Mark 'Chopper' Read claims he killed four people in final interview before his death

Mark Chopper Read has confessed murdering four people in the last interview before his own death.

MARK "Chopper" Read, Australia's most infamous criminal who recently died from liver cancer, claimed he killed four people.

In an extraordinary interview on 60 Minutes last night that was recorded two weeks before his death, Read came clean about the deaths of influential union member Desmond Costello, paedophile Reginald Isaacs, gangster Siam Ozerkam (more commonly known as Sammy the Turk) and bikie boss Sydney Michael Collins.

Recorded, fittingly, in the now-defunct Pentridge Prison, Chopper's claims were full of the theatricality and dry humour that became his trademark over the past four decades.
"Four is all you're getting, that's it. I haven't killed any more than that, and don't try to tell me, don't try to make out that I have," Read said.
Using his well-known blue take on the English language, Read began by confessing to the murder of union heavyweight Desmond 'Dessie' Costello outside Collingwood's Leinster Arms Hotel in 1971.
"He didn't really see it coming," Read said.

Mark "Chopper" Read has never been convicted of murder.

"He didn't believe it was going to come - not from me. I was only a young kid. I was about 17 years old."
A gaunt Read also talked about his battle with cancer, adding he was happier to die a slow death than with a bullet in his brain.
"It doesn't even hit me emotionally," he said.
"I'd like to come back and see what all the fuss is going to be after I'm dead - read a few of the papers and watch a few of the TV shows and listen to a few of the arty-farty debates that are going to be on after I'm dead."
Tom Malone, executive producer of 60 Minutes, said Channel 9 had made verbal and written submissions to Victorian police in the wake of Read's on-camera confessions.

A gravely ill Mark 'Chopper' Read talks everything from cancer to his new show with Herald Sun's Nui Te Koha.

He said producers were still working to establish the veracity of his confessions when he died earlier this month.