings.
Underworld feuds.
Prison politics.
The books felt like secret access to a hidden world.
A backstage pass into criminal Australia.
And whether every story was true barely seemed to matter.
People weren’t buying court transcripts.
They were buying entertainment.
The number that changed everything was one.
One successful book.
That was all it took.
Suddenly Chopper wasn’t merely a former inmate.
He was a celebrity.
A media personality.
A touring attraction.
A brand.
The transformation stunned many people.
How did a man who spent almost all of his adult life in prison become a national icon?
The answer was surprisingly simple.
Australians love characters.
And Chopper was a character.
Larger than life.
Unpredictable.
Funny.
Dangerous enough to be exciting.
Safe enough to be interviewed.
He existed in the perfect middle ground.
Then Hollywood arrived.
Or at least Australia’s version of it.
In 2000, actor Eric Bana starred in the film Chopper.
The performance was extraordinary.
Many people who knew Chopper personally later admitted something remarkable.
Eric Bana was sometimes more convincing as Chopper than Chopper himself.
The film transformed him from national curiosity into cultural legend.
A whole new generation discovered him.
The myth expanded.
The audience grew.
And suddenly Mark Read became larger than his own life.
Yet even while profiting from his reputation, he occasionally surprised people.
One of the strangest examples came after the success of the film.
Many expected him to pocket every dollar.
Instead, he donated substantial profits to the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.
The gesture confused people.
Why would a notorious criminal do something so generous?
The answer depends entirely on who you ask.
Some viewed it as proof that there was genuine goodness beneath the chaos.
Others viewed it as another chapter in the performance.
Another way to control the narrative.
Another way to build the myth.
Perhaps both were true.
Because Chopper seemed to exist permanently between contradictions.
Criminal and entertainer.
Bully and philanthropist.
Villain and folk hero.
Truth and fiction.
The boundaries constantly blurred.
As he grew older, the performances continued.
Speaking tours.
Interviews.
Public appearances.
Stories.
Always stories.
People lined up to hear them.
Many were probably exaggerated.
Some were demonstrably false.
Others contained enough truth to remain uncomfortable.
The audience rarely cared.
What they wanted wasn’t accuracy.
What they wanted was Chopper.
One journalist who spent significant time with him eventually reached an interesting conclusion.
Many criminals tell stories.
Chopper was different.
He stole stories.
Collected them.
Adapted them.
Improved them.
Then performed them.
In some ways, he functioned less like a criminal memoirist and more like an oral historian from a forgotten age.
Stories moved through prison populations.
Changed hands.
Changed details.
Changed owners.
By the time they reached readers, they had become something entirely new.
That process made fact-checking nearly impossible.
But it also made the stories unforgettable.
The hinged realization is what ultimately separates Chopper from almost every other criminal celebrity.
Most criminals become famous because of what they did.
Chopper became famous because of what he said he did.
And that difference matters.
Because his greatest skill wasn’t violence.
It was narrative.
Near the end of his life, Chopper faced cancer.
The disease advanced quickly.
His health deteriorated.
The larger-than-life figure began shrinking.
Even then, the stories continued.
Confessions emerged.
Claims surfaced.
New allegations appeared.
Murders he supposedly committed.
Secrets he supposedly carried.
Many observers remained skeptical.
By then, they understood the pattern.
Attention had always been oxygen for Chopper.
Why stop breathing now?
In 2013, Mark “Chopper” Read died.
The headlines were enormous.
Tributes poured in.
Criticism followed.
Arguments erupted.
The same debate that had followed him for decades continued after his death.
Who exactly was Mark Read?
A violent criminal?
A manipulative opportunist?
A damaged child who never escaped his past?
A gifted storyteller?
A folk hero?
A fraud?
The uncomfortable answer may be all of the above.
Perhaps that’s why Australia remains fascinated by him.
Not because he was the toughest criminal.
Not because he was the smartest.
Not because he was the most dangerous.
Because he understood something fundamental about human nature.
People love stories.
Especially stories about outlaws.
Especially stories that make ordinary life seem boring by comparison.
And nobody told those stories better than Mark “Chopper” Read.
Whether they were true or not.
