Original subtitles

There was no second in the race that he won.

No one remembers who was second because there was only one winner.

So it was a huge celebration when it was announced that he would be coming to

Ballymany Stud at the Curragh.

A star was coming back home. The star happened to be a horse. But that's what

was. He was a star.

There was no security at the stud.

You and I could have just walked in.

At the same time, there was political instability.

The IRA grew out of extinction in the early 1970s. In order to carry out a

conflict against the British state, they needed to undertake fundraising action.

So they start kidnapping.

If you kidnap an individual, it is essentially a political act.

Nobody had conceived of the idea that a horse could be taken and held ransom.

Shergar, one of the most highly valued horses in the world, was taken by gunmen

from Ballymenny Stud near Newbridge in County Kildare during the night.

They reputedly said that they wanted two million for him, so they were very

clear about what was going on.

The world and its mother, in terms of the press pack, descended on this small

village in County Kildare in Ireland.

Forensic experts visited the scene this afternoon, but so far details of where

the ten million pounds horse was taken remain a mystery.

negotiations that were taking place at a higher level and ransom calls began to

take their story in another direction.

There's only one way of describing it. A shitshow.

The men who stole Shergar came up this driveway in the darkness of last Tuesday

night. Today, its brightness belies the fact it leads to the beginning of the

Shergar drama.

For the government of the day, this was an international story and we'd have to

say an international security embarrassment.

What were the police doing? What were the on guard at Shear Corner doing?

And then the question for the guards, how are we going to handle what is going

inevitably? to become a big international story.

It is open to anyone who offers their reward.

It's not to communicate with the Gardaí.

I have said that at all times.

The people who wish to give the reward is open to them not to communicate with

the Gardaí.

Chief Superintendent Jim Murphy, known as Spud Murphy.

led the investigation, and truth be told, he became something of a figure of

fun. Chief Superintendent James Murphy is leading Garda investigations. I asked

him if he thought the horse was being held in the region off the Curragh.

It could be anywhere in the country.

Could be anywhere.

He wasn't one of the top hot shots in the police service.

James Murphy was a kind of an enigmatic, philosophical, detached...

critical man and he liked to indulge the Irish pastime of answering a question

with a question or refusing to come to the point or talking around the subject

as we do so well in this country. We are still continuing our inquiries and our

investigations and our searches right through the country.

Have you got any leads at all now? Are you any further ahead than you were

yesterday? I regret to say that I'm not.

A journalist once commented that Chief Superintendent James Murphy was the most

comical cop since Inspector Clouseau. Now, that may be very unkind, given some

of the work that he had done previously. He was not someone who was completely

wet behind the ears when it came to dealing with the crimes of subversion.

Nonetheless, you have to think of the optics.

He presided over press conferences wearing a three -piece suit and a

which was put slightly back on his head and cocked to one side.

From the point of view of the international press, and particularly

reporters and cameramen from the UK, he came across like a stage Irishman.

The first box was taken on Saturday, Sunday morning, Saturday night, Sunday

morning. It is still outstanding, therefore I am interested.

There wasn't a sophisticated Garda communications operation, so obviously

it was a little bit of making it up on the hoof in terms of the PR, and it was

catastrophic.

What we haven't got, he told the assembled journalists, is a clue.

Now, he was being honest, and they hadn't got a clue, but that was not

necessarily the best way to handle the beginning of the police investigation.

He had no new information at any stage to go on. So he was never going to look

like somebody who was in control of the situation.

He was not a loser.

Do you suspect that people, officials at the stats, may be prepared to do a

deal?

That I could not say.

As I have said from the start, that would be a matter for themselves. I

advising against the payment of the ransom.

I got a phone call about 2 o 'clock in the morning. I was asleep in my hotel.

was mumbling away. I just woke up. Hello, is that Derek Thompson? It's

Street. I thought it was somebody having a go, a silly laugh.

So I put the phone down, rang back straight away. No, it's the Fleet

We've had the kidnappers with Shogar on. They want you to fly over to Belfast.

And that is how I heard at 2 .30 in the morning.

And they said they want you, Lord Oxy, a former top jockey, former champion

amateur jockey, and Peter Campling, who is the tipping man from the Sun, the

footballer, to negotiate for the release of Shergar.

So we said, yes, we've got to go.

Derek, do you really know what you're going into in Belfast today?

No, and I don't think any of us do, actually, but I think our conscience has

told us to get on this plane and come over, because I think we all agree that

something did happen to the horse and we weren't there, then we'd live with that

conscience for the rest of our life, and that would be very, very unfortunate.

So that's the reason we're here.

We got off the plane in Belfast, and the whole place was surrounded by a hundred

press people with cameras, and there was us guys, you know, thinking we hadn't

heard anything.

It was just incredible.

This was the height of the troubles.

It was a frightening experience.

There were soldiers all around with guns, there were tanks, there were

cars, there was everything, lots and lots of police.

And I remember on the way from the airport to the hotel, the driver said,

want me to show you a little bit what it's like at the moment?

Yes, of course. I said, it'll only take a minute. Yeah, of course.

And so we turned off the main road.

We turned left. I'll never get it. He said, lock your doors.

He just drove round, and after 30 seconds, I said, I think we'd better get

of this area. It was frightening.

Now, there were more interesting things going on behind the scenes in terms of

trying to begin a search and trying to locate where Shergar might be.

A lot of the ODCs... The ordinary decent criminals at the time, as the guards

used to refer to them, they were involved in small gangs, a handful of

An operation like this, you would have needed many more, and you would need to

have been very sure of your escape route. The level of sophistication and

planning here meant that the only game in town was that it was carried out by

the provisional IRA.

There is a propaganda battle ongoing, constantly.

as part of the troubles.

And the IRA was acutely aware of that. The perception of it and how its

activities or its operations, as I'd like to call them, would be perceived.

There was an awareness, of course, that this was not the kind of attention that

they wanted. But what they were clearly looking at was the value.

Now, Shergar was valued at £10 million, which is an extraordinary sum in the

early 1980s. And if you consider the constant money worries and challenges

the IRA had, Perhaps that idea of a ransom demand maybe of two million, that

that could solve a lot of short -term problems for the IRA.

Obviously the hotel has changed a bit. This is new, the front.

But in the old days when I arrived, it had great big long windows. They were up

about three stories.

And there were cracks in all the windows.

And I said, what's this for?

And the guy said, well, it's the most bombed hotel in Europe.

And I remember going inside, walking through the front door, and the world's

press were there as well. 60, 70 people with cameras and microphones were

following me in and reporting.

And when I got in through the front door, literally within a few seconds,

voice on the tannoy said, a phone call for Mr.

Thompson. Please pick up the hotel phone.

So I went just around the side there and picked up the hotel phone, and that's

when it all started.

And this voice, which I'll never ever forget, said, we're watching you from

across the street.

This is what we want you to do with the kidnappers of Shergar.

How far is that from Dublin?

Yeah, from Belfast.

30 miles.

Right. And who am I talking to, by the way? A man using the fitting codename of

Arkell instructed the journalist to drive to an address in County Down 30

outside the city.

Bye -bye.

Well, that's interesting.

We were checked into a room. Police came up.

and we're discussing it, the police were there all the time, and he had told us

to drive out to this farmhouse outside of Belfast, about 30 miles outside.

They said, right, we'll get you out there, your driver will take you, but

you what the best thing to do, go through the kitchen of the hotel,

otherwise all the press will see you. So we did. We crept through the kitchen of

the hotel, ran outside, jumped in the car and took off.

The word farce is inevitably and justifiably used regarding the public

spectacle. The three journalists, for example, who are becoming players, it

seems, in ransom negotiations.

The use of code words.

The Europa Hotel, so often referred to as the most bombed hotel in Europe as a

result of the troubles.

Those who were making calls, could they be trusted? Who were they seeking to

deal with? Why were they picking racing journalists?

Was it because...

They wanted to get messages to other key individuals who actually had a stake in

Shergar.

We had no real idea what was going to happen. We'd been told by this voice on

the phone to come to this place outside of Belfast, and it was just incredible.

We didn't know what was happening.

We were talking to supposed kidnappers, not very nice people at all, and we were

in a strange land which we... hadn't been to for a long time and didn't know

much about.

So we're now coming to the top of the hill.

Three guys jump out in front of us, here.

This is incredible.

This is just the same spot. Three guys jump out with balaclavas, machine guns,

and one comes round to my side.

Just stop the car for a second, because this brings it all back.

And he went like this with his gun.

which meant wind the window down. Do you remember the old days when you would

wind the window down?

All I could see was two eyes, a mouth, and he had the balaclava, and the

machine gun, which was about a foot away from where I was.

And I was sitting here, and he said, Are you Derek Thompson?

And I said, Yes.

And I thought they were just going to spray the car.

with bullets and kill it.

And he said the immortal words, we're the police. I said, thank God for that.

might have used another word. He says, drive over the top of the hill, run into

the farmhouse, and you'll be contacted inside.

Okay, let's go.

As night fell, the action moved swiftly to a lonely farmhouse at Ardglass, the

home of one of Ulster's leading racehorse trainers, Jeremy Maxwell.

The three would -be negotiators arrived to find the same anonymous Irishman who

claims to have Shergar had already called Mrs Judy Maxwell three times,

the demand was now £40 ,000.

He seemed to be a very rational, well -spoken man.

There really doesn't seem to be a lot more to gather about it. We feel we

be negotiating a bit more. We'd like to go on a bit further with negotiations.

But all they could do was wait anxiously for further instructions, still not

knowing if the whole thing was a hoax.

It was such a profoundly stupid thing to undertake that you have to wonder if.

this was something that was sanctioned at the senior levels of the IRA.

Surely they would have been aware, A, that this could go very badly wrong,

easily. B, that the public would obviously turn against anyone who was

be putting Shergar, this celebrity horse, this wonder horse, in harm's way.

C, what kind of a national and international focus would it bring on

a very negative focus on the IRA.

When you begin to add up those different things, you have to question whether

those who were running the IRA really thought this was a good idea or whether

they were actually made aware of this plan.

One of the extraordinary things about this also involves a horse's head.

I mean, it's almost like a motif from The Godfather, but it happened.

A photograph arrives of the famous blaze down the nose of the Wonder Horse, and

somebody is holding up a banner of the Irish news to show the date and that the

horse is alive on this day. That was a Polaroid. In fact, a couple of Polaroids

taken of the horse. From the syndicate's point of view, there was no guarantee

that the horse was alive subsequent to that date.

As this became an international story, the craziest, most lurid allegations

coming forward that the horse had been seen in Switzerland, that Lord Lucan was

on its back on the belt of South Africa, and that the horse was already rendered

and turning up as cat food in parts of Scotland.

The longer he was kept, the more hopeless it seemed for him.

We really didn't think that they'd pay up. Sad though it is, he was, he's a

business asset.

He's no longer a person. He's no longer our Shergar.

The unanimous view of the government was that we couldn't countenance the

payment of ransom for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the

that once you pay a ransom in one case, it opens the door for further cases.

And I mean, the bank robberies and robberies of various kinds were.

the way they were going about getting funding, apart from the kind of

fundraising they always did among sympathisers.

But the main concern was to make sure that the supply of money for the

of arms as far as possible should be dried up.

And that was the reason why, in the particular case of Shergar, since there

might have been a link, that we were concerned to make sure that no ransom

paid.

At the end of the day...

There's a limited amount you can do to make sure that things turn out that way.

As it happened, some attempts were made unsuccessfully to pay a ransom.

In County Clare, a man had come forward who was a local detective who had been

cultivating an IRA informant.

And this man had told him before any horse was kidnapped, he had heard about

IRA dry run involving a horse box.

and they had simulated the taking of a horse.

He had passed it on to his superiors, but it had just been shrugged out

it didn't seem to mean anything.

And then, as soon as the horse was taken, this gentleman became very

to the investigation.

He was asked, could he get in contact via his source with the kidnappers? So

there was a back channel going on there.

Well, word then came back from the kidnappers. They revealed...

that the horse had actually been suffering from thrush. And when this was

back to headquarters and the vet, Stan Cosgrove, was consulted, he immediately

realized this was the truth. To him, this meant that this back channel was

They were absolutely in contact with the real kidnappers.

That then led to a very interesting situation whereby there was a proposal

produce hello money to the kidnappers.

A bank in central Dublin was opened on a Sunday most unusually.

and cash was taken out. And this sum, £80 ,000, it would have been a down

payment, but it was a serious amount of money. And that was channeled down to

the contact guarder, Martin Ten Arns, in South West Ireland.

And he was empowered to meet with a representative group from the IRA and

negotiations through his contact. But unfortunately, the money disappeared

the boot of his car outside his house.

And Mr. Ken Irons would say that he then became the second victim of the Shergar

kidnap because ultimately Garda headquarters suspected that he must have

cahoots with his contacts and he was dismissed from the force.

The international, you know, image of Ireland, of Keystone's cops in rural

Ireland, in an unsophisticated way, did not reassure people that Shergar was

going to be found.

You had, via Superintendent Spud Murphy, all of this stuff about Claire

Foyne. Between Diviner, Claire Foyne, and psychic persons, there are three

different categories that must be running into the 50 now.

To have an individual like Murphy using the kind of language that Murphy used

and creating the impression that Murphy created, that was not a good look for

Ireland. And it lent itself to satire and the stereotype of the bungling

of the innocent, guileless Irish. Complete ineptitude was the image that

being portrayed.

But it really reached the point of ludicrousness when a bunch of

turned up for one of his press conferences all wearing trilby hats like

If you were a journalist filing copy about this sensational development in

Ireland and you had that raw material to deal with, you were going to make a

meal out of it. There was some irreverent comment around the idea that

Gardaí were stopping cars and checking the boots of cars.

as if Shergar would be in the boot of a car. But it does raise that question, of

course, as to where you could put Shergar during this period.

One of the problems on the day of the kidnapping, that February day, was also

day when there had been a big sale at Gough, the bloodstock trading business

ring, which was only down the road from where the kidnapping happened.

So the roads were filled with...

horse boxes and people moving horses around.

So it wasn't as though the horse box carrying Shergar would have seemed out

place or been odd on the roads at that time.

The whole horse industry was out there buying and selling and moving animals

around. So that was the first problem for the guards.

But they did set up roadblocks and they asked the usual questions of motorists

and did anybody see anything unusual?

But literally the horse and boat, if you can put it that way.

Quite separate to all of that, you have Ballymany Studd being telephoned,

Fitzgerald, Jim Fitzgerald being telephoned, and when the kidnapping

he was told, there's a code word, you will hear from us, the code word is King

Neptune. So somebody rang him, used the code word King Neptune, and again, there

was a demand for two million ransom, and they wanted a deal via the Aga Khan's

office in Paris.

And the entire circuit transfers to Paris.

Hello. Hello.

This is King Neptune.

Yes, hello.

Just listen. I want you to answer some questions.

Yes. Are you the man with the sole power to hand over the money?

No, the shareholders have to decide. I have to refer to the shareholders.

You get the person who has the sole power to negotiate and hand over the

Yes. In five minutes' time.

I am the only one capable of being on that phone.

Right. Will you get the full power to negotiate?

Yes. You get it. Will you have it in five minutes?

The money? The sole power to negotiate.

I can try to get it.

You'd better get it.

Unless the person with the sole power to negotiate hands over the money is on

the phone in five minutes, the whole deal is off.

Do you understand that?

Well, I understand that, but I have to contact the shareholders. I can't. They

have the sole authority because... How long will it take you to contact the

shareholders? Sorry?

How long will it take you to contact the shareholders?

35 people and they are all in Ireland.

Most of them.

Well, listen, you have exactly 60 minutes.

Yes.

60 minutes.

60 minutes?

And that question again of who are we dealing with here? Is this really

who has Shergar? Is Shergar not dead at this stage? Who can prove that Shergar

is alive?

Can we trust these people who are communicating these messages? And who

actually ultimately trying to get to?

I'm fed up being messed around.

We're fed up being messed around.

You're fed up?

Listen, don't get fucking smart. Just listen.

Yes?

have been messed around, okay?

Okay. We know that all you're doing is delaying us.

No. You may have some idea that the police will get your horse back. That's

the case.

No. The police will never get your horse back.

We believe that the horse is dead.

I'll ring in an hour.

Yes. You should have the person there with the sole power to negotiate and

over the money.

I will try to get this power myself.

Yeah, and you've got one hour.

That's the limit?

Yes. No more discussion, no more deals after one hour.

Unless you've got power, there's no more deals. You'll never see the fucking

horse again.

You don't want to deal in Ireland?

No. If this person is empowered in Ireland, what happens?

If he is in Ireland, you have his name and address and phone number?

Yes. You ring and get him to Paris.

Okay. By the next time I ring, you'll have him there.

Okay. You have one hour to have that person there at that phone, and we don't

care how you do it.

Yes. You have a person there at that phone in one hour with total negotiating

power. Okay.

I'm fed up.

Okay. Okay?

Okay, understood.

It makes you wonder, was there an assumption before this kidnapping that

Khan was really the only person that they would be dealing with?

The Aga Khan, of course, so spectacularly wealthy and so well

think... of Shargar's ownership in terms of that figurehead, that one

individual, that they would ultimately have to find a channel of communication

directly with the Aga Khan.

But then they discover that that, of course, is not going to be remotely

straightforward.

Hello. Hello, this is King Neptune.

Have you got the money ready?

No, the money is not ready.

I always told you... Listen.

Yes. If you don't have the money ready by tonight... Sorry, I can't hear you.

Why have you not got the money ready?

I told you I have to have the agreement of the shareholders.

That's bullshit.

Okay, what I want to know, are you going to pay money for the horse? Yes or no?

We have to have the proof the horse is alive and has not been armed because we

are not going to pay and the shareholders are not going to pay. Are

going to pay up the money?

If the horse has been armed and they are not going to pay for the unsled source.

Listen. They are certainly not going to pay for this horse.

You can be sure of that.

If we have to kill this horse, it'll be you that kill them.

Yes, but you will be responsible to your country for that.

What? You are going to damage the reputation of your country and the

Do you think I give a shite about it?

Oh, in that case, that's another matter.

That's another matter, right?

Right. All I'm interested in is getting that money.

You're either willing to pay the money... or you're not willing to pay

money. Okay, I will convey this message immediately, but it takes me some time

to get it all of these people.

Listen, just let me make one more point to you.

Yes. You may not pay for this horse, but you definitely will pay for the next

one when you see what we do to this one.

Do you understand that?

For the Aga Khan and the shareholders, to pay a ransom would have been a very,

very dangerous precinct. Like, if that happens, then...

that probably would have put all valuable stallions all over the world in

jeopardy from then on.

The space becomes so crowded in relation to calls and messages and demands, of

course, for proof that Shergar is alive.

The longer this drags on, the less likely Shergar is alive or is going to

found alive.

And there would have been a growing scepticism on the part of those who had

interest in Shergar that there was actually any point.

in dealing with multiple supposed kidnappers, or those speaking on behalf

kidnappers. Mr. Drayon is not satisfied with the proof, and I am sure the

shareholders will not be satisfied with it.

If you're not satisfied, well, that's it.

I'd taken a number of phone calls throughout the afternoon and evening

supposed kidnapper of Shergarth.

It was very difficult.

What we were trying to do was save the world's best racehorse from possible

death to try and get him back.

And we don't know to this day whether we were talking to the real kidnappers or

whether it was somebody else to try and divert the world's press from what was

happening elsewhere.

There was a phone call at 7 o 'clock. I didn't take it because I was asleep.

And apparently the voice said, with a simple phone call, the horse has had an

accident.

He's dead.

And the phone went dead.

And that's the last we heard from the supposed kidnappers.

This is a town of horses.

Of horse lovers, indeed almost of horse worshippers, and today everyone here is

desperately trying to convince themselves that the appalling phone

Belfast this morning will turn out to be nothing more than an obscene hoax.

The man in charge of the investigation here in Newbridge, Chief Superintendent

James Murphy, was non -committal when asked about the calls today.

It is very difficult to say at this stage.

It would appear from the reports on last night.

news bulletins during the interview with Mr Maxwell that the people were the

people concerned.

This morning I am beginning to doubt that and to be honest I do not know.

It was a big story in the one, two, three, four days afterwards.

The problem is that after that there is very little fact to be reported.

And for a journalist like myself in the Irish Times The story kind of lost legs

after a few days.

In truth, what happened probably happened within a couple of hours of the

being taken.

He's been shot. He's dead. That wasn't a surprise. You know, that was going to

happen. Without somebody who understood stallions, not just horses, but a

thoroughbred stallion, it was inevitable that at some point, the longer he was

kept, the more hopeless it seemed for him.

You couldn't make it up in some sense. It was daring to do it. Had it worked,

would have been brilliant. It was also incredibly stupid.

I mean, these were characters who kidnapped this horse who clearly hadn't

how to handle a really seasoned stallion.

that needed very careful management and careful looking after. All the stuff

about code names, you know, King Neptune, there were all sorts of bizarre

about it from the IRA side.

The double attempts to get a ransom negotiation going, one in Belfast and

other in Dublin via Paris, etc., etc.

The fact that Shergar was such a winner, I mean, he won the Epsom Derby by ten

lengths, never equaled before or since.

He was a magnificent animal. He was part of a world that was filled with

aristocracy, with glamour. It had so much going for it as a story.

As was famously said, the guards didn't have a clue. In the absence of a clue,

there's a blank canvas there. And onto that blank canvas can be painted all

sorts of different theories and ideas and an awful lot of speculation.

as to who planned this, what they had in mind, how they carried it out, and what

the fallout was.

You cannot prove definitively any of those things, but you can speculate, and

sometimes you can speculate why.

I've heard many theories.

The one that I think is the most plausible... The horse wasn't simple to

I wouldn't be surprised if they underestimated what they took on.

You absolutely need somebody who's skilled and experienced in the

stallions. And if you don't have somebody like that to look after a horse

Shergar at the time, then you're possibly going to end up in trouble.

You can have a very sophisticated plan on paper in relation to a heist.

or a kidnapping, when you put it into practice, human frailty, human mistakes,

emotion, a small twist or turn can throw the entire plan into disarray. And then

you have the question of the personality and the temperament, both of the

kidnappers and those they are kidnapping, and how that might affect

they have.

So it can very easily go wrong.

Imagine trying to do that with a whore.

One day, I took the owner of a golf club, who was a racing man, and he rang

me. He said, Tommy, you'll never believe what I've just heard.

I said, well, what have you just heard?

Because the horse had a white blaze down the front of his face, they had to put

something over it to get rid of the white blaze.

So, apparently, they put boot polish over.

the white blaze.

And apparently that burnt the horse's head.

And not surprisingly, the horse went crazy if he felt his face was burning,

we would.

And that's why then they shot him.

I raised yours interviewed by the Daily Telegraph not terribly long after all

this as well, said yes, that the horse injured himself.

We, the IRA, machine -gunned it to death. And he describes an awful scene

blood and mayhem as they tried to kill the horse. The horse wouldn't die, but

eventually they did kill the horse.

And this source believed that the body was probably buried in Ballinamore in

County Leacham.

You know, when I look around here and I wonder, did they bury the horse in a

place like this?

Rumour has it that lots of things are buried around here, but they're just

rumours.

I dread to think what happened to the horse, but I tell you something, this is

the bleakest of bleak places, it really is. I know the IRA used to dump arms and

hide bodies and things like that in here, but it's absolutely unbelievable.

Look, I mean, you could just go five yards, you wouldn't even find it.

It's as simple as that. If you don't stay on the track, if you walk in the

trees, nobody will find it for 100 years.

It took on a sinister meaning when this guy who said he was from the IRA and

they're the ones who sell used the code word. And immediately, that was the code

word. And I'd never told anybody about it.

And he used King Neptune.

And I realized then that that was the guy who I'd been talking to.

So I had been talking to the kidnappers of Shogun, and all these years later,

I realized they were part of it.

It's actually really quite distressing, the idea of this beautiful animal, this

aristocratic animal, being terrified, as he must have been, and being riddled

with bullets, and probably not dying in the first wave of bullets that were

fired into him.

falling on the floor, blood everywhere, writhing in agony, and then being

finished off with more machine gunfire.

It's horrible.

What happens over the course of decades is that certain theories grow wings,

certain stories are embellished. One question we do need to consider, who

authorised this? If you are undertaking something on this scale, had it been

authorised at the very top?

We have conflicting accounts as to whether it was or not. Was this somebody

within the lower ranks of the IRA trying to make an impact, trying to prove

their worth, trying to impress the hierarchy of the IRA?

You cannot discount the fact that there are very strong -minded individuals

within the Republican organisation who may be nurturing their own ideas as a

result perhaps even of their own interests or may be hugely influenced by

scale of media coverage.

around, in this case, sugar or a horse or what the potential might be there to

create an impact.

The IRA terrified because they were in the business of terror and they were in

the business of inflicting terror.

And, you know, these were people who, they would kidnap people, put plastic

over their heads, blow their brains out, dump their bodies on a border or dig a

hole in a bog and dump them. And even to this day.

There are efforts to try and find the bodies that the IRA disappeared.

You know, you talk about death squads in Latin America. We had death squads here

on both sides.

The IRA put no -warning bombs in public houses, hotels, shopping centres,

murdered children, murdered women, civilians all over the place. They

more people in Northern Ireland than the British Army.

So, you know, when I was thinking back about the Shargar thing and thinking to

myself, how could you do that to an animal?

They wouldn't have thought twice about that.

These are people who murdered civilians, women and children.

They wouldn't have cared one shit about a horse.

I tried to write a book to mark the 30th anniversary of the taking of Shergar.

And I wanted to call it Taking Shergar.

My idea was to tell the story from the inside out. By this stage, peace had

descended. We were all getting on with our lives. There were old men.

that knew what happened to the horse.

And I let out word because I wanted to write the story from their point of view

so that they could tell it. And of course, we'd give different names to the

individuals in the acts of service unit who were involved. And this would right

a wrong. It would right a wrong because so many people were wronged by the

taking of Shergar.

Innocent shareholders, a poor vet, the Irish racing public, the British racing

public. At the end of it, I would be able to give a location for the remains,

the skeleton to be dug up, wherever it was.

So I let out word, and on a particular Saturday, two members of the Republican

movement turned up and sat around my kitchen table.

And one of them was young, and so I immediately knew that he had very little

do with the case, could only have been a schoolboy at the time. And the other

was an old, gnarled, hard man.

with a mask of a visage on him who was impassive, to say the least. And the

young man was asking all the questions.

Why do you want to write this book? How are you going to do it? What's your

proposal? And the other chap was just sitting back and regarding me coldly.

But it gradually dawned on me that the bones could not be produced.

They were beyond use.

as the decommissioning phrase has it.

And as I gently probed further, it wasn't a matter of digging anything up.

given to understand that, in fact, the horse could have been buried at sea.

At one level, it's a surprise, and it's another crazy theory, but if you dwell

on it, you realise that makes a hell of a lot of sense.

The IRA already, well, master gunrunners, they'd had lots of shipments

into Ireland.

large trawlers sailing from Gaddafi's Libya.

So ships were no problem to them, little trawlers. With Derek, I mean, it would

have been a very easy thing to crane a weighty carcass onto the deck of a

trawler and to put out from some fishing port north of the border that's solidly

Republican and then a big splash to take place a couple of miles off the coast.

How could you possibly return any bones in that circumstance?

It's something I'll never, ever forget.

I can remember it as if it was yesterday. It is that clear in my mind

years on.

I would love it to be a happy ending. You know, we watch a film or we read a

book. There's nothing like a happy ending. Ah, that was lovely. You close

book and you put it down. You've enjoyed it. But here, I'd love to have known

basically what had happened to the horse. I hope.

It was instant. I hope it was all right. I know it's over 40 years since we saw

him, but I'll never, ever forget him.

There was a time when people used to watch out for possible Shergar codes or

fillings. If a new entrant on the scene was doing well, somebody would always

see, is there possibly a link back there to Shergar? But it was never found.

Eventually, the Shergar story just became...

A regrettable part of history.

Shergar was a hero to the public.

He crossed over that horse racing threshold.

So he became a news feature, even before he was kidnapped.

He was a beautiful horse. No horse has won the Derby by ten lengths, before or

since. He was just a very special racehorse.

There have been many great races.

And there's no doubt that Shergar was one of them.

But his story, his disappearance, have ensured that his name

is going to be forever remembered, not only as a racehorse, but as folklore

within the country.

He was such a superstar himself, the racehorse Shergar, the athlete Shergar,

win a classic trial, to win the Chester Vals, to win the Derby by 10 lengths, a

distance that... hasn't been bettered since and hadn't been bettered before,

then to go on and win the Irish Derby and the King George as well. To achieve

all that, that's very, very unusual.

A horse who had so much more to give as a stallion, whose impact on

the bloodstock industry could have been so much bigger and better and more

significant than it was.

It's very, very sad for all the reasons.

A beautiful animal like that should meet its end in that manner.

I've been a farmer myself and you have livestock losses.

It's the loss of, you know, generations, future Derby winners, classic winners

and so on, being deprived of that.

Because Shergar's don't come along every day.

It will continue to leak into the news and current affairs in different ways

because somebody will turn up with a skull.

Or somebody will say, I have a suspicion that Shergar is buried there, or I

heard it from X who heard it from Y, that this is definitely where it

And it does, it prolongs a story, it prolongs a legacy.

Again, in the absence of concrete proof, you can't push Shergar to bed as a

story and as a drama.

Politics, policy and the issues making headlines.

Take a closer look at the stories driving the national conversation.

Monday with Gavin Riley. Monday night at 10 on Virgin Media Play and Virgin

Media One.