"In the history of criminal Melbourne, no single word has ever imparted as much fear as Chopper." - New York Times, April 2013

Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read died of cancer at age 58 in Melbourne.

A self-confessed murderer, robber and extortionist, his life was still glorified for his "moral code": no abuse and stealing from civilians. He targeted criminals just like himself. Drug dealers and pimps who abused drug users and hookers will find death in the hands of Chopper.

During an interview with the New York Times, he shared that his crime specialty was ambushing illegal casinos with explosives in his mouth.

"There's no sense carrying it in your pocket, is there?"

As for the drug pushers, he tortured them with blowtorches.

It was Chopper's dark character that became etched in people's mind.

However, Chopper's manager, Andrew Parisi, called on everyone to remember how he changed his life from a terrible upbringing and criminal past to a quiet one.

"Despite his failing health, he delighted the audience (in his last show) with his skills as a raconteur and storyteller. This is how he would wish to be remembered, as someone who spun a great yarn and made many people laugh.

He worked as a writer, painter and public speaker, paid his taxes and took care of his family. We ask that people reflect on how Mark was able to overcome his past and, after more than 23 years in prison, find a way to re-enter 'normal' society. It is as a husband, father and friend that Mark will be missed most deeply," Mr Parisi told The Herald Sun.

As for Crime Victims Support Association President Noel McNamara, Chopper "was a larger than life character."

Chopper was born to a devout Seventh Day Adventist mother who approved of his father's beating of him. But he grew up more afraid of his mother than his father whom he always saw sleeping with a loaded rifle at hand.

"When I was born my mother said that I was not a gift from God, things went downhill from there. My mother was a devout Seventh Day Adventist who placed religion above anything else ... I had no mother. She was devoted to her church and that was it, and you were either with her or against her," Chopper shared in an interview with ABC TV.

As for his father, he imparted a lesson to Chopper which he lived by the whole of his criminal life.

"Remember, son, just because you're going to kill a man is no reason for discourtesy."

At the age of 15, he had been notorious for robbing drug dealers.

He was then put inside a mental institution because his mother hated him for turning his back against the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

"She felt that if I could be deemed mentally insane then I would be forgiven in the eyes of God and go to heaven," Chopper told of his mother.

He was not mentally ill for he recalled he was given 60 episodes of shock treatment inside the institution.

Despite this terrible childhood, Chopper did not blame his father nor his mother for the "rotten" person that he had become.

"You want to hear about my childhood, I'll tell you. But I don't dwell on it, nor do I use it as an excuse for how I turned up. I didn't have a very nice childhood." he told ABC TV.

He was jailed for the first time when he was just 17. He spent 23 years inside prison for arm robbery, assault and kidnapping. At one point, he tried to abduct a County Court judge at gun point.

Even the worst of the worst of criminals fear Chopper for "showing no fear of pain - or of consequences - and that made him dangerous," as how Herald Sun put it.

At the ages of 19 and 23, he was sent back to a mental institution for having an inmate cut part of his ears just to show off that he can go out of the jail for hospital reasons.

Chopper had lead a gang called The Overcoat Gang. They wore long coats in which they hide their weapons used in killing and starting riot inside prison.

While reports said he had killed 19 people, he said he had only killed 7.

He was stabbed numerous times, shot once, hit by a car and beaten to the head with a claw hammer.

With all these, now that he is dead, Chopper will always be a character of mystery for most of the people.

As how Chopper put it, ""Now how many times in those books have I got to tell you that in certain areas I'm pulling your leg I'll let you be the judge ... They can either believe it or disbelieve it I couldn't give a s***."