40 years of GUBU
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Was there not a difficulty in getter a barrister to act for the DPP?
It does appear that, in the small circle around the DPP and AG offices, officially separate for the previous eight years, some barristers refused to act in this case because of their friendship with the AG. Not calling Connolly as a witness might have been a consideration in avoiding a longer more detailed trial rather than any desire to do a special deal for MacArthur.
One thing i have never seen commented on was why Haughey had appointed Connolly to the post of AG. As far as I know he wasn't in any way politically active . He had been part of Haughey's defence team ten years earlier , but only in a junior role. Perhaps he was just seen as the best man for the job at the time.
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I wasn't a question of barristers refusing to act because of an acquaintance with Connolly. At the time the brief was given, it wasn't known that Macarthur would plead guilty. There might have been a trial; Connolly might conceivably have been a witness. And a barrister shouldn't act as advocate in a matter where a friend or relative is to be called as a witness, either by his own client or by any other party.
Haughey had been close to Connolly since the arms trial. Connolly wasn't political, but Haughey did turn to him for advice and briefings on legal matters, and he admired Connolly's reasoning and had a good opinion of his ability.
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That would be a fair summary, except that the murderer was arrested in the home of the Attorney-General, the subsequent scandal contributed to the fall of the Government just over two months later and then his trial five months later was a scandal in itself.
Unfortunately, the recent books and podcasts don't answer the question - what was he doing in the AG's home? We were lied to at the time that Macarthur was a mere "casual acquaintance" but no one has thrown any fresh light on the matter e.g. why did the AG leave a large bequest to Macarthur's "son"?
Even so, the case might be forgotten today except that it created a sense of GUBU - a widespread belief that Ireland was at the mercy of bizarre and grotesque events driven by dark forces. This contributed to a series of unstable governments which presided over the disastrous 1980's when mass unemployment forced a whole generation to emigrate from Ireland.
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The 80s especially early 80s was a crazy time. IRA hunger strikes (twice), 3 general elections in 18 months, religious loo-las running rampant, the 8th amendment campaign forcing a wording into the constitution which FF, FG, Lab all knew to be deeply flawed, tax tax tax, unemployment, emigration, moving statues... and of course GUBU.
Life ain't always empty.
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You keep looking through the wrong end of the telescope. The issue is why did the DPP agree to this deal, not why did Macarthur agree? The petition against the deal which was signed by 100,000 people in 1983 was one of the most impressive protests in our history because it was entirely spontaneous i.e. there was no party or organisation behind it. https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-10111856.html
In a detailed analysis for the IT on 20 July 1983, a young academic lawyer called Mary MacAleese had put the issue very clearly. She pointed to some options after the nolle prosequi for the Dunne murder, e.g. a private prosecution, but concluded (rightly) that
they all are very cumbersome and circuitous ways to get the information which the public ought to be entitled to.
In a subsequent editorial of 25 July 1983 on "A Bargain At Law", the Irish Times was even driven to ask
Is there possibly some secret element so big that even Fine Gael and Labour are driven to connive with Fianna Fail in shrouding the whole affair in mystery?
With regard to Macarthur's side of the deal, I like to think he got shafted but you prefer to believe that Paddy MacEntee, the best criminal defence barrister of his generation, got Macarthur to plead guilty to murder with its mandatory life sentence on some vague, and in the event totally misjudged, hope that a Parole Board might be better disposed to his client in years to come. Believe what you will in that regard.
With regard to Macarthur's time at the AG's home, I don't believe your claim that Macarthur stayed in a guesthouse in Dun Laoghaire and the investigating Gardai didn't believe it either. In all the reports on that investigation, there is high praise for an alert newspaper seller in Dun Laoghaire whose suspicions led to Macarthur's capture but there is no mention by the Gardai of a guesthouse. Where exactly is this mystery guesthouse? Why did the media not run stories about the house where Macarthur lived when he murdered Bridie Gargan and Donal Dunne? Why did other guests not give interviews ("I shared my cornflakes with killer Macarthur!)
It would be natural if Macarthur tried to minimise the time he had spent with his friend the AG during his crime spree but it seems he didn't bother to share any information about a guesthouse with Mark O'Connell
Unless you have some information to support this claim, I say Macarthur spent those three weeks with his good friend, the AG. More importantly, if there had been a proper trial, we would not have to speculate.
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It seems obvious that the DPP will always accept a plea rather then go to trial. What possible reason could they have to go to trial?
Fulfilling the need of the public for gory details is not a reason.
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The DPP dropped a murder charge after the killer had confessed. Never before or since.
The public interest in this case was not morbid curiosity.
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Lots of murderers confess, they still plead not guilty and go to trial.
Wanting to find out gory details is just that, morbid curiosity.
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I should not have omitted the Stardust disaster - which was more or less hushed up. Inquests are reopened now 42 years later. Almost everyone who could be held accountable is dead.
Life ain't always empty.
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Although there was no connection to Macarthur, the Stardust fire did add greatly to the sense of GUBU at that time and it's interesting to compare the two investigations.
The original Stardust Inquiry report, which was published a couple of weeks before the murder of Bridie Gargan, exposed the complete failure of the authorities to enforce the fire regulations but the report outraged the victims' families because, on very tenuous grounds, it blamed local youths for starting the fire. Many people saw Haughey's hand in this report. The Stardust was in his constituency and the owners, who were big FF supporters, were able to claim compensation because of the Inquiry's finding that the fire was caused by arson. But it was hard to pin anything on Haughey because the Inquiry and its report were the work of a High Court judge who subsequently became the Chief Justice. Of course, we didn't know then that the judge's wife was Haughey's lover.
The persistence of the Stardust families and support in the local community have kept the media and political spotlight on this tragedy for over 40 years. I hope the latest inquiry can get at the truth even if many of those responsible have died over the past 40 years. Sadly, we will not get transparency about the Macarthur deal. The media has shown renewed interest in Macarthur but not in the issues that would make his case a public scandal i.e. his relationship with the AG and the deal that shut down his trial.
There's another promotion for Mark O'Connell's book in the IT today. Lots of fatuous hand-wringing about the ethics of the writer's relationship with a double-murderer but complete disinterest in the most astonishing aspects of Macarthur's story. Weirdly, O'Connell does not seem to recognise how he was manipulated by Macarthur who was not willing to speak to a journalist who would ask the hard questions. Now that they finally accept that Haughey had nothing to do with Macarthur (after Harry McGee came up empty), the IT, like the rest of the media, have lost interest in the issues that led 100,000 Irish people to sign a spontaneous petition 40 years ago.
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Nonsense. Barristers should not accept a brief in a case where they are likely to be called as a witness but of course they can take cases where friends or relatives are witnesses. What daily chaos would ensue if barristers had to drop cases any time someone they knew entered the witness box! Or do you exclude “casual acquaintances”?🤣
Magill highlights the fact that Harry Hill was a very unusual choice for the most high profile case that year and that he ended up as a mere go-between for the DPP and the defence. Here’s a thought- the top barristers would have balked at such a limited role. Surely they would have objected when the DPP wanted to drop the Dunne.murder charge? They would certainly have said it was unprecedented in their long experience.
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A Thread of Violence and The Murderer and the Taoiseach are both among the Top 10 non-fiction bestsellers in Ireland this week but neither answer the outstanding questions about the Macarthur case.
Neither book gives even a colourable justification for the State's handling of the trial, above all the nolle prosequi for the murder of Donal Dunne. It was claimed here that the evidence for the Dunne murder was weak - on the contrary, it was an iron-clad case: Macarthur confessed to the killing, his fingerprints were on a newspaper found in Edenderry and he had Dunne's shotgun in the AG's apartment.
Anyone who thinks the DPP was justified in his management of this case should listen to Donal Dunne's brother in this documentary (at 21:30). The Dunne family turned up at the High Court expecting a murder trial, instead the hearing was over in a matter of minutes and no word of explanation was ever given to the grieving family. Has any family of an entirely innocent murder victim ever been treated so shabbily by the Irish State? Did it send his father to an early grave?
Harry McGee's book (and podcast series) tries to put Haughey in the dock but succeeds only in absolving Haughey of any blame. Haughey had nothing to do with the mis-handling of Macarthur's trial because he had lost the election in November 1982, i.e. two months before the trial. Haughey has been criticised on two tangential grounds. Firstly, for allowing Connolly to go on his holidays but it seems Connolly at first only told Haughey that a friend might be charged with murder, not that a double murderer was arrested in his apartment (with Donal Dunne's gun!). Secondly, Haughey is also criticised for using the phrase "grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented" but it was Conor Cruise O'Brien who picked those words from different parts of Haughey's press conference and coined the immortal GUBU. (Has any Irish journalist since matched the Cruiser's combination of intellect and rapier wit?)
It is remarkable how little we know about Macarthur's crimes apart from what the Gardai established through excellent detective work. In O'Connell's book, Macarthur claims that if there was a moral graph of his life, it would show a flat line except for the two weeks from the murder of Bridie Gargan to the attempted robbery of Harry Bieling. Maybe so, but the Gardai found a chilling document where Macarthur planned to electrocute his own mother yet they did not investigate the sudden death of his father in 1974 shortly after Malcolm returned to the family home. Malcolm had a violent relationship with his father and inherited a fortune on his death.
There was also the dreadful murder of Charles Self who moved in the same circles as Macarthur and was murdered a few months prior to Macarthur's murder spree. A drawing of the murder suspect by a man who saw him that night was said to have looked remarkably like Macarthur but Macarthur seems to have been eliminated from Garda inquiries.
There is also an extraordinary vacuum in accounts of Macarthur's crime spree. He returned to Ireland on 8 July 1982 but Connolly says he first arrived at his apartment on 4 August 1982. Where did Macarthur live for the intervening four weeks while murdering two innocent strangers? Amazingly, the Attorney General never made a formal statement to the Gardai and, when pressed to do so before going on his hollers, he had a stand-up row with the Gardai. Was that why the trial was shut down?
Connolly later said Macarthur told him he had been staying with a friend in Trinity for a few days but that has never been confirmed. Macarthur told Gardai that he stayed in a guest house in Dun Laoghaire but the Gardai don't seem to have pursued that line of inquiry. The Gardai were flooded with sightings of Macarthur before his arrest but no one has ever come forward to say that they saw Macarthur in a guest house. And why would a man who was desperately short of money stay in a guest house for four weeks only to turn up at his friend's apartment when he had just botched an armed robbery nearby?
In the final analysis, the DPP made the trial look like a cover-up and turned a first-rate piece of police work into an abiding mystery and a shameful episode in our criminal history. The recent books/podcasts/interviews give a certain stature to Malcolm Macarthur while shedding no light on the real issues. An excellent result for an upper-class twit and heartless murderer.
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"A Thread of Violence" is very readable and intriguing but, as I expected, it does not answer the key questions in the Macarthur case.
It presents the decision not to prosecute Macarthur for the murder of Donal Dunne as being based on two factors: that Macarthur might claim the gun went off accidentally during a struggle (i.e. manslaughter, not murder) and that, in any event, Macarthur was already serving life for the murder of Bridie Gargan. These arguments are so patently inadequate that they are highly revealing.
If the recent books and podcasts, which were thoroughly researched, could not find a better explanation for the nolle prosequi in the Dunne case, then there was no good reason and we are entitled to consider dishonorable reasons. Dishonourable certainly describes the DPP's treatment of the Dunne family. The family were shocked to discover that no-one would be prosecuted for Donal's murder when the judge announced it in open court. They were never given any explanation, even in private and even after 100,000 people had signed their petition. Has any DPP ever behaved so callously towards the family of a murder victim? Leaving unanswered the myriad conspiracy theories about one of the most notorious murders in the history of the State.
With regard to the issue which turned these murders into a political scandal i.e. the involvement of the AG, the book does not look beyond the standard line. I accept that the AG was completely unaware of Macarthur's crime spree and profoundly shocked by his arrest but that is not the end of the story. The book, like all other sources, is strangely vague about Macarthur's lodging during the four weeks before 4 August when there is independent evidence that he was in the AG's apartment. The books recounts the familiar tale of the mysterious guest house in Dun Laoghaire which is never named and where no one ever seemed to have noticed the weird guest who drew attention everywhere else he went. And who is on a murder rampage because he is desperately short of funds but prefers to pay for a guest house for four weeks until he is literally on the run from an attempted armed robbery in Killiney and decides this is the moment to bunk with his good friend the AG (sorry, casual acquaintance. Or no, I mean very, very good friend of his partner/mother of his son)
The book does confirm one of my suspicions - that the AG refused to make a statement to the Gardai before he left for America. In fact, there is no evidence that he ever made a formal statement to the Gardai on the matter. That alone should be a major scandal. It is simply mind-boggling that the Attorney General refused to assist the Gardai after they had arrested in his home the subject of the biggest man-hunt in recent history. And it casts a very different light on his departure to New York. It seems he did not come clean to Haughey on the night of Macarthur's arrest and he mislead Haughey again the next day, giving the impression he was just about to board his flight to New York. Yes, of course, he let the Gardai into his apartment but from that moment on he seems to have been uncooperative. Worse, the AG's brother turned up and started berating this Gardai for not tipping-off the AG about his guest. What brass neck!!!
The book mentions without comment the AG's bequests to Brenda Little and Colin, her son with Macarthur. Brenda Little got €100,000 in cash plus the AG's share of an apartment in Ranelagh. Colin Little got €75,000 in cash and a valuable collection of cigarette trading cards (these cash amounts are equivalent to €160K and €120K today, the apartment has probably trebled in value). The book, which is so sensitive to nuances of gesture and speech, is singularly uninterested in this extraordinary act of posthumous generosity. Has anyone ever heard of such generous bequests to people who were not relatives and did not live with the deceased? Give us names and dates, please. And not some eccentric billionaire with an endless list of beneficiaries.
The book is mainly concerned with Macarthur's motivations and he has developed elaborate theories to claim that he is a normal, decent person who just had a period of "lucid insanity" when he behaved like an "automaton". In 1981, that sort of self-serving obfuscation was of no interest to our courts of criminal justice. Those who were judged "guilty but insane" generally spent longer in a mental hospital than the sentence they would have served if convicted . Since 2006, our law on insanity and crime has been so muddled that it absolves defendants of legal responsibility for terrible crimes on the basis of claimed temporary insanity.
The book dwells on his childhood which Macarthur claims, contrary to all the evidence, was perfectly normal with loving parents. I think the book is barking up the wrong tree about his time studying in California. Berkeley, whose libraries Macarthur used as a student, was the centre of the counter-culture movement but Macarthur was repelled by the hippies and he did not protest against the war (although he left America when he became eligible for the draft). He was very defensive when asked about his relationships at that time and insists that, while he did not have a girlfriend, he did have "friends who were girls". His mother also deflected any questions about her son's sexuality.
The book takes a very circuitous route on back to the start on the issue of motivation: Macarthur went on a crime spree, including the murder of two perfect strangers, because he needed money to maintain his lifestyle. As he told the Gardai, he planned to steal a car and a gun which he could use to rob banks. He had spent his inheritance living large in the 1970s and he didn't want to get a job. Macarthur prefers to say he was not work-shy but he didn't want to give up his time to paid employment because he lived "the life of the mind". Whatever. But spare me the literary analogues - Raskolnikov, Meursault, Bateman and, of course, Freddie Montgomery, Macarthur's literary doppelgänger.
Macarthur and his crimes should not be confused with literary fiction. A detective on the case described Macarthur's crime-spree as "a frenzy of tomfoolery" and the book reveals many ludicrous details e.g. his weird attempt at disguise that only drew the attention of witnesses. Macarthur's fictional counterpart might be closer to Monty Python's "Upper-Class Twit of the Year" but there was deadly method in his madness.
"A fool and his money" comes to mind but I think the books/podcast have also missed something there. I now think it was not a case of living naively beyond his means until suddenly noticing that his bank account was almost empty. In the book, Macarthur mentions a series of loans which were not repaid and particularly one loan which went bad in 1981, shortly before his move to Tenerife. The borrower told Macarthur he had to prioritise his bank loans because they were guaranteed. Macarthur presents these loans as evidence of his generosity to friends but this was not a few bob to tide a friend over to payday. This was serious money based on a formal written contract.
Here's my theory regarding Macarthur's money. He inherited £70,000 in 1974, almost €1M. in today's money and enough to buy a half-dozen ordinary houses in Dublin. If he put it on deposit with the Irish banks at that time, he'd get around 10% interest. Sounds great, but inflation was running in double-digits so the real value of his capital would quickly dwindle. I think Macarthur was lending money systematically to business people who had reached their credit limits with the banks (when our banks did not engage in reckless lending because the Central Bank had not invented "light touch regulation"). He could charge far more interest on these loans than he would get on deposit and the scheme probably worked well until 1980 when boom turned to bust. Suddenly, his loans turned bad and by 1981 he had to resort to desperate measures to keep his parasitic life-style. Perhaps he thought robbing banks would be simply a means to prioritise his debts over the banks'.😎
The book makes great play of Bartley Dunnes and its eclectic clientele but doesn't even mention Charles Self who was murdered a few hours after he had spent an evening there, and about six weeks before Macarthur left for Tenerife. Was Macarthur ever questioned by the Gardai about that murder, even after he confessed to two other murders? So many others were.
Post edited by Caquas on1
