It was the middle of Troubles, we were miles outside Belfast, going up a single track road. We slam on the brakes and I think, hang on, these guys are just going to spray the car. So I did and I was sitting there, six inches away from a gun pointing straight at me held by a guy with two holes for his eyes and one for his mouth. The police ushered the group into the farmhouse, owned by a breeder and trainer of racehorses, Jeremy Maxwell.
Over the course of the next eight hours Thompson took between 10 and 12 more phone calls, each beginning with a different password. Thompson was trying to keep his interlocutor on the phone for more than 90 seconds, the length of time required for the police to discover the caller's location. The voice knew what Thompson was doing and was putting down the phone after 80 seconds, 85 seconds, never any longer.
Finally, at in the morning, Thompson succeeded. A conversation lasted 95 seconds. He turned round to the policeman at his shoulder and said: "Did you get it? Where are they? For the next six hours they heard nothing. Thompson and the police dozed fitfully. Finally at on Thursday morning the phone rang one last time. The caller said just eight words: "The horse has had an accident. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
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After failed attempts to demand money for the stallion, gentle Shergar was brutally killed and his body was never found. The most famous and valuable racehorse in the world, Shergar had won the Epsom Derby by ten lengths, which is the longest winning margin in the race's year history.
Following this triumph, he had four more major derby wins and was named European Horse of the Year. The stallion had a white blaze mark on his face, four white "socks" and a distinctive racing style of running with his tongue hanging out - he was gentle, calm and kind. On the cold, muggy evening of February 8, , Shergar was kidnapped by a gang of men in balaclavas, thought to be part of the IRA.
The bay colt was owned by the Aga Khan, the billionaire spiritual leader to 15 million Ismaili Muslims. Shergar was just five years old when he was snatched in the middle of the night from the Ballymany Stud in Co. He had been preparing for his second season as a breeding stallion, the BBC said.
He loaded Shergar into the horsebox the men had brought with them. Fitzgerald was then forced into their car at gunpoint. 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," Mr. After driving him around for three hours, the kidnappers dumped Fitzgerald out of the car. Collectively it had been decided not to pay the ransom because they figured if they had, every racehorse in the world would be in danger, as many of them were worth over a million pounds 1.
He flew to Belfast to negotiate at the Europa Hotel. He said the scene that greeted him at Belfast airport was unreal: "It was like being a film star. There were cameras all around. The men never reached an agreement. All sorts of thoughts were racing though my head about what they might do to me. One of them, with the revolver, was very aggressive," Fitzgerald said, at his end-of-terrace home in Newbridge, just five kilometres from the stud. After several kilometres, Fitzgerald was ordered to get out of the car, to keep walking, not to turn around and not to call the police.
Eventually, he walked to the next village and rang his brother. Once back home, 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. But he had his first budget to deliver the next day so he said 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 Irish 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 codeword - King Neptune - that had been given to 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 also had failed to anticipate the reaction of the people of Ireland - a horse-loving nation - to Shergar's abduction.
The IRA's operations were severely disrupted as every known Republican stronghold and safe house was raided in the hunt for the horse, leading to the seizure of several arms caches. As scores of British journalists descended on County Kildare, the hunt for Shergar turned into a media circus. That is something we haven't got," he once said. Captain Berry, now 78, who at the time was the chairman of the Irish Thoroughbred Breeders' Association, last week revealed that he had been working with senior police officers from Dublin on the case who felt themselves to be in direct competition with the local police in County Kildare.
This meant there were two parallel inquiries and the two forces were refusing to share information. 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.
Years later, there were still whispers that Shergar was alive and secretly producing foals whose breeding lines could never be divulged.
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