40 years of GUBU

The failure to convict Macarthur for the murder of Donal Dunne added to the sense that there was a coverup.

The IT explains it as part of a deal where Macarthur pleaded guilty to the murder of Birdie Gargan. It is almost unprecedented (that word again!) for anyone to plead guilty to murder because there is a mandatory life sentence I.e. the normal reduction in sentencing for a guilty plea does not apply. The evidence against Macarthur was overwhelming but there is always a risk that a prosecution might fail due to a technicality. The DPP intended to present a statement in court about the Dunne murder but the Judge ruled it out so the Dunne family never had their “day in court” and naturally felt aggrieved.

I just listened to episode 3, the Haughey episode. What a disappointment! I assumed they had some dirt on Haughey, some link to these terrible murders. Maybe via Paddy Connolly, the AG, or some other nefarious Haughey contact. But this episode has nothing, just nothing!

The introduction begins "Though they never met in their lifetimes, the narratives of Charles Haughey and Malcolm Macarthur would become inextricably linked".

In the lifetimes! Hilarious. So now we know Macarthur will join Haughey and other monsters in the afterlife.

The podcast starts with Haughey opening an account at the Dame St. branch of the Munster and Leinster Bank in June 1973. What's the link with Macarthur? Was Macarthur also a customer at that branch? Did he plan to rob that branch? No, there is no link but it is there to remind us that Haughey borrowed a lot of money which the bank ultimately had to write off. (Bonus points - there was no Munster and Leinster Bank of Dame St. or anywhere else in 1973 - it merged with the Provincial Bank and the Royal Bank of Ireland to form AIB in 1966)

The episode makes desparate efforts to find "commonalities" between Haughey and Macarthur. We are told they both had "wretched childhoods". In fact, their childhoods were as different as any two Irish boys in that era could be - Haughey's family was poor, living on a miserable pension in a Council House where his mother gave devoted care to Haughey's disabled father and all her children. Macarthur was an only child whose family was very well-off and lived in a large house with servants but his parents' marriage was a disaster.

Oh, but here's what Haughey and Macarthur really had in common - "a fear of poverty". Amazing! Imagine anyone growing up in this land of milk and honey having a fear of poverty. No wonder Haughey and Macarthur were kindred spirits even if they never met. Are we quite sure that Haughey wasn't a serial killer in his spare time?

In contrast, Paddy Connolly - the only real link between Haughey and Macarthur - is handled with kid gloves. This epidsode doesn't even mention that he left generous bequest to Macarthur's son. The gay scene in Dublin at the time is mentioned but oh so discretely.

There is a generation of IT staff who are tragically obsessed with Haughey. They need therapy, or an exorcism. Anything that might help free them from their terrible fixation which colours their view of everything that happened in Ireland for almost 30 years.

The BBC podcast series is very well made and captures the paranoid atmosphere of that time very well. More importantly, and to my surprise, it adds a very interesting new dimension to the case: a possible link to the Charles Self murder.

I had heard vague suggestions that MacArthur might be involved in that brutal murder, just six months before the Bridie Gargan and Donal Dunne murders, but there seemed to be no evidential basis for this speculation. Episode 6 of this podcast throws a dramatically different light on the Charles Self murder and the ensuing heavy-handed police investigation into the gay scene in Dublin.

Charles Self was murdered in the house he shared with Vincent Hanley, the RTE DJ. Hanley was in London that night and his room was occupied by a visitor, Bertie Tyrer, who was woken up in the middle of the night by a stranger who came to his bedroom door. Tyrer (like Self a stage designer) drew a sketch of this stranger for the Gardai and told them the stranger spoke with a "West Brit" accent.

For whatever reason, this sketch was never made public by the Gardai but a friend of Charles Self, Bill Maher, was shown the drawing by investigating Gardai. He didn't recognise the man at that time but, months later, when MacArthur's photo was on every newspaper, Maher immediately said - "****, that's the person in the drawing". When a colleague from RTE asked one of the detectives investigating MacArthur if he could have been involved in the Charles Self murder, the Garda dismissed it ("not a runner").

This sketch is not conclusive, of course. Colm Tobín says it is unlikely unless MacArthur frequented gay pickup areas like Burgh Quay (where Charles Self met a man he brought home on the night of his murder). But is is not just the drawing - there is the West Brit accent. At the very least, MacArthur should have been asked about this murder. He was in Tenerife in early 1982 - when did he actually leave Dublin? He may have a perfect alibi or maybe he went to Tenerife to make himself scare during the Garda investigation of the Self murder. The Garda response to the BBC enquiries for this podcast is a classic stonewall. Oddly, the podcast doesn't mention that there was a full-scale Garda cold case investigation of the Charles Self murder about 10 years ago which, it seems, never considered Malcolm MacArthur as a suspect.

There is another extraordinary possibility mentioned in this podcast, and for the first time as far as I know. There was very bad blood between MacArthur and his father. They had a terrible fight and MacArthur went to live with an uncle in California. On one of his very rare visits home in 1971, his father died suddenly overnight. Was there an inquest? What cause of death was certified? The podcast doesn't pursue these questions.

I have a feeling that there was a major coverup in this case but the media was so obsessed with Charlie Haughey that they missed the real manipulators of this case. The DPP did a deal with MacArthur in which he pleaded guilty to murdering Bridie Gargan but was not tried for the murder of Donal Dunne. Was there more to this deal? Did the Gardai agree not to investigate MacArthur for any other crime or did they believe a law-abiding citizen had suddenly become a brutal serial killer at the age of 36?

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Harry McGee has turned the IT podcast into a book. McGee spent a lot of time speaking to MacArthur but, judging by this report, he learned nothing.

And his book’s title - “Murder and the Taoiseach” - is absurd. Haughey had no connection with MacArthur although the Cruiser skewered Haughey with GUBU after his press conference. The title is either a backhanded compliment to Haughey (he sells books) or just another expression of the IT’s obsession.

The book doesn’t seem to address the two most interesting questions at this stage:

• What was MacArthur’s relationship with the Attorney-General?
• Did MacArthur have anything to do with the murder of Charles Self?

How murderer Malcolm Macarthur spends his days: library visits, bookshop browsing, living a quiet lifehttps://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2023/05/20/how-the-fates-of-malcolm-macarthur-and-charles-haughey-became-inextricably-linked/

Harry Magee got his book out ahead of Mark O’Connell who had much more extensive conversations with MacArthur.

It is extraordinary that MacArthur is not allowed to speak about his crimes as a condition of his probation. I have never heard any such condition applied in any other case.

Surely he, like all criminals, should be encouraged in every way to confess their crimes even after their release from prison. More than any other Irish prisoner I can think of, MacArthur should tell the truth about these events which transfixed the nation and which never emerged in open court. Of course, he should not be allowed to profit in any way from his crimes but that is a very different issue. It seems the Department of Justice simply do not want us to know the truth but O’Connell’s book might enlighten us.

The book previews in the coming weeks might reveal something new about the case. It hope it is not just another re-hash with a bogus Haughey smear. The Indo still can’t resist the hoary old “pint or transfer” BS about Haughey (which is really a smear on the Gardai i.e they didn’t enforce the law in order to protect their careers.)

https://www.amazon.com/Thread-Violence-Story-Invention-Murder/dp/B0BMWCWPGF/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

I was not aware that it is standard practice here to ban ex-prisoners talking to the media. Ex-prisoners generally don't talk to the media simply because they don't want the public to be reminded of their crimes. And the media would, of course, be very wary of an ex-con spinning their exculpatory lies but MacArthur is exceptional because he never denied his guilt and there are no mitigating circumstances worth talking about. Of course, as I said, MacArthur should not be allowed to profit in any way from his crimes but many jurisdictions have laws to prevent that. A general, life-long ban would surely fall foul of our constitutional guarantee of free speech (which is subject only to specific exceptions - sedition, indecency etc.). In any case, Mark O'Connell seems to have got MacArthur talking. His book is out in two weeks

https://www.foyles.co.uk/book/a-thread-of-violence/mark-oconnell/9781783787708

Was Paddy Connolly the father of Brenda Little's son? I've heard that before but I don't think it was ever acknowledged publicly by any of them, even in the will making the bequest (and long after the taboo on unmarried mothers). The relationship between Connolly and MacArthur is central to this scandal. If it was nothing more than a casual acquaintance, as claimed at the time, then there was no scandal - there were two horrible, senseless murders by an sociopath with no public standing who was caught by excellent detective work in which Connolly was extremely unlucky to be caught up.

In reality, however, Connolly had a substantial relationship with MacArthur and he was at pains to minimise the extent of that relationship. He did not come clean about the extent of that relationship at the time or subsequently so the rumour machine was cranked up to maximum. You say "there was no evidence" that either man was gay but, at that time, such evidence would have given grounds for prosecution of a crime which was almost unmentionable. It was simply unthinkable that such evidence could be produced against the Government's legal advisor, in whose name such crimes were prosecuted until the establishment of the DPP a few years earlier. I don't say Connolly was gay - I think we don't know and he didn't want us to know.

The Charles Self investigation was a dreadful mess and a low-point in relations between the Gardai and the gay community (Declan Flynn's murder in Fairview was also shocking, especially the suspended sentences, but the Gardai did a competent investigation). The initial investigation was such a failure that, like the Sophie Toscan du Plantier case, the cold-case reviews yielded nothing. It is terrible to think that, in both these cases, brutal murderers can sleep soundly knowing that the miraculous advances in forensic science are no threat to them. Conversely, it is hard to rule out any suspect and MacArthur now feels aggrieved that suspicion also hangs over him. Well, yeah. Suck it up, Malcolm!

Unlike his AG, we know that Haughey had no connection whatever to MacArthur and I think any Taoiseach, including Garret Fitzgerald, would have behaved much the same in the bizarre and unprecedented circumstances. Haughey was unfortunate to have this scandal explode on his watch or, to say the same thing, this scandal was manna from heaven for the Opposition and for his opponents in his own party. Conor Cruise was a gifted writer and "GUBU" was a brilliant distillation of Haughey's press conference but, if the truth was known at that time (i.e. that there was no Government conspiracy behind MacArthur), there was in reality no "GUBU" here. Or, more pertinently, the 1980s was a GUBU decade with record unemployment, a return to mass emigration, underfunding/underdelivery in almost every area and no solution in sight for NI.

Brendan O’Connor’s interview with Mark O’Connell about “Thread of Violence” is trending on the RTÉ website. O’Connell spent many hours with MacArthur who eventually began to speak about his crimes.

Personally, I have no interest in MacArthur, a nobody and a leech whose only “claims to fame” are two horrible murders which were committed for the lowest motive. This interview must be painful for the families of Bridie Gargan and Dónal Dunne, two hardworking young people whose brutal murders devastated their families. MacArthur is no better than that killer in Nottingham who murdered the two students and a caretaker this week.

My interest in his case is its political reverberations. O’Connor glides past MacArthur’s relationship with the AG (“friend of a friend” 🤫) but dwells on the GUBU aspect of MacArthur going to Croke Park with the AG who sits next to the Garda Commissioner and discusses the murders.

I didn’t know MacArthur wrote to the Taoiseach, apparently in an effort to exonerate the AG. I bet that went down like a lead balloon with Haughey. Was that before or after he sued Haughey for his “got their man” comment? 😫

https://www.rte.ie/radio/radio1/clips/22264750/

MacArthur did indeed. To be exact he made:

but the case was thrown out at the preliminary stage by Declan Costello because Haughey’s remark was “inadvertent” and the GIS had immediately asked journalists not to report it.

Haughey was a qualified barrister who understood immediately that this was a gaffe but I think it was the only aspect of the MacArthur affair for which he could be justly criticised and it was no more than a slip of the tongue which anyone could have made in the circumstances. There is so much scope for valid criticism of Haughey that it is weird how often the MacArthur case is highlighted on his list of failures.

MacArthur also complained of the publication of “the contents of his letter” to the Haughey (I.e. the bit exonerating the AG) but that argument was also dismissed by Declan Costello. I don’t think the letter itself, or any other documents on this case, were ever released despite an FOI request.

The trial was a fiasco - MacArthur was only charged with the murder of Bridie Gargan and there was no evidence presented. Everything was done to minimise publicity. Why?

https://www.thejournal.ie/no-mention-of-patrick-connolly-gubu-in-1982-state-papers-721266-Dec2012/

I see no good reason why the State did not prosecute Macarthur for the murder of Donal Dunne. The arguments you put forward here were raised in the media at the time and they simply don't wash.

Macarthur had confessed freely and openly to killing both Bridie Gargan and Donal Dunne. There was compelling circumstantial evidence against him in the Dunne case, including eye-witnesses who had seen him in the vicinity. The Dunne family were not consulted about the decision not to prosecute and were, rightly, aggrieved.The DPP did a deal which was extremely generous to the defence and which pre-empted a proper trial in a case which had aroused intense and entirely justifiable public interest.

I am disappointed by the extract from Mark O'Connell's book. O'Connell is interested in drawing a psychological portrait of Macarthur but all that matters in that regard is well-known: Macarthur was running out of funds for his life of pampered leisure and his hare-brained preparations for a bank robbery resulted in the brutal murder of two young people, a nurse and a farmer.

The Gardai did a top-class job in catching this oddball killer who should have spent his days contemplating his base crimes in a cold, dank cell. Instead, he resents the length of time he spent in jail and he is not remorseful, just very sorry for himself. He is the object of continuing morbid curiosity among Irish intellectuals. John Banville cast him as an Irish Raskolnikov and I think Macarthur liked that sort of intellectual relativising which appeals to the phoney academic image he projects. I'm not surprised the Macarthur engaged extensively with O'Connell, a post-doctoral fellow in Trinity, while shunning journalists like Harry McGee. (Incidentally, O'Connell notes a curious instance of truth in fiction - in The Book of Evidence, the murderer drinks Apollinaire mineral water which was the brand of bottled water that Macarthur ordered when staying with the AG but the Gardai and the media all consistently mis-reported this item as Perrier water. I wonder if this is a fortuitous coincidence or did Banville have a special source? No pun intended!).

The only thing that interests me is whether or not Macarthur had high-level protection, as many believed at the time. If not, it is Macarthur's victims who deserve to be remembered not their killer, a bumbling egotist who preferred to kill rather than work for a living. It was widely believed that Haughey was somehow behind a conspiracy to protect Macarthur but it seems clear now, despite the best efforts of Harry McGee, that Haughey simply had the misfortune to try to explain to the Irish people how the most wanted criminal was arrested in his Attorney General's apartment. Haughey's explanation was, in a nutshell, GUBU. But the AG's involvement may have been something more than bizarre happenstance and "unbelievable mischance". The AG told Haughey that Macarthur was merely a casual acquaintance who was just passing through when he was arrested. That was also the story the media gave us. But then he left a substantial bequest to the boy for whom Macarthur was a father figure. Does Mark O'Connell explain this?

It seems Connolly was a friend of the boy's mother but I have never heard of such a generous bequest on such tenuous grounds. And it turns out that Macarthur had spent at least three weeks with the AG in Dalkey. And he resided for a year or more in the AG's other apartment in Ranelagh (I think the one bequeathed to the boy). The AG's standards of hospitality, like his bequests, may have been more generous than anyone I've ever met but I doubt he would have a "casual acquaintance" take up residence in his apartment.

Mark O'Connell says his interest in the case was first aroused because his grandparents lived in the same apartment complex in Dalkey and knew the AG as a neighbour but, as far as I can tell at this stage, O'Connell is not much interested in the AG's relationship with Macarthur. If that relationship was as tenuous as we are led to believe, then I doubt if Macarthur had high-level protection and his deal with the DPP was just a very poor judgement call. His was also a remarkably speedy and economical trial, even by the standards of the day. He was convicted and sentenced for the murder of Bridie Gargan less than six months after the crime and less than five months after his arrest. Total legal fees were £5,000!

But what if his defence, especially the redoubtable Paddy McEntee, had cards to play with the DPP which we have never been allowed to see? Remember, the DPP had been an official of the AG's Office until a few years earlier and his Office works in tandem with the AG on many cases. The refusal to release documents on this case 40 years later adds to a sense of cover-up.

But I don't see Haughey's fingerprints on this coverup, perhaps uniquely among all the scandals that surround him. On the contrary, it was in the interests of his government to quell rampant public speculation by putting everything into the open. And Haughey lost the election in November1982 so he was out of power when Macarthur went to trial in January 1983. The fiasco of a that trial re-kindled public suspicions of a coverup but without a clear target because Haughey could hardly have been pulling the strings. Of course, it was in the interests of the Irish Times and the newly-installed coalition Government to keep the focus on Haughey (and even now, 40 years later).

I don't think Mark O'Connell will enlighten us about the issue which matters to the Irish people i.e. was Macarthur protected by powerful interests or did Irish people fall for a fake conspiracy in the febrile atmosphere of the early 1980s? No one, then or now, imagines for a moment that the AG had the slightest involvement in Macarthur's crimes but that is not the issue. Ultimately, Macarthur did not benefit from any special protection (i.e. he spent 30 years in jail) but does his sense of grievance spring from a belief that he did have a special deal in 1983 and it was reneged on?