A DOUBLE KILLER WHO WAS BORN INTO PRIVILEGE ... AND VIOLENCE
WHAT was Malcolm MacArthur’s state of mind when he murdered two innocent people in cold blood? The evidence uncovered by the detective team was that he plotted for weeks, if not months, to stage a robbery and the likelihood that he would have to kill someone. He showed no remorse. After his conviction, he told John Courtney: “Had I known you were coming, I would have been long gone.”
Irene MacArthur shed little light on her son in a chilling but fascinating interview with David
Hanly on RTE radio. With cut-glass diction, she described a privileged but difficult family in Breemount House, a period manor in Trim set on 180 acres of farmland. She was never a “great person for children” and raised hers in the tradition that they are “seen but not heard”.
Her husband was violent, had a “sadistic streak” and “fabricated” stories. Her son was a “dreamer”. “No doubt about it , he saw violence at an early age. And who’s to know what will happen against that?”
She was stunned and disbelieving of his arrest. She visited him in prison but there was “no question” of talking about the case. “The first day I went in a few days after the arrest, he apologised to me and he apologised to any relations we had, well they were mainly in England, and friends, for any distress that he had caused. And I said that’s fine, not to worry, we’re having no trouble at all and that the public had been absolutely super and of course, they still are.”
She could not say whether her son ever felt remorse.
She said she had always believed in capital punishment. Asked if she believed if her son should have hanged, she said:
“Well it is very difficult for me to say that now, but I know my first reaction when I heard that there had been this murder in the park is, I have always believed, I wouldn’t even waste money on a trial.”