A former IRA kingpin alleged to have devised the plan to kidnap champion racehorse Shergar still refuses to talk about the case – 43 years on from the audacious plot.
Ex-Provo Kevin Mallon – named by supergrass Sean O’Callaghan in his autobiography as being behind the heist – was tracked down by a US documentary team making a film about the mystery disappearance of the world famous champion equine.
Now in his 80s, Mallon – an IRA veteran who was part of the notorious Mountjoy prison break and later sat on the IRA’s army council – refused to speak to 60 Minutes reporter Jon Wertheim.
He hung up the phone on the journalist and then would not open the door when he called to his home in Howth, north Dublin.
In a follow-up phone call, when asked about Mallon’s knowledge of Shergar, a woman tells Wertheim: “I’m sure he wouldn’t know anything about that. No, forget it.”
The unsuccessful attempt to quiz Mallon, who also blasted his way out of Portlaoise Prison along with 18 other IRA escapees, came as part of the US TV series’ attempts to finally solve the mystery of Shergar that has baffled the world for four decades.
The shocking kidnapping came in 1983 when masked gunmen knocked on the door of the house of Jim Fitzgerald, the head groom at Ballymany Stud, and demanded to be taken to Shergar.
Having won the Epsom Derby in 1981 by ten lengths — the biggest winning margin in the race’s history — he achieved immortality and even though he was put out to stud in 1982, he was still the most famous racehorse in the world.
And the mystery surrounding disappearance only added to his fame. It sparked dozens of theories, from a mafia revenge plot to a conspiracy of silence that he was being secretly kept alive to father more winning horses.
But the most likely theory is that the IRA were behind a botched bid to raise cash for weapons by holding him for ransom to fund their payment for arms and explosives for their armed campaign, which was estimated to cost between £2 million and £5 million a year.
Fitzgerald’s family were locked into a room while he was taken at gunpoint to Shergar’s stable and was told to put the horse in the back of a horsebox. It was the last known sighting of the star racehorse.
After the horsebox was driven away, Fitzgerald was told to lie on the floor of a van and his face was covered with a coat. After four hours, he was finally released around 20 miles from Ballymany and told he and his family would be killed if he called the police.
While the IRA has never officially admitted any role in the theft, O’Callaghan claimed that soon after the theft, Shergar had panicked and damaged his leg, which led to him being shot dead by the gunmen who carried out the kidnapping.
Belfast-based filmmaker interviewed Alison Millar Jim Fitzgerald for her documentary “Searching for Shergar”. She told 60 Minutes makers CBS that she felt Mallon had been shamed into silence and that’s why he refused to speak.
She said: “I think there’s a massive shame that the IRA took this on, and what was the point of it? It was pointless. The horse is such a symbol of Ireland and, you know, freedom, and its beauty, its wildness, its magic.
“And there’s a shame that they shot the most famous and killed the most famous horse in the world at that time.”