Families sought answers about slain relatives from notorious crim Neddy Smith

Murdered gangster John Regan’s cousin Kelly Slater attempted to separate fact from fiction by going straight to the source. This is what she learned.

Arthur Stanley ‘Neddy’ Smith after being found not guilty of the murder of Sally Anne Huckstepp in 1999. Smith recalled meeting John Regan at Sydney’s Long Bay Jail in his autobiography. Picture: NSW Police

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The second cousin of murdered gangster Stewart John Regan wrote to one of Australia’s most notorious criminals seeking answers about him.

The Australian’s podcast The Gangster’s Ghost revealed Regan was incarcerated at the Mount Penang Training School for Boys near Gosford on the NSW Central Coast as a teenager – one of the many institutions where hitman Arthur ‘Neddy’ Smith was also locked up in his youth. Subscribers can listen to Episode 3 now at gangstersghost.com.au.

A drug trafficker, rapist, robber, and contract killer, Smith was once one of the most feared figures in Sydney’s underworld.

Almost five decades after Regan was gunned down in a Marrickville back street, Kelly Slater wrote to him at the Long Bay Correctional Centre in Sydney’s Eastern suburbs, where he was serving two life sentences for murder, asking if he could shed light on Regan’s time at Mount Penang or the criminal career he fostered following his release in the 1960s.

“I said, ‘I’ve read your book … and I find it contradicts itself’,” Ms Slater told The Australian’s senior reporter Matthew Condon in a new episode of The Gangster’s Ghost.

Smith recalled meeting Regan at Long Bay in his autobiography, and said he would deliver books to him in solitary confinement when the pair were incarcerated together.

The friendliness didn’t last.

Smith wrote he was shocked to receive a letter from a childhood friend who’d fallen in with Johnny Regan and another gangster, Kevin Gore, on the outside.

“I wrote to him straight away telling him to watch himself and to get out of those two madmen’s company.”

Even by Smith’s standards, Regan was worthy of his reputation.

“Regan was completely insane. He had an impulse to kill everyone he could.

“He wanted more than anything in the world to be the most feared man in Australia. He got his wish alright!”

Kelly Slater Regan in the lane in Marrickville where John Regan was shot dead. Picture: Ryan Osland/The Australian

Ms Slater said she inquired about the circumstances of the pair’s meeting in her letter to Neddy Smith, as well as the nature of their relationship during their shared incarceration.

“And do you know who killed him?” she wrote.

Neddy Smith never replied to Ms Slater’s correspondence. He was suffering from dementia and it’s unclear if he received the letter before his death in September of 2021.

Johnny Regan’s oldest daughter, Helen Regan, recalled encountering Smith in Long Bay – where she was accompanying a friend who was visiting a close relative – before his death.

“All I knew was that … my father did some time or was a visitor of that maximum security prison, which I’m led to believe has the worst of the worst,” she told The Australian.

Helen Regan. Picture: Ryan Osland/The Australian

Helen says she recalls Smith – who stood at over 190cm tall – was a “massive guy” who loomed over her as she sat at a table in the prison’s visitor area.

“It was a really awkward situation,” she said as Smith extended one of his “huge hands” to her.

“I stated, ‘Hi, Helen Regan’, and he looked me in the eye and said, ‘I knew your father’,” she said.

“I replied, ‘I know – you wrote a book about him, remember?’”

Helen said Smith noted her resemblance to her father before offering to make her a clock out of matchsticks.

“I just sort of went, ‘Uh, thanks, but no thanks’,” she recalled.

Looking back now, Helen told The Australian she’s still puzzled by the interaction.

“He’s one of Australia’s most feared criminals … and here he is making matchstick clocks,” she said.

“Those same hands are the ones that pulled triggers.”

Arthur Stanley ‘Neddy’ Smith in 1976. Picture: NSW Police

The sister of murdered Sydney woman Lynette Simms also wrote to Smith in prison in 2010 pleading for information about her missing sister.

Lynette’s suspected murder by her husband, Chris Dawson, was the subject of The Australian’s global smash-hit investigative podcast The Teacher’s Pet. Dawson was convicted of the crime in August of 2022, four decades after she vanished.

He has always denied any wrongdoing and has applied to appeal his conviction in the High Court, arguing he suffered a forensic disadvantage in proving his innocence due to the long delay in bringing the matter to trial.

Lynette Simms with daughter at her Bayview home in 1978. Picture: supplied

Pat Jenkins, Lynette’s older sister, asked Smith if she was involved in or knew about her suspected murder after the teenage babysitter Mr Dawson later married told an inquest into Lynette’s disappearance he had attempted to hire a hitman to kill Lynette.

“Dear Mr Smith, I am writing to you in the hope that you can help me,” the letter, obtained by The Australian in 2018, said.

“What I hope you will find within yourself is to write to say you had family and social connections to Paul Hayward.

“That is all I need and I cannot tell you how much we would appreciate it if you could do that.”

Paul Hayward, also a convicted drug trafficker, was Smith’s brother-in-law and played alongside Mr Dawson at the Newtown Jets Rugby League Club.

“That was quite a difficult thing to do because I’ve never written to anyone like that before,” Ms Jenkins told The Australian’s National Chief Correspondent Hedley Thomas in 2018.

More is known about the fate of Ms Jenkins’ correspondence: her request that Smith be allowed to read and respond to the letter was ultimately declined by prison authorities.

“I advise that while we appreciate what you and your family are trying to achieve, a decision has been made not to allow inmate Smith to receive the letter,” Regional Superintendent Ross Edwards told Ms Jenkins in his written response.

Subscribers hear new episodes of The Gangster’s Ghost first. Listen to Episodes 1, 2, and 3 now at gangstersghost.com.au