Chopper

An amalgam of Billy the Kid, the Kray Brothers and Jack Henry Abbot, Mark "Chopper" Read (named for a kiddie cartoon character or his habit of slicing off people's toes with a bolt-cutter, depending on who you believe) is a phenomenon in his native Australia. Read claims to have committed more than a dozen murders — though he was tried and convicted for a single killing — and isn't a bit sorry; his victims were all drug dealers and villains who only got what was coming to them. Chopper's devil-may-care attitude, gutter style and over-the-top exploits sold newspapers like crazy, and he eventually stopped wasting brutal bon mots on ink-stained scribblers and ...