Podcasts on Macarthur murders and ‘GUBU’ period launched

In a new podcast series launched at the weekend, Irish Times journalists Harry McGee and Enda O’Down track down many of the players, witnesses and observers of those defining events of the 'GUBU' period of 40 years ago.

On a sweltering day in June 1982, a man got off a bus on Dublin’s City Quays near the Phoenix Park. The man was bearded and was dressed in heavy tweeds with a fisherman’s hat, making him stand out.

What happened next would give eventually lead to a political crisis so extraordinary, that it still resonates today 40 years later.

That man, Malcolm Macarthur, would carry out two brutal murders and trigger one of the biggest manhunts in the history of the State. He came from way outside the sphere of a usual suspect. He was the son of land-owning Trim couple, who cultivated a man-about-town image and dressed dandily in bow ties and cravats.

Macarthur had frittered away a large inheritance and - desperate for money - had hatched a plan to carry out armed robberies. Instead, he would carry out two senseless savage murders to get his hands on a car and a gun. The victims were nurse Bridie Gargan of Curraha, and Edenderry man, Donal Dunne.

The story took on a truly sensational turn when Macarthur was finally tracked down in the penthouse flat owned by the Attorney General, Patrick Connolly, the Government’s legal officer who sat at Cabinet.

Despite the shock of discovering his house guest was a double murderer, Connolly insisted on going on holiday the next day. It was an ill advised move. With rumours flying of cover-ups and conspiracies, he was hounded by a posse of reporters all the way to New York.

Charles Haughey, who had cut his own holidays short, ordered him back from New York and demanded his resignation, even though Connolly had no inkling of Macarthur’s crimes.

The subsequent fall-out led to a huge political crisis for a floundering government and made international headlines, and contributed to the collapse of Haughey’s government.

In attempting to describe the huge coincidences that marked the case, Haughey used four adjectives: Grotesque; Unbelievable, Bizarre and Unprecedented.

They were shortened to GUBU by one of Haughey’s arch enemies, Conor Cruise O'Brien, and quickly became the acronym that negatively described Haughey’s style of politics.