Who Kidnapped Shergar? The Mystery of the World’s Most Famous Racehorse - How It All Played Out

13:33Jim Fitzgerald:Many of those mayors are already on their way to visit him.

13:37Paul Hayward:He's fully booked for 1983.

13:39Jim Fitzgerald:Everything's looking good.

13:41Paul Hayward:None of them get to see him, unfortunately.

13:43Mark Pougatch:So, as we said, about half past eight on the evening of February the 8th, which is a Tuesday, it's been a filthy day in County Kildare. We're about 40-odd miles southwest of Dublin. And a Ford Granada pulling a trailer comes off the main Dublin road and literally goes through non-existent security. They literally just have to take open a latch off the gate and drive in. And I think when people think about that today through the prism of today's security around everything, let alone sport, you're thinking, what, a car can just literally drive in to a stud where the most prized stallion, certainly in Europe, is housed.

14:23Mark Pougatch:It seems inconceivable, doesn't it?

14:25Jim Fitzgerald:Particularly given the state of politics and so on and warfare in Ireland, this is a£10 million asset unguarded. But even though humans had been kidnapped in the 1970s, there's still no conception at all that anyone would kidnap a horse, even one that's worth£10 million. So I think that's where the disconnect was. You know, they didn't need security because it was inconceivable that Shergar would ever be stolen.

14:50Mark Pougatch:Well, that's what happens when we get to it later with the insurers as well, isn't it? The judge said, well, no one had ever stolen a horse before, so there was no precedent for it.

14:58Paul Hayward:Yeah, and the question we will answer next is, why do they do it?

15:20Jim Fitzgerald:Police have had the stud sealed off all day, but tonight they admit they had no leads in the hunt for sugar, and they don't know if those who took him are ordinary criminals or paramilitary or terrorist organisations trying to raise funds. The Ballymani stud holds bloodstock worth millions, but Shergar was the undoubted star.

15:41Mark Pougatch:That was a news clip taken from 1983 from ITN.

15:46Paul Hayward:Now, by 1980-81, the conflict in Northern Ireland was at its, I would argue, its most intense phase. So these were the years of the hunger strikes when 10 Republican prisoners starved themselves to death. These deaths further radicalised the Republican movement and led pretty much directly to the Brighton bombing of 1984

16:09Jim Fitzgerald:in which the IRA tried to exact revenge on Margaret Thatcher for allowing these prisoners to die. 100 ,000 people attended the funeral of Bobby Sands, who was one of the people who starved himself to death.

16:20Paul Hayward:So you can see in the year that Shergar was winning the Derby, it was a separate story, disconnected in many ways, But in Ireland, the whole island of Ireland, not just Northern Ireland, there is a conflagration.

16:32Mark Pougatch:I think the issue that disappeared is actually very relevant when we go back to the night of the kidnapping for James Fitzgerald, the groom. I think reading this is really significant and explains, I think, in many ways, his actions. So there's a knock on the door at 8.40. James Fitzgerald lives on site. He's got six children. He's the groom who's in charge of the stud. And his son opens the door, Bernard. and he looks at a man who's ostensibly wearing uniform of the Irish police, the Irish Guard, but he's got a balaclava over his face. And he goes, is he in? Now, when I read that, I was thinking, is he referring to his dad, the start manager, or is he referring to Shergar?

17:09Mark Pougatch:Because they've come for Shergar. Berder turns around to go and get his dad and gets a whack at the back of his head. James comes out and goes, what's going on? And there are men with guns there. And they make it very obvious from the word go, we've come to take Shergar. You take us to Shergar, we're going to go and take him. away well what would you do with someone with guns in your house who's pointing them at your family in an era that disappeared and if you don't do what they say you know what the history is so he goes to get the horse now of course even though shirgar is a stallion on the eve of breeding season he knows james and he knows james so he's quite calm with james with jim and he goes to get him and they put him in the back of the trailer and the trailer drives away and then they take gym somewhere else and they drive him around for three or four hours before they chuck him out about 23 24 miles away in a place called kilcock and they chuck him out about midday they use a password don't they king neptune we'll hear about king neptune quite a lot and they say don't call the police i think you can understand paul why he doesn't call the police because he's been driven around for three or four hours he doesn't know where he's going he knows that someone's kidnapped Shergar.

18:18Mark Pougatch:He doesn't know who they are, you might guess, or where they've taken Shergar. He doesn't know what's happened to his family. Two men have been left with them. He's very aware of the disappeared. It's the middle of the night and he's cold. I'm not surprised he doesn't call the police straight away.

18:32Paul Hayward:No, the human disappeared went missing between 1972 to 85. So this is this event. Right in the middle of this is right in this kidnapping of Shergar is right in the middle of that, the Irish finance minister, Alan Dukes, actually said that Shergar had been disappeared, quotes, disappeared. So he sort of included him with the human kidnappings. This was a crime wave at a particular point in the IRA's development when they needed money desperately, they were short on funds, and they came up with the idea of kidnappings to raise money very quickly.

19:07Jim Fitzgerald:But crucially, it's an eight-hour gap between the kidnapping and the authority authorities being alerted. So there's no chance of roadblocks. There's no chance of police interventions.

19:19Paul Hayward:By the time the police and the government get to hear about it, Shurgar has long gone into the night.

19:25Mark Pougatch:There's also the day, and no one quite knows whether this was just fluke from the kidnappers, it was also the day of the big goths racing sale. So the roads of Ireland are full of trailers because people are buying and selling horses. So there's absolutely no chance of stopping of any old trailer there's a there's a relay of extraordinary phone calls isn't there jim gets out the car goes to a chinese when he's thrown out the car goes to a chinese restaurant rings his brother who picks him up he then calls gillain drion who's the stud manager at ballymanny who calls stan cosgrove who's shergar's vet and then after that then stan calls sean berry who's a former captain in the irish army who calls the irish finance minister you mentioned him, Alan Dukes, who says he doesn't know what to do and he's got to deliver the budget the next day anyway, who calls the justice minister.

20:12Mark Pougatch:And all the while they're trying to get hold of the Aga Khan. So you look and you go, blimey, is anyone going to call? When is someone going to call the authorities? But for the reasons we've outlined, that's why there was the worry. And actually, so it's not till four o 'clock in the morning, pretty much the police are alerted.

20:28Jim Fitzgerald:Yeah. So that part of the operation was successful through the kidnappers eyes. Anyway, They bought the time they needed to make Surgard disappear and to get him to wherever they took him.

20:38Paul Hayward:And so out of the mist comes a gentleman called Chief Superintendent James Murphy, who's nicknamed Spud. He's teased by the press on both sides of the water for his trilby hat and country accent. It was an Irish journalist who called him the Irish Inspector Clouseau. But actually, a lot of people had a lot more respect for him than that. Nicholas Wichel, for example, who was the BBC's Northern Ireland correspondent, called him a very shrewd and charming man. Wichel said he did know more than he was able to share with us. Murphy called the kidnappers terrorists. He told them that negotiations would be impossible without proof of life.

21:17Paul Hayward:The police went farm to farm. But with the murder that we know about in relation to terrorist activity, nobody said anything. But the line that people always remember from James Murphy is when somebody asked him whether they had any clues. And Murphy replied, a clue? That is something we haven't got. So he was... That plays into the cartoon character, doesn't it? Exactly. The usual prejudicial portrayal of Irish police officers. So he was a bit of a figure of fun. But underneath it all, he knew his business, I think.

21:51Mark Pougatch:The interesting thing here is this is where the stories start to be quite muddled, isn't it? Because on the same night, on the same night that Shergar is taken about midnight, Jeremy and Judy Maxwell, who were renowned trainers who live in a farm outside Belfast, so in Northern Ireland, they get a call at midnight about Shergar being kidnapped. And they're thinking, what do we need Shergar's being kidnapped? We haven't heard that. And the next morning, so we're eighth into the ninth now, there's nothing on the news about that. so already we're getting mixed stories already we are getting the thought are there decoy trails being laid here because on the one hand the police are only told at four in the morning that shirgar has been kidnapped and yet the maxwells are called at midnight the night before

22:36Jim Fitzgerald:that he's been kidnapped yeah i hesitate to use this phrase but it almost turns into a sort of crime caper at this point you know there are people flying off in all directions there are wild rumors going around about vendettas about colonel gaddafi being involved gaddafi's regime in libya was supplying arms to the ira at that time there's even a suggestion that the american mafia are involved i mean the american mafia gets him gets dragged into everything doesn't it but

22:59Mark Pougatch:in this case something to some new orleans mafia and there were people talking to diviners and

23:07Paul Hayward:clairvoyants and travelers so it it had become it quite quickly became a bit of a pantomime a pantomime that sucked in three um british horse racing journalists who were i think i can say with some confidence that they were duped into thinking that they were they were go-betweens they'd been taken over to belfast to be the intermediaries so there's a phone call to the

23:30Mark Pougatch:bbc in belfast is that saying this is kim neptune if you want to see your horse again these three journalists i mean you know derek thompson very well you work with him a lot lord oaksie who was a very famous itv journo being an amateur uh jockey as well and peter campling from the sun They are told you must go to the Europa on the Wednesday evening. So it's kidnapped on the Tuesday evening. You must go to the Europa Hotel in Belfast, which was the because Belfast of the Hydra Troubles was the most bombed hotel in Europe. It felt like to me when I read that, I thought this this is this is all quite coincidental, isn't it?

24:01Mark Pougatch:That they've got to go to this particular hotel. But to be fair to them, if you or I were in that position and we get a phone call to say you need to come to this hotel because this, you know, this is the way to get Shergar back. we'd all go, wouldn't we? Yeah, we would.

24:15Jim Fitzgerald:Interesting cast of characters. I mean, John Oakesy, Lord Oakesy, his father was a judge at the Nuremberg Trials, for example. Very august man.

24:24Paul Hayward:Amateur jockey, breeder, establishment figure, racing journalist. And alongside him, Tomo was the, Derek Thompson, Tomo was the fun man of Channel 4 racing. You know, he'd kind of make a spectacle of himself and try and generate some energy and laughter. And again, he really knows his stuff, Tomo. But at that time, you wouldn't have chosen him as the most sort of serious-minded intermediary to negotiate with the IRA for the recovery of Shurgar. Nevertheless, the three of them go there. And at one point, so they're sent out into the countryside to continue the negotiations to go to the Maxwell's yard, as you've just said.

25:07But they were told by the kidnappers to lose the press.

25:11Jim Fitzgerald:And I was thinking, well, that's a bit optimistic because they were the press. So all three of them must be thinking, I am never going to get a better story than this.

25:19Paul Hayward:Which is why we'd all do it.

25:20Mark Pougatch:That's what I've said. You know, yeah.

25:21Paul Hayward:I know. It's every journalist's dream, isn't it? To be the story. To be in the story. So it's sort of gonzo journalism of a high order. But they're on the way to the Maxwell.

25:33Mark Pougatch:Well, they run through the kitchens to lose the press. It's the old kitchen bag, isn't it? Yeah.

25:37Paul Hayward:Yeah. And so they get up, they head out towards the Maxwell yard trying to lose the press. And they're stopped by men in Balaclavas who are not the IRA.

25:45Jim Fitzgerald:They're the police who are surrounding the farmhouse of Jeremy and Judy Maxwell. A call comes in asking for£40 ,000. That arouses suspicion because suddenly the price has dropped to£40 ,000. That's a bit odd.

25:57Paul Hayward:And then another call comes in asking for£1 ,000 for a photo of the horse. So it's starting to look like a bit of either a diversionary tactic or a scam.

26:08Jim Fitzgerald:But finally, a fairly serious call is made at 6.50 a.m. in the morning when a voice says he's had an accident. He's dead, which, according to the IRA supergirl, Sean O 'Callaghan, we'll talk about this later, is actually what happened. And that's the last they ever hear from the so-called kidnappers. John Oakes, who bless him, gets fed up and goes home.

26:30Mark Pougatch:Well, I think he's seen through it by then. Because, again, the parallel stories, Paul, all the time here, because while that's happening, which is why people think it's a decoy, the Aga Khan has brought in someone who used to be in the SAS, the Special Air Service, to negotiate, as it were, from France or from Switzerland, wherever he is. But the complication is, which is why we talked about the shareholding earlier, is you're not just negotiating with the Aga Khan. You're negotiating with all these shareholders. And some might be prepared to pay a ransom, but most of them certainly aren't because of course you know why would you pay a ransom for the obvious reasons if you pay a ransom for Sharga then every prize racehorse around the world is liable to be kidnapped there's a this is what makes it so complicated you know who are they

27:11Paul Hayward:actually negotiating with yeah well when I said it was a disastrous attempt by the IRA to extract

27:19Jim Fitzgerald:money from rich people one of the reasons for that is they didn't understand that that the Aga Khan wasn't the sole owner of the horse and that they could negotiate with one person they They were negotiating with 35 people, none of whom could agree on what the best course was. Some of them wanted to settle to get the horse back, but most of them didn't want to negotiate with the IRA. So those negotiations could have gone on for weeks and months, you know, had the horse himself not met what we think of as a very swift demise.

27:49Mark Pougatch:I think that that last phone call at 6.50, having grown up with a mother who preferred horses to most human beings, and I was quite often in the second category. She was probably a good judge. She was probably a good judge. You know, a mother who loved horses and being near them enough at the time. Even a horse, I'm not talking about a stallion, I'm not talking about a racehorse, just a horse. You know, you have to know what you're doing. You have to be careful of it. You have to make sure you stand in the right place or you're going to get seriously hurt. I think somebody we both know very well, Claire Balding, said you would only do this, talking about the RA, if you had no idea about horses.

28:26Mark Pougatch:Because the thought that you could put a stallion in a trailer. Now, it's one thing when he's with his groom, Jim, who would be able to keep him calm. But the minute Jim's gone because he's been kidnapped as well, you have got a stallion on the eve of breeding season in a trailer handled by four men. men who clearly are not adept at handing a highly strung, frankly, very horny racehorse, and you're driving him around, you would only do that if you had no idea what you were doing. So the thought that that horse would quite literally kick off in a trailer when it's being driven away, to me, is very, very, very plausible that he would do that.

29:03Mark Pougatch:I mean, I've heard, I mean, I've driven a trailer before and heard a horse kicking in the back. You know, the fact that he, you know, that he would fracture a bone in his leg, I think is very,

29:10Paul Hayward:very probable you cannot take a stallion out of its natural environment stick it in the back of

29:15Jim Fitzgerald:a horse box with no serious veterinary care and there was supposed to be a vet with them wasn't there well yeah i wonder whether this story is apocryphal if it's not true it should be as they used to say in fleet street that the the vet the vet pulled out on the day of the operation because his wife threatened to leave him if he took part in it so he stayed at home which meant that the The kidnappers had no real expertise. There was one of them apparently had had some experience of working with horses, but not at a high level. And suddenly they've got this raging stallion who's been taken out of his box in the middle of the night, doesn't know where he's going, doesn't know the people who are surrounding him.

29:54Jim Fitzgerald:And that is a recipe for disaster.

29:56Mark Pougatch:So no ransom is paid, but money does change hands.

30:15Mark Pougatch:so paul on a purely financial level most of the people involved in this are the elite of of european racing of world racing and extremely wealthy they can afford the financial loss of course it's a terrible story for them except one man his vet stan cosgrove he loses time

30:30Paul Hayward:and time again yeah he gets hit three times so stan cosgrove is a highly respected irish country vet very religious he loses shirgar as a patient as it were he loses his share in the horse as a stallion and he loses 80 000 pounds in cash for reasons that i will now explain stan cosgrove

30:51Jim Fitzgerald:gets led all around the houses as a kind of uh middleman between the kidnappers and the aga khan

30:57Paul Hayward:he gets led up the garden path in all sorts of ways goes to an airport and gives the code name Johnny Logan. Johnny Logan had won the Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland to meet the kidnappers but there aren't police there that deters them and the kidnappers don't show. At another hotel he's given a photo of the horse's head but the insurance company won't accept it as proof of life and eight weeks after the kidnap he's told by Dublin detectives that there's a man called Dennis Minogue who has information about Shergar and says he's still alive but wants a ransom bait of 80 ,000 pounds of Cosgrove's money.

31:32Paul Hayward:Why he handed the 80 ,000 pounds to the Irish police is a is a mystery that we'll never solve. But anyway, to cut a long story short, the money is left in the boot of a young detective's car in a remote location, but it disappears overnight. So Stan Cosgrove's desperate to get the insurance payout on his share in the horse, but he has no proof that Shergar is dead. He has mortality insurance, but he doesn't have any theft insurance. Now, Now, Lloyds of London paid£7 million to those with theft insurance, but those who only had mortality insurance got nothing.

32:06Mark Pougatch:Yeah, because there was no proof the horse was dead.

32:08Paul Hayward:And some of them sued their agents for not covering that base unsuccessfully in Stan Cosgrove's case. Well, that's the bit I was saying earlier, wasn't it,

32:15Mark Pougatch:that the judge actually said because no horse had ever been stolen before, it wasn't wrong of the agent not to say to you, oh, you need theft insurance as well, because it never happened before.

32:24Jim Fitzgerald:So meanwhile, as the search gets underway for the body, really, and a man called Des Leiden from the Irish Thoroughbred Association is charged with inspecting all sorts of carcasses. One is he's given a skull and he's told it's Shergar's skull. It's a bovine skull. A horse washes up in Dublin Harbour. He's got hairy hooves. He immediately sees that that's not Shergar. So the trail goes cold and it becomes a bit farcical. It becomes a bit of a running joke where Christy Moore, for example, writes a song about Lord Lucan riding in on Shergar And it becomes a kind of almost like an amusing folktale.

32:58Paul Hayward:I mean, it's anything but. So finally, we get some light shed on what actually happened to him. It's not definitive light, but it's a pointer in the right direction.

33:07Mark Pougatch:This comes from an IRA informer, doesn't it? Exactly.

33:09Jim Fitzgerald:Sean O 'Callaghan, who's a super grass, he's the highest placed IRA informer inside the Garda. He's working for the Garda, really, rather than British intelligence.

33:18Paul Hayward:So he claims that a man called Kevin Mallon dreamt this scheme up in prison and was put in charge of a special operations unit of the IRA to raise millions of pounds for the struggle. The chief of staff of the IRA at that time liked the Italian mafia model of kidnappings and the IRA Army Council gave the go ahead for Shergar to be kidnapped. Sean O 'Callaghan says, I only know what I've been told. So that casts some doubt on his testimony. But he claims that he was told by a man who was on the operation that Shergar had become fractious, had sustained an injury, had become fractious and was shot quite quickly after the kidnap.

34:00Jim Fitzgerald:Didn't really survive very long because he injured himself.

34:03Mark Pougatch:And actually, some of the other reporters are pretty graphic, isn't it? That he's machine gunned to death. You know, it's not a bullet in the head. he's machine gunned to death.

34:12Paul Hayward:I don't know how much of that was poetic license,

34:14Jim Fitzgerald:but it definitely adds to the haunting quality of this story, this idea that he suffered a brutal end. You know, he wasn't sort of calmly put down, but he was executed effectively and, you know, put in a shallow grave somewhere.

34:27Mark Pougatch:It seems to be that if anybody does have an idea of where he is, it's County Leitrim, isn't it? Near the border. That seems to be a very good documentary. And when the reporter went there. Alison Miller's documentary. Yes, and when she went there, People were very reluctant to talk about it. Now, it is near the border. So there's always the complications when it's near the border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. But basically, she's told, I wouldn't be going around asking questions here. And that's very remote, isn't it? A lot of peat bogs. Frankly, very easy to bury something there.

34:58Jim Fitzgerald:Yeah, and that town is called the Falls Road of the South. It's one of the Republican strongholds. So if they were going to take him anywhere, they'd take him to a place with the least chance of detection or comeback. He was wiped out as a horse, as an animal, but he was pretty much wiped out as an influence in the breed. And again, to people who don't know much about racing, that might seem not a very significant thing. But actually, when you've been trying to do something for 250 years and a champion, an exemplar is wiped off the breeding charts by a kidnapping, it's pretty surreal.

35:32Mark Pougatch:But you have got one bright spot for everybody at the end of this tale. Literally this tale. Yeah.

35:38Paul Hayward:Well, completely. It's quite a touching story because when Shergar was cavorting around the field at Ballymanistad with little security and open to visits, really, people used to come down and see him.

35:51Jim Fitzgerald:And there were two young women who were Shergar nuts. They traveled down to Ballymanistad and said to the groom, do you mind if we give him a carrot over the fence? And the chap there said, yeah, of course, no problem. He loves carrots. You know, come and say hello to him. And Shergar came over. There was a nice exchange between these two fans. And the groom was so touched by this, he said, tell you what, don't tell anyone I did this, but I'll just give you a little lock of his tail hair. And the two women were ecstatic, of course, and they took this tail hair back to, I think they were from Northern Ireland.

36:20Jim Fitzgerald:Anyway, they put it in a keepsake box. And when Shergar was kidnapped, of course, people understood the value of this little lock of hair. And Des Lieden, the man who was in charge of trying to find the body, was given these little fragments of hair from Shergar's tail, knowing of course that if they ever did find a body and they needed to identify him through his DNA that this tail hair might just provide the answer so if there's a hopeful ending it is that one day that tail hair will be matched to a horse that's laying in the ground and of course that tail hair was given as a kind of act of love and friendship and I just I just like to think that

37:04Mark Pougatch:maybe that is the key to finding him still thank you for listening to how it all played out we'd love to hear from you give us an idea and say love you too to look back at this story to re-evaluate this story to bring this story to life which hasn't been told for a bit so email us how it all played out at global.com do hit subscribe please give us a rating as well let us know how we're doing and tell your mates as well and we look forward paul very much to seeing everybody next time can't wait

37:41Mark Pougatch:How it all played out is presented by me, Mark Pugach, and Paul Hayward. It's a Global Original production in association with Apex Content Ventures.

37:53Paul Hayward:This is a Global Player Original podcast.