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Any concrete evidence on this?
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killed by republican terrorists within a few hours of kidnap and buried because they could not control the horse, this was admitted some years ago by individual republican who was involved
His bones are in Donegal Id suspect. Bad people robbing the poor innocent horse.
Insurance company still not paid out the 10 million to the Aga Khan.
If they could find the corpse they could clone him. worth a fortune
poor stan cosgrove the man behind Dermot Welds Moyglare colours lost a large ammount on him too. sorry affair.
Sean O'Callaghan (think that was his name) gives a full account in his book.
It is 25 years since a world-famous racehorse was kidnapped by the IRA, never to be seen again. Now, chief reporter Andrew Alderson has solved the mystery of Shergar's final hours, why his remains have never been found and uncovered the truth about the bungled ransom attempt that led to his demise
Swirling mist and driving rain threaten to obscure the view from a ridge up in the Iron Mountains, high above County Leitrim. 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.
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. 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.
Co Leitrim, which even now has a population of just 26,000, has kept many secrets during the 30 years of the Troubles. But perhaps its greatest mystery is what happened to Shergar, the racehorse once regarded as the nearest real-life equivalent to Pegasus, the winged horse from Greek mythology.
Now, however, an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph to mark the 25th anniversary of the horse's kidnapping finally solves the puzzle of Shergar's final hours, why his remains have never been found and how the Garda, the Irish police, bungled their investigation. The precise circumstances of Shergar's grisly death are also revealed for the first time.
Shergar was five years old and preparing for his second season as a breeding stallion when he was snatched from the Ballymany Stud in Co Kildare - just a stone's throw from The Curragh racetrack - on a foggy winter's evening.
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.
With a distinctive white blaze on his face, four white "socks" and his unusual racing style - he ran with his tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth - Shergar quickly captured the imagination of the British and Irish public.
The bay colt was owned by the Aga Khan, the billionaire spiritual leader to 15 million Ismaili Muslims, was trained by Sir Michael Stoute at Newmarket and was ridden by the "choirboy", an angelic looking 19-year-old jockey called Walter Swinburn, who now trains in Britain.
There was widespread relief when at the end of his career, instead of being shipped to one of the large American studs as expected, Shergar was returned to his birthplace of Ireland. There, he was syndicated for £10 million (40 shares worth £250,000 each, six of which were kept by the Aga Khan) to stand at stud.
During his first season he "covered" 35 mares, with owners paying up to £80,000 a time for the privilege of having a colt or filly by Shergar. As his second season approached, Shergar was expected to cover at least 55 mares throughout 1983. He was thought to have a long and distinguished stud career ahead of him.
A quarter of a century ago, the Ballymany Stud was shielded from the outside world by a five-bar wooden gate with a latch. Unlike today, there were no electronic security gates, CCTV cameras or an intercom to gain access - even though the horses inside were sometimes worth millions of pounds each.
Shortly after 8.30pm on February 8, 1983, Jim Fitzgerald, then 53, the head groom who lived at the stud, heard a knock on his door. As his son, Bernard, answered it, three masked and armed men barged their way in and started ordering the family around. "We have come for Shergar. We want £2 million [ransom] for him," one said.
At gunpoint, Mr Fitzgerald, a quietly spoken father of six, was forced to lead the gang to Shergar's stable and load the horse into a stolen horsebox that they had brought with them. By now there were up to eight gunmen on the scene. Two stayed behind to "guard" the groom's family and Mr Fitzgerald was forced into a car.
In a rare and exclusive interview last week, Mr Fitzgerald, now 78, frail and with a full head of white hair, quietly recalled the most terrifying moment of his life, as he was driven away from the stud by three armed men.
"I can still remember that night in that car with them lads. All sorts of thoughts were racing through my head about what they might do to me. One of them, with the revolver, was very aggressive," said Mr Fitzgerald, at his end-of-terrace home in Newbridge, just three miles from the stud.
After a few miles, Mr Fitzgerald was ordered to get out of the car, to keep walking, not to turn around and not to call the police. "I can tell you, I didn't look around once - I was happy to be on the ground," he said in a broad Co Kildare accent. Eventually, he walked to the next village and rang his brother.
Once back home, Mr Fitzgerald found his family unharmed. He rang the stud manager, Ghislain Drion, who then phoned Shergar's vet, Stan Cosgrove, who had also bought a share in the horse. Mr Cosgrove, in turn, rang his friend, former Army officer Captain Sean Berry.
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. But he had his first budget to deliver the next day, so he "passed the buck" to the justice minister.
It was not until about 4am that the Garda was alerted - and one of the biggest security operations in the Republic's history swung into action.
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.
Using a coded phrase - King Neptune - that had been given to Mr Fitzgerald during the kidnap, those holding the horse soon began secret negotiations with a representative of the Aga Khan.
Already, however, there were problems: the kidnappers mistakenly believed that Shergar belonged solely to the Aga Khan when, in fact, the horse was owned by 34 members of the syndicate, who had to agree tactics. Even then, the consensus was that if a ransom were paid, every racehorse in the country would become a potential target.
The kidnappers had also failed to anticipate the reaction of the people of Ireland - a horse-loving nation - to Shergar's abduction. The IRA's operations were heavily disrupted as every known Republican stronghold and safe house was raided in the hunt for the horse which, in turn, led to the seizure of several arms caches.
As scores of British journalists descended on Co Kildare, the hunt for Shergar turned into a media circus. 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. "A clue? That is something we haven't got," he once said.
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.
This meant there were two parallel inquiries, with the two forces refusing to share information. 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. "The police from Dublin told me not to tell Murphy anything," Capt Berry said.
Conspiracy theories soon abounded over who had kidnapped the horse. Some said it was the Mafia in retaliation for a horse deal with the Aga Khan that had gone wrong. Others said he had been seized for Colonel Gaddafi of Libya in return for arms to the IRA. Years later, there were still whispers that Shergar was alive and secretly producing foals whose breeding lines could never be divulged.
Most investigators accepted from early on, however, that the IRA was to blame. A decade ago Sean O'Callaghan, an IRA double killer turned police double agent, used his book, The Informer, to name seven former Provos he claimed had planned and carried out the horse's kidnap.
The book identified Kevin Mallon, a senior IRA leader, as the man who had devised the plot. Mallon, a convicted killer originally from Co Tyrone, eventually became part of IRA folklore after shooting his way out of one prison and being lifted by helicopter from another.
O'Callaghan suggested the horse had thrown itself into a frenzy, injured a leg and that it was put out of its misery and "was killed within days
Swirling mist and driving rain threaten to obscure the view from a ridge up in the Iron Mountains, high above County Leitrim. 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.
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. 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.
Co Leitrim, which even now has a population of just 26,000, has kept many secrets during the 30 years of the Troubles. But perhaps its greatest mystery is what happened to Shergar, the racehorse once regarded as the nearest real-life equivalent to Pegasus, the winged horse from Greek mythology.
Now, however, an investigation by The Sunday Telegraph to mark the 25th anniversary of the horse's kidnapping finally solves the puzzle of Shergar's final hours, why his remains have never been found and how the Garda, the Irish police, bungled their investigation. The precise circumstances of Shergar's grisly death are also revealed for the first time.
Shergar was five years old and preparing for his second season as a breeding stallion when he was snatched from the Ballymany Stud in Co Kildare - just a stone's throw from The Curragh racetrack - on a foggy winter's evening.
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.
With a distinctive white blaze on his face, four white "socks" and his unusual racing style - he ran with his tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth - Shergar quickly captured the imagination of the British and Irish public.
The bay colt was owned by the Aga Khan, the billionaire spiritual leader to 15 million Ismaili Muslims, was trained by Sir Michael Stoute at Newmarket and was ridden by the "choirboy", an angelic looking 19-year-old jockey called Walter Swinburn, who now trains in Britain.
There was widespread relief when at the end of his career, instead of being shipped to one of the large American studs as expected, Shergar was returned to his birthplace of Ireland. There, he was syndicated for £10 million (40 shares worth £250,000 each, six of which were kept by the Aga Khan) to stand at stud.
During his first season he "covered" 35 mares, with owners paying up to £80,000 a time for the privilege of having a colt or filly by Shergar. As his second season approached, Shergar was expected to cover at least 55 mares throughout 1983. He was thought to have a long and distinguished stud career ahead of him.
A quarter of a century ago, the Ballymany Stud was shielded from the outside world by a five-bar wooden gate with a latch. Unlike today, there were no electronic security gates, CCTV cameras or an intercom to gain access - even though the horses inside were sometimes worth millions of pounds each.
Shortly after 8.30pm on February 8, 1983, Jim Fitzgerald, then 53, the head groom who lived at the stud, heard a knock on his door. As his son, Bernard, answered it, three masked and armed men barged their way in and started ordering the family around. "We have come for Shergar. We want £2 million [ransom] for him," one said.
At gunpoint, Mr Fitzgerald, a quietly spoken father of six, was forced to lead the gang to Shergar's stable and load the horse into a stolen horsebox that they had brought with them. By now there were up to eight gunmen on the scene. Two stayed behind to "guard" the groom's family and Mr Fitzgerald was forced into a car.
In a rare and exclusive interview last week, Mr Fitzgerald, now 78, frail and with a full head of white hair, quietly recalled the most terrifying moment of his life, as he was driven away from the stud by three armed men.
"I can still remember that night in that car with them lads. All sorts of thoughts were racing through my head about what they might do to me. One of them, with the revolver, was very aggressive," said Mr Fitzgerald, at his end-of-terrace home in Newbridge, just three miles from the stud.
After a few miles, Mr Fitzgerald was ordered to get out of the car, to keep walking, not to turn around and not to call the police. "I can tell you, I didn't look around once - I was happy to be on the ground," he said in a broad Co Kildare accent. Eventually, he walked to the next village and rang his brother.
Once back home, Mr Fitzgerald found his family unharmed. He rang the stud manager, Ghislain Drion, who then phoned Shergar's vet, Stan Cosgrove, who had also bought a share in the horse. Mr Cosgrove, in turn, rang his friend, former Army officer Captain Sean Berry.
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. But he had his first budget to deliver the next day, so he "passed the buck" to the justice minister.
It was not until about 4am that the Garda was alerted - and one of the biggest security operations in the Republic's history swung into action.
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.
Using a coded phrase - King Neptune - that had been given to Mr Fitzgerald during the kidnap, those holding the horse soon began secret negotiations with a representative of the Aga Khan.
Already, however, there were problems: the kidnappers mistakenly believed that Shergar belonged solely to the Aga Khan when, in fact, the horse was owned by 34 members of the syndicate, who had to agree tactics. Even then, the consensus was that if a ransom were paid, every racehorse in the country would become a potential target.
The kidnappers had also failed to anticipate the reaction of the people of Ireland - a horse-loving nation - to Shergar's abduction. The IRA's operations were heavily disrupted as every known Republican stronghold and safe house was raided in the hunt for the horse which, in turn, led to the seizure of several arms caches.
As scores of British journalists descended on Co Kildare, the hunt for Shergar turned into a media circus. 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. "A clue? That is something we haven't got," he once said.
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.
This meant there were two parallel inquiries, with the two forces refusing to share information. 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. "The police from Dublin told me not to tell Murphy anything," Capt Berry said.
Conspiracy theories soon abounded over who had kidnapped the horse. Some said it was the Mafia in retaliation for a horse deal with the Aga Khan that had gone wrong. Others said he had been seized for Colonel Gaddafi of Libya in return for arms to the IRA. Years later, there were still whispers that Shergar was alive and secretly producing foals whose breeding lines could never be divulged.
Most investigators accepted from early on, however, that the IRA was to blame. A decade ago Sean O'Callaghan, an IRA double killer turned police double agent, used his book, The Informer, to name seven former Provos he claimed had planned and carried out the horse's kidnap.
The book identified Kevin Mallon, a senior IRA leader, as the man who had devised the plot. Mallon, a convicted killer originally from Co Tyrone, eventually became part of IRA folklore after shooting his way out of one prison and being lifted by helicopter from another.
O'Callaghan suggested the horse had thrown itself into a frenzy, injured a leg and that it was put out of its misery and "was killed within days
Shocking end if true. I still have a reproduction front page of the Sporting Life the day after he won the Derby, awesome, just awesome.
I should be in the Guiness Book Of records for getting the highest odds in the world for Shergar to win the Derby.
2,499/1
2,499/1
A big London store were selling raffle books for charity. Tickets were in a book of 10 for £1. Each ticket bore the name of an Epsom Derby entrant based on the first declarations.
They were then supposed to be chucked into a box and drawn out at random with the names on the tickets entered against the name of a horse.
If June came and you got a runner, you got £5.
Then the prize money increased to £250 for the winner.
I persuaded somebody who worked in the office to put my sisters name by the side of Shergar.
£250 for 10p.
Bung the bird in the office and my sister a pony each, 200 sovs for nothing for me.
Luvvly Jubbly. :)
They were then supposed to be chucked into a box and drawn out at random with the names on the tickets entered against the name of a horse.
If June came and you got a runner, you got £5.
Then the prize money increased to £250 for the winner.
I persuaded somebody who worked in the office to put my sisters name by the side of Shergar.
£250 for 10p.
Bung the bird in the office and my sister a pony each, 200 sovs for nothing for me.
Luvvly Jubbly. :)
Big Charlie 08 Feb 22:46
A big London store were selling raffle books for charity. Tickets were in a book of 10 for £1. Each ticket bore the name of an Epsom Derby entrant based on the first declarations.
They were then supposed to be chucked into a box and drawn out at random with the names on the tickets entered against the name of a horse.
If June came and you got a runner, you got £5.
Then the prize money increased to £250 for the winner.
I persuaded somebody who worked in the office to put my sisters name by the side of Shergar.
£250 for 10p.
Bung the bird in the office and my sister a pony each, 200 sovs for nothing for me.
Luvvly Jubbly.
great story Charlie. Picked one of the best horses of the last century takes some doing that :D
A big London store were selling raffle books for charity. Tickets were in a book of 10 for £1. Each ticket bore the name of an Epsom Derby entrant based on the first declarations.
They were then supposed to be chucked into a box and drawn out at random with the names on the tickets entered against the name of a horse.
If June came and you got a runner, you got £5.
Then the prize money increased to £250 for the winner.
I persuaded somebody who worked in the office to put my sisters name by the side of Shergar.
£250 for 10p.
Bung the bird in the office and my sister a pony each, 200 sovs for nothing for me.
Luvvly Jubbly.
great story Charlie. Picked one of the best horses of the last century takes some doing that :D
Howdi
easy enough when you've been a horse racing fan since Sleeping Partner with Johnny Gorton in the saddle won the Oaks in 1969.
I was in a sweepstake for the Grand National at work (forget the year, but it was in the 80s) I had to go out, and when I got back there were only two tickets left.
When I found out what they were I told the bloke to shove them up his arse as they were useless.
So he bought one, and a blioke I didn't like had the other one.
The ticket for the bloke I didn't like was for Hallo Dandy :(
easy enough when you've been a horse racing fan since Sleeping Partner with Johnny Gorton in the saddle won the Oaks in 1969.
I was in a sweepstake for the Grand National at work (forget the year, but it was in the 80s) I had to go out, and when I got back there were only two tickets left.
When I found out what they were I told the bloke to shove them up his arse as they were useless.
So he bought one, and a blioke I didn't like had the other one.
The ticket for the bloke I didn't like was for Hallo Dandy :(
Read that account of Shergar's final hours a couple of years ago,
and felt really sick and upset about what happened to the horse,
apparently they used a machine gun to kill him and the horse was slipping on his own blood.
Heartbreaking to think such a brilliant racehorse met his end like that.
and felt really sick and upset about what happened to the horse,
apparently they used a machine gun to kill him and the horse was slipping on his own blood.
Heartbreaking to think such a brilliant racehorse met his end like that.
I used to know Kevin Mallon and would never have described him as a "headcase" as described in the article.
Heard the rumours at the time regarding Shergar but nothing conclusive to say he was involved.
Heard the rumours at the time regarding Shergar but nothing conclusive to say he was involved.
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