Tag Archives: Malcolm McArthur

 

The following is from Malcolm McArthur’s statement taken at Dun Laoghaire Garda station on August 14, 1982, following his arrest at the home of the then Attorney General Patrick Connolly (from Garda files via Sunday World). McArthur had returned to Ireland from Tenerife on July 8.

“I affirm that I am responsible for the deaths of Miss Brigid Gargan and Mr Donald Dunne.I would first like to tell you about the Miss Gargan incident in the Phoenix Park on July 22 this year.

A little while before that day – it may have been a week – I bought a heavy builder’s hammer in Lenihans of Capel Street. It was a female who served me and she was in her early twenties. The reason why I bought this all goes back to money. For the past two years my finances have been diminishing. This was something that I could not cope with.

…I wanted this hammer to injure somebody, to get a car, to travel down the country to get a gun because I had no transport. In turn I had planned ahead to stick somebody up and the object was to get money. I had been reading in the newspapers about all the robberies and this seemed a way out of my obsessive financial situation.

Part of that plan also involved a shovel because my attitude was that I wanted this venture to succeed and if by chance I did kill anybody in this venture I would use the shovel to dispose of the body.

At first I want to mention an imitation firearm which I made for myself out of a pistol crossbow which I purchased at Garnet & Reegan in Parliament Street. This thing cost me twenty-two or twenty-three pounds. I did not have much faith in this weapon so I cut part of the barrel off to make it look more like a pistol and I built up the top of the barrel with plastic car filters. I sanded it down to put a fine finish on it and I painted it black….around this time I started to grow a beard and I purchased a fisherman’s hat with an orange or brown feather on the side.

…I walked up the Quays to the Phoenix Park. I entered the park through the Conyingham Road entrance at approximately 4pm on that evening.

Before I entered the park I bought an orange in a small sweet shop on the Quays. When I entered the park I put down my luggage and peeled my orange between the Wellington Monument and the Main Road. I stayed there for a couple of minutes. From there I walked along by the cricket grounds. I walked along the joggers’ track carrying the items which included the holdall bag. I carried the shovel wrapped in plastic in the other hand.

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