Chopper Read said 60 Minutes murder confessions crap, says Ron Iddles
CHOPPER Read admitted on his deathbed that he lied when he confessed to four unsolved murders during a paid interview with 60 Minutes.
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CHOPPER Read admitted on his deathbed that he lied when he confessed to four unsolved murders during a paid interview with 60 Minutes.
Read told homicide squad detective Ron Iddles just days before dying that everything he said on camera to 60 Minutes “was crap”.
In an exclusive interview with the Sunday Herald Sun about a new book on his life and policing career, Sen-Sgt Iddles also revealed:
HE is sure he knows who murdered teenager Thomas Cooper at a Ricketts Point lover’s lane in 1980 and has been trying for years to convince the killer’s partner to dob him in.
A STILL serving Victoria Police officer came incredibly close to being charged with the 1997 murder of Niddrie mother of three Jane Thurgood-Dove.
CORRUPT cops set fire to what was known as the rear of the St Kilda police station in 1983 in what was believed to be a means of showing the new breed of Sergeants, who were bringing about change, that they should back off.
HE was disappointed the coroner refused his 2012 request to dig up the body of paedophile Catholic priest Father Anthony Bongiorno so his DNA could be compared with DNA the killer of Maria James left at the murder scene in 1980.
AN underworld informer told him there is a secret film of the 1981 death of Warren Lanfranchi and that it shows the shooting of the Sydney drug dealer by corrupt New South Wales cop Roger Rogerson was a cold blooded murder and not the self-defence Rogerson claimed.
THE informer said Lanfranchi’s girlfriend Sallie-Anne Huckstepp was the only other person who knew about the 8mm film.
HUCKSTEPP was murdered just days after the informer told him about the existence of the film — with Rogerson being the likely suspect for ordering her death to shut her up.
In an interview recorded by 60 Minutes several months before his 2013 death, but broadcast 11 days after he died, Mark “Chopper” Read claimed to have committed four murders.
Chopper said on camera his murder victims were:
DESMOND Costello, a Painters and Dockers Union heavy who was shotgun blasted to death in 1971 — when Chopper was 17.
REGINALD Edward Isaacs, a serial paedophile and child killer who was found hanged in his Pentridge Prison cell in 1975. Chopper claimed on 60 Minutes that he and Charles “Mad Charlie” Hegyalji bashed Isaacs before making his death look like a suicide by hanging him from his cell door.
SIAM “Sammy the Turk” Ozerkam. Chopper was acquitted of the 1987 shooting death of Ozerkam on the grounds of self-defence, but claimed to 60 Minutes it had been an “outright murder”.
SID Collins, a former Victorian president of the Outlaws bikie gang who was shot dead in 2002. Read, who had earlier served six years for wounding Collins in 1992, told 60 Minutes he finished the job in 2002 because Collins “was an absolute turd”.
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Sen-Sgt Iddles revealed he had developed a strong rapport with Read over many years and had visited him in hospital just a couple of days before he died.
He said that during that deathbed interview Read admitted to him that the murder confessions he made on camera to 60 Minutes were lies.
“He thought the 60 Minutes interview was going to be predominantly around the fact he had turned his life around, that he was a successful painter and that he hadn’t been in trouble for many years,” Sen-Sgt Iddles told the Sunday Herald Sun.
“But instead the 60 Minutes focus became on murders he might have committed.
“He told me as 60 Minutes wasn’t prepared to accept he had changed he decided he might as well give them what they wanted as they were paying him handsomely and he wanted money to give to his wife because he knew he was going to die soon.
“So he confessed to the murders on camera, but he told me what he told them was all crap.
“I am satisfied he was telling the truth when he told me he wasn’t involved in any unsolved murders.”
Sen-Sgt Iddles said the only thing he doesn’t agree with in author Justine Ford’s book about him is her description of him on the cover as “Australia’s greatest detective”.
“I would obviously never claim to be that,” he said.
Sen Sgt Iddles tried to get the publisher to change it, but was told that was the author’s view and as it was her book she was entitled to choose how to refer to him.
The book, The Good Cop, published by Pan Macmillan, discusses many of the high profile murder investigations undertaken by Sen-Sgt Iddles, including the stabbing of Thornbury bookshop owner Maria James and the killing of Jane Thurgood-Dove, 35.
No charges were laid in those two murders, which is unusual in Sen-Sgt Iddles’ case as he had a success rate of around 99 per cent in the more than 300 murders he investigated during 25 years as a homicide squad detective.
He left the squad in 2014 to become secretary of the powerful police union.
The first murder case he worked on was that of mother of two Ms James, 38
It still rankles with him that it was one of the few he never solved.
The Maria James murder in 1980 was one of those he kept going back to so he could have a fresh look at it.
New evidence he got in 2012 convinced him the James family priest, Father Bongiorno, needed to be exhumed to see if his DNA matched DNA the killer left after stabbing Ms James 68 times.
One of the new bits of evidence came from Ms James’ youngest son Adam, who was 11 when his mother was murdered.
He told Sen-Sgt Iddles in 2012 that Father Bongiorno had sexually molested him.
In his sworn statement, Adam James, who is intellectually impaired, said he told his mother about the sexual abuse just days before his mother was murdered and that his mother intended confronting Father Bongiorno about it.
Sen-Sgt Iddles considered the molesting of Adam James, along with other information from a new witness who claimed he saw Father Bongiorno with blood on him on the day of the murder, was enough to warrant exhuming the priest’s body to get his DNA — and was disappointed when the coroner wouldn’t approve his request to do so.
Father Bongiorno’s sister had earlier refused to provide her DNA to Sen-Sgt Iddles. If she had agreed her DNA would probably have been sufficient to clear or implicate her brother.
“The statement from Adam James provided a motive for Father Bongiorno to murder Ms James in that once she confronted him about it he would have feared being exposed,” Sen-Sgt Iddles said.
“We had been to the coroner, but he wasn’t satisfied there was enough evidence to order the exhumation.
“Sadly, I left the homicide squad in 2014 without getting Father Bongiorno’s DNA.”
Cold case squad detectives put out a press release in 2015 to say Father Bongiorno had been eliminated as a suspect in the Maria James murder, but refused to say how they did so.
Sen-Sgt Iddles has also continued to probe another 1980 murder, that of 18-year-old Thomas Cooper, and is convinced he knows who the killer is.
Mr Cooper and his girlfriend were sitting in his parked car in a well-known lover’s lane at Ricketts Point, Beaumaris, shortly after 7pm when a man smashed the side window.
Mr Cooper was shot three times as he frantically tried to turn his car around to drive away and escape his attacker.
The man Sen-Sgt Iddles believes is the killer was interviewed soon after the murder, but his girlfriend provided him with an alibi, saying she was with him in the car and that they drove past Ricketts Point without stopping.
“I don’t think that’s right, I think he drove in there,” Sen-Sgt Iddles said.
He visited the suspect’s girlfriend in recent years in the hope she would reveal she wasn’t with her boyfriend on the night of the murder — he came away disappointed.
“It was ironic, she was living 10 kilometres from where the suspect was,” he said.
“She was on a horse the day I saw her and she rode the horse back up to where the suspect lived.
“It wasn’t the right time, they were still connected together.”
Sen-Sgt Iddles told the Sunday Herald Sun he believed corrupt NSW cop Roger Rogerson probably got away with murdering Sydney drug dealer Warren Lanfranchi in 1981 and Lanfranchi’s girlfriend, Sallie-Anne Huckstepp, in 1986.
He said while he was working for the National Crime Authority in 1986 he had interviewed an inmate at Sydney’s Long Bay jail and the prisoner had revealed new details about the Lanfranchi shooting.
Rogerson claimed he shot Lanfranchi in self-defence and NSW police later gave him a bravery medal for it.
“The prisoner told me he had an 8mm movie and that the movie showed Roger Rogerson hadn’t acted in self-defence,” Sen-Sgt Iddles said.
“Basically, Rogerson had deliberately killed Lanfranchi.
“He told me there were only two people who knew of the existence of that 8mm movie, himself and Sallie-Anne Huckstepp.
“Two weeks after he told me that, Sallie-Anne Huckstepp was found dead in Sydney’s Centennial Park.
“Initially they thought she had drowned but she’s got a broken bone in her throat, which is classic of strangling. So she’s been lured there to be killed.
“I think if detectives went back and relooked at it there would be some connection to Rogerson.
“I think if you look at all those who were involved with Rogerson who could have implicated him in serious crime you would probably find they are no longer with us.
“Sallie-Anne Huckstepp was somebody who I think probably would have implicated Rogerson.”
Sen-Sgt Iddles said the prisoner had refused to give him a copy of the movie and wouldn’t show it to him either, saying it was his insurance against getting harmed.
“I only have his word that it existed, he never produced it,” he said.
“People knew Lanfranchi was going to meet Rogerson on the day he died, Sallie-Anne Huckstepp was aware of where he was going, so certainly somebody could have filmed the shooting.”
Rogerson, 75, and fellow former detective Glen McNamara, 57, were last month found guilty of murdering Sydney man Jamie Gao during a drug deal.
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