One of Australia’s most notorious standover men and self-confessed hit-man Mark Chopper
Read has died.
The 58-year-old had been diagnosed with liver cancer last year.
Read claimed to have killed 19 men, but he was never convicted of a single murder.
Following a hard upbringing in Melbourne, Read was a ward of the state by his early teens.
He turned to a life of crime, stealing from drug dealers, and later kidnapping and assaulting criminals who had outstanding debts.
In 1987 he shot and killed a man outside a St Kilda nightclub but was acquitted on the grounds of self-defence.
Read spent nearly half his life in jail but made efforts to rehabilitate after he was released from a Tasmanian prison in the 1990s.
He became a household name in Australia after the eponymous film Chopper, starring Eric Bana, became a cult hit — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Photo: Patrick Rivere / Getty Images