Read explained that he had a disagreement with Gangitano regarding an elderly neighbourhood hero, whom Gangitano admired.
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In the TV series Tough Nuts, Read also spoke of his mid-1980s to early 1990s rivalry with Alphonse Gangitano. Loughnan later died in the Jika Jika fire at Pentridge in 1987. Read was serving a 16½-year sentence after attacking a judge to get Loughnan released from prison. Read lost several feet of intestine in the attack.
Another theory is that James "Jimmy" Loughnan, a friend of Read, with Patrick "Blue" Barnes, wished to benefit from a contract put on Read's head by the Painters' and Dockers' Union. Read was stabbed by members of his gang in a sneak attack when they felt that his plan to cripple every other inmate in the division to win the gang war in one fell swoop was going too far. The nickname "Chopper" was given to him long before this, from a childhood cartoon character. His later works state that he did so to "win a bet". In his biography, Read claimed this was to avoid an ambush by other inmates by being transferred to the mental health wing. Around this time, Read had a fellow inmate cut both of his ears off to be able to leave H division temporarily. "The Overcoat Gang" wore long coats all year round to conceal their weapons, were involved in several hundred acts of violence against a larger gang during this period. While in Pentridge Prison's H division in the late 1970s, Read launched a prison war. Read spent only 13 months outside prison between the ages of 20 and 38, having been convicted of crimes including armed robbery, firearm offences, assault, arson, impersonating a police officer and kidnapping. He later graduated to kidnapping and torturing members of the criminal underworld, often using a blowtorch or bolt cutters to remove the toes of his victims as an incentive for them to produce enough money so that Read would leave them alive. He began his criminal career by robbing drug dealers based in massage parlours in the Prahran area.
When he was still young, Read was already an accomplished street fighter and the leader of the Surrey Road gang, which had a notorious reputation for violence. Read was made a ward of the state by the age of 14 and was placed in several mental institutions as a teenager, where he stated he underwent electroshock therapy. He was bullied at school, saying that by the age of 15 he had been on the "losing end of several hundred fights" and that his father, usually on his mother's recommendation, beat him often as a child. He grew up in the Melbourne suburbs of Collingwood and Fitzroy. Read was born on 17 November 1954 to a former army and World War II veteran father Keith Read of Irish descent and a mother who was a devout Seventh-day Adventist. The 2000 film Chopper is based on his life. Read wrote a series of semi-autobiographical fictional crime novels and children's books. Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read (17 November 1954 – 9 October 2013) was an Australian convicted criminal, gang member and author.
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