It started with a middy of VB. Or 30. When he wasn’t drug-dealing, prostitute-running, raping, robbing or murdering, the notorious Arthur “Neddy” Smith enjoyed crawling Sydney’s seediest pubs from Chinatown’s Covent Garden Hotel to Alexandria’s Star Hotel, from where he and sidekick Graham “Abo” Henry ran their “green-lit” heroin operation, fronting pounds of the drug to their top runners.
The Star, no longer a pub, is also where drug dealer Harvey Jones was last seen in 1983, leaving with Smith before his body was discovered 12 years later buried off Botany’s Foreshore Road. Neddy was later convicted for the knock.
And it was after another typically epic binge with his old mate, disgraced former detective and convicted murderer Roger “The Dodger” Rogerson – encompassing The Rocks’ Lord Nelson, the Covent Garden and Glebe’s Australian Youth Hotel – that Neddy committed his final murder, stabbing tow truck driver Ronald Flavell near the Coogee Bay Hotel in Australia’s first documented road rage incident on 30 October 1987.
After being picked up outside Botany Council on 22 December 1988, where he was planning to hit its Christmas payroll, Neddy was refused bail on the Flavell murder charge. Sentenced to two life terms, and crippled by Parkinson’s, last drinks have long since been called on Neddy’s infamous criminal career.
For more information about Neddy Smith, visit the Sydney Crime Museum
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