In the winter of 1983, at the height of Ireland's Troubles, armed men took from a quiet County Kildare stud farm not a person, but a symbol — a champion thoroughbred named Shergar, whose speed and grace had made him a kind of national myth. The kidnapping, believed to be the work of the IRA seeking ransom to fund a violent campaign, ended without payment, without arrest, and without the horse ever being found. More than four decades later, the case endures as one of history's stranger silences: a crime that consumed a nation's imagination, yielded nothing for its perpetrators, and left behind
Shergar: The Unsolved Mystery of Racing's Greatest Horse
The head groom was held at gunpoint and traumatized by the kidnapping, remaining haunted by the experience until his death.