Mayhem

by Matthew Thompson

So, under investigation for an attempted escape, I’m taken to Pentridge’s H Division.

  34. IN THE ZONE

  1989–91: PENTRIDGE

  CHRIS:

  The prison authorities can’t prove that I had an active role in the toaster incident – although they bloody act like I am guilty – so I get sent to remand in D Division, and then H for a while before settling into the ‘behavioural’ zone: B Division.

  This period starts in March 1990.

  Violence.

  Never before in B Division history was such a spike in assaults reported. Ambulances are attending daily at one point to collect those who need to be stretchered out, sometimes twice a day.

  The muster in the wing is about 100.

  And I am at home in the zone.

  I’m in a crew of four, all young, all hectic, and we are feared by many even far-older men. The four of us – Kevin Miles, Jamie Whelan, Steve Jackson and me – are independent, we’re equals yet ready any time to gel together in combat formation.

  We make the old guard of hard knockabout crooks nervous. I would suggest that many of them are also on the payroll, led by the likes of supersnitch and killer Keith Faure, who years later would openly implicate anybody, police included. He even lagged his own brother, Noel, over the 2004 shooting of Lewis Moran.

  I’m working in Pentridge kitchen. The activities officers in the compound next to the kitchen can’t work out why the gym billet uses the vacuum cleaner to ‘sweep up’ the concrete floor for us.

  Truth is, the vacuum cleaner is full of stolen meats and vegies from the kitchen. With the vacuum’s wheels squeaking and wobbling under the weight, the billet would transport the food, which I’d already chopped and prepped, safely past the metal detectors of the guard post at B Division’s entrance. Too easy.

  When he delivers it at the end of exercise time, it’s all ready for the pan and then I arrive right on time to cook up a proper decent meal.

  The screws can’t work out how we eat so well. Security tries their best, but even they concede that once it’s in the pan, we earnt and can eat it.

  Maybe they are also reluctant to start something when four of the most problematic inmates in the wing are sitting down at the table eating. We would rise to any challenge from them and they know it.

  DEEPER INTO THE ZONE

  Two of the grubs on the payroll, Nick Levidis and Chris Stone, attack me with an icepick but I take it, stab them with it and then charge into their putrid peer group with a pool cue, cracking everyone within reach until the screws tackle me.

  The staff have tried to reason with us. Head Office is putting heat on them about the level of assaults plaguing the wing. But our response has been: ‘Go tell someone else what to do, not us.’

  The majority of casualties at this time are lesser calibre inmates. They dilute our hardcore gene pool. They weaken the population of B Division. We have to defend our pride.

  Worse than gronks, the prison is dropping snitches in B Division, playing us off against each other; pouring petrol on the adversarial madness of ‘us versus the system’.

  We feel the need to defend our pride and as a result, it’s chaos for new arrivals. They have no hope at all.

  If they’re not vouched for, they bleed.

  Even though the staff know that I couldn’t have taken the icepick through the metal detectors and they saw me get it off those two clowns and use it in self-defence, they send me and – even though I was acting solo – my whole crew to H Division.

  READING THE CHARTS

  Prison is a flow chart. Inmate classifications dictate movement up (towards more of what passes for education, work, space and relatively mellow people), movement down (heading past more hardcore and disturbed inmates on the way to solitary) or sideways (same shit, different postcode).

  Sentence management panels have a big hole at the top into which justice and prison staff fling such tasty ingredients as the prisoner’s offending history, history of escapes or attempts, record of violence inside, drug and alcohol history, mental state, and age.

  So that’s the past and present down the hole. Now they throw in a bit of risk analysis to spice it up and keep it interesting. So they ponder what risk the prisoner poses to prison security, the community, himself, herself, any other person or the ‘good order’ of the correctional facility.

  After all that’s digested, out plops the fat turd of your prisoner classification.

  Anyway, today I wear a zip-up top to my classification review and sit across the table from prison managers Kelvin Anderson and Brendan Money.

  After enduring sufficient blah-blah-blah-blah I unzip and bare my t-shirt, which I have duly inscribed with a logo reading, ‘Eat Shit & Die’.

  Division Staff are ordered to forcibly remove the garment, leading to an argy-bargy very much inconsistent with the ‘good order’ of the prison.

  Both of these gentlemen take a lasting dislike to me, I believe, carrying such sentiments into high places: Anderson rising all the way to the top of the tower as Commissioner of Corrections Victoria, while Money goes on to be Victoria’s Director of Sentence Management.

  I am 22 years old. When I am more than double that, when I am nearly 50, Mr Money will still be at the top of the flow chart, the grand-fuckin’ poo-bah of a system that keeps me in solitary confinement for years on end.

  How much shit can I eat?

  PRISON SLANG: LESSON FOUR

  Classo – where you get your security classification, E: someone who has escaped before

  Bronze up – to cover yourself in excrement

  36. BRONZING UP

  LATE 1990: H DIVISION

  Chris is turning 22.

  CHRIS:

  I’ve entered a radical phase and the staff are now desperate to get out of H Division, clogging the system with transfer requests.

  The governor of Pentridge, Clive Williams, has even intervened, telling me that we have reached a truly alarming state of affairs.

  No argument from me.

  You see, I’m indulging in wayward levels of bronzing up. That on its own would be more than many officers can bear, but it’s not all: I’m actively engaging prison staff with human faeces.

  Let me explain bronzing up.

  I save my shit for a couple of weeks in milk cartons. The older stuff goes to one side. The fresher stuff I piss in, get a bit of a mixture going: make it more or less runny depending on what consistency, what kind of spray pattern, I want.

  I get some just right for warpaint, for soldiers putting on the camo. If it’s still too hard I water it down a bit more with piss.

  My dress code is sunglasses, jocks and a pair of runners.

  I open the cartons I need and my body adjusts to it. It takes twenty minutes to acclimatise to the smell.

  Now I do this: I put the fucking camouflage, the warpaint, all over me like I’m an Injun.

  All over me because then they don’t want to come near me: they don’t want to grab me; they don’t want to bash me – because they’ll get covered in shit themselves.

  I would never put the fucking old stuff on – that would cause me to gag.

  So the old stuff is the ammo: the stuff I use as grenades to throw at the screws.

  It has reached the point where if screws catch a slight scent of anything remotely suggestive of shit, they refuse to open my cell.

  On one occasion, I’m bronzed up and the whole wing can smell it. When the staff move them past my cell to complete a run out into the yard, some are dry retching.

  The officers think they can talk to me and maybe negotiate some way out of this, so they open the trap in my door.

  Yeah, right. I slip a hand out so they can’t close it, then start flinging shit nuggets in all directions. I also have a cup of shit piss-watered down to the consistency of runny mud, and I give it a mighty flick, sending a brown splash across the wing and collecting anyone in range.

  A couple of the officers have to go home.

  Some sta
rt keeping spare uniforms at work, and they sniff the crack of my door every time I’m to be let out. I have them clamouring to get a transfer out of here and walking on egg shells until they can. One flat out abandons his post, going on extended leave and developing a Serepax habit.

  My favourite line to use on the guards was plagiarised from the IRA: ‘You gotta be lucky every fucking day; I only gotta be lucky once.’

  *

  In these months, BADNE$$ is born.

  Contrary to ‘the-wanker-called-himself-BADNE$$’-line pushed by parasitic keyboard jockeys like Underbelly author John Silvester, other inmates give me the tag.

  The view in the division is that there is Good, there is Bad, there is Badder, and then there is BADNE$$ itself. Me.

  *

  The gates to the community open again. Direct from H Division to you.

  *

  Footnote: each member of our group were released from H Division into the community. Everyone would reoffend.

  Kevin Miles jumped counters with me; Jamie Whelan went down for murder; Steve Jackson opened up with an assault rifle on what he thought was a police car.

  They are all now dead. I am the last.

  If this is life.

  37. BADNE$$ AT LARGE

  10 JANUARY 1991: OUT AND ABOUT

  Chris is now aged 22.

  CHRIS:

  I’m wound as tight as fuck. Fuelled by hate I run amok – me against the state. Within a week of getting out, I’m catching up with Kevin Miles. I decide to pair up and we scout his part of town – the Dandenong region – selecting banks to rob. I have the guns and a bulletproof vest.

  Two weeks to the day of release, we raid the Commonwealth Bank at Glen Waverley.

  Using a stolen motorbike, I drop Kevin at the rear exit and then ride along the bank and park at the front, leaving the bike idling.

  We’re at each end of the bank.

  We head in, both in helmets and overcoats, my automatic shotgun strapped over my shoulder by a modified holster, allowing me to let go of it and even ride the motorcycle with it dangling by my side.

  *

  We strike again within weeks, hitting a Westpac at Keysborough in Melbourne’s southeast, this time switching back to a car in order to vary the MO.

  *

  A few weeks after that I’m working solo once more, holding up the State Bank at Noble Park.

  *

  As Easter approaches I am short of money. I select my local Commonwealth Bank at St Albans, being familiar with the area and the branch – especially after that fruitless attempt a few years ago when they’d already locked up.

  It’s a busy Friday when Kevin and I pull up out front – hard not to get noticed in balaclavas and overalls.

  We park the car on an angle at the corner kerb, still running, and enter the crowded bank. Kevin starts clearing the tellers while I stay at the door to control the floor.

  I spot a group of locals, older Slavic men – Croats, Serbs, Macedonians and others – who meet every Friday while their wives shop at the market.

  They’re crossing the road from the bus stop to our car, trying to be heroes, trying to steal our car and shut us down.

  This situation is hard to control. I have to keep an eye on Kevin and watch his back, but I’m also leaving the bank a number of times to shoo them away from the car.

  So I yell to Kevin to abandon.

  We return to my dad’s place in St Albans soon after, and he tells me about the robbery – as he too was caught up with friends there. It’s his social meeting spot. Turns out our next door neighbour was also in the group.

  Talking about it with my dad, my dad straight away tells me I did it. I have a laugh with my neighbour when I get charged over it later on.

  I have only been out of jail for about three months. I’m hectic, to say the least – involved as I am in high speed police pursuit on the Geelong Freeway.

  Riding a motorbike, I deliberately overtake six police cars and exit the freeway soon after having lost them.

  But Mick Doohan I’m not, smashing head-on at 140 k’s into a car parked on the nature strip.

  I crawl to the closest house and lie under a carport, my knee wrecked, and can’t move when the lady of the house sees me. A crowd is gathering, having heard the smash. She rings an ambulance but the police arrive first. I can’t walk at all.

  I’m arrested and they ask for ID. They don’t believe the fake name I give, and as I’m taken to Footscray Hospital for a knee reconstruction they call in cops from all surrounding police stations in the hope that someone will recognise me.

  Eventually someone pegs me for Barry, but then he doesn’t have tattoos and I do, so they finally nail me as Chris.

  *

  While I’m still in hospital, Kevin drops by to plead for access to some of my weapons.

  My arsenal is extensive and expensive, including pistol grip machine guns with silencers.

  He tells me he has dramas with people in his area, and asks for something to protect himself with. So I reveal where they were buried in plastic plumbing pipes, telling him to just take one and leave the rest.

  Unbeknown to me, outside in Kevin’s car is his junkie mate. Kevin knows I hate this mate with a passion. They go to the weapons cache, which is off along a creek and off a dirt track, and they take them all.

  Plus, while they’re there, they decide to dump the guns used in the last robberies. Kevin was supposed to have destroyed them by now but instead here they are and he’s tossing the bag of them less than a metre from the riverbank, leaving them barely submerged.

  The guns are found by the next person walking past – a guy giving his dog some exercise. He reports it to the police and they seal off the area.

  Matters deteriorate even further when Kevin doesn’t even use the weapons for personal protection but gives my precious personal modified and silenced machine gun to his junkie mate to use in a bank robbery. The gun is highly recognisable on camera.

  Hungry to score, the robber sloppily leaves his prints all over the car he uses, which, when it’s found, will direct the police to him and he will then lag everyone he can, including Kevin and me for the stick-ups that Kevin has told him about.

  At the same time, Kevin, who still has my cache, selects an assault rifle for his protection at home, and leaves the rest with a friend.

  Kevin has started a relationship with a local gang bang slut from the pub. Soon he wants to show off to her, so he talks her through all our robberies and even tells her about my recent solo job.

  This is not how I operate, I should point out. My girlfriends of the past knew nothing of my business. Nothing at all.

  Kevin and the gang bang slut have a drunken domestic; she shits herself, takes the assault rifle to the police and reveals everything she knows about both of our activities.

  Now I have huge problems. Kevin gets in touch to say that he has a little heat on him and while he can’t return the guns he can tell me where they are.

  So, on crutches and wearing a knee brace I hobble out and fill my car boot but then find fencing around the creek that I used before, so back home I go to rest my leg and think about what the fuck to do.

  I don’t get long to think. The next morning, the Armed Robbery Squad raid me, wrench my knee to torture me, beat me in the face and head, and charge me with the solo job at the Noble Park State Bank. They also have my arsenal, including the machine gun that they know was used by the junkie they arrested just days ago.

  I’m now facing sentences of several years, with a Major Offender classification. Very shitty territory on the flow chart.

  I would like to add that I have nothing against gang bang sluts – the world is a better place with them – but not everyone is for talking business with.

  38. HOLIDAY ON THE APPLE ISLE

  MID FEBRUARY 1991: LAUNCESTON

  Early in 1991, Chris was out of jail and raiding banks again. He was also at the tail end of a relationship with ‘Lucy’, by all accoun
ts, a decent and law-abiding young woman.

  Here, Lucy describes taking a Tasmanian holiday with Chris, Kevin, and the woman that Chris calls the ‘gang bang slut’.

  STATEMENT FROM LUCY:

  I am 21 years of age.

  I have known Christopher Binse for the past seven years as we went to school together. We have been going out for the last four years.

  I was aware that Chris was released from jail on 10 January 1991.

  At the time he got out of jail he was hard up, he didn’t have any clothes and he borrowed a couple of hundred dollars.

  I actually didn’t loan him the money but I gave it to him.

  With that money he bought a new pair of runners.

  For the first two weeks after the 10th of January we saw each other every day. He was staying at my house because my mum was on holidays.

  At the end of January or early February, Chris asked me if I wanted to go away for a weekend to Tasmania with a mate of his, Kevin Miles.

  I asked him how we were going to pay for this trip because I couldn’t afford it and I thought that he wouldn’t be able to afford it.

  Chris just said, ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll take care of it.’

  At around the end of January 1991 I noticed that Chris had a lot more money than what he had before.

  Around that time I remember that we went on a shopping spree where he bought shoes, jeans, tops and other clothes. He probably spent about $1000 on clothes that day.

  Chris started taking me out to restaurants and he spent money on flowers and a card on Valentine’s Day.

  I asked him how he had come to have so much money because I knew he didn’t work and he was on the dole.

  He would say to me either nothing or, ‘You’re better off not knowing.’

  I had suspicions about where the money had come from. I thought that the money had come from Chris committing some kind of crime or stealing it but Chris never came out and told me directly.