Posted on 08/30/2002 6:53:18 AM PDT by aculeus
MALCOLM Macarthur was known to his friends as a quiet academic with a raffish dress sense.
He was widely understood to have immense wealth.
The man with post-graduate degrees from both Trinity College and Cambridge University had never worked a day since his birth to a well-off family with a substantial farm near Trim, Co Meath.
His childhood was both violent and unhappy and his parents separated when he was in his mid -teens.
His father was reported to be a brutish penny-pincher, who had constant rows with his wife and later his son.
Macarthur's mother Irene described one incident where her son had to have five stitches in his hand after being bitten by his father.
At the age of 17 he went to America to stay with an uncle and graduated with a BA from a small university in Southern California. He came back to Ireland in 1967.
Macarthur inherited £70,000 on his father's death in 1974 and became a man of leisure.
He hung around fashionable Dublin city centre pubs and those who came in contact with him said he was a loner, shy, an eccentric, an outsider.
During 1974 he met Patrick Connolly who was later to become Attorney General. The two shared an interest in film and opera.
He also met Brenda Little and moved in with her. They had a son, Colin, the following year and for a while were "caretakers" of a flat in Donnybrook which Mr Connolly had previously occupied.
As his money ran out, Macarthur moved to Tenerife but found it difficult to cope with dwindling funds and was attracted to the idea of a successful armed robbery.
He had a fragile relationship with reality but at this point it is thought he was slipping into a psychotic state as he planned a cold blooded operation in Ireland to get money.
To test himself as a criminal he walked in and out of hotel lobbies carrying a brick.
He arrived in Dublin in June, 1982 and booked into a guesthouse in Dun Laoghaire.
He immediately got in touch with a number of clay pigeon shoots in his quest for a gun.
On July 22, a sweltering day, Macarthur went to the Phoenix Park.
He cut a strange figure in the heat, dressed in tweed trousers, a combat jumper and a tweed stalking cap pulled low over his face.
He carried a blue holdall containing a heavy lump hammer, an imitation pistol and a shovel wrapped in plastic.
The brilliant sunshine drew a 27-year-old nurse from St James's Hospital to sunbathe in the park on her way home from work.
Bridie Gargan drove her Renault 5 to a quiet spot just beside the grounds of the American Ambassador's residence.
Macarthur came upon her lying sun-bathing in the grass, produced the gun and ordered her to get into the car.
Although he had promised not to hurt her, he bundled her into the back seat and hit her repeatedly on the side of the head with the hammer.
Patrick Byrne, a gardener at the Ambassador's residence, noticed something suspicious and approached the car where he saw paper spread over the girl and blood everywhere.
Macarthur threatened him with the gun which he grabbed but lost his grip as the pair tumbled to the ground.
Macarthur jumped into the car and drove off at high speed towards the Islandbridge gate.
By an uncanny coincidence an ambulance spotted the hospital sticker on the car and the injured woman in the back and guided it through the rush hour traffic to St James's.
Inside the grounds the car did a U-turn and sped away.
Less than an hour later it was found off the South Circular Road in Rialto with Bridie Gargan stretched unconscious on the back seat.
She died four days later.
Two days after the attack in the Park, Macarthur got a bus to Tullamore in response to a small advertisement about a gun for sale.
The seller was a young farmer and clay shooting enthusiast called Donal Dunne from Edenderry.
They went to the grounds of the clay pigeon club in Edenderry to test the gun but Macarthur used it to shoot Donal Dunne at point blank range through the side of the head.
On August 4, Macarthur landed on Patrick Connolly's front doorstep.
Brenda Little had phoned him a few days before from Tenerife saying she was worried because she had not heard from Macarthur.
Mr Connolly, who had been appointed Attorney General earlier that year, was preparing for an extensive holiday in the US.
He told Macarthur he could stay for a few days.
By the middle of the following week, the net was closing and gardai put the apartment block in Dalkey under surveillance.
When they told the Attorney General his house guest was wanted for armed robbery, Mr Connolly later said: "It is very difficult to exaggerate exactly how dumbfounded I was."
He was "even more astounded" when he heard the charge was murder.
The ensuing political row led to Connolly's resignation and the coining by Dr Conor Cruise-O'Brien of the acronym GUBU, standing for Grotesque, Unbelievable, Bizarre, Unprecedented, words used by the then Taoiseach Charles Haughey describing his reaction to the events.
Macarthur was charged with the murder of Bridie Gargan the following January and pleaded guilty during the five-minute hearing.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment.
The charges relating to Donal Dunne were adjourned and eventually a nolle prosequi was entered.
This case leads the news in today's Irish Independent, the biggest circulation broadsheet (that's what adults' newspapers are called) in that country.
Where, exactly, do you think the Irish Independent should have reported it?
Do you think this site is limited to items from American papers? (Hint: we do have Irish people on this forum.)
What, exactly, is your problem?
Is "GUBU" a keeper?
Boxed and gift-wrapped. Oh, yes.
All is forgiven. Now go back to work.
What a test!
I doubt if Gotti's crew would have let him in the club!
Is he on the Internet? Is he on FR? What is that, a brick in his hand? Oh, a practice brick, nevermind.
After reading about what a wonderful fellow he is, it was rather disappointing to reach the end of the article and discover that it wasn't an obituary...
He pleaded guilty and the case lasted only five minutes ...
and the bad news
Since his conviction, Macarthur has spent more time behind bars than any other prisoner in the State with the exception of two men ...
No one gets "life without parole"?!
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