Shergar... 30 years on and still one of the biggest unsolved mystery's..
Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2013 4:49 pm
30 years on remains one of the great unsolved crimes in Irish history, writes John Daly
Derby-winning racehorse Shergar was kidnapped on Feb 8, 1983 and 30 years on, no-one has admitted taking him and why. Nor has he been found.
It was 8.30pm when head groom Jim Fitzgerald, 53, who lived at the stud, heard a knock on his door. When his son Bernard opened the door, three armed men wearing masks burst in. “We’re here for Shergar. We want £2m for him, the terrified family were told.
The raiders led him into the stable yard at gunpoint, as his wife Madge and the two youngest of their six children, Patrick, 8, and Gillian, 5, were held in the house.
Moving quickly, they led Shergar to a horsebox attached to a waiting car with four other gang members inside, while the head groom was bundled into a second vehicle. His wife was warned her husband would be killed if she gave the alarm. Mr Fitzgerald remembers most of the gang being in a state of excitement, brandishing guns and shouting abuse. “All sorts of thoughts were racing through my head about what they might do to me. One of them, with a revolver, was very aggressive. He also remembers one of them saying “sorry to him.
Driven around the back roads of Kildare for over three hours, Mr Fitzgerald was finally released just outside Kilcock village, about 30km from Ballymany. “They told me not to look back, and I didn’t, he recalled.
In another twist, Ballymany vet and syndicate member Stan Cosgrove was told to go to the Crofton Hotel in Dublin and pick up an envelope using the name of Eurovision winner, Johnny Logan. The envelope contained a picture of Shergar’s head next to a current copy of a Belfast newspaper.
However, the Aga Khan’s office was not satisfied and demanded a full standing shot of the horse as ultimate assurance he had not been harmed. No such photograph was ever forthcoming. It marked the end of the negotiations, and the last contact made by the kidnappers.
http://saoirse32.wordpress.com/2013/02/ ... -years-on/
It was 1983 just two years after the hunger strikers and the same year the IRA bombed London...
To anyone who remembers Shergar and anyone Involved In horse racing, the outcome Is not a mystery but a fore-gone conclusion.
The IRA If It was them would have thought that It was a simple case of horse rustling but had absolutely no experience of highly strung thoroughbreds. Thinking they could hold him to ransom they never envisaged how highly strung Shergar was. No doubt on opening the horse box at their destination, Shergar would have flipped out... unable to handle him we believe they shot him...
30 years on, where ever he Is, we hope at least he Is at peace.
Derby-winning racehorse Shergar was kidnapped on Feb 8, 1983 and 30 years on, no-one has admitted taking him and why. Nor has he been found.
It was 8.30pm when head groom Jim Fitzgerald, 53, who lived at the stud, heard a knock on his door. When his son Bernard opened the door, three armed men wearing masks burst in. “We’re here for Shergar. We want £2m for him, the terrified family were told.
The raiders led him into the stable yard at gunpoint, as his wife Madge and the two youngest of their six children, Patrick, 8, and Gillian, 5, were held in the house.
Moving quickly, they led Shergar to a horsebox attached to a waiting car with four other gang members inside, while the head groom was bundled into a second vehicle. His wife was warned her husband would be killed if she gave the alarm. Mr Fitzgerald remembers most of the gang being in a state of excitement, brandishing guns and shouting abuse. “All sorts of thoughts were racing through my head about what they might do to me. One of them, with a revolver, was very aggressive. He also remembers one of them saying “sorry to him.
Driven around the back roads of Kildare for over three hours, Mr Fitzgerald was finally released just outside Kilcock village, about 30km from Ballymany. “They told me not to look back, and I didn’t, he recalled.
In another twist, Ballymany vet and syndicate member Stan Cosgrove was told to go to the Crofton Hotel in Dublin and pick up an envelope using the name of Eurovision winner, Johnny Logan. The envelope contained a picture of Shergar’s head next to a current copy of a Belfast newspaper.
However, the Aga Khan’s office was not satisfied and demanded a full standing shot of the horse as ultimate assurance he had not been harmed. No such photograph was ever forthcoming. It marked the end of the negotiations, and the last contact made by the kidnappers.
http://saoirse32.wordpress.com/2013/02/ ... -years-on/
It was 1983 just two years after the hunger strikers and the same year the IRA bombed London...
To anyone who remembers Shergar and anyone Involved In horse racing, the outcome Is not a mystery but a fore-gone conclusion.
The IRA If It was them would have thought that It was a simple case of horse rustling but had absolutely no experience of highly strung thoroughbreds. Thinking they could hold him to ransom they never envisaged how highly strung Shergar was. No doubt on opening the horse box at their destination, Shergar would have flipped out... unable to handle him we believe they shot him...
30 years on, where ever he Is, we hope at least he Is at peace.