Chief Supt James "Spud" Murphy became the darling of the media for his bizarre pronouncements and his determination to use psychics and mediums to try to solve the case. The most valuable horse in the world disappeared without trace. Alan Dukes, the local MP and Irish finance minister, was then woken by a phone call from Mr Berry telling him of Shergar's kidnapping. Thieves stole a life-size statue of the triple Grand National winner, Red Rum, from a house in East Meon, Hampshire. John Waynes Monument Valley Horseback Ride, Wyatt Earps Vendetta Ride Tombstone Arizona Territory. "A clue? Shergar was born in Kildare, Ireland in 1978. And especially in that era, the shoulder pad and champagne era, it was very glossy. There are several ideas pertaining to what happened to Shergar. Police were Thats it.. "He has always refused to speak openly about his time in the IRA, but he spoke to me as an 'expert' on the IRA's kidnapping strategy," says Alison. Until a decade ago this was "bandit country", the remote hills and marshlands from where the IRA and its supporters smuggled arms over the border and planned their raids on the security forces in Northern Ireland. Bold Ruler. Years later, there were still whispers that Shergar was alive and secretly producing foals whose breeding lines could never be divulged. In the wake of the kidnapping, he was the victim of a scam in which the Garda appears not to have been blameless and which cost him many thousands of pounds. Although there was some dissent, the members of the syndicate owning shares in Shergar refused to countenance paying over any money and, shortly afterwards, all contact was ended and the mystery deepened. We also may change the frequency you receive our emails from us in order to keep you up to date and give you the best relevant information possible. Shergar was just five years old when he was snatched in the middle of the night from the Ballymany Stud in Co. Kildare. Conspiracy theories soon abounded over who had kidnapped the horse. What did Cleo sMITHs abductor do to her? The source did not know exactly where Shergar's body was buried, but the fact that his carcass was riddled with bullets meant the gang did everything to ensure Shergar's remains were never found. From 31 crops to race, First Down Dash has sired 1,462 winners, which includes 258 stakes winners. After driving him around for three hours, the kidnappers dumped Fitzgerald out of the car. He was a very kind horse. Hes dead.. On the cold, muggy evening of February 8, 1983, Shergar was kidnapped by a gang of men in balaclavas, thought to be part of the IRA. "An operation of this intensity requiring this amount of manpower would have to have been authorised at a high level," he said. Shergar won at a canter and the chief anticipation at Epsom was whether the sensational three-year-old and his young jockey would handle the enormous expectation. Published by Jennifer Webster on November 28, 2022. Why Does My Horse Bob Is Head When I Put His Bridle On? From there, the scene moved to Maxwells farmhouse, at a remote location outside Belfast. A sign on a railing leading to the stud read: "Please close the gate.". They warned Mr Fitzgerald not to inform the police and said they would be in touch at noon yesterday with more details. Staff assigned to look after Shergar, valued at 20million, were not in his centrally-heated security stable. "When I saw the names he mentioned, I knew right away that what he was saying in the letters was right," she says. There was lots of cussin' and swearin' because the horse wouldn't die. He was very upset about that, says Doreen Swinburn. The Ballymany Stud is located in County Kildare, Ireland. After failed attempts to demand money for the stallion, gentle Shergar was brutally killed and his body was never found. Just sort of go out there and do your best. If that was not bad enough insurers refused to pay him out, insisting there was no proof that the horse was, indeed, dead. Of course, the world kept turning and Ireland was beset by problems more profound than a disappeared horse. He's dead." Even then, the consensus was that if a ransom were paid, every racehorse in the country would become a potential target. Following this triumph, he had four more major derby wins and was named European Horse of the Year. Once back home, Mr Fitzgerald found his family unharmed. The other - "a very senior IRA man" - agreed to talk to her off the record. He was expected to be a source of profit for the syndicate which owned him. (In a bitter twist, Stan Cosgrove would discover that his did not). I understand that. Secretariat Maybe the most well-known racehorse of all time was the first in racing history to be awarded the Horse of the Year Award. Then How many races did Shergar lose? It was the time of horse sales in the area and the roads were full of horseboxes. He was ordered to point out Shergar's box. The failure to find Shergar's body meant that only members of the syndicate who had insured the horse for theft - as well as death or an accident - were compensated by their insurance companies. Stud fees were set at around 80,000 for each time it covered a brood mare. Walter Swinburn on Shergar after his runaway victory in the Epsom Derby in 1981. Should I Get A Pre-Purchase Exam On A Horse? He rang the stud manager, Ghislain Drion, who then phoned Shergar's vet, Stan Cosgrove, who had also bought a share in the horse. "There were two bullet holes in the head and it was definitely a racehorse's head," he said. As he was freed the kidnappers told him their chilling terms. His owner Le Mare always had the dream of winning the Grand National, so Red Rum began training for his new career in steeplechasing. and the rest are nowhere. In the one-hour programme Bafta-winning film maker Alison Millar looks at the life and death of the dual Derby hero, stolen at gunpoint from the Aga Khan's Ballymany Searching For Shergar will be on BBC iPlayer (Northern Ireland section) from Thursday night. No one has ever admitted responsibility for the incident, and the remains of the horse have never been found. He opened it to find two men wearing balaclavas wielding guns - one of them said, We have come for Shergar. The remains of a Cherry Hill man reported missing by his family earlier this year were found by a hunter this week in a state park, authorities said.. Peter Myers, 68, About 100 cameramen and journalists were in or outside the Europa Hotel as Thompson and his co-negotiators arrived. Revered Irish racehorse Shergar was taken at gunpoint from Ballymany Stud in County Kildare on February 8, 1983, and never seen again. But the next year - when 55 mares were lined up to breed from Shergar - everything changed. The sinister end to a beautiful episode in Irish sport; the freakish clash of paramilitarism and high-end horse breeding and the abrupt and sudden silence has made Shergar seem like a symbol of everything that was warped about Ireland on both sides of the Border. Doreen Swinburn cant remember the precise date, but Walter Swinburn did, at least, get another chance to say hello to Shergar far away from the thrilling crowds. At gunpoint they led Mr Fitzgerald's wife and their five children into one room and locked the door. Two stayed behind to "guard" the groom's family and Mr Fitzgerald was forced into a car. What is known, however, is that the horse was a star on the track and at the center of one of the biggest crime mysteries in Ireland during the 1980s. As the hunt for Shergar continued on both sides of the border, the gang's background was still a mystery. Shergar, scheduled to cover up to 55 mares a year, has put 42 of his first 44 mares in foal. It is believed that an IRA gang took him at a time when kidnappings were plentiful. It was believed Shergar - valued at 10m - was taken by the IRA, which was short of money and looking for new sources of funding. Fitzgerald was then forced into their car at gunpoint. He knew that I was really just trying to tell the story, Alison Millar says of how she persuaded Stan Cosgrove to speak openly about a painful episode in his life. Among others, one reason the investigation was so difficult for authorities was because the kidnappers had chosen the day before Irelands big Goffs racehorse sale to abduct Shergar, when many horseboxes were being driven across all of Irelands roads, thereby making it hard to differentiate him. I did find though that people honestly didnt want to talk about it. There was blood everywhere and the horse even slipped on his own blood. In an interview given to the Telegraph in 2008, a source claimed that Shergar was machine-gunned to death by the IRA. 1 Ruffian. Cosgrove didnt doubt this was Shergar but it was impossible to tell if the horse was even alive. No. When proof of the horses wellbeing was required, the kidnappers instructed someone to go to the Crofton Hotel and report to the front desk as Johnny Logan. He said: "If Shergar is harmed in any way it will do untold damage to the whole bloodstock industry. He said the kidnappers had failed to make proper provision to look after the horse, which damaged a leg in a horsebox and proved impossible to control. The body has never been found. I think Wally and [trainer] Michael Stoute not me, I can assure you, I was the one who was in bits were very good with him. Ill never forget it. Forty years on, the taking of Shergar remains such a bizarre and shameful episode in Irish history that it only makes sense when set against the lush scenes and ecstatic cheering of his immortal season. Most domesticated horses in the world today are used to ride and to do farm or ranch work. View our online Press Pack. I set out thinking surely after all this time, there will be somebody wholl say, Ach yeah, he was buried in such a such a place. . When Alison set out to make the documentary, she figured that 35 years after the kidnapping and the new atmosphere in Ireland - at that time the Troubles were at their height - tongues may have been loosened and people would be more willing to talk about the incident. Capt Berry, now 78, who at the time was the chairman of the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders' Association, revealed last week that he had been working with senior police officers from Dublin on the case - and those officers felt themselves to be in direct competition with the local police in Co Kildare. He was bred by the Aga Khan and sold for 10 million to an international syndicate when he was retired from racing. It was a sort of exasperation: oh, you dont want to talk about that horse. By day four, an impasse had been reached. ", Jim Fitzgerald, Shergar's former groom with a photograph of the prize bay stallion: 'He was a grand horse', Kevin Mallon, a convicted killer and senior IRA leader who has been identified as the man behind the plot, The Aga Khan owned six of the 40 shares in Shergar, Donald Trump to arrive in UK in week of Coronation, I wasnt good at being a performing monkey, King reveals in BBC documentary, Sadiq Khans Ulez has turned centre of London into a ghost town, I took a pay cut to get a public sector pension, Technology and slow growth will destroy 14 million jobs by 2027, Jewish leaders want to meet Guardian editor over anti-Semitic Richard Sharp cartoon, Brough Scott: Extraordinary racing machine's callous end. In February 1983, Shergar was kidnapped for ransom by the IRA, who killed him when the abduction went wrong and buried his body in a bog in the north of County Thompson believed he kept the call going long enough to trace the location only to be told by police that the man who did their tracing had clocked off and headed home at midnight. There is a general acceptance of who was behind the kidnapping of Shergar. "After that, it was just a case of old-fashioned walking up laneways and knocking on doors and trying to track down people who had some connection with the case. The kidnappers were told that further proof of Shergars wellbeing was needed. the gang and the Aga Khan. According to OCallaghan, Shergar had become agitated during transport, badly damaging a leg. Alison has no doubt. However, it is still possible to see, hundreds of feet below and stretching to the horizon, the most sparsely populated terrain in all of Ireland. Police said the kidnappers did just that after driving away with their prize. But Ballinamore has form. The horse had retired from racing and had recently embarked on a lucrative career at stud with racehorse owners paying for Shergar to cover their mares in the hope the resulting foal would be another champion. Security was very lax.". 'He was a very kind horse. On the racecourse, as a two- and three-year-old, Shergar had been nothing short of sensational, winning the 1981 Derby by 10 lengths, a record distance that century for Britain's biggest flat race. "Thirty-five years after the horse was taken from its stable in Kildare, I wanted to do my own documentary, and the letters proved invaluable in pointing me in certain directions. "No horse deserves an ending like that - let alone one as special as Shergar.. Investors thought it was a licence to print money. The gang struck as stud head groom Jim Fitzgerald and his family were relaxing after dinner at their home in Ballymany, near Newbridge in County Kildare. Police are investigating after human remains were found in a large plastic container last week in a New Jersey neighborhood near New York City. As always you can unsubscribe at any time. Here is Shergar winning the Epsom Derby in 1981: Discover the real Ireland, how you can travel slow around the island, Dubliner adopted to New York at birth reunites with Irish family 63 years later, Catholic Church launches initiative encouraging young Irish men to consider priesthood, Killarney National Park in "terrible state" after years of neglect, conference hears, Great Famine Voices 2023 Launch New Season of Films, Ireland of the Welcomes' hot hotel: The Savoy Hotel Limerick, WATCH: 1916 Easter Rising footage featured in British Path online archives, Mustard and herb lamb chops with honey dressing recipe. The kidnappers had chosen the day before Ireland's major Goff's racehorse sale - when horse boxes were being driven the length and breadth of the country - to abduct Shergar, thereby making it more difficult for the stallion to be found. Over the course of the following few days, a strange and blackly comic series of late-night phone calls and false trails formed the official backdrop to a nationwide trawl of farm yards and sheds for the missing horse. She says: "He would have been in the middle of it.". Swinburn would ride two other Derby winners but his surname and glittering career will always be associated with that of Shergar. The Sun website is regulated by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes. Watch: Irish enjoy a trad session in 1988, in Paddy Reillys pub, NYC, How you can learn Gaelic literature and culture online with a top Irish university, The story behind Ireland's favorite song, The Cranberries "Zombie", How the Irish (and Welsh) invented romantic love. A former IRA member told the Sunday Telegraph: "Shergar was machine-gunned to death. Now, chief reporter Andrew Alderson has solved the mystery of Shergar's final hours, why his remains have never He was astonished to find it was pierced by two bullet holes. On the night of February 8th masked gunmen invaded the family home of Jim Fitzgerald, the retired chief groom at Ballymany and a father of six children, took him hostage and brought him to Ballymany. Well, I would say, somebody knows. The horse was the easiest modern-day winner of the Epsom Derby. Red Rum was passed from training yard to training yard until he found his footing with his new trainer McCain. Capt Berry's work and home phone lines were tapped, with his knowledge, by the Dublin police after his association put up a 100,000 reward for information leading to Shergar's safe return. When she spoke with people, she found them friendly but reticent You can call me Arkle from now on, a voice told ITVs Derek Thompson when the phone eventually rang at 1.15 in the morning. Laurence White reports. Police were checking on reports that a car and horsebox were seen heading towards the Ulster border at dawn yesterday. And she further uncovered a piece of evidence hitherto unknown to the public - that the kidnap gang dropped a magazine from a sub-machine-gun when fleeing from the stud farm. Most investigators accepted from early on, however, that the IRA was to blame. The family was in Ireland and made a detour to Ballymany one afternoon for a quick visit. To inquire about a licence to reproduce material, visit our Syndication site. Read more, Known in the industry as fake tails, these pieces, just like the best hairpieces for humans, are made from real hair and braided into existing locks to add length and volume. A TERROR chief who was publicly accused of being behind the Shergar kidnapping nips down to the bookies on the anniversary of the legendary racehorses disappearance. Instead, they were dealing with a syndicate, most of whose insurance policies covered theft. They demanded a 5m ransom from the syndicate owning the horse, which included the Aga Khan. Even as the case remains unsolved, Taking Shergar offers a new look at this over thirty-year-old mystery. I found that really strange. That is certainly not the case around Ballinamore. Don Tidey, an Irish businessman, was found alive in woods near the town after being kidnapped by the IRA at the end of 1983, months after Shergar's disappearance. Remains were never found, and what happened to the horse has never been known. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. But I honestly don't think Shergar's grave will ever be found.". He is the majority shareholder in the syndicate, which also includes trainer Vincent O'Brien and leading owner Robert Sangster. "We decided to go into the extreme end of the glen this year where there was a lot of dumping taking place. Read about 10 more mysterious disappearances . I remember Willie Carson it was Willie he bumped said that it was nothing afterwards.. Once targets had been attacked, active service units would then slip back to the "safe houses" of the south to prepare for their next mission. Des Leadon, the head of clinical pathology at the Irish Equine Centre, who has investigated a number of horse corpses that were believed to have been Shergar, said DNA testing would have to be used to determine if the skull belonged to the missing horse. He was thought to have a long and distinguished stud career ahead of him. "He was a gentleman and he even gave us his mobile telephone number. His frightened family had followed kidnappers' orders to remain silent and it was 5 am yesterday before police were contacted. No-one has ever admitted the theft of Shergar. ", In that, she was often assisted by Liam's widow, Kathryn Johnston. 679215 Registered office: 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF. Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in, Find your bookmarks in your Independent Premium section, under my profile. He was gelded at a young age, so he was never used for breeding. Why CanT I Take My Horse Into Gerudo Desert? Tom Foley, an independent member of Kerry county council, found the skull of a racehorse in a deserted gully near Tralee last Saturday. All sorts of thoughts were racing through my head about what they might do to me. He had a lot of confidence in Shergar. Copyright 2023 Irish Studio LLC All rights reserved. Swinburn was suspended, because of an infringement. In 1999, former IRA gunman Sen O'Callaghan published his memoirs, The Informer. As scores of British journalists descended on Co Kildare, the hunt for Shergar turned into a media circus. Senior IRA leader Kevin Mallon is thought to be the man who devised the plot. He was a 25/1 shout for the Derby after trainer Michael Stoute decided to prepare him after his maiden season in 1980. There was no pressure. It is then believed, and the claim is repeated in a documentary on BBC One in Northern Ireland on Thursday night, that the remains were buried in a bog. I could hardly see it for tears, Doreen Swinburn, Walters mother, remembers of her joy when we speak by telephone. Were William Butler Yeats alive, his passion for Celtic myth and legend would seize upon the story of Shergar.
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