Tough Nuts: Australia's Hardest Criminals

Criminal lunatic, gunman, arch-thief and armed robber, Jockey Smith terrorised Australia at gunpoint for three decades. When confronted, the short angry guy with a bad case of small man syndrome invariably reached for a gun. In a TOUGH NUTS exclusive, we bring the first in depth interview with the policeman who finally brought Jockey’s one man crime spree to an end, shooting him dead in order to save his own life. Jockey did his criminal apprenticeship with Ronald Ryan - the last man to hang in Australia. Later on Jockey found his way to Pentridge as a prisoner but escaped after only two days by obtaining a visitor’s pass and casually walking out the front gate. Jockey lived his life on the run in plain view. Brazenly he returned to the life he always wished he’d had and worked in horse racing. The incorrigible criminal’s joke was to call himself Tommy Cummings, training horses under the names of the two great trainers of the time: Tommy Smith and Bart Cummings. After the largest manhunt in NSW history, Jockey was captured near his hideout in Nowra in 1977 and served 14 years in prison, convicted of armed robbery and attempted murder. Released in 1992, Jockey returned to crime. With police on his tail, Jockey did one last dramatic hold up at a suburban shopping centre on the NSW Central Coast. In a crime typical of his manic life, Jockey stole some worthless household goods from a shop. When confronted by store detectives, he pulled a gun, kidnapped two shoppers for good measure and fled the scene in a stolen car. The little man had again escalated a minor crime into abduction, kidnap and wild-eyed threats to kill. Jockey’s violent life came to an end a week later in rural Victoria when country policeman Ian Harris shot Smith dead in the car park of a hotel.