City of Evil: The Shocking Real Story of Adelaide's Strange and Violent Underbelly - as Seen on TV by Sean Fewster

Author:Sean Fewster [Fewster, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: True Crime, Murder, General, Serial Killers, Biography & Autobiography, Criminals & Outlaws, history, Cultural; Ethnic & Regional, Australia & New Zealand
ISBN: 9780733627385
Google: 13gzAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Published: 2010-11-01T00:16:10.591523+00:00

Rise and Fall of the Artful Dodger

Anthony John Smith

Five paces separated the men. One was a bar worker with a calico bag of money. The other was an armed robber and prison escapee with a loaded gun in his pocket.

In another time and place, Anthony John Smith would have been a folk hero. But at that time – February 2000 – and at that place – Ferguson Avenue, Myrtle Bank – he had a decision to make. In the time it took David Purdue to walk five steps, Smith had to decide whether or not to draw his weapon and add another vicious robbery to his already legendary rap sheet.

‘I was just walking down the road and I wasn’t going to do anything … I was just going along,’ Smith later remembered. ‘He was walking toward me, he had the money in his hand. I only had about five steps to make a decision about whether I was going to rob him. Mr Purdue was just walking out at the wrong time – for him and for me.’

Dubbed ‘The Artful Dodger’ by a media grimly obsessed with his prowess, Smith thought himself a modern-day outlaw. He created a false identity, complete with identification documents and a bank account, to case his targets before he robbed them. He lived in five-star luxury, checking into hotels under a series of aliases. He counted his loot – gold bullion, cash and precious jewels – on plush beds and photographed himself lying amongst his spoils. His one and only failure – being caught – was temporary, quickly corrected by a daylight escape that boosted his myth. For 12 months, he had no greater substance than the name on a dozen arrest warrants; it seemed he could strike any target in the city and vanish without a trace. The people of Adelaide were fascinated by the Dodger, but Smith truly believed the hype – and was ready to etch his name in history alongside Jesse James, John Dillinger and Ned Kelly.

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