Her death, and the shooting dead of an innocent Offaly farmer a few days later, became two of the most infamous murders in Irish history, setting in motion a sequence of events that rocked the state to its foundations.

Taking advantage of an afternoon off work, Bridie Gargan, a nurse from Dunshaughlin, Co Meath, who worked at St James' Hospital in Dublin, went to Phoenix Park to sunbathe on 22 July 1982.

She drove to the park in her small Renault car, parked close to the US ambassador's residence and lay soaking up the sun in the long grass close to where she had parked.

Unknown to Gargan, she was being watched. She had left the door of her car open to cool down its interior and a man was watching her from behind the trees. He was there to steal her car. He needed it to embark on his new life as a hold-up man.

That man was Malcolm MacArthur.

MacArthur was 36 years old in 1982, a well-spoken and genteel man who was wellknown among the social elite and in academic circles around Dublin in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Always well-dressed, he wore a trademark bow-tie and lived a life of luxury, drinking in the pubs around Grafton Street and Baggot Street and funding his lifestyle from an inheritance.

After his conviction for the murder of Bridie Gargan, Maev Ann Wren and Maurice Walsh wrote a piece in the Irish Times consisting of comments typical of those who knew him in Dublin's social circles.

Said one: "He was very, very academic. If I hadn't met him in a bar, I would have taken him for a professor in one of the universities. He was a nuclear scientist and astrophysicist. He went to countries where he could express his ideas and do his research. He had been to Berkeley and spent a lot of time in Cambridge where he had his own research facilities. He was verging on genius."

The reality was somewhere close to these perceptions of the man. Malcolm Edward MacArthur was born in April 1946 at Hatch Street, Dublin.

He was the only child of parents who inherited their 180acre estate at Breemount on the Summerhill road out of Trim, Co Meath.

After doing well at the Christian Brothers school in Trim, he moved to live with an uncle in California. There he studied at the University of California near Sacramento where he obtained a degree in economics in 1967 before returning home to Ireland. It was assumed he would now embark on a career in academia but there are no records to confirm this ever happened.

After his father died in 1974, the family's lands near Trim were sold and MacArthur came into an inheritance of �70,000. Buttressed by this windfall, he moved to Dublin to embark on a bohemian lifestyle. It wasn't long before he and a Dublin girl in her 20s, Brenda Little, moved into a flat together at Fitzwilliam Square, where their son Colin was born in October 1975.

By 1980, MacArthur, the family man, had still not worked for a living and his inheritance was running out.

He and his young family moved to his grandmother's house at Iona Drive, Glasnevin, and stayed there for a year before his mother sold the house and gave him �10,000 from the proceeds.

They then moved into an apartment that had been previously rented by Attorney General Paddy Connolly at Seaview Terrace in Donnybrook. Connolly had moved on to a luxury apartment at Pilot View in Dalkey.

In late May 1982, MacArthur, his partner and their son went to Tenerife where it is said they planned to set up home. Despite his degree in economics and his academic nature, MacArthur still had no career, and even though the �70,000 windfall he received eight years previously was considered a lot of money at the time, he had managed to squander most of it.

After spending six weeks in Tenerife with his partner and child, he told Little that he had to return home alone to Ireland to sort out some financial matters.

The man whom his contemporaries deemed a "genius" was about to make one of the most erratic decisions of his life. He had nearly run out of money, and he was not going to work to earn any, so he decided he was going to become a hold-up man or armed robber.

Back in Ireland, he stayed at a guesthouse in Dun Laoghaire and planned how he was going to make money fast. He acquired a lump hammer to threaten his victims, a spade to bury them if he ended up killing them and a crossbow that he moulded into a fake pistol for carrying out hold-ups.

As he was such a wellknown socialite around Dublin at the time, he realised he would need a disguise if he were to get away with his crimes. So he changed his appearance by growing a beard and ditching his trademark shirt and bow-tie for a heavy woollen jumper and a fisherman's hat.

While MacArthur had transformed his crossbow into a fake pistol, he realised that he would need a real shotgun if he were to pull off heists. He scanned the classifieds sections of the daily newspapers looking for a gun and was seen by clay pigeon shooters hanging around at several Dublin gun clubs . . .

possibly attempting to rob a gun.

He also needed a getaway car and it was this desire which saw his path cross that of innocent nurse Gargan on this day 25 years ago.

Armed with his fake gun and a lump hammer in a holdall, and with his spade wrapped in black plastic, MacArthur lurked around Phoenix Park for some time as he awaited a potential victim.

Spotting Bridie Gargan lying in the summer sun, he hid the spade behind a tree and crept up beside her with the fake pistol in one hand and the holdall carrying the lump hammer in the other.

He pointed the pistol at her and ordered her to get into her car. In a statement later made to gardai, MacArthur said, "I assured her I only wanted her car, and asked her to lie on the back seat and I would tie her up."

He told gardai that Gargan panicked so, in fear of passers-by noticing what was happening, he took the hammer out of the bag and struck her across the head with two heavy blows.

"There was blood all over, some on the window and more on the seat, " he told gardai in a statement.

Patrick Byrne, the gardener at the US ambassador's residence, witnessed the attack and ran towards the car where MacArthur confronted him with the pistol before starting the car and speeding away.

Byrne alerted gardai and flagged down a passing motorist before trying to find MacArthur in the Renault.

MacArthur had escaped out of the park and a passing ambulance crew assumed he was a doctor taking his bloodied patient to St James' Hospital, as nurse Gargan had a hospital staff sticker on her windscreen.

The crew put on their sirens and got MacArthur to follow them to the gates of the hospital. There he made a U-turn and sped away in the direction of Rialto, where he abandoned the car and left Gargan in it, bleeding heavily.

A passer-by spotted the dying Gargan on the car's back seat. She was placed on a life support machine at the Richmond Hospital but died four days later.

Meanwhile, after abandoning the car, MacArthur's first move was to get rid of his disguise. He dumped his blood-stained jumper and got a bus to Ballymun where he shaved his beard with disposable razors in the bathroom of the Fingal House pub.

After this he returned to Dun Laoghaire where he kept a low profile for a few days.

One of the few people to spot that he had shaved his beard and changed his appearance was John Monks, a newspaper seller in the seaside town.

Monks was later to help the gardai in catching Gargan's killer.

Despite looking different, MacArthur was still determined to make money fast as an armed robber even after his brutal slaying of Gargan.

He was intent on getting a gun to carry out heists and combed the small ads sections of the Evening Herald and the Irish Independent to find a gun. Donal Dunne, a farmer and member of a wellrespected and popular family from Edenderry, Co Offaly, had advertised a shotgun in these newspapers at this time.

MacArthur responded to Dunne's ad and went to Edenderry to buy the gun two days after he attacked Gargan.

Dunne took him from the family farm to a nearby bog road that was regularly used by the local gun club for clay pigeon shoots. It was here, on 25 July, that MacArthur shot Dunne dead, leaving him to be discovered by a Dublin family having a picnic in the area that evening.

Paddy Connolly, the attorney general, had moved into his plush new apartment at the Pilot View complex in Dalkey not long before MacArthur decided to call and visit him. MacArthur's partner, Brenda Little, was a close friend of Connolly and had helped him furnish his apartment before she left for Tenerife.

Connolly welcomed MacArthur into his home and generously offered him a room to stay in. During his stay with Connolly, MacArthur came and went on his own on some occasions, though he did spend some time with Connolly.

On 17 August 1982, the Irish Times reported that the murderer was chauffeur-driven in a state car by an armed garda on at least two occasions, including a trip to a Kilkenny v Galway hurling match at Croke Park.

A meticulous murder hunt led by Detective Superintendent John Courtney and Detective Inspector Noel Conroy (now the commissioner of the force), with the help of another bizarre series of events, was to see the gardai catch the double killer.

In early August, MacArthur called to the house of an American man, Harry Beiling, in Killiney, saying he had been at a party there a few years previously and asking if he could take photographs of Killiney Bay from Beiling's house.

After he gained entry to the house, he reached into his holdall, took out a sawn-off shotgun and demanded �1,000 from Beiling. The American had very little money on him, and after MacArthur agreed to take a cheque, he pretended to go searching for his chequebook and managed to escape.

By the time Beiling got back to the house with the gardai, MacArthur had escaped but he made a major slip-up a few days later when he rang Dalkey garda station leaving his correct name and a false address to say he had merely been playing a practical joke on Beiling.

By leaving his name with the gardai in Dalkey, MacArthur led the murder hunt to an address at Pilot View, Dalkey . . . the home of the attorney general.

On 13 August, gardai surrounded Connolly's house waiting to pounce on MacArthur. As they waited to make their move, Connolly arrived home and, after much persuasion, MacArthur let him into his own house with the armed gardai.

A gun was recovered from the house and the following day MacArthur made a 20page statement over the course of six hours to gardai.

He was then charged with the murder of Bridie Gargan, the shooting dead of Donal Dunne, and the illegal possession of a gun.

MacArthur's arrest in the home of the chief legal adviser to the Irish government caused major political fallout in what was to become known as the Gubu (grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented) affair [see panel].

Connolly was caught up in a most unfortunate situation that was not of his making.

He went on holiday to the US just after the MacArthur arrest but he was called back from his trip and resigned on 16 August.

In accepting his resignation, taoiseach Charles Haughey stated that Connolly was "a kind and compassionate man of the highest integrity", and "an eminent and highly respected member of the Inner Bar" and he had served as attorney general with "the highest distinction".

If the bizarre events of the summer in 1982 left the general public feeling sceptical about the judicial system, MacArthur's murder trial caused outrage.

His appearance at the Central Criminal Court in January 1983 took only five minutes and no evidence was heard. MacArthur pleaded guilty to the murder of Gargan; he was not tried for Dunne's murder as the state entered a nolle prosequi.

MacArthur received a life sentence for the Gargan murder.

A protest meeting was organised and a petition of 10,000 signatures was gathered to urge that MacArthur be tried for Dunne's murder as well.

Both the Gargan and Dunne families declined to speak to the Sunday Tribune about the events of 25 years ago but the two families did speak about their loss to retired journalist Cathal O'Shannon for the landmark RTE television series, Thou Shalt Not Kill, several years ago.

It can be said of the Gargans that they were denied a trial in which all the details of Bridie's murder might have been revealed. The Dunnes never even got to see the man who clearly killed their brother face trial for his murder.

In a radio interview with David Hanly on RTE some time after his sentencing, MacArthur's mother Irene said: "I have always held the old-fashioned belief of a life for a life. I have always believed in capital punishment for murder."

While penal servitude for life usually means up to 15 years in prison in Ireland, MacArthur is now the second longest-serving prisoner in the Irish prison system, behind John Shaw and Geoffrey Evans who were convicted of the murder of Castlebar woman Mary Duffy in 1978.

In 2003, the Parole Board recommended that MacArthur be put on temporary release, which would eventually lead to his full release. In May 2003, he was transferred from the training unit at Mountjoy prison to Shelton Abbey open prison in Wicklow.

In July 2004, he had his recommendation for temporary release overturned by junior justice minister Willie O'Dea.

That decision has since been reversed and MacArthur has been given temporary parole for Christmas in 2005 and 2006. The Sunday Tribune has learned that he is still in contact with his partner and son.

Former justice minister Michael McDowell was a member of MacArthur's defence team during the murder trial so he refrained from commenting on the case when he was justice minister.

However, on 17 November last, McDowell said that the reason Malcolm MacArthur was never tried for the Dunne murder was directly related to evidence that was available to the DPP at the time.

Responding to an impromptu question from a schoolgirl during a visit to Dunne's home town of Edenderry, McDowell strongly denied that a deal had been done with the DPP by MacArthur's legal team to avoid the case going to trial.

Today, the Sunday Tribune can reveal that MacArthur told a senior public servant who has had direct dealings with him, as well as a number of his fellow inmates, that the state asked him to leave the country on his eventual release. It is understood that MacArthur had these disccussions with the state, most likely with an official from the Department of Justice, at the time of his trial in January 1983.

MacArthur, who other prisoners say is now institutionalised, intends to make another plea for release later this year.

It is not clear how long his sentence will be. But 25 years to the day since he savagely attacked Bridie Gargan, her sentence continues.

GUBU: CONOR CRUISE O'BRIEN'S ACRONYM STILL IN USE

AFTER 25 YEARS GUBU, the acronym that stands for grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented, is 25 years old this summer.

The phrase was coined by Conor Cruise O'Brien following a comment by former taoiseach Charles Haughey who was describing the sequence of events that unfolded after Malcolm MacArthur's brutal slaying of 26-year-old nurse Bridie Gargan and Offaly farmer Donal Dunne in 1982.

Sensationally, the massive garda hunt for the double killer led to the plush Dalkey apartment of the attorney general, Paddy Connolly, where Connolly had innocently invited MacArthur to stay.

A major political crisis ensued for Haughey's government after MacArthur's arrest. Speaking at a press conference, Haughey said: "It was a bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque situation, an almost unbelievable mischance."

Cruise O'Brien's acronym is still used 25 years later. A bar at Dublin's Capel Street called Gubu was in business for many years. Haughey's short-lived 1982 administration would forever afterwards be known