Mayhem Read online

  About Mayhem

  “A Gonzo portrait of the Mad Max of Supermax”

  Andrew Rule, author of Underbelly

  Meet BADNE$$. He’s the enigmatic, impulsive, exasperating, destructive, big-hearted Aussie outlaw who stole millions of dollars in daring bank robberies and became a folk hero as big as Ned Kelly when he masterminded two spectacular prison breaks in the space of six weeks.

  Now Christopher ‘BADNE$$’ Binse is serving a crushing 18 years in solitary. He craves death more than infamy. The only way he can find redemption is to open his tortured soul to acclaimed journalist Matthew Thompson, in the hope another wild child out there will learn from the strange and savage saga of his life and think twice.

  Mayhem is the bizarre, scary, brilliantly unique and jawdropping inside story of how a naughty little boy became Australia’s most notorious prisoner.

  Let’s get hectic!

  “This book is like brutal poetry. A cage flight with life, by a man who spent most of his life in that cage.’

  John Birmingham

  Contents

  Cover

  About Mayhem

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  1. Voice from the Abyss

  2. Well Worn Lines

  3. Badness in Isolation

  4. Little Golden Book

  5. Young Chris’ Report Cards

  6. Prison Slang: Lesson One

  7. Crime as Guerrilla War

  8. The Route to Hectic

  9. Born From Trouble

  10. The Police Welcome a New Family to Melbourne

  11. Steve

  12. Just Too Much

  13. Freeway Horse Thief

  14. Golf Course

  15. Teardrop Explodes

  16. College of Knowledge Induction

  17. Prison Slang: Lesson Two

  18. College of Knowledge 2

  19. Release

  20. Listen to Me, Fellas

  21. Nightclubbing

  22. Tooling Up Big Time

  23. Hit the Slate

  24. A Few Crews Loose

  25. Happy Eighteenth, Barry

  26. Attack the Commonwealth

  27. Anyone Seen Chris?

  28. Match Head Thin

  29. Welcome Back to Prison

  30. Prison Slang: Lesson Three

  31. Attack the Commonwealth Again

  32. An Absolutely Shocking Piece of Driving

  33. Toasted

  34. In the Zone

  35. Prison Slang: Lesson Four

  36. Bronzing Up

  37. BADNE$$ at Large

  38. Holiday on the Apple Isle

  39. Along Comes Roxy

  40. Laggers Beware

  41. Honour Among Thieves

  42. Internal Affairs

  43. Badlands

  44. Priming to Break Out

  45. Breakout

  46. My Audacious Eight Days

  47. Jumpin’ Outta Parra

  48. Dust to Dust

  49. Roxy Says

  50. On Julian Knight, Hoddle Street Mass Murderer

  51. Uncontrollable

  52. Hunger and Resentment

  53. Shackled in Barwon

  54. A Letter to Barwon Prison

  55. The Banality of Supermax

  56. Extradition

  57. Inmate 219 Lucifer

  58. Lithgow Ice Pick

  59. Race Hate Cages

  60. Into Another World

  61. Media Blitz

  62. Road to Fatherhood

  63. Debt Collector

  64. The Father

  65. Sheilas

  66. Dog Days

  67. Bathed in Love

  68. Getting’ Hectic

  69. Meyhem 666

  70. Sons of God

  71. Totality

  72. Cleansing

  73. And Now?

  Acknowledgements

  About Matthew Thompson

  Also by Matthew Thompson

  Copyright page

  From Christopher Dean Pecotic,

  AKA Christopher Binse,

  AKA BADNE$$, AKA LORD BADNE$$

  AKA prisoner 43517

  AKA solja 43517:

  To Charlize and Runty

  &

  To my victims

  To my mum and brothers

  To prisoners left to rot in isolation

  To kids in danger of becoming like me

  From Matt Thompson:

  To Renae, Avalon, Chocolate & Fred

  &

  To my dad, who dropped dead the morning after

  my last book came out.

  FOR AFFLICTION DOES NOT COME FROM THE DUST, NOR DOES

  TROUBLE SPROUT FROM THE GROUND; BUT MAN IS BORN TO

  TROUBLE AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARDS.

  Book of Job

  MAYHEM is a documentary in writing.

  It is not a production-line true crime book in which the author serves up a cartoon-level morality of right and wrong, goodies and baddies.

  This is a raw blast of a world gone berserk.

  MAYHEM is Christopher Pecotic, aka Christopher Binse, aka BADNE$$, aka Lord BADNE$$, speaking directly to you from the grave of long-term solitary confinement in Victoria’s so-called ‘correctional’ facilities: a place where Australia’s barbaric zeal for ‘supermax’ punishment is in full swing, even if largely hidden from public scrutiny. You will also hear from an assorted cast of witnesses and characters.

  I am the author of this book in the way that the director of a documentary is the creator of that work.

  It came about as an agreement between Chris and me. A smart bloke kept almost around the clock in a small room, Chris wants to tell his crazed but necessary tale. He hopes that by doing so, budding crims – kids like the young him – might change direction, and the public might at last see the naked truth of our often monumentally stupid and destructive prison system – a system that seeks to ‘correct’ people with serious antisocial tendencies by clustering them in claustrophobic cages of fear, anger, and boredom. If someone within those cages arcs up, acts out or flips out – in other words, has a predictable reaction to being left to rot in society’s hopeless, violent dumping ground – then they’re ‘corrected’ further via isolation and solitary confinement.

  If and when their deterioration continues, medics offer psych pills to zonk the prisoner into compliance for years of wall-staring and pacing in order to keep a lid on the rage and self-loathing that breed from abject dependency and resentment.

  We spring-load people in our jails and then release them.

  Of course, there’s more to it than that – and there’s much more in MAYHEM. This is a wild book but not a simple book.

  I told Chris that if I was going to tell his story then he had to be pretty damned honest. ‘Don’t incriminate others if you don’t want to but be truthful about yourself.’ He thought about it, agreed, and then asked his mother to open his archives to me and tell me anything and everything.

  Chris said that he would give me the tragic ending the book needs to push troubled kids and pig-headed ‘correctional’ systems alike to change their ways.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I said. ‘It’s already got a tragic ending – you’re doing 14 to 18 in solitary.’

  ‘Fuck that, mate,’ he said. ‘I’m not sticking around for it.’ Chris was not talking about a physical escape.

  We were going to shake on our deal, or at least powerknuckle the perspex between us at HM Prison Barwon, in a visit I had booked.

  But the night before I was due to fly south, Chris’ mum, Annette, rang to say the prison authorities had banned me: ‘They told Chris, “We know all about this Thompson,”’ she said. So I was scratched from his list of people that he ca
n phone, write to, or who can visit him.

  Can’t have scumbag authors meeting scumbag crims, can we? But I’m as bull-headed a writer as Chris is a bandit. Tell me I can’t do something and I’ll tell you ten ways I can. So this slab of madness is built with conversations, diaries, transcripts, reports, documents, telepathy, possession, and jaw-dropping shock at how weird, wild and appalling life can be.

  Annette has been shocked in the process not just by Chris’ subsequent admissions about his own misdeeds – admissions he even took to the extent of contacting the police about cold case heists he was responsible for – but by her wrecking ball of a son finally facing up to very personal demons, including the legacy of his beloved, rotten, complicated dad.

  Chris is MAYHEM’s heart and shattered soul. So prepare to jump bank counters, brawl in jail yards, go on the run and go around the twist with this enigmatic, impulsive, exasperating, cruel, caring, cheeky, egotistical, smart, creative, destructive, big-hearted and doom-starred maniac.

  Matt Thompson 2016

  WITH ME I’VE GOT A KNACK OF INCOM-, I START ONE SENTENCE, I DON’T FINISH – COMPLETE IT – SO I’M FOREVER JUMP, JUMPING ALL OVER THE PLACE, YOU KNOW? THAT’S WHERE MY MIND IS AT THE MOMENT, YOU KNOW?

  Chris reckons he gets a bit hectic sometimes — years upon years in solitary have set his mind spinning.

  REGARDING CHRISTOPHER DEAN PECOTIC, AKA CHRISTOPHER DEAN BINSE, AKA BADNE$$, AKA LORD BADNE$$

  Corrections Reference Number (CRN) 43517:

  ONE OF THE MOST DANGEROUS MEN IN AUSTRALIA FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS

  John Silvester, co-author of the Underbelly series, rates Chris Binse for listeners of Melbourne’s Radio 3AW

  WHILE I HAD MY HEAD DOWN I HEARD THE GUN CLICK TWICE. I WAS IN GREAT FEAR THAT HE WAS GOING TO SHOOT SOMEONE.

  Female teller, State Savings Bank clerk describing one of Chris Binse’s hold-ups

  I HAVE ABOUT AS MUCH SYMPATHY FOR HIM AS I DO FOR OSAMA BIN LADEN.

  Steve Medcraft, president of People Against Lenient Sentencing, shares his feelings about Chris Binse with readers of the Age newspaper

  MOST OF THE ROBBERIES I TRIED TO DO BEFORE LUNCH.

  Chris Binse describes an average workday

  &

  1. VOICE FROM THE ABYSS

  EARLY 2016: CHRIS PECOTIC

  Born in Fremantle in 1968. Now buried in long-term solitary confinement, which is against all the guidelines for Australian prisons because it drives people nuts and inmates come out even more angry and antisocial. But the guidelines are routinely ignored because this is an age that seeks absolute and total control: this, the supermax era.

  CHRIS:

  I feel a strong need and desire to convey a message to those young enough to be my kids.

  To those still very much naïve.

  To those caught up in a foolish notion: that jail is a badge of honour.

  And to those in government, too, to learn from all the terrible mistakes that have been made.

  To these ends, I have removed all egotism.

  This is just me. I’m not after folklore status.

  So here in these pages I lay myself bare in order to reveal the reality of my life and not to glamorise it in any way.

  My story must be a deterrent, and thus a tragic end awaits to drive the point home, and to showcase what the system is generating.

  If it must be then I will die for this message to be heard. I will die to warn, to deter, to fuel needed change.

  I will die if that helps stop all of us from repeating the stupid mistakes that all have made.

  I can’t warn the young enough of the dangers that others, too, will face if they are to follow the path I foolishly lead.

  I was considered a hardcore inmate, too, but look at the result: a miserable end.

  It all started off with things so trivial and petty – like shoplifting a bit of chewie – but grew and grew and here I am now: an institutionalised, dysfunctional misfit.

  If I could be born again, but not again into this life that has been so traumatising and traumatised, and is so wasted and ruined, then I would want that. Yes, I would.

  But every choice, every chance, every curse, everything that ever happened leads here to this terrible madness of isolation.

  No roads go back.

  So please listen, and keep listening even when the stories I tell make you very glad that you don’t know me and never met me and never will.

  I’m in Hell.

  2. WELL WORN LINES

  AUGUST 2015:

  HM PRISON BARWON

  Here Christopher ‘BADNE$$’ Pecotic sits down with a few detectives. The routine they are about to run through makes me think of something Oscar-winning actress Glenda Jackson said: ‘The whole essence of learning lines is to forget them.’ She reckons that a good drama feels alive and real even though the actors are repeating stuff they’ve said countless times before. That’s pretty much serious crime: utterly repetitive yet forever raw and seething with consequence.

  And why is this particular interview happening? Because Chris wants to die purged of his sins. So he has decided to tell the police about a stack of unsolved hold-ups he did in the late 1980s and early 1990s, along with a little drunken gunplay when some nightclub bouncers pissed him off. Chris will not name any living accomplices, nor most dead ones: that’s against his code and beside the point. So after he wrote a confession letter to an old nemesis in the Armed Robbery Squad, a few detectives come to see him at Barwon. How many times have they said all this before?

  Police: What is your full name?

  Chris: Christopher Dean Pecotic, aka Binse.

  Police: Chris, before continuing I must inform you that you’re not obliged to say or do anything, but anything you say or do may be given in evidence. Do you understand that?

  Chris: Yes, I do.

  Police: I’ll also inform you of the following rights. You may communicate with or attempt to communicate with a legal practitioner. You may communicate with or attempt to communicate with a friend or relative. If you’re not a citizen or permanent resident of Australia you may communicate with or attempt to communicate with the consular office of the country of which you are a citizen. Do you understand those rights?

  Chris: Yes, I do.

  Police: Do you wish to exercise any of these rights before we proceed?

  Chris: No, it’s fine.

  Police: Have you had a chance to get some legal advice about this?

  Chris: No, I don’t need legal advice.

  3. BADNESS IN ISOLATION

  FEBRUARY 2016: RIP 43517

  Acacia Unit, a high risk section of the maximum-security Barwon Prison in the Victorian town of Lara, where scenes of the original Mad Max were filmed back in 1979.

  Inmate 43517 has one last story to tell, but here in this stripped back, no pen, no pencil, no hanging point, no nothing, anti-suicide observation cell, he has zero that he can write with except shit or blood. I mean, come on, what the fuck?

  There was a time, actually many times, when 43517 was flying stratospherically high, when he looked in the mirror and grinning back at him was Australia’s No. 1 urban guerrilla, when he rampaged through bank jobs as a hardcore ‘solja’ [soldier] using guns, masks and his berserk will to exact payback from a rotten state, and there was a time when he had his own commando sanctuary deep in the Queensland bush, Badlands, where he lived with his firecracker of a girlfriend while on the run.

  In those brief, snatched-away moments of liberty in a lifetime spent otherwise in the grind-core cages of prison after prison, he scared the living shit out of a stack of regular folk with his banditry and mayhem, and he has pinched cars and motorbikes like other people shoplift chocolate bars.

  I AM CARRYING A SLEDGEHAMMER WITH A .45 SEMIAUTO PISTOL TUCKED INTO THE TOP OF MY OVERALLS. MY COMRADE IS CARRYING A PUMP-ACTION SHOTGUN. PEOPLE ARE SCATTERING. TRAMS PASS BY.

  Westpac withdrawal, 1991

  Inmate 43517 has raised full-on merry hell, lea
ding swarms of Melbourne pursuit cars and a chopper on an absurd fucking chase in a clapped-out LPG car stuck in second gear; he’s leapt to freedom from an old stone bastard of a jail in Sydney under gunfire from a watchtower while his bisexual livewire lover, Roxy, sweats her fanny off with nerves as she sits primed in their getaway car. He’s been stabbed and bashed and scarred and slashed, and beaten heads with socks full of heavy cans and had icepick fights and coated his body in shit and run roaring into walls hard enough to knock himself out, and been beaten and tortured by cops as hateful and greedy as himself. When wired tight on ice he once sized up the police parked out front in an armoured car and put a bullet into the window. He also shot their robot. All while dressed in shorts and a ballistic vest.

  I SAW A PUFF OF WHITE SMOKE FROM THE FRONT DRIVER’S SIDE WINDOW AND KNEW THAT THE BULLET HAD STRUCK THE WINDOW OF THE VEHICLE ONLY A METRE OR SO FROM WHERE I WAS SEATED.

  … IT WAS DECIDED THAT THE ARMOURED VEHICLE WOULD BE REVERSED OUT OF THE DRIVEWAY.

  Siege at East Keilor, 2012

  Like what the fuck, ya know.

  But time passes, and who would know it better than this wretch whose life has been locked into the literal service of time, a man on the rack of time, strapped to the clock with the click of each second echoing off the walls of his isolation chamber for years and fucking years, the judge who gave him almost two decades for this latest stretch telling him in court that this would drive him insane, or more insane, since this has been such a formative part of his life – no, fuck that, this is his life; he is the wire and the walls and the bells and the bleak house pandemonium of a soul spinning into the void.

  Inmate 43517 is now 47 years old, father to a girl, son to a mother, brother to two men.

  His name is Chris.

  And between writing with blood or shit, he chooses shit.

  *

  Chris stands a mattress up against the cell wall. It’s his tombstone so it needs his name, dates and an RIP.