They were guided to racehorse breeder Jeremy Maxwell’s isolated farm near Downpatrick, about 30 miles from Belfast. On the way, as they were in the countryside, five masked men with machine guns stopped their car. Thompson said when he rolled down the window, one of them asked him if he was Derek Thompson. “I looked at him and said, ‘Yes,’ and he said, ‘We’re the police.’ And I said, ‘Thank God for that!’
Over the next eight hours, Thompson made 10 to 12 more calls, each with a different password, as police tried to trace the calls. Negotiations never progressed beyond the kidnapper’s original demand of £40,000 (currently £137,000, or $187,000) and Thompson’s request for photographic evidence that Shergar was alive. After several hours of silence, the last call came at 6:55 the next morning. The caller said, “My horse was in an accident. He died.” Then he hung up.
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According to a 2018 BBC documentary looking for shergarthese calls were believed to be an elaborate hoax used as a decoy for negotiations taking place elsewhere. The real kidnappers are currently in direct contact with the Aga Khan’s office, but negotiations are slow to progress. In one phone call recorded by police, a man said: “If you don’t answer the phone at 9 o’clock tonight, you can forget about horses. You’ll never see them again.” Three days after the kidnapping, she received a chilling final message: If the ransom demand was not met, it would be the end.
As the police search for Shergar continued, journalists needed new perspectives in their reporting to meet public demand, and Ch Supt Murphy continued to provide information. Nicholas Witchell, who was the BBC’s Ireland correspondent at the time, said in a 2018 documentary: “Sapt Murphy became this funny character who would show up every morning in a trilby hat and tell us absolutely nothing, just do so in a charming and entertaining way. And in the absence of any clear information, we were forced to use our imaginations as to how to cover this.”
Source: BBC Culture – www.bbc.com
