Convicted Murderer Neddy Smith | Forensic Investigators | Australian Crime

[Music] no no no no no no no no ah a routine early morning walk for one man but this day would be unlike others his dog would not only uncover a skull but a past that one killer thought he buried forever here with a person who was sticking his thumbs up at society and saying I've got away with this the system's about to take him on I wasn't sure whether he'd gone overseas gone underground or just didn't want to be found we only get one go at forensics we can't go back and put bodies back and re-dig them having everything intact then getting an x-rayed meant it was almost like x-raying a living person he was making allegations even at that stage that it was a police set up it looked like something from a movie the skull headset had a really long thinner face I thought this could be Harvey he thought he'd go away with it cold he thought he'd be right and it was going to be a fight to the end foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] skull was found on this beach there was little doubt the victim had been murdered but it was what happened six months before that discovery that would be vital in solving this case the killer had boasted that even if police found his victim they would never prove he was the murderer but these were no Bare Bones [Music] Botany Bay was a crime scene today after a human skull was found buried in a sand Bank a man walking his dog made the Grim Discovery he was quite taken aback rather shocked and he he went home to to settle down with a cup of tea I think it was rather unexpected on a Sunday morning while the victim's identity remains a mystery police here have called in task force snowy the special team of detectives investigating a series of Gangland murders dating back to the 80s foreign [Music] what we had here was a crime scene and we all know from experience that crime scenes leave Clues the trick is to find the clues so we had a one get the remains out and secondly preserve any forensic capacity that was there with an encroaching tide later that day we knew we were on time limits the tide had already uncovered the top of his skull so it may undermine the area where we had to dig and I spoke to Lyle at the scene and said I think we need to put some form of protection in so we weren't going to lose what could have made Vital Information and vital evidence with the tide coming so close to the skull the skull could well have been washed away so we've built the sandbag area around the skeleton and backfilled the entire area with sifted sand to stabilize the skull because we only get one go at forensics we can't go back and put bodies back and re-dig them it is in absolutely imperative that everything is addressed first time around task force snowy had recently received a tip-off that a particular murder victim from the 1980s had been buried in this very spot cartridge cases in their projectiles any of the ID from the deceased like a wallet or anything else that may have been discarded by the murderers the firearm itself so we had to make sure that we didn't miss any of that evidence [Applause] apparently members of the rescue squad and they backhoe operator are removing the vegetation on top of where the skeleton is located [Applause] the backhoe operator removed all the sand from the top of the body and when we got to a level where we believed that we should start digging by hand there was still a large amount of sand there so we got him to use the backhoe scoop and he started scooping away and unfortunately the first scoop of sand out came this brown tan shoe hooked on the fork of the backhoe I was not happy about that yeah when I hooked onto his shoe I thought oh no they might have ripped him about a bit obviously we stopped digging at that stage and from there on in we went down very slowly by hand 5 20 p.m we've removed the overburden to the level of the sandbags that we established earlier on today these three blue arrows here right location of the skeletal head [Music] we'll continue digging down until we uncover it remains [Music] the closer we got to the body the smaller the implements we started using we eventually ended up using paint brushes and spoons to actually dig the sand away from the remains so as not to damage them did look like something from a movie but hey we were dealing with it in real life we were able to dig down underneath the body there was a bit of a seal between the remains and the sand and we broke that seal by two police officers tying a piece of string to the hands and just moving it down underneath the body so one said it occurred we then positioned a body board under those remains [Music] I was very worried when we started sliding that spinal board under there because things started moving sand started crumbling and I thought this this is not going to work but the more we persevered the better it came together and it did actually work wasn't able to lift it up and place it into a body bag and uh headed down to the mortuary [Music] and that stage all we've had as Khalil remains past the invest in some clothing full stop but these bones would tell a story within the skeleton were Clues to its identity and that of the Killer when a skull was found buried deep within a sand dune a special task force of detectives were called into the site by the local police there are a number of police there including one of the body detectives he said oh we found one of your bodies I said oh that's great mate which one this area was considered a Dumping Ground for Gangland murders of the 80s and this may be one of its victims he took me over and showed me the skull and this skull deadset had a really long thin face and I thought this could be Harvey and I don't want this to sound derogatory but having known Harvey we had a very thin long face [Music] oh [Music] Bobby Jones was a Moana criminal he was a glorified Thief he was a would-be gangster it was well dressed well turned out dripping in golf there's a mug there and he was as flesh as a wrap with a gold teeth he went missing his mother was very upset his sisters were very upset there was a very basic investigation done by police at the time because of the people he mixed with I wasn't sure whether he'd gone overseas gone underground moved into state or just didn't want to be found we knew today positive identification of the human remote so it was okay for us to suppose it was Harvey Jones but we had to prove it to a coroner and we also had to prove that we was murdered given the nature of the case where police suspected Foul Play it was very important to examine the body in its entirety and to be as comprehensive as possible so literally you want to have as much material as as you can first thing that was done was to take an x-ray of the remains obviously to find anything which might be inside which would be of interest the X-rays showed a tiny fragments of foreign material that was consistent with the outside casing of a fire projectile and the two projectiles that we recovered were quite deteriorated but nevertheless they were consistent with having been fired into that body the suspicion that the victim had been shot was right on the money but whether it was Harvey Jones or another gunshot victim was still up in the air there was no fingerprints or DNA available but what had weathered the years with the dead man's clothing still hanging on his skeleton it was amazing to see how much of the clothing was still intact the cardigan was still there you could clearly see the side seams of where the jeans had been the buttons still had all their markings on them [Music] the cardigan was one of those ones that had the leather patches on it and you could see where the leather patches had been the nylon Fabrics the interfacing and lining of the cardigan was 100 intact could almost moved the zipper on it one of the things that had been reported when Harvey went missing in 1983 that he was wearing a particular brand shirt fuss Fus and that shirt had been obtained from overseas and a place called guitar and had been sent to him by his sister but that by itself was not conclusive clothing per se is unreliable people can change clothing and there's always more than one shirt in existence so it's not conclusive we needed to go much further than that well we thought we'd identifying by dental records to start with so we went along to the dentist and said you know you've got the records of Harvey and they said oh no he was seen here seven years and one week away when we've destroyed the records because you've only got to keep them by Statute for seven years so I said to the detective so we could carry out this video superimposition so we just got that centered now that ball joint centered around where his front teeth out because they showed me a photograph and it had teeth in it Smiling Teeth so we've got something to actually match up because we had the teeth on the skull and the teeth on the photograph head down a bit more head down head down head down yeah that's getting close coming in that'll be very close now so you can use two television cameras to Overlay the teeth from the photograph to the teeth on the skull now we're overlaying the premolars to start with then across to this canine with this very unusual worn off canine with the next test with the lateral tooth which is usually a lot smaller and then coming across to these front teeth with a V chip in the in them and then across to the lateral on the other side then you can look for the rest of the skull for outline of soft tissue to see if it matches looking at the from the right side to the left side the outline of the orbit the eye position and coming across to the left hand side you're looking at the Bony outline you can see on the soft tissue relative to the Bone where that large lump of bone is above the eye and as they crossed it just jumped out of you it was Harvey it was quite disconcerting slightly creepy a bit like a horror movie where the face melts away and you've got the skull left it was like Harvey's face had jumped out of the skull at you at that point we had the first positive identification that would stand skirt in any form any court that the person that we dug up was Harvey Jones but who had killed the 29 year old man 12 years before the task force was in possession of other vital evidence evidence that would put them hot on the heels of the Killer [Music] 29 year old Harvey Jones had vanished in 1983. clothed skeleton was found 12 years later its identity only confirmed through one photo that had survived over the years it was quite a wonderful photograph it was um of some individuals having lunch and there was the Lobster in front of them the glass of chardonnay Philly bulky bloke on one side Harvey Jones on the other side bulky bloke linking arms with Harvey was his best mate Nettie Smith who was one of the most well-known and feared criminals in the 1980s Neddy was a career criminal a long history of convictions for thieving assaults robberies armed robberies a large man physically overpowering the only way you'd hold him down would be with a piece of 4b2 around the ears he was a very violent character um very mean just a vile creature but he had some powerful friends according to him he was involved in large scale police corruption he was given a green light to commit armed robberies to be involved in drugs the blight was effectively bulletproof he could do what he wanted in this town anything Smith has repeatedly and very publicly said he was provided with police assistance to the point of being dropped off and picked up from armed robberies and marked cars and being provided with police equipment and uniforms to conduct down robberies so a fairly significant relationship and one that Harvey Jones admired Harvey idolized nitty Smith and just wanted to be as um Infamous is on what he was Harvey Jones is a very small time player on this scene he and his living managing a brothel at home Bush he was a used car salesman at another point a loudmouth tall gangly fellow who nonetheless seemed to throw his weight around in pubs had propensities to wearing loud fake jewelry I thought he was he was hanging around with the man of the moment and would be seen to be a serious gangster if he's able to go out drinking with Nettie Smith and Ned would give him the time of day but he doesn't seem to have really added much to to Smith's business or to cause him anything other than trouble Harvey had been charged with some thefts or some gold bullion there was a court case pending and he had been assembling the money he said to bribe police to have those charges fixed according to Nettie Smith in one of his autobiographies finding the money wasn't going to be difficult for Harvey and Neddy would help him with the exchange but only 24 hours before the deal was to be done Harvey was making himself unpopular he was involved in an incident that trailer's Nightclub at North Sydney he had a habit of going to nightclubs pulling out his revolver letting one go on the roof to the horror of the patrons that caused police inquiries and it brought someone wanted attention to him and also to the people he's actually hanging around with the next night July 15 1983 Harvey Jones was to make the sixty thousand dollar payment in return for his charges being dropped he told his mother that he's going to see Neddy Smith at night for a meeting according to her and that was the last time that she had seen him but in his book Nettie claims Harvey never turned up and after waiting for hours he called Mrs Jones wondering where her son was Smith was recorded a few days later saying that he contacted Harvey's mother and was concerned about his his welfare nobody had seen him or heard of him or heard what happened to him which is one of those sort of dead investigations but other than people who knew him directly and noticed his absence uh Harvey Jones disappearing off the face of the planet wasn't going to cause a great deal of public concern but over the next few years disappearances and underworld murders would literally be in the public Arena Sydney police are hunting the underworld assassins of 49 year old Barry Croft the shooting happened just before seven o'clock in the midst of late night shocks there's many areas that could have been taken but the underworld like the door in the open streets Barry McCann's bullet riddled body was discovered at 6 30 this morning by a council cleaner this was a professional hit police have found more than 20 spent cartridges the body of Sally Ann huckstep was fished out of a pond at Centennial Park today Michael Daniel Chubb had just returned from buying fish and chips for lunch when the killer struck by the time that the shooting had stopped there were perhaps a dozen fairly well-known Crooks dead during this period no one was charged for any of their murders Nettie Smith his name had been connected to some of these but certainly other people's names had been connected to them as well they were on the books as unsolved murders in 1994 task force snowy was on the scene in their hands they had secretly taped confessions about these murders one of them was about Harvey Jones and the voice on the tape was of the man he idolized Neddy Smith underworld figure Arthur Neddy Smith has been sentenced to life for the murder of a stranger a Supreme Court Judge rejected Smith's claim that he'd been too drunk to know what he was doing for a fellow who was perhaps this City's most notorious criminal ever he has come unstuck through road rage Nettie Smith was found you have stabbed Ronald favel in the stomach on Koji Bay Road the dispute broke out when a tow truck driver flicked his lights at a car Smith was traveling in today Justice mcinerney sentenced Smith to life in jail adding to the 13-year sentence he's already serving for armed robbery crunch finally came and he went to jail for life but he was still eligible to apply for parole but wouldn't have meant that he was going to get it but he's still able to apply and of course anything could happen foreign spent nearly three years alone in his cell here at Long Bay prison and during that time he wrote a book Nettie the life and crimes of Nettie Smith which became a best seller but as he started to Penn his next a book about the unsolved murders of the 80s he had company the crowding and by chance another prisoner was placed in the same Sill asked if I'd like to go on someone I might have heard of through the media or who I might know shoot a prison system and um I asked him who it was but they wouldn't tell me so they led me up to the cell blocks and locked me to sell up there and then Nettie Smith walked in he was pretty impressive pretty large sort of a bike physically he knows how to take up a room but he had these eyes that just bored straight through you like real cold Icy Blue yeah he's a one-off that's for sure police would know this prisoner as Mr Brown Mr Brown has spent most of his adult life in prison for thieving assaults drug abuse alcohol abuse um just one of those institutionalized persons who survives in the jail environment well there was only two of us in the Europe so you basically you had to talk to someone so we ended up talking to each other and struck a pretty good rapport of each other and um he was writing a book at the time and he began telling me about some of the things he did that he could put into the book and some of the things he did that he couldn't put into the book and some of those was about various murders so yeah they're pretty brutal pretty Frank like I've been in jail at that stage probably 20 years and they scared me because I knew that they were true that was probably more the like you hear a lot of stories in jail and you just put it down to [ __ ] but um with this bloke you just knew that he started bragging to him about murders that he'd committed and the informant was quite sickened by the way that Neddy would cold bloodedly told him about these murders he told me about um a certain murder that he did and it gave me nightmares and that's when I thought well you know maybe this is a bit more than just being a cream in a jail maybe I should do something about it so I contacted employees and the operation began with the cooperation of Mr Brown we were able to capture a lot of these conversations about all these unsolved murders going back many years on an authorized leasing device tape the way awake many many nights thinking about it and thinking about the consequences and whether I'd be able to do it or not and I couldn't find a reason not to I think in total there were mention of 14 separate murders some of them are gangly and related some of them were drug rip-offs and some of them were Revenge killings one of them was the murder of Harvey Jones Mr Brown ran a very high risk one word it applies nearly was not stupid completely if it has had the wrong thing well he would have been in fairly Grim strikes I was thinking [ __ ] I hope he doesn't hear the the tape recorder that's about all I was thinking um yeah but he persevered and um he teased a lot of detail a lot of information from Neddy um in a lot of ways it seemed to me that the only reason that he killed Harvey was kasabi annoyed him I never met Harvey but from what I did find out about him it seemed that he was a bit of a party boy we went over the top a few times but he certainly didn't deserve to pay for his life for no more than not set in the bike that's how things were back then here's his words he um elsewhere in the book indicates that most big time criminals Come Undone because of their mouth and they tell too many people too many things and here is he'd falling for the same trap the tapes themselves would have allowed us to go out and charge the default with but that would have been quite foolish to do it because any breath that hinges on a confession per side or wouldn't get past first base and you'd just be wasting your time be nothing worse than charging nearly then watching him walk what they needed was a body and for months they searched the area mentioned by nitty on the tapes I've flown over driven over walk through I knew it better than I really wanted to but I didn't find Harvey Jones [Music] a man walking his dog found Harvey Jones I was watching the news and it said how Blake had been walking his dog along the beach had botany and found human remains that was pretty much where Neddy said it was on the tape I said oh a bit of that's Harvey Jones my first impressions was well here's one brief for Ned Dy had given them a challenge because somewhere in those remains hopefully would give us that linkage back to Nettie Smith and confirm what was on the types he thought he'd go away with it cold he thought he'd be right for sure he had a person who was sticking his thumbs up at Society in general and saying I've got a wife of this and that was our challenge to make sure well you just can't do these things and get away with it and that was our challenge then to make sure that we put him away and he paid the prize for what he's done police had secretly taped Nettie Smith in his jail cell confessing to the murder of his friend Harvey Jones [Music] and was confident he'd got away with it [Music] we had no doubts that Harvey James had been murdered by Nerdy but the standard of proof in the courts were charged and murder was extremely high and it's beyond reasonable now not just that you think it was him nearly unfortunate bin Lotto for some time and didn't appreciate the value of forensics he had been locked away he felt that since of security a lot of time had elapsed he would think that there'd be nothing to tie him back into the crime scene or the crime the first step in the process was to establish whether the projectiles found at the post-mortem were fired from a 357 revolver as needy had stated there was not a lot of evidence presented to his ballistics wise usually when we go to crime scenes we'll have a body we'll have fired cartridge cases we'll have the Smoking Gun so to speak in this case we had none of that except the recovery of the two bullets which were heavily corroded and badly damaged as well if we recoverable under normal circumstances and it's in quite good condition we will weigh the projectile we'll measure the projectile the diameter of it with calipers we'll also look at those individual markings on the bullet those lands and grooves and we can do that by looking at it under a microscope which will give us an indication of what type of firearm could possibly have been used what we're looking at here is the surface of the bullet the side view and we're actually looking at one of the landmarks on the bullet to make an identification the problem in this case was that we could only identify one partial Landmark on each of the bullets however even though the examination was limited we went to our reference material [Music] firing up some weapons out of our library and found the two bullets both consistent with being fired from a 38 caliber 357 revolver it was encouraging evidence but the task force would need further proof Nettie had claimed he had used a 357 and blew out Harvey's heart the x-rays were very helpful and showed a number of fractures in ribs of the chest cavity undoubtedly fractured by a gunshot there were shards of projectile around the fracture line indicating that a projectile had entered the chest probably from the front in all likelihood striking the heart and or lungs [Music] but even that wasn't enough for this team of detectives led by John laycock for them it was a matter of Crossing all T's and dotting all eyes I don't like just to put the biles on the top of the stump so lock the belt and stumps right in so there's no room for any movement we're playing a great here this is a first class crook if I can use those terms and it was going to be a fight to the end so we didn't want to leave anything open to any suggestion that it wasn't so it could be easily seen as a get square they had to overcome that and therefore everything they did had to be very much above board we were on the right track we just had to keep on going to really tighten the news around his neck and give you no room to move if you raced out you'd muck it up and you never forgive yourself if you walked to further support our Theory we are sent one of Harvey's ribs down to a expert in Melbourne what we needed to know was was there any traces of lead on these ribs I was basically asked by New South Wales police to have a look at some bones there was some visible damage to one of the rib bones and they wanted to know if this damage was caused due to a gunshot or some other form of damage that could have occurred while the body was buried in the sand the damage was cone-shaped which is very typical of bullet damage but then there's obviously a matter of actually proving it not just giving an opinion to do that the bone was put into a scanning electron microscope so that any particles on the rib could be detected and analyzed various heavy metals show up as various images material that has a high atomic number basically shows up as a bright particle so things like iron and lead you get quite polite images and Lead has its own unique shape and form a pattern is produced and that pattern corresponds to lead in this case both lead and calcium was detected the calcium comes from the bones so the material that was actually on the bones was in fact lead the finding of lead on the bone and around the damage confirms that a lead projectile a bullet caused that damage even more damning evidence was found from the clothes Harvey was wearing on the night he was murdered when I started examining the cardigan and the shirt I had to distinguish between Decay and forensic evidence I located what I believe to be a projectile hole on the cardigan Midway up on the nylon section of the zipper reminder of the Zipper was totally intact by this one area Harvey's shirt also had a distinctive hole we're able to determine that the fabric had been doubled over when the projectile had been fired when you overlay the two pieces of fabric it becomes a perfectly circular hole the holes were measured for diameter both the holes in the right chest area were consistent with being either a 38 caliber projectile or a 357 caliber projectile the most crucial piece of forensic evidence that was obtained from the clothing was the fact that the holes in the jumper in the front right chest area match the holes in the shirt in the right chest area and we were clearly able to establish a bullet trajectory from entering the cardigan through the shirt and actually striking a rib in Harvey's chest we're on a winner we're on a conviction we knew the forensic case linking Neddy Smith to the murder of Harvey Jones was strong not only had the experts proven the skeleton in the Sand Hills was Harvey but they were able to prove that he had been shot and the weapon was most likely a 357 revolver when those bullets exited the gun they made a perfect and traceable trajectory through his cardigan and shirt hitting a rib in his chest police now had the forensic evidence they needed to match the words used by Nettie in their secretly taped recordings also in the confession was the mention of a man who was with Neddy on the night Harvey was killed a man who police would call Mr Green originally spoken to by police him was uncooperative however when the body was found it firmed up certain information that we'd been given and he became Cooperative with the Poise Mr Green was a driver or a gopher for Nettie Smith in those years and he told us the whole story on the night of the 15th of July 1983 according to Mr Green he went to the star hotel on Alexander where he met Nettie and Harvey Jones there was some discussion about Mr Green making some money that night so they all got into a van and Eddie directed them to drive to the vicinity of botany they lied from the car and Nettie Smith and Harvey Jones went for a walk down the beach Mr Green stayed behind on that his instruction to keep a lookout a short time later there was a gunshot and Harvey had been shot by Nettie foreign he walked down to the beach and he saw Harvey lying on the ground Nettie was standing over the top of him with a gun in his hand Mr Green was then directed by Nettie to dig a hall which he did there was a shovel obtained from the van he dug a fairly deep hole and the body was placed into that hole and they then left the scene and went back that night at the star hotel and just contended on business yeah that boy itself was pretty damning evidence but um it's a man's word and it's open to dispute you'd probably have to look at possible motives and his background so it's a question of how much weight you would place on a per se but put together as a package with tapes the crime scene the forensics it certainly left no Gap that nearly could punch holes in when it got to court so it just helped tie everything together colorful Sydney identity Neddy Smith has appeared in court charged with murdering an underworld figure 15 years ago Arthur Neddy Smith under tight security to face trial for the Gangland killing of brothelona Harvey Jones it's 15 years to the day since he was executed with two gunshot wounds to the chest he was then buried in sand dunes along Botany Bay Police claim Smith lured Jones to the beach to get sixty thousand dollars allegedly to pay off corrupt detective Roger Rogerson for getting Jones off a criminal charge his body was undiscovered for 13 years prosecutors say Smith confessed to the crime he was secretly recorded boasting about how he got away with it the defense Council consented to those tapes for admitted into evidence of our contest so the only the fence that Neddy would have would say I was I'm boasting or telling lies or what have you his explanation in his words were I'm talking crap it's pretty accurate crap someone's talking crap he was saying that he was testing Mr Brown saying if he told him this story he heard it back on the prison Grapevine and he says that didn't in fact happen there's been a day of courtroom drama as alleged Hitman Nettie Smith came face to face with a cellmate who informed on him looking back now I think I think it was probably one of the hardest things I've ever done but at the time it seemed very very simple very easy I I got nervous you know before court just like anyone else I suppose and like talking in public in that but um and probably because I was telling the truth in in the court see so it didn't really matter that much I was I just had to go and tell the truth so I wouldn't have to worry about keeping stories together or anything like that [Music] the trial that included evidence from Mr Brown and all the forensic experts lasted two months even with all the evidence and with our confidence um you can never estimate what a jury would or would not do the jury was out for about three or four days which was a very torturous process was there something we'd missed was there going to be a legal technicality to be thrown up by the jury and either a hung jury which would involve the retrial or God forbid to be acquitted Sydney's most notorious gangster will spend the rest of his life in prison Arthur Neddy Smith was found guilty of murder he was first jail for theft at the age of 15. now he's convicted of killing brothelona Harvey Jones just as Carolyn Simpson said Smith showed no remorse or Contrition she said the murder was premeditated cold-blooded and deliberate Jones had become a nuisance to him it also proves that our legal system does work even on a 15 year old murder and more importantly I suppose for Harvey Jones even though he was a scandal he's 80 year old mum will now have some police in the final years already serving a life truck driver Smith was eligible for parole within weeks the Jones verdict finishes that he was charged with a total of seven murders arising from those prison tapes four were dismissed at committal he was acquitted by a jury for another and when police won this case they decided not to proceed with the seventh eviction and then we call it quitsar for that because it was the end result was life Milling life he would never walk out of jail vertically the way in the manner in which the body was found the place it was found the bullet wounds that were found on the body everything supported what nydia confessed and we could prove everything that he had said and to have a jury satisfied beyond the Reasonable Doubt that that he had murdered Harvey was just one of the best feelings you get as an investigator it's not up to police too convict a person we just put the evidence before the jury and in this case we'd satisfied the jury that that he had killed Harvey there were high fives all around congratulations and went out a couple of beers afterwards it's a good film good token on one of the best in his day from the other side and we'd won [Music] for John laycock his and search continues I'd suggest is at least one set of remains at Port botany from the 80s with the gang wars and I wouldn't be surprised if there were several more we haven't given up yet foreign [Music] no no no no [Music] no no no no no no no no no hello [Music]

Channel: Australian Crime

Views: 196,415

Keywords: Australia, Australian Crime, Australian crime documentary, Australian crime series, Gangs & Mobs, Stalkers, child crime, cold case, con artists, crime, crime documentary, crime series, disappearances, family crime, ivan milat, murder, podcasts, police, renae marsden, revelle balmain, roger rogerson, serial killer, true crime, true crime documentary, true crime series

Id: ybC0hskqL6Q

Length: 42min 27sec (2547 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 30 2023