The detective who arrested Mark "Chopper" Read for shooting a Tasmanian bikie was unsurprised to hear the notorious criminal admit to killing him a decade on.
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In his last interview Read, who died from liver cancer this month, claims to have "rubbed out" Sidney Michael Collins in New South Wales in 2002.
Read spent six years in Risdon Prison for shooting Collins "in the guts" at Evandale in 1992.
In his 60 Minutes interview, Read said he caught up with Collins and shot him dead "because he was an absolute turd".
"I hopped in his car, going back to his place, bang, bang, bang. I shot him the last time with his gun," he told Nine presenter Tara Brown.
Former Launceston CIB detective Bob Coad, who arrested Read the night he shot Collins in the stomach and dumped him at the Launceston General Hospital, said he was capable of finishing the job.
"Knowing Chopper as well as I did I would be accepting that Sid Collins is dead," he said yesterday.
A year after supposedly killing Collins, Read detailed in his third memoir - How To Shoot Friends & Influence People - a dream involving the former Outlaws' president.
"I did exactly what I'd like to do in real life: pulled out a gun and shot Sid in the head," he wrote.
READ MORE: Chopper fell and rose in Tasmania
Read's dislike of the bikie appears to have been rooted in Collins giving him up over the Evandale shooting.
As it turns out it was Bob Coad who got Collins to turn on Read as he interviewed him at the Royal Hobart Hospital.
"He wasn't going to co- operate, but under our method of interrogation he swayed and and told us what happened - well, at that stage he was basically on his death bed," he said.
"I leaned over his bed and had a couple of words with him and he decided to co- operate."
He said the method of interrogation involved approved methods including being direct, sharp and abrupt with Collins.
Read who was never convicted of murder, also admitted killing union heavy Desmond Costello in the '70s during the Melbourne waterfront wars.
The second involved murdering serial paedophile and child killer Reginald Edward Isaacs in Melbourne's Pentridge Prison.
In comments likely to haunt some jurors Read confessed that his shooting of Siam "Sammy the Turk" Ozerkam in the '80s "was outright f---ing murder".
Read was found not guilty by jury on the basis of self- defence.
"Everyone swallowed it. I couldn't understand," he told Brown.
