Arthur Stanley ‘Neddy’ Smith, one of the most relentless and opportunistic criminals in Australian history, has died aged 76.
Smith, who had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in the early 1980s, died of natural causes in Long Bay Prison’s aged care unit on Wednesday night. He had been in palliative care for a year.
The 76-year-old was serving life sentences for the murder of Sydney tow truck driver Ronald Flavell in October 1987 and the 1983 murder of brothel keeper and underworld wannabe Harvey Jones.
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Smith stabbed Flavell in a road rage altercation following a drunken pub crawl with his then mate Roger Rogerson. Rogerson was not involved in the murder.
Jones’s body was found near Botany Bay in 1995 – 12 years after he disappeared. He had been shot twice in the head.
Who was Neddy Smith?
Smith was born in Sydney in 1944, as a result of his mother’s liaison with a visiting American serviceman.
He never knew his father and was raised by his grandmother in Redfern.
In the 1970s, he married Debra Bell and the couple had three children.
They were divorced while Smith was in prison serving his sentence for the Flavell murder.
In 2009, Debra Bell told The Daily Telegraph her former husband was “a gentle person”.
“He’s always been a good father and provider and he has always done that for me and the kids,” Bell said.
“I respect the man, I honest to God respect him.”
Life of crime
Smith’s first conviction was at age 11 for stabbing his half brother, Edwin.
He was sent to Mittagong Boys Home, the first of numerous periods of incarceration as a juvenile and an adult.
By 19, he was in prison for housebreaking, and back again in 1967, this time for 12 years for rape and stealing.
He was released on parole in 1975.
Smith then turned to armed robbery and, later, drug dealing. By the early 1980s, he was reputedly Australia’s largest heroin dealer.
He was a career criminal and police informer and in the early 1990s, he gave evidence on his crimes and alleged police corruption to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption.
His testimony inspired the TV series, Blue Murder.
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