Google ‘succulent Chinese meal’ and you’ll get about 100,000 results – more than twice as many hits as searching for a merely ‘delicious’ Chinese feed.
The difference is due to one Australian man and a viral video of his arrest at a Brisbane restaurant after a tip-off he was using a stolen credit card to settle his bill.
That arrest, on October 11, 1991, was filmed by a Network Seven news television crew and has been watched millions of times since it was uploaded to YouTube in 2009.
The faded footage shows a bear-like man delivering a series of off-the-cuff Shakespearean lines as he is reluctantly dragged away from his lunch.
‘Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest!’ the man booms at the camera. ‘Get your hand off my penis!
‘What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal? Ooh, that’s a nice headlock, sir. Ah yes, I see that you know your judo well.’
The arrest was a case of mistaken identity, but the minute-long clip has since become the subject of countless memes and even has its own Wikipedia page.
After much speculation, the moustachioed man hauled off by cops was revealed to be small-time crook, part-time actor and full-time showman Jack Karlson.
Now, more than 30 years after that overplayed incident, Karlson’s story has been told in a book called Carnage: A Succulent Chinese Meal, Mr Rent-a-Kill and the Australian Manson Murders, by journalist Mark Dapin.
Dapin, the author of two previous true-crime studies of armed robbers and escapees, describes Karlson as ‘definitely the most interesting crim I’ve ever met’.
Karlson is a talented painter and actor who starred in a music video for punk rock band The Chats and appeared as an extra in classic Australian television dramas Homicide, Division 4 and Matlock Police.
Jack Karlson struggles with police outside a Brisbane restaurant on October 11, 1991, in one of the most-viewed arrest videos of all time. His arrest for suspected credit card fraud was a case of mistaken identity – but his real life story is far more extraordinary
Almost a quarter of a century after that incident – now known as the ‘Succulent Chinese Meal’ video or ‘Democracy Manifest’ – Karlson’s story has been told in a book called Carnage: A Succulent Chinese Meal, Mr Rent-a-Kill and the Australian Manson Murders, by Mark Dapin
He has been locked up in prisons in Brisbane (Boggo Road), Sydney (Parramatta, Long Bay) and Melbourne (Pentridge), and escaped from custody three times.
Dapin also learned details of far darker chapters in Karlson’s complicated history, including his wife’s murder and the couple’s links to a pair of serial killers and their lowlife mates.
While parts of Karlson’s criminal past were known, Dapin’s research uncovered his associations with some of Australia’s most notorious crooks from the 1970s to 1990s.
Karlson knew then up-and-coming standover man Mark ‘Chopper’ Read, did time with gangster Neddy Smith, and was friends with hitman Christopher Dale Flannery, the Mr Rent-a-Kill of the book’s title.
He worked for underworld figure Ron ‘Fatman’ Feeney, grew close to the Melbourne cop Brian ‘Skull’ Murphy, and shared a cell with armed robber and playwright Jim McNeil.
Read, Smith, Flannery, Feeney, Murphy and McNeil are all dead, while Karlson – now in his early eighties – lives on a run-down property in south-east Queensland.
Karlson served time in prisons in three states and knew budding hitman Christopher Dale Flannery (above), escapee Darcy Dugan, playwright Jim McNeil and gangster Neddy Smith
That was where the author found the old thief in 2021 after Karlson called him to suggest his adventures should be included in a book about prison escapes Dapin had already written.
‘Ah, my boy, my good man, lovely to speak to you, wonderful to speak to you,’ he told Dapin at the start of their first phone conversation in that thunderous voice.
‘Name’s Karlson, Jack Karlson. I understand that you’re writing a book about escapes. Well, I think I should star in your wonderful upcoming tome.’
Told the book was finished, Karlson said, ‘My boy, come up anyway, come up and see me. I live between Gatton and Esk and we should share my tale.’
Dapin, who had not seen the ‘succulent Chinese meal’ video, was fascinated by Karlson when they met at his bush property several months later.
Karlson had taken art and acting classes in Pentridge as a young man and decades later, after his house had burned down, lived in a shack next to a shipping container, surrounded by his paintings.
‘Loads and loads of unfinished canvases,’ Dapin says. ‘Most of them female nudes but some of them are paintings of his arrest in the democracy manifest incident.
‘He still had the air of an actor about him, albeit he’s older and smaller and less rambunctious. He certainly loved painting and felt he was a painter.’
Karlson. known in jail as ‘Jack the Hun’, was born Cecil George Edwards somewhere in Queensland and grew up in Brisbane, where his family life was a mess.
When Dapin once asked him has parents’ names he said: ‘My father’s name was Alphonsus Hitler and my mother’s name was Eva Braun.’
Karlson was first sent to a boys’ home at age seven or eight. He began hanging around adult criminals when he was a teenager.
While serving three months for vagrancy in Boggo Road in 1966, he was put on a train to face a shop-breaking charge in Maryborough, 250km north of Brisbane.
‘So he goes on a train handcuffed to a cop,’ Dapin says. ‘And the cop falls asleep so he undoes the handcuffs and just jumps out the train onto the siding.’
A year later, Karlson and another inmate fled McLeod Prison Farm on French Island, in Victoria’s Western Port Bay, after convincing a fishing boat operator to take them to the mainland.
Jack Karlson’s wife Eve (above) was murdered
Karlson’s most audacious escape came in Sydney in 1968 when he walked out of the cells below Central Local Court by impersonating a detective, pretending to escort his co-accused to a hearing.
They were the three escapes Karlson wanted to tell Dapin about, but there were other times he avoided custody.
‘He was always getting arrested and he develops this tactic that whenever he gets arrested he pretends he’s mad,’ Dapin says. Sometimes, Karlson would expose his penis.
‘The reason he did this was he knew it was easier to escape from a mental hospital than a jail. They’d put him in a mental hospital and he’d walk out again.’
During an early 1970s stint in Parramatta for car theft and carrying break-and-enter tools, Karlson performed in prison productions of McNeil’s plays.
‘These are the great days of Jack’s life,’ Dapin says. ‘These are the things that he remembers the most.’
Next stop was Pentridge, where Karlson met Flannery and Ray Mooney, who would write a play based on Flannery and armed robber Stan Taylor’s time in the jail’s brutal H Division.
Karlson would later play a character based on Taylor in that play, Everynight… Evernight, which was turned into a 1994 film starring David Field and Bill Hunter.
Taylor and Craig Minogue would bomb Victoria Police’s then Russell Street headquarters in March 1986, killing constable Angela Taylor and injuring 21 others.
Karlson had done time with heavy criminals in Pentridge but was never one of them. ‘The hard men aren’t interested in him,’ Dapin says. ‘He’s way out the edge of things.’
After his release, Karlson worked at the infamous St Kilda club Mickey’s Disco – run by Feeney with Flannery on the door and the regular presence of Murphy.
Karlson played a character in a play based on Chris Flannery’s time in the jail’s H Division called Everynight… Everynight written by Ray Mooney. He is pictured centre in the play
He soon met and married Yugoslavian-born Ivanka ‘Eve’ Djugum, who had previously been in a relationship with convicted double killer Barry Quinn.
Karlson’s young bride remained under the spell of Quinn, a cult-like figure dubbed Australia’s Charles Manson, and that attraction would ultimately cost Eve her life.
‘We’re talking about all this funny stuff and then Jack goes, “My wife got murdered,”‘ Dapin says.
In November 1978, Quinn escaped from Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital with the help of Eve Karlson, serial killer Paul Haigh, Robert Wright and Wayne Smith.
Shortly after Quinn made his getaway, Eve was shot dead – Dapin thinks by Sheryle Gardner – a former girlfriend of both Quinn and Haigh – but possibly by Wright.
Carnage: A Succulent Chinese Meal, Mr Rent-a-Kill and the Australian Manson Murders
Haigh and Wright shot Smith dead in June 1979 then Haigh murdered Gardner along with her ten-year-old son Danny Mitchell. In August, Haigh stabbed to death another girlfriend, Lisa Brearley.
‘They’re just all killing each other,’ Dapin says. ‘It’s horrific.’
Quinn was killed in Pentridge in July 1984 after being set alight with model glue by multiple killer Alex Tsakmakis. In July 1988, Tsakamakis was bashed to death in the same prison by Minogue, Stan Taylor’s lead accomplice in the Russell Street bombing.
Wright died with four other inmates including Read’s mate Jimmy Loughlan at Pentridge’s high-security Jika Jika unit in October 1987 in a fire the prsioners lit.
Dapin says there are some details about Eve’s murder and the following bloodbath Karlson won’t discuss – or doesn’t remember – but it is likely he was acquainted with at least most of the killers.
His book takes Karlson’s life up to the ‘succulent Chinese meal’ arrest video which has made its subject an unlikely folk hero.
‘But there’s more,’ Dapin says. Like why Karlson claims he never knew Sydney crime boss George Freeman – when his daughter says she called him Uncle George.
There is also a gunshot wound in Karlson’s leg that does not have a satisfactory explanation. One theory is that Flannery shot him, but Karlson says he didn’t.
Dapin remains intrigued by Karlson, who continues to paint and has previously produced a line of merchandise – T-shirts, stubby holders, a wine range – based on the arrest footage.
‘I mean, he is a painter, he can write, he’s an actor,’ Dapin says. ‘I think Jack’s probably a genius.’
Carnage: A Succulent Chinese Meal, Mr Rent-a-Kill and the Australian Manson Murders by journalist Mark Dapin is published by Simon & Schuster. It is available online from Booktopia and Amazon.
‘It’s just not the way crims speak’
Mark Dapin tells Jack Karlson’s story
Mark Dapin had not seen the ‘succulent Chinese meal’ arrest video before he first spoke to Jack Karlson, but his then 16-year-old son had studied it at school.
‘What impressed me about it was he’s this big bear of a man being manhandled into a car by a whole bunch of cops and he’s not punchy,’ Dapin says.
‘To be fair, he can’t really punch because they’ve got him in all kinds of different locks, but he’s defending himself with his voice as much as anything else.
‘And the way that he uses words, it’s just not the way that crims speak. It’s the way a Shakespearean actor speaks.
‘His lungs are full like he’s making a proclamation, he’s declarative and he’s using this really curious vocabulary.
‘”This is democracy manifest” – who the f*** says that?
‘Then he sort of contrasts this democracy manifest style of talking with, “Get your hands off my penis!”
‘Even the way he uses “penis” – he’s not saying “leave my c*** alone, mate”, it’s “Get your hand off MY PENIS!” It’s his penis and it’s as innocent as the rest of him. It does not deserve to be arrested any more than he does.’
