It was back in 1994 when I first realised an empty tummy outranks human compassion.
After a spate of police shooting people, a new system called Project Beacon was introduced in which the safety of the public, police and offenders was to be the priority. Almost immediately, a disturbed gentleman clambered to the edge of the West Gate Bridge, threatening to jump. Police, following the Beacon rules, shut the bridge during the evening peak hour to wait him out.
Marooned motorists on the Melbourne side left their cars yelling encouragement to the man on the rail to jump because their lamb chops were on their dinner tables and starting to go cold.
The same amount of sympathy goes out to Jack Gibson-Burrell, 22, who painted a giant bird on the Bolte Bridge and then made a series of demands during a nine-hour stand-off (although he sat for most of the time).
He wanted taxation relief, a peanut butter and jam sandwich (he should go to jail for that) and a glass of milk. The bridge is named after premier Sir Henry Bolte, who would have wanted him hanged for the offence.
His demands were not met, and he ended up in custody, which leads us to conclude that stand-offs with police rarely end well.
Here is our list of criminal plans that were always going to end badly.
Mark Brandon ‘Chopper’ Read
On a quiet Australia Day in January 1978, Bill Martin was one of two County Court judges rostered for duty.
The court was quiet and Martin’s tipstaff, Ernie Trotter, had his head down completing paperwork as standover man Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read, wearing double denim to conceal a single-barrelled sawn-off shotgun, appeared.
It was madness. Read had made a promise to his jail mate, Jimmy Loughnan, to hatch a plot to force his release. This was it.
In his pocket was a note of his demands, which included Loughnan getting an automatic station wagon, $1 million cash and a jet at the airport.
Read later said it had to be an automatic because “Jimmy’s too stupid to be able to drive a manual”.
Chopper, who had loaded the gun with a blank, pushed it against the judge’s head. What he didn’t know was that at that range the blank would have been fatal. The quick-thinking judge flicked the gun away and began walking towards the bench door with Read following. According to Trotter, Martin turned to face Read, and “gave him a hefty kick in the knackers”.
Trotter wrestled the gun from Read, who received 13 years. He wrote to Martin to apologise. The judge wrote back to say he knew it wasn’t personal, wishing his attacker well in the future.
Loughnan was part of the team that later attacked and stabbed Read in Pentridge Prison.
Amos Atkinson
A couple of months later, Chopper’s mate Amos Atkinson proved he was not a student of history, creating another siege, this time to demand Read’s release.
First he fired at police from a South Melbourne taxi and then burst into Melbourne’s Italian Waiters’ Club holding 30 staff and diners as hostages.
He said if Read was not released within 24 hours he would start killing. What he didn’t know was members of the newly formed Special Operations Group were across the road with orders to shoot Amos dead if he lifted his gun.
When his initial demand was refused, he asked to see his mother.
She was unimpressed, walking up the stairs in her dressing gown, before dressing down her son, ending the stand-off by hitting him on the head with her handbag.
He then gave up without a fight.
Chopper Read (2)
As part of a prison protest, Read managed to burst through the roof of Pentridge, only to find burly prison officers waiting. One smashed a wooden riot baton on the rioter’s head until it broke. Read said: “Don’t do that to the bloke behind me, he hates screws.”
When his demands to leave maximum security were ignored, he had the top of his ears chopped off, forcing authorities to send him to hospital. He wrongly surmised they could be reattached. For a crazy period, other inmates did the same to join the Van Gogh Club.
Later, an overly enthusiastic member hacked off his penis. At this point, Read announced that when “the Dickie Birds start hitting the table”, it was time for him to resign.
Edwin John Eastwood
Another Pentridge Prison slow learner, Eastwood pulled two kidnappings that would only end badly for him.
In October 1972, he kidnapped six children and their 20-year-old teacher Mary Gibbs from their tiny school in Faraday. He rang The Sun’s chief police reporter, Wayne “Smokey” Grant, to report the kidnapping anonymously, leaving a ransom note at the school demanding $1 million.
Gibbs kicked her way out of Eastwood’s van and raised the alarm. The kidnapper was sentenced to 21 years, with a minimum of 15.
He escaped from Geelong Prison and, in February 1977, did it again at the Wooreen Primary School in South Gippsland.
He kidnapped nine children and their teacher, Rob Hunter, 20, who was only days into his first posting. Along the way, he managed to kidnap another five adults.
He asked for $7 million, the release of 17 inmates, 100 kilograms of heroin, 100 kilograms of cocaine and a car filled with fuel.
Eastwood left a sign at the school designed to give him time: “HAVE GONE ON A NATURE STUDY TRIP, WILL BE BACK IN ONE HOUR!”
Hunter was professionally annoyed as no school teacher would use capital letters.
Eastwood fed his captives tinned ham and chocolate before chaining them up for the night. While the kidnapper loved grand plans, he wasn’t good at details, which is why truck driver Robin Smith was able to slip out of his chains and run 10 kilometres to a farmhouse to raise the alarm.
Eastwood was shot in the leg during his arrest.
When chief commissioner Mick Miller was asked what would happen to the policeman who fired the shot, he responded: “Give him target practice.”
While kidnapping children is a terrible crime, Eastwood blotted his copybook even more by taking up the guitar in prison, which is why Read referred to him as the “tone-deaf kidnapper”.
Eastwood was easily offended and wrote to Read suggesting he needed to see a psychiatrist. Read retorted: “I did, and he said, ‘Send in Ted Eastwood.’”
Greg ‘Bluey’ Brazel
A double killer and prison hardman, Brazel was one of the gang that stabbed Chopper Read in prison. Later, he went on a jail hunger strike for weeks, demanding improved conditions.
His supporters contacted the media daily to say he was fading away and was days from death.
We asked the prison authorities to provide his physical statistics. He was the same height and weight as the legendary footballer Leigh Matthews.
Turns out he had a secret stash of Mars bars in his cell. His only health risk was tooth decay or a fatal dose of acne.
Glenn ‘Colonel’ Sanders
Glenn Sanders was a genius who could fix just about anything, but fatally failed to tell the time.
Full of drugs and paranoia, he booby-trapped his country property and took to wearing a suicide vest when he wandered around Derrinallum, on the Hamilton Highway.
He had built a cannon to occasionally fire at nearby Mount Elephant.
After he was seen wearing the explosive vest to hospital to visit his mother, Special Operations Group hostage negotiators tried to talk him down, but he was having none of it.
In April 2014, the siege at the property lasted seven hours, with Sanders repeatedly telling police he would not surrender. He also kept asking them the time. What they didn’t know was that he had rigged seven bombs to explode at 5am. What he didn’t know was that because of daylight savings, they would go off at 4am.
His explosive vest had three detonating points so that if handcuffed, he could trigger it.
With the premature explosion, Sanders involuntarily shrugged in shock. It was his last act on this earth.
Christopher Dean Binse
Badness Binse was a prolific armed robber and an expert escape artist, but he must have known back in May 2012 there could be no escape from the large number of police outside his East Keilor door.
Days earlier, he had pulled a $235,000 armed robbery but now, after a 44-hour siege, he must have thought he would not live to spend it.
The SOG pumped the place full of teargas and hit it with distraction devices (they worked so well the house later had to be demolished).
Binse, blinded, armed and wearing a ballistic vest, came out firing. The SOG returned fire hitting him several times until he was knocked off his feet.
Believing police were trying to kill him, he rose again, only to be taken down by a second volley of shots. But the SOG were not using lethal SG projectiles but beanbag rounds, designed to be non-lethal.
A doctor at the scene took his pulse. It was 80.
Binse later wrote to the SOG with a critique of their tactics, then asked for a beanbag round as a memento.
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