Mayhem

by Matthew Thompson

  I dropped Chris at Bundaberg airport in the red transit van. On the way back to the property I rolled the van. I rang Chris in Melbourne and he was very angry and threatened to kill me. I was very frightened and decided to get away from him and so I got a lift to Southport where I picked up the BMW. At this time I stayed with ‘Mary’.

  Whilst I was staying at Mary’s place – it would only have been about a week – I found out that Chris had been arrested in Melbourne. During that week Chris spoke to me and apologised and told me to go back to Bundaberg and collect the handguns.

  I did what he directed as I knew his temper and he was coming back. I returned to Bundaberg in the BMW, picked up about three or four handguns which had been in the biscuit tin. I put the guns in the tin in a backpack in the car and returned to Mary’s place.

  I was frightened that the police were after me and also frightened of Chris so I decided to take off to Sydney. Before I left I contacted a guy called ‘Ralph’ in Melbourne. He was the only person I knew to contact – he was an associate of Chris. I was scared about having the guns and Ralph flew to Coolangatta and he then accompanied me to Sydney and I gave him the guns. These handguns from the property in Bundaberg are the same guns found at Pittwater Road on the 16th of September 1992 by the police.

  I sold the BMW in Sydney couple of days after getting there for $3500. I decided to cut Chris out of my life and start a new life for myself.

  I wrote a letter for Chris which I sent via a friend as I didn’t want him to know where I was. I got a job in Sydney as a waitress and ended up living in Peakhurst with ‘Jane’, the girl who ran the business. It was about nine months since I had any contact with Chris.

  Out of the blue I received a telephone call at home one morning. It was Chris. I asked him where he was, he told me that he was in Sydney at the central railway station. He just told me that he was out and to come and get me. I didn’t think anything at the time.

  I took Chris back to Jane’s and introduced them. When I picked up Chris he told me that he had escaped. I was very frightened. I decided that I didn’t want Jane and her boyfriend to get involved with Chris so I suggested that he stay with a male friend who knew nothing about Chris. I then borrowed Jane’s car and drove to Pittwater Road, Gladesville, to ‘Bill’s’. Chris told me I think on this day that he had arranged for my white Sigma to be transported up from Melbourne. I introduced Chris to Bill but used another name.

  I stayed overnight with Chris at Bill’s place and the next morning I went with Chris to some truck depot out Fairfield Way where we picked up my car. We returned Jane’s car before returning to Gladesville. Chris left me and Bill’s place. Bill didn’t have a telephone and we went and used a public phone, came back and he told me he was going out. Chris left me for a few hours, taking my Sigma. This car was unregistered at that time but had been registered in my name in Melbourne. It was a white Sigma station wagon.

  When Chris returned Bill wasn’t home and he brought into the bedroom we were staying in a number of firearms and ammunition. I recognised the handguns from Bundaberg that I had last seen when I gave them to Ralph. There was also a number of other large guns. He put them in the bedroom that we were using. Some of the larger guns were still in boxes. I asked him where they had come from and he told me he’d brought them up from Melbourne in a car after the escape. I questioned him about the car as he had told me previously that he had caught the train but he didn’t elaborate and I assumed he must have had a stolen car hidden somewhere.

  The morning of 14 September 1992 – I recall this date as it was the day of the robbery – Chris went for a walk in the morning, returning with the red Laser hatchback. I didn’t ask where it came from, it was obviously stolen. It was quite early in the morning, about 8 o’clock, that Chris got the car. I never asked what or why things happened as I was too scared of him. I thought that I had got him out of my life. But he was all controlling and rarely let me alone. I thought of going to the police but knew that I was in trouble myself.

  When Chris returned with the Laser he told me to get up and dressed and that we were going for a drive. He ordered me to drive the car to Warringah Mall. I was wearing a white t-shirt and cream pants and Chris was wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I cannot recall if the ignition was pulled out or if I used keys to start the car but I followed Chris’ direction and drove to Warringah Mall. I recall that I thought at the time that the car belonged to someone involved with the church as there were tapes in the car which I tested and it was all religious hymns.

  After we left the mall he directed me to Chatswood. We drove around and then he told me to park in the Target car park. It was a multi-storey car park and I parked in a secluded spot. Chris said put a carry bag on the backseat. I didn’t know what was in the bag but when I saw it there and he directed me to Warringah Mall I thought he was thinking of doing another robbery at some time.

  After parking the car Chris told me we were going for a walk. We went to the Chatswood Mall. I waited for him, buying a drink, whilst he wandered off for a while. When he returned after about five minutes he told me to go to the Commonwealth Bank in the mall which was nearby and ask about opening an account. I remember that he also said words to the effect of, ‘Go right down the back and check out the back door and see if it’s open or shut.’ Just like he’d asked me to do at Warringah earlier that morning.

  I then went into the bank with Chris. I didn’t ask him why. We walked in together and Chris sat down at one of the desks and I went further along the tellers stopping towards the end and enquired about opening an account. I remember being told to go to enquiries. I then walked along a bit further. I think there might have been a partition from getting up to the back door. I remember looking at the door and then I rejoined Chris and we walked out of the bank along a laneway down the side, back to where the car was parked. I told Chris that I thought the door was locked.

  I returned to the car and got in and Chris picked up the bag from the back seat. He said, ‘I won’t be long.’ He then left me. There was a pillar behind me and I lost sight of him.

  I was pretty frightened as I realised that Chris was going to try and rob the bank. I didn’t think he was going to do it straight away. I sat in the driver’s seat waiting for him as he told me to wait. He was only gone a very short time, a matter of minutes. When Chris returned running to the car, I saw him at the passenger’s door and could see that he was wearing a disguise – he had a black curly wig on and I think a cap on top. He was wearing wraparound ski glasses and a large men’s green shirt and was carrying a gun which was cut down with two barrels. He was also carrying the carry bag. You know, one of those shortened firearms. He screamed at me to drive and to head back to Bill’s.

  Chris had got into the rear passenger’s seat and was stripping off. I had to go around to get to the exit and by the time that I got to pay the woman Chris had jumped into the front passenger seat and was wearing the same clothing as before he had left the car.

  I was quite panicked and I recall turning left out of the car park and that a four-wheel drive police car came up behind me with the sirens going. It reached nearly my car when it suddenly turned around the other way. I was quite panicked and I don’t recall exactly what happened next. Chris was pretty quiet when the police car was behind us. I presumed the gun was in the back seat as he didn’t seem to have it in the front.

  On the drive back to Bill’s, Chris told me that he had shot out the back door. He also told me that there were a lot of people in the bank and that we hadn’t got much. He told me that one of the tellers tried to give him five dollar notes and that he had told the teller that he didn’t want that ‘shit’. He mentioned something about opening a bottom drawer.

  We returned home. I was pretty dazed for Chris having involved me again. Chris went into the bedroom with a carry bag. I was nervy, shaking. I tried to relax, made a coffee and turned on the TV. I think Bill was home and I was just making conversation with him.

  Later tha
t afternoon Chris walked up to the local shops in Pittwater Road. I went and did some grocery shopping with Chris. I recall that it had a Liquorland attached to the grocery shop. I remember him buying Jim Beam, the green label one. The first I saw of any money was when Chris pulled out his wallet and paid for the groceries and liquor. I believe that he paid the bill with $20 notes. Chris also went to the post office and newsagent and bought envelopes. We then returned back to Bill’s and I recall him giving Bill some money for rent.

  I remember watching the 6 o’clock news. Chris turned it on and there was an item on the robbery at Chatswood. When it came on, he looked at me and grinned. A short time after this Chris and I went into Oxford Street in Sydney. Chris had told me to drive the red Laser and I drove down a side street off Oxford Street. Chris told me to park the car. We walked up Oxford Street to the post office and I rang Jane who was expecting us for dinner. I told her we wouldn’t be coming and she was cranky. Then we went and had dinner at an Italian restaurant.

  The next day we went into the city and then looking around car yards for another car. Chris suggested to me that I sell the Sigma, as it was in my name. On 16 September 1992 Chris and I left the Pittwater Road address. I was driving the Sigma and we were on our way to St Peters to sell the car. Bill was going to follow us but he forgot his wallet so I pulled over to wait for him. This was only a short distance after leaving Bill’s place and that’s when we were arrested.

  I am very frightened of Chris and I am prepared to assist police as much as possible as long as I am given adequate protection. He has threatened my life on a number of occasions, even holding a gun to me and I know that he is capable of carrying out his threats. I don’t want anything more to do with Chris and I am making a life for myself.

  50. ON JULIAN KNIGHT, HODDLE STREET MASS MURDERER

  Chris dislikes Julian Knight, an inmate serving time for his 1987 killing of seven people and wounding of nineteen on the August night that he decided to shoot at traffic, bystanders and police around Hoddle Street, Clifton Hill.

  Chris has lived alongside Knight, initially in H Division of Pentridge, where Chopper Read had let the mass shooter join his club, the Overcoat Gang.

  CHRIS:

  He’s a fucking rat, a little coward, a fucking rat. He’s lucky he’s alive, he really is.

  I had a few verbals with him down in H Division. He was in Chopper’s gang, basically.

  After Chopper left there was Slime Minogue [aka Craig Minogue, one of the Russell Street police station car-bombers]; Mr Stinky [rapist and double murderer Raymond Edmunds], Greg Brazel [serial killer, arsonist and former soldier], Olaf Dietrich [aka Hugo Rich, a con man, armed robber, drug mule, and later a murderer], and Dane Sweetman [Neo-Nazi and murderer]. And Julian Knight.

  They were the skunks, you know. The Mutley Crew, I used to call them.

  What’s happened is Julian Knight starts getting smart one day in the yards and I say, ‘Hey don’t worry mate I’ll catch ya.’

  Within a couple of days they were doing a movement in the wing and at the bottom of the wing there’s a tunnel that used to lead out to the yards. The first, closest yards on the right-hand side were the shower yards and everybody had to use those shower yards. Whoever was in the yard at the time would go there.

  They were escorting him out and I spotted him. I jumped over the screw’s desk, landed at the top of the stairs that lead down to the tunnel and ran about eight leaps, or bounds, on top of him. I’ve gone fucking bang with a big right hand to the back of the head – knocked him to the ground.

  He’s sprawled, he didn’t know what the fuck hit him. I’m standing over the top of him and you could see he’s dazed, like, ‘What the fuck?!?’ He didn’t see it coming, you know. And I say, ‘Hey, won’t get fucking smart now, will ya, ya little cunt.’ He’s lucky I didn’t start jumping on his fucking head. ‘Got something to say now, fuckhead?’ That’s when the screws jumped on top of me. After that it’s on my file, there’s now alerts, and now I can’t ever be where he is.

  He was in Port Phillip Prison’s back units one time and so I couldn’t get out of management – they weren’t prepared to put me in the back units with him being there. I can’t get anywhere near him. He’s just a coward, just a weedy little fucking rat. A little coward. Shooting fucking innocent people: women, older people, anyone on the road. And when he come up against the police he shit himself, surrendered himself, handed in the gun and cowed like a fucking little coward rat.

  A lot of people hate him.

  Well, more so before. Now they tolerate him, accept him. The system’s totally different now. Before inmates used to have more morals and principles. The drugs have really fucked things up: eroded the ethics, depleted the gene pool. It’s depleted, mate, from all the ice and all the other stuff, the bupe [Buprenorphine]: very similar to methadone but in tablet form. They’re all on that, and if they’re not on that they’re on the ice.

  Drugs have fucked everything. Julian Knight wouldn’t have lasted before. They’ve let him out into certain sections of certain jails, controlled areas where he’s under supervision, where the screws control that area with a lot of informers, and there’s no real threats to him. Anyone that poses a threat to him they remove or they remove him. He’s basically a protection prisoner. He’s safe.

  He’s safe and he doesn’t give a fuck about the people he shot. He’s a fucking rat.

  BEER WITH BARRY

  One sunbaked afternoon in Sunshine North, I crack a beer with Barry, who can’t help but know a thing or two about the underworld and prison life.

  Barry shares Chris’ assessment of Mr Hoddle Street: ‘You’re a weak cunt if you gotta hide from a distance and kill people with a gun.’

  ‘But people want him in their club?’ I say. Yet what a club. Something that’s puzzling me is that within jail’s pecking orders, I would have assumed that Knight would rank pretty low.

  ‘How did he get to be in Chopper Read’s gang? How does he fit with the others?’

  ‘Well, Chopper Read is dead but the rest are alive. You’d have to ask Fat Minogue or Greg Brazel,’ says Barry, who’s not really into gossip. ‘Both of those despise my brother because my brother absolutely hates them.’

  I nod, wondering if, since Chris got dumped in endless solitary with too much time on his hands and no option of face-to-face blueing, these notorious killers have copped onslaughts of what Chris calls – with a chuckle – his ‘poison pen’ habit. Some very hardcore prisoners have eventually had to shuffle off to management to ask that Chris not be allowed to send them letters anymore, so inflammatory, condescending, and sometimes deranged they can be.

  ‘Like Chopper and Minogue actually worked within criminal networks, right, and they act the part,’ I say. ‘Just don’t see how Knight’s like that.’

  ‘He’s not,’ says Barry. ‘But who knows what goes on behind a cell door. Maybe Julian Knight’s a closet faggot. I don’t know. Maybe he was sucking ’em all off, I don’t know. Shit like that happens in there.’

  51. UNCONTROLLABLE

  1993:

  PLANS TO ESCAPE H DIVISION

  CHRIS:

  From here to Badlands and back in three months.

  What a loop: gained everything at the start; now I’m holding less than nothing. And another brick [ten years jail] will probably get stacked on top of what I was staring at before.

  I have some fucking good memories from what’s gone down but even they’re fucking with me, partly because each one is served up with potent dose of regret and frustration.

  I’m putting a brave face on it but I am destroyed. I’m this fucking close to losing it. So I don’t want to think too much. Best for now is to zone in and deal with the shit at hand.

  *

  ‘My heart goes out to Christopher Jergens’ mother.’ That’s what Mum said in the newspaper when that other teenage Chris I knew hanged himself. That was, what – 1986? What the fuck? Six fucking years. Maybe H Division really is Hell a
nd there was no other Chris – it was me who hanged himself – or maybe I didn’t survive the stabbing; maybe I didn’t survive the jump; maybe the SOG killed me. And I’m just going to keep waking up here forever.

  I think about the obvious: that we would all leave, right now, never to return, if we weren’t squeezed into the centre of locks and bars and guards and dogs and cages and wire and walls and clubs and gas and guns. It takes an army to keep this solja down.

  Man, too much shit in my head. It’s spinning me out. At night I can’t stop thinking about getting woken up in the dark by black shadows rushing at me with shotguns. And then I think about that very fucking thought itself as a kind of black shadow rushing me. And then I think about black shadows rushing at me from everywhere, all hell-bent on my destruction.

  Maybe I should give pot a miss when I get out.

  But first things first: getting out.

  *

  Okay, enough bullshit. Take stock and make plans.

  I’m in H Division which is adjacent to A, a section for well-behaved inmates (although more than a little blood gets spilt there too). But its classification means that A isn’t screwed down so tight.

  The opportunity that they have next door to get their hands on necessaries is, as I’ve discovered, also an opportunity for me, because if you look closely at the cells up the very end of H Division, the old sand grout between the bluestones is crumbly. With a little careful handiwork to enlarge the gaps and holes in the grout, slim but useful items of contraband could be passed from A to H. Items such as hacksaw blades.

  But to what end?

  Prisoners are locked in their cells from the afternoon through to morning. Overnight there is a solitary officer stationed in his box, armed with a .38 calibre handgun.

  My intention is to cut the lock of my door and then to call the guard to my cell during the night. The bloke in the next cell will have removed one of the big bluestones between our cells and then come through. We’ll both have knives and be in position to overpower the guard on his arrival.