Gregory David Roberts, ex-criminal and author makes plea for internet privacy

CONVICTED bank robber turned author Gregory David Roberts has made a bizarre plea to be erased from cyberspace as his new book tops the bestsellers’ list.

Author Gregory David Roberts in Melbourne.

AUSTRALIAN author and convicted bank robber Gregory David Roberts has made a bizarre plea for help to erase him from cyberspace as his new novel, The Mountain Shadow, tops the bestsellers’ list.

The former heroin addict wrote that he was “a sinner who tries to sin no more” in his only public statement to coincide with the release of the long-awaited sequel to Shantaram, which he partially wrote in Pentridge Prison in the 1990s.

“If there’s anyone out there who knows how to delete stuff from the internet legally and without compromising anyone’s copyright, I’d appreciate it if you’d delete any pictures and film of me or references to me from the internet, especially deleting me from Wikipedia, leaving only my work,” he wrote on his Facebook page.

“It would be very nice, to be erased from cyberspace, because it’s not about me: it’s about the art.”

The "Building Society Bandit" in Melbourne after being extradited from Germany.

Convicted robber turned author Gregory David Roberts (aka Gregory John Peter Smith).

Roberts escaped from Pentridge Prison in 1980 and fled to India, but he was caught smuggling heroin into Frankfurt in 1990 and extradited to Australia.

He served a further six years in prison, two of those in solitary confinement, where he started writing Shantaram, about an Australian fugitive in Bombay.

He claimed prison wardens twice destroyed the manuscript, but he finished it after his release from jail.

More than a million copies of the novel have sold since 2003.

Roberts fled Pentridge Prison in 1980.

Then known as Gregory John Peter Smith and Gregory Lawrence Smith aka the "Building Society Bandit" was one of Australia’s ten most wanted men following his escape.

In 2003, after his reformation and publication.

Roberts wrote on his Facebook page that he had retired from public life in January 2014.

“I don’t do interviews any more, and don’t have email, a mobile phone or a social media presence. All of my time is devoted to new projects and my family of loved ones,” he wrote last month.

The only way to get insight into his life is to read his novels and piece together the few quotes on various websites.

Born in Melbourne in 1952 as Gregory David Smith, Roberts wrote on the Shantaram website that he was a student activist at Melbourne University in the 1970s and became a heroin addict after his marriage broke down and he lost custody of his young daughter.

He robbed building society branches to fund his addiction and his three-piece suits and polite manner gained him some notoriety.

“You think that it’s going to solve all your problems, but what it does is roll all your problems up into one huge problem, which is getting the money for drugs,” he told BBC News in 2005.

Smith remade himself as a successful author, Gregory David Roberts, and now wants his past to disappear..

In a similar vein to musician Cat Stevens calling himself Yusef Islam after converting to Islam and US author Anne Rice disowning her vampire novels after becoming a born-again Christian, Roberts adopted the name Shantaram, which means Man of Peace, while in India.

He’s also know to his fans as GDR, achieving the same kind of cult status as Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, who is known as GRRM or Grim.

Roberts ended his recent Facebook statement with a few words of new-found wisdom for his fans.

Book cover for “The Mountain Shadow”

Book cover for “Shantaram”

“I’ve done wrong, I’ve made just about every mistake there is, and I dug a trench in my own honour,” he wrote.

“But as a sinner who tries to sin no more, and who knows that it’s never too late to change if you never give up hope, here it is. Connection is everything. Connect with others, and with your spiritual self.”

His story has been sold to a Hollywood studio, but the project has stalled.

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There’s no doubt that Roberts is an interesting character.

Extract from ‘The Final Interview’

If you could wave a magic political wand, and change one thing about the world, what would it be?

GDR (Gregory David Roberts): I would make hypocrisy an impossibility.

Hypocrisy? Why that?

GDR: Hypocrisy is the most significant impediment to political and social progress.

How so?

Look, I’m not talking about the small-scale hypocrisy that we all fall into from time to time. I do hypocritical things sometimes, and there’s no-one who is immune.

But I’m not talking about little, quotidian hypocrisies here. I’m talking about powerful and influential people, sometimes speaking for entire nations, making decisions to invade countries or bomb them, establishing trade treaties that advantage a small number over the interests of the great majority, and who speak of the environment while deliberately destroying entire ecosystems: people in high places, in other words, who know that they’re lying to everyone, or concealing the truth of what they’ve decided or done.

And how would the eradication of hypocrisy help?

GDR: So long as we can continue to say one thing and do the opposite, we can’t escape from the prison of moral inconsequence.

The prison of moral inconsequence?

GDR: For example, I have to admit the flaws in my own character that allowed me to commit crimes to feed my drug habit. That happened decades ago, but if I allow time to erase my culpability, I shift my personal perspective into a hypocritical sphere, and I void principle.

But if I acknowledge that weaknesses in my character drove me to desperate, criminal acts, I’m free to improve myself.

If I blame somebody else for my own mistakes and failings, I’m stuck in a prison of moral inconsequence, accepting no blame, and facing no shame. It’s very hard to grow in a stone garden like that.

Similarly, if political leaders talk about human rights, while committing extrajudicial murders by drone attacks, that hypocrisy undermines the principle. If billionaires talk about philanthropy, using money they stole from society by avoiding taxes, they’re voiding principle.

If we condemn violence, while bombing human beings in other countries, we void principle. If we preach humanity, while demonising refugees from horror, we void principle. If we preach austerity, while allowing corporations to hide their stolen tax avoidance in havens, we void principle. If every politician and self-described leader in the world had to tell the truth, and couldn’t be hypocritical, the world would be a better place almost over night.

From The Final Interview at themountainshadowbook.com