A reporter from The Sun confronts Lisa Marie Smith on July 4. Picture: Padraig O'Reilly Source: Supplied
IRELAND is a great place to lie low, providing you lie low - which means not calling on the law for help.
The problem for Lisa Marie Smith, one-time Melbourne schoolgirl and accused drug mule once dubbed by Interpol "the world's most wanted woman", is that she and her boyfriend broke cover after falling victim to Dublin's troublesome youth gangs.
Late in March, the boyfriend, Stephen Maguire, gamely confronted a mob vandalising signs outside the hip cafe and wine bar the couple opened in the fashionable Temple Bar district almost two years ago.
Maguire is a big man with a fighting Irish pedigree who grew up in New York before returning to his home country.
When a rampaging mob of 25 youths started kicking over the hand-painted sandwich boards outside Hippetys Café, he went on to the street and tried to stop them, peacefully.
Security footage shows that within seconds the ringleaders kicked and punched the 42-year-old to the ground.
Lisa Marie Smith outside her cafe. Source: Supplied
But the word among Dublin crime reporters and police is that this nasty but fairly routine brush with the law also put Lisa Marie Smith's name "in the system" - and started people talking.
Until then, she had been hiding in Ireland in plain sight - at least since 2001 and possibly earlier, according to an Irish photojournalist and to police familiar with the case.
"If you're wanted yourself, and your house or car is robbed, then don't report it," one well-connected source said at the weekend.
By taking on law-breakers and following up with complaints to the Dublin council, Mr Maguire attracted attention his partner didn't want and must now regret.
MORE: How runaway drug smuggler was exposed
MORE: How Lisa Marie Smith escaped Thai justice
Had that ugly incident not happened, Lisa Marie Smith might have stayed under the radar for many more years.
After all, she is blessed with one of the most common surnames, and one of the most common given names of her generation, being named after Elvis Presley's daughter back in the 1970s, when thousands of other girls were, too.
When she applied for an Irish driver's licence several years ago, her name raised not a ripple of interest or suspicion. She presumably used one of her two legitimate passports - one British, one Australian - with her correct 1975 birth date, and could also easily have had a British driver's licence, as she had lived there after moving from Australia with her parents in the early 1990s.
As a British passport holder, by virtue of her UK-born parents, the Melbourne-born Smith can travel easily in the European Union.
The only potential problem would be in entering Britain and Belgium, both of which have extradition treaties with Thailand, where she has been wanted since jumping $74,000 bail posted by her millionaire insurance executive father Terence Smith in 1996.
Lisa Marie Smith photographed in Dublin's Temple Bar on July 4. Picture: Padraig O'Reilly Source: Supplied
It seems a disgruntled former employee knew of, or suspected, Lisa Marie's colourful past as an accused drug mule in Thailand.
When the Hippetys Café attack made the local papers in April, tongues started to wag.
And word reached London's Sun that the fugitive who hit the headlines in 1996 by jumping bail in Bangkok had finally surfaced.
After that tip-off, it was only a matter of time. The Sun sat off the story until last Friday night, when a reporter "door stopped" Smith outside Hippetys.
She might have been dismayed, but was by no means distraught, and told the reporter she would call him.
Lisa Marie Smith is escorted by a police officer after her arrest in 1996. Source: Supplied
Hippetys is in the heart of the cobbled streets in Dublin's fashionable inner city, and is much like hipster bars in Melbourne's laneways or inner north.
It sits on the ground floor of an old building on a corner of a horseshoe-shaped lane running around the Central Bank building.
The cafe has brightly painted tables with pictures painted on them, eye-catching original pop art (for sale) on the walls, and a humorous mishmash of "op shop" cups and saucers and big coloured mugs on the tables, alongside teapots with knitted cosies.
Vintage radios line shelves behind the tiny counter cum bar, and the ceiling has a dozen old lampshades.
An alert-looking waiter wears a bright blue T-shirt printed with the legend, "Hippetys cafe wine bar, Temple Bar's cool spot".
Lisa Marie Smith manages Hippetys cafe in Temple Bar, Dublin. Source: Supplied
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