Neddy Smith is half the man he used to be

WHEN he used to sign his autograph, Arthur Stanley "Neddy" Smith would write: "Walk tall and f . . . them all".

WHEN he used to sign his autograph, Arthur Stanley "Neddy" Smith would write: "Walk tall and f . . . them all".

But if Smith ever gets out of jail, it will be as a wheelchair-bound cripple.

And his well-known attitude certainly won't help him - for once, he will be asking for help from a system he could never abide.

Gone is the man who - at almost 2m-tall and built like the proverbial brick outhouse - could throw punches like an unstoppable "threshing machine".

Parkinson's Disease, with which Smith was diagnosed with almost 30 years ago, has reduced him to a shaking wreck of a man.

He cannot maintain his balance and topples over frequently.

Even the medication has stopped being effective and he requires round-the-clock medical care in Long Bay jail, where he still takes visitors.

Neddy's cohort Graham "Abo" Henry describes Neddy's current condition as dire.

"He'd fall over all the time, fall over and break his nose," said Henry.

Henry said that when a fellow inmate of Smith's, "Mr Asia" drug ring participant Jimmy Shepherd, was recently released from jail, Smith had sounded realistic about his lot.

Henry knows of the existence of Smith's new female visitor but not much about her.

"I know he said to a mate, Jimmy Shepherd . . . 'Well, it's good to hear you're going home, but this is as good as it gets for me'," Henry told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.

According to former NSW Police Assistant Commissioner John Laycock, Smith had once relied on his massive frame - and his hard man reputation - to maintain his place in the prison pecking order. He stood at almost 2m tall and was extremely fit, said Mr Laycock.

"He could fight like a threshing machine; you would never hold him down," said Mr Laycock, who spent years of his career investigating Smith over a string of gangland murders.

Smith, he said, had been in and out of boys' homes in the 1950s for petty crime before hitting the mainstream prison system.

He is probably one of the best-known figures from Sydney's 1980s drug wars, and his criminal career is long and sordid.

On his criminal CV is drug-dealing, prostitute-running, rape, armed robbery and murder.

Smith was a main target of Task Force Snowy, which investigated a series of 14 gangland murders committed in the 1970s and 1980s.

He was eventually convicted of one of those murders - that of brothel-keeper Harvey Jones - and sentenced to life in jail, while already in jail serving life for the murder of tow-truck driver Ron Flavell.

The Director of Public Prosecutions recommended Smith be charged with the murders of brothel-keeper Harvey Jones, as well as Daniel Chubb, Barry McCann, Bruce Sandery, Lewton Shu, Barry Croft, and prostitute Sallie- Ann Huckstepp.

This followed the placement of a listening device inside Smith's jail cell, which allegedly caught Smith boasting about his crimes to a fellow inmate.

However, Magistrate Pat O'Shane dismissed the charges relating to Chubb, McCann and Croft.

Of the remaining four murder counts, he was only convicted of the murder of Jones. He was acquitted of Huckstepp's murder and the other two charges were not proceeded with.

Police also suspected he was involved in the killing of hitman Christopher Dale Flannery.

Smith refuses to assist police with information about the outstanding murders - despite being imprisoned for life.

According to Mr Laycock, Neddy's inculcation in criminal ways is so strong that his criminal tendencies can never be erased.

"He's a broken-down old man, but he still hasn't been completely neutralised," he said "There's only one way that will happen."