The Aga Khan IV, the wealthy leader of the world’s Ismaili Muslims who died on Tuesday at 88, led an eventful life that included resort development, charitable initiatives, a Harvard education and a trip to the Winter Olympics as a skier.
But one of his darkest days was the kidnapping and death of his prized horse, Shergar.
Shergar wasn’t just a winner of the Epsom Derby, Britain’s most prestigious race. He was one of the greatest horses ever to run in the Derby, winning in 1981 as the favorite by 10 lengths, a record that still stands.
As Shergar pulled away for his big Derby win, the radio commentator Peter Bromley said, “There’s only one horse in it; you’d need a telescope to see the rest!”
Shergar won other big races that year, including the Irish Derby, and then was retired at the end of 1981. He was set for a life as a stud horse, with every expectation that he would sire a generation of impressive racehorses. The fee for a mare to mate with him was $100,000.
But in February 1983, armed men forced a groom who cared for Shergar to lead them to the horse’s stable in Newbridge, Ireland. They loaded the horse into a trailer they had brought and drove off. Shergar was never seen again.
The crime was a shock: Kidnapping a star racehorse was almost unheard-of, before and since. “The whole thing seems like a fiction,” Prince Sadruddin, the Aga Khan’s uncle, said at the time. The crime made the front page of newspapers in Britain and around the world.
The kidnappers told the groom they wanted 2 million pounds, or about $3 million at the time, for the horse’s return, and reiterated that demand in a phone call. (The horse was valued at £10 million when he was sent to the breeding farm.) By this point, Shergar was owned by a syndicate of several dozen people, although the Aga Khan retained a large share. That group decided that no ransom would be paid.
A police investigation made little progress. Landowners and farmers in the area helped out, searching their fields. Mediums and psychics were called in. James Murphy, the chief superintendent of the Irish police, at one point said at a news conference: “A clue? That is something we haven’t got.”
As time passed, it seemed increasingly likely the horse was dead. Lloyd’s of London agreed to pay out millions of pounds to the owners, but it seemed a small consolation.
Soon fingers began to point at the Irish Republican Army, which at the time was engaged in a violent struggle with Britain.
After the 1998 Good Friday Agreement wound down the conflict, some former I.R.A. members began to speak about the kidnapping, although their accounts were often secondhand or hearsay.
According to these stories, the kidnappers knew little about horses and struggled to manage the stallion. He was killed only a few hours after the kidnapping, they said, perhaps after injuring himself. He was said to have been buried in a remote area, but his final resting place has never been found, and the case remains formally open.
The story has continued to resonate in Britain and Ireland, with new supposed information and theories emerging periodically. “Shergar,” a 1999 movie that took some literary license with the tale, starred Ian Holm and Mickey Rourke.
The Aga Khan was news-media-averse and never had much to say publicly about the kidnapping. But there is little doubt it affected him: In 1983, he unveiled his new 150-foot superyacht, named Shergar.
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