60 Minutes - 9/20/2026: Patrick Clancy, AI Data Centers, Shergar Where Are You?

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

In his first television interview, Patrick Clancy speaks with 60 MINUTES just weeks after his ex-wife, Lindsay Clancy, was on trial in one of America's most high-profile murder cases for the killing of their three children. Correspondent Ross Douthat sits down with Clancy for a conversation about grief, memories of his children, and the social media reactions that have swirled since the case made headlines. Clancy is also joined by his new wife, Dr. Rachel Danis. Michael Karzis is the producer.Data centers have become a flashpoint in the midterm elections and opposition to them has brought together both Democrats and Republicans. 60 MINUTES correspondent Norah O'Donnell travels to rural Texas to examine the boom in AI data centers — and the growing tension between economic development and community pushback. Roxanne Feitel is the producer.Correspondent Jon Wertheim looks back at Shergar, the champion racehorse kidnapped in Ireland in the early 1980s, and explores theories about his disappearance through firsthand accounts from those closest to the case. Nathalie Sommer and Kaylee Tully are the producers.

For the last few months, the Lindsay Clancy trial has become a national obsession. Did you ask Lindsay why she did it? I asked her if she remembered it. Tonight you'll hear from the father, Patrick Clancy, for the first time outside the courtroom. I try not to think about that night very often. Data centers have become the symbol of America's unease with big tech. How dare you? We are struggling to pay our bills.

An issue uniting both Democrats and Republicans ahead of the midterms. I'm not going to vote red or blue. I'm going to vote for the candidate that is willing to speak up and put up and do something to help us with this issue. Shurgar was one of the great racehorses in the world until he was kidnapped. What would the IRA want with a horse? It remains one of sports enduring unsolved mysteries. Well, Shargar wasn't any horse. He was the most expensive horse in the world.

I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm John Worthheim. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Ross Douthit. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories and more tonight on 60 Minutes. Over the last few months, a murder trial in Massachusetts has become a national obsession and a cultural Rorschach test.

The story of Lindsay Clancy, a labor and delivery nurse who killed her three children and then attempted suicide, has created a vortex of online theorizing and suspicion, and generated furious arguments about the relationship between mental illness and criminal fault, the ways in which the medical system fails mothers, and how men and women understand one another. At its heart, though, it's a story about a family and the worst tragedy imaginable. Tonight, you'll hear from the father, Patrick Clancy, for the first time since the trial,

talking about how he tried to rebuild a life in the shadow of unbearable grief, and why, he wants to put the focus back on the memory of his children, Cora, Dawson, and Callan. In the fall of 2022, when Callan was five months old, Patrick noticed that Lindsay was struggling. It was October, and she went a few nights without sleeping. What did she tell you that she was experiencing that? She came downstairs one morning, and she said, I didn't sleep at all last night. And so I said, you know, that's awful. and I'll take the kids to school.

You just focus on getting caught up on sleep. Did you know anything about postpartum mental illness before this experience started? No. I could piece together what it was like to be really, really anxious or depressed, but I didn't know how to manage a postpartum illness. I think mental illness has this ability to be tragically deceptive So I'm sure there are things that I didn't see.

Patrick and Lindsay Clancy were living in the seaside town of Duxbury, Massachusetts. They were married six years. Months after the birth of their third child, Lindsay made repeated emergency room visits. She admitted herself to a program for patients with postpartum depression and was discharged after a day of treatment. She was also prescribed an escalating number of prescription drugs. Patrick said he struggled to help his... his wife navigate the medical system.

What was the low point a few months in? I think December. December was a big struggle for her. Just a huge lack of sleep, deep, deep depression, intrusive thoughts. And at the end of that month, she went to the hospital. It was New Year's Eve when Lindsay checked herself into McLean's psychiatric hospital. She was treated for depression, and days later, she was released. The family celebrated Cora's birthday on January 7th. She told you she wanted to come

home. She did. 17 days later, the unthinkable. After taking Cora to a doctor's appointment earlier in the day, Lindsay asked Patrick to run an errand and pick up dinner. And when he returned home, he said he found her lying in the backyard, her throat and wrists cut, paralyzed after jumping from an upstairs window. In the basement, he said he found his children strangled. Cora and Dawson were dead. Callan somehow survived and was airlifted to Boston Children's Hospital. So I didn't have all the details of Callan's condition. I just knew that they got a heartbeat back, so I remember that that night, I really thought there was a chance that Callan would live. And I remember just thinking, just give me one.

Just give me one kid. And I would raise him as best I could. And I would give him the best life I possibly could. And I tell him about his brother and sister. And I was holding out hope for that. And then when I got to the hospital, I saw the doctor, I saw the look on her face, and I knew that it wasn't going to be a good prognosis.

Callan's heart kept beating for four days. I'm so grateful for those four days that I had with him. And I'm so grateful he hung on. Did you talk to him in those four days? Yeah. Can you tell me anything you said? I said, I'm so sorry. And I got to hold him.

I got to lay down next to him. And he died in my arms. During those hours with Callan, Clancy sat and wrote tributes to each of his three children, typing with one hand while he held his baby's hand with the other. He said he was afraid if he didn't write about them, they would be forgotten.

But it wasn't just about your kids. It also had something that I think a lot of people found at that moment incomprehensible, which was something about Lindsay, where you forgave her. I saw headlines that said, you know, killer mom and baby murderer, monster, and none of them were accurate.

I believe that it was her mental illness that caused that. So I shared those words. And I think when it comes to forgiveness, I also felt that if I didn't get there, I would be eaten up inside forever. Did you ask Lindsay why she did it? I asked her if she remembered it.

And what did she say? She said it was like a dream. And she remembered it much in the way you would remember a dream after waking up. Do you feel like you failed in some way in this period, or do you feel like you did the best you could? I think I did the best I could with what I had at the time. And I live with the outcome.

I live with it every day. Has she ever asked for your forgiveness? No. But I gave it to her. In the weeks after the tragedy, the crowds of mourners dissoned, burst and Clancy's world emptied out. There was no family routine, no bedtime stories, no purpose. Everything just came to a screeching halt. And then there was a day where I,

really without thinking, I drove by their school, and it was at the exact time that all of their friends were getting dropped off. And I was just, I couldn't be there anymore. Did you ever have suicidal thoughts yourself? Yeah. There was a time where I didn't think I would live to see my 35th birthday. And I was completely fine with it. In April, unable to stay in Duxbury, Clancy said he moved to New York City, seeking anonymity. Five weeks after I moved to New York on May 26th, I had to figure out how I'm going to celebrate Callan's first birthday.

And how do you celebrate your son's first birthday? months after he's passed away. And so I go to St. Patrick's Cathedral. I light a candle, and I say, I love you, buddy. And I walk out on Fifth Avenue. And I start crying my eyes out. And nobody cared.

And was that good? Were you grateful for that? I thought this is where I need to be. I can grieve. Before moving, he had emptied the house in Duxbury, a home filled with the most visceral reminders of his children's lives. What kind of things did you keep?

Some of their toys, a lot of personal items, just things that reminded me of them. This is Dawson. Reminders now purposefully placed around his Manhattan apartment, a baby sloth that Cora carried everywhere, a photo of Callan wearing a bowtie almost bigger than him, Dawson's beloved and battered helicopter. real handprints. In their hometown of Duxbury, Clancy found another way to keep them close, this brand new playground, built to feature touchstones for each child, sloths for his daughter, a firefighter for Dawson, and down the way, a toddler's playpen for Callan. Do you dream about them? Yeah. All the time. Tell me a good dream. I remember early on having a dream, maybe

six months or a year after. And I'm in the kitchen at the house, and Cora walks in. And I just look at her, and I, it was like, I basically just said, where have you been? And she comes up to me and gives me a big hug. Those dreams are so real. It's like I'm lucid

in those dreams. In July of this year, Lindsay Clancy went to trial for the killing of her three children. Her lawyers argued that she was suffering from dangerous postpartum psychosis and couldn't be held responsible for her actions. I'm going to declare a mistrial. Her trial ended with a hung jury. Meanwhile, Patrick was suddenly facing a trial by TikTok.

This is why I think Patrick did it. I have so many questions. Not Lindsay. Patrick did it. You Googled how to commit suicide. An online swarm of sleuths and influencers has been, dissecting every detail of the case, developing theories that portray him as uncaring, unfaithful, and even the murderer of his children. How do you respond to people who have that idea about you?

It's deeply harmful to the legacy of my children. It is a huge distraction from what really matters here, which is perinatal mental health. And it's done real harm to real people, myself included, but... myself included, but also others. How does it affect you directly, the stuff that's out there online? It's painful to see, and it makes it difficult to be in public. And it's possible that some of those people, after seeing lie after lie after lie, they start to believe it. And that's what we're left with.

One of the catalysts for these theories was Patrick's apparent stoicism on the witness stand. Testifying is very difficult. On the second day, a lot of that was focused on the night of January 24th. We did take a break right before they played the 911 call, which I knew was going to be just horrific. And I went to a back room, and I started having this massive, traumatic panic attack. My heart was pounding, and they put me in an ambulance. They offered me some medication, but I said, I don't want it

because I want to go back and I want to finish this. so I can be done with this. I went back and I finished the testimony. Clancy says reaching out to survivors and experts in the field of postpartum health has helped him. I started reaching out to people at postpartum support international. I reached out to psychiatrists, experts in the field. And I asked them, what do you think happened?

And we had some pretty deep conversations. Those conversations helped Patrick come to terms with what happened. And so too has Dr. Rachel Danis, a fertility doctor who says they met in January of 24 in a run club in New York. They got to know each other over coffee. Pat pulls out his phone to pay, and I noticed this adorable photo of children as the wallpaper, and I just asked who were those cuties. And Pat had said, those are my kids. And then I think I asked if they live in Massachusetts,

and Pat said they died. And this is just the cashier. So what did you do then? I guess I had so many questions, and yet at the same time, I didn't know exactly what to ask. As they logged miles together, their relationship deepened. They got married in New York City this April. We talked a lot about what Pat carries,

the grief that he carries, along with the good memories. do you think you help him carry that grief? I hope. Do you think she helps you carry that grief? Yeah, yeah. I mean, 100%. It's... My life has changed since I met Rachel in such a positive way.

I always try to take some of the weight from Pat. I always want to strive to do that. I know I can't fix... I can't bring his kids back. But if I can honor them and allow Pat to grieve, but also just continue to honor them in the present, I guess that's all I can do.

And you guys are starting a family? Yeah. What are you going to tell your child about? their brothers and sister. I think every parent can agree you have different relationships with your kids, but they're all your kids. And I can't wait to tell them about their brothers and sister.

Patrick and Lindsay have each brought lawsuits against health care providers who treated her, alleging medical malpractice. Lindsay Clancy is being held in Tewkesbury Hospital in Massachusetts, waiting to learn whether she will be retried for the murder of her children. America and the world are in the midst of one of the most profound technological revolutions in human history, with artificial intelligence poised to transform nearly every aspect of how we live in work. Behind this seemingly invisible revolution is something very physical, data centers.

They are the factories of the AI age, vast industrial warehouse, packed with powerful computer chips consuming enormous amounts of electricity. With more than 3,000 of them across the country and another 1,500 proposed, data centers are now one of the top issues in the midterm elections. So we went to Texas, where everything is bigger, including the development of data centers, to understand the backlash happening nationwide. All this agricultural land will look like what? It'll be nothing but data center buildings, concrete.

This is just part of it. Yes. It's just one little bit as far as you can see. Jasmine Villegis lives on this quiet farm just outside Dallas, Texas. The data centers will be right there. When she learned that a data center campus, almost three times the size of this one a few miles away, would be built next door,

this mother of five in Marine veteran felt called back to duty. How did you become the go-to person at the center of this fight against the data centers? Ma'am, just because I'm not in uniform, doesn't mean that my service to this country has ended. I stand strongly behind my oath that I took when I enlisted to, you know, protect and defend this Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And you believe the data centers are an enemy? We're not sure. That's the thing. It might not be an enemy per se. But how do I know that these chemicals or this pollution, water, air, noise, isn't going to affect my community, isn't going to affect me?

How dare you? In town halls and on social media, data centers have become vessels for other worries and fears of rising prices, the power of the tech elite, congestion and crowding, and a dawning AI era that threatens livelihoods and futures. We are struggling to pay our bills. In Loudon County, Virginia, which has the world's highest concentration of data centers, electricity bills have surged in the last year, at least in part because of growing power demand. We live in the desert. We can't waste water. They will waste water. In Chandler, Arizona, residents worry about...

water being used to cool data centers when the state already has a shrinking supply. And in Red Oak, Texas, where Villegas lives, construction workers' cars clog the roads from miles before dawn. There, they are concerned about all of these things, and they accuse the city council of operating in secrecy. And now you've been caught. You've been caught making decisions without transparency. Not one single person in that room was for the data center, and the city council just went ahead and approved it.

How did that make you feel? Angry. But instead of feeling defeated, it's like, oh, challenge accepted. The pressure is real. The people are concerned, and I think they have a right to be concerned because they don't know what's going to happen. Michael Weber is a professor at the University of Texas, whose specials. is the relationship between water and energy. When tech companies want to build in Texas,

they call Weber for advice. I tell them you need to pay your taxes and hire people and be power-flexible, water-positive and carbon-negative. You have kind of a less technical, more direct message for some of these tech companies. Don't be a jerk. Don't take the water. Don't break the grid. Don't ruin the land.

Weber says data centers have been around for decades, But the speed of the construction and the size of those built for AI are unprecedented. The primary difference is they're larger. In the old days, and by old days, I mean like two years ago, a large data center might have been five megawatts. A new data center for AI might be 1,000 megawatts. It's like 200 times larger. So the scale is much different.

You look at the numbers. They're mind-boggling. Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, expected to spend $1.5 trillion. building data centers through next year. Why do we need so many? I talked to a lot of smart people, and some say this will satiate, but then there are other smart people who say the demand for intelligence will never be stated. So we will always want more data centers.

We will always want more intelligence. That intelligence developing inside these hulking warehouses, supporters believe, will generate what's called AGI, or artificial general intelligence that can match or surpass human capabilities. That means in addition to autonomous cars and robotic factories, this additional computing power could pave the way for groundbreaking discoveries like curing cancer. And data centers aren't universally loathed. Building trade unions want more because of how much skilled labor is needed to build them.

On the issue of water, they often aren't as draining as many believe. A CBS News analysis found golf courses nationwide, use more than twice as much water as data centers. There's a race to power, a speed to power right now, where all the AI companies are in a race to train up their models to win the AI arms race, they call it. You're saying this is like a new arms race? There's national security implications on the line,

as well as great economic gains on the line. We, in America, want to have it first before a bad actor, say China or someone like that. In Texas, attracting big tech was the goal of Republican Governor Greg Abbott. Texas will be the centerpiece for AI data centers for Google in the entire world. The Democrat running against him in November, Gina Inahosa, has made data centers a key issue in her campaign and is calling for a temporary moratorium. Who authorized that? Greg Abbott.

Abbott took 20 million in campaign donations from data center executives and companies. Governor Abbott has changed his tune. pushing back against these AI data centers that are trying to build in our neighborhoods. In August, he paused approval of new data centers that would draw from the state's power grid until they complete an audit. You know, worry about the traffic, the congestion, the noise,

I worry about the environmental impacts and the impacts it has on where I live. Dave Lowe lives right by the proposed data center in Red Oak and told us he's a lot of. lifelong conservative Republican. Are you thinking about voting differently? This is the first time in my adult life where there's been an issue that's come up

that I feel like is going to directly impact me. And so this time around, I've made the decision that I'm not going to vote red or blue. I'm going to vote for the candidate that is willing to speak up and put up and do something to help us with this issue. Opposition to data centers is one of the rare issues

uniting Americans across the political divide. more than 60% of Republicans, independents, and Democrats all agree they don't want a data center where they live. Lowe and Vigas are part of a group of a few dozen Red Oak residents across the political spectrum who meet twice a month. Time is 402. We're starting. Thank you, everyone, for coming. Their primary focus is stopping a developer called Compass from building 10, two-story data centers in their rural neighborhood on agricultural land the size of Manhattan's Central Park. We need to know what feasibility studies the city of Red Oak has done before inviting the data centers in. If completed, this would be just one of seven campuses set to cover

more than a quarter of the entire town of Red Oak, population about 20,000. We wanted to talk to Compass and local leaders to understand. why they think this project would be good for the town. They both declined to speak to 60 minutes, but Compass CEO Chris Crosby said this in July. You know, we want to be part of the communities that we're in. We want to be long-term job creators. We want to be places where there's continued investment and growth that comes as a result of us. Growth has also come to rural Hood County, 70 miles west of Red Oak, where there are nine proposals for data centers. We have probably eight or nine,

possibly 10,000 acres worth of data centers proposing to come in here. Dave Eagle is one of five elected officials on the commissioner's court, which votes on them. They come out here to this very rural area. Who do you think they think they're dealing with? They think that they're dealing with some low information, how can I put it? country bumpkins, maybe, so to speak.

One of Eagle's concerns is that the proposals are shrouded in secrecy. What are some of the names of these proposed projects? Well, they're interesting. We have a project yellow, project red, project lion, project panther. Do you think maybe these developers want to make it hard to keep track of them? Yes. How so? Based on their track record.

We've had to pry information out of them. Last year, an out-of-state company came to the table was something they said would be a big win, but wouldn't say who was behind it. They just basically approached us in a way that they're going to bring a lot of jobs in here. They're going to be good neighbors. They're going to really upgrade the community,

but they wouldn't tell us exactly what they wanted to do. They basically came in here to razzle-dazzle me. They tried to razzle-dazzle you. I think so. and, I mean, how would you take it if it was you against eight others? It was kind of like, whoa, you know, this must be really big, you know. Two months later, Eagle found out they were really big. Amazon Web Services was behind the proposal.

We obtained the pitch. They asked the county for up to 90% in property tax rebates for 30 years. And you said, I can't do that. There's no way I'd do that. But wouldn't bringing a big company like Amazon Web Services to Hood County actually lead to a lot more tax revenue that could benefit people here? Sure, could. This should not give it 90% of it back to them.

Eagle voted against the Amazon Web Services Project, but it is moving forward in the next county over, where AWS got the tax rebate it wanted. In a statement, Amazon said, in part, we ultimately decided to not build in Hood County. Where we do invest, we work with local leaders to create jobs and generate revenue for public services. Woo, come on, girls! Blake O'Quinn is a third-generation Texas rancher. He's worried there won't be land for his cattle to graze or water for the herd to drink. Do you feel like your

way of life is being threatened? I feel like if we don't make a stand and educate, The general public on what we do on a daily basis, yes, 100% our way of life can be threatened. This technological revolution is expected to transform rural America, with two-thirds of the proposed data centers planned in places more used to farmhouses than warehouses. We're not all against change, that's not it. But the values and traditions, we're blessed with this land. We're stewards of this land. take care of and pass it on to the next generation of Texans. Rural Texans are going to fight

as hard as anybody because that's what we know how to do. We won't give up. We're going to keep fighting against big tech AI and we'll prevail. Legends lore, the oral tradition. For centuries, they've come stitched into the Irish National Tapestry. Add this one to the anthology. The story of Shurgar, a champion racehorse, Ireland's answered a secretariat, who dominated tracks in the early 80s until he was kidnapped. The crime was thought to be an Irish Republican Army plot launched amid the troubles, the violent conflict that convulsed Northern Ireland for 30 years. All this time later, the horse was never found, no one's been arrested, and one of sports

great unsolved mysteries has never moved beyond cold case status. With central figures dying off and memories fading, we ventured to horse country, not far from Dublin, in county Kildare. A vast carpet of unfurling grass. This is the Curra, Gaelic for Place of the Running Horse. A thousand years ago, kings and chiefs race chariots here. Now it's the beating heart of Ireland's thoroughbred racing industry. The last place you'd peg for the setting of an ill-fated kidnapping. Inside the final furlong, it is fixation. Pulling away from Genoa and touch the moon is fixation. Over the last weekend in June, the Kura is home to the Irish Derby, or Darby, as they say here. The best in breed come from all over.

But in 1981, it was won by a local, Shergar, born in a nearby stable. And there he is Shergar. And who knew it at the time, but his saga was barely getting out of the gate. And they're off, and here he comes. Gar, marking himself once again, a really great horse. easier than you thought it would be. That's commentator Derek Thompson asking the question, and trying to keep up with Shurgar, on his way to another winner's circle.

What was Shurgar like up close? He was just a beautiful mover. He had a white face which I think endears him to the crowd. You know, you could see him, hey, that's Shurgar. As a commentator, you look for things like that. It was Shurgar's overwhelming speed and stride that distinguished him at the 1981 Epsom Derby, England's equivalent of the... Kentucky Derby.

The way he won the Derby that day at Epsom and he won by 10 lends. The guy who rode the second horse, he was long-sighted. And he couldn't wear his glasses obviously when he was riding. So when he passed the post,

he thought he'd won. Give us a sense where Shergaard ranks historically among thoroughbred racehorses. Probably the best of all time. You say that as someone who's seen a lot of racing.

I have. And I can tell you, and that's true. What does the future typically hold for a horse like Shurgar once he's done racing. Becomes a stallion, all right? And when you become a stallion, you become a very lucky lad. That is, after getting a hero's welcome back in County Kildare, Shurgar was put out to stud. His highness, the Aga Khan. The other lucky lad, Shurgar's owner, the late Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the Ismaili Muslims, one of the richest royals in the world. He retired

Shergar to Ballymany's stud farm, hoping to create a dynasty of sorts, syndicating the horse selling 40 shares for 250,000 pounds each, totaling more than $50 million in today's currency. But fortunes changed on the night of February 8, 1983, when masked men with guns broke into Ballymany and kidnapped Shergar. Belfast-based filmmaker Alison Miller is one of the few people to interview Shergar's head groom Jim Fitzgerald, who was there that night. What was your impression of him? Oh, Jim.

My impression was that he was absolutely haunted, traumatized by the whole experience. Never got over the trauma. No, never. Before he died, Fitzgerald opened up to Miller, recalling what happened. She showed us the interview from her documentary searching for Shergar. Tell me what happened. Can you remember it, Jim? I'll tell you know, it was an early February. and we were in the sitting room

and the next thing I'd not come at the door and these gangsters came in with guns. And they shouted at everyone to get down, get down and they put his wife and children all down the floor and they ordered him by gunpoint

to come out and take them down to the stable where Shergar was. Fitzgerald was bundled into a car driven about 30 miles from the farm then released, while the kidnappers made off with Shergar. He had the gun pointed at his head and told to get out of the car and shut up. Don't talk about this.

This forced silence was familiar in Northern Ireland, a hallmark of the IRA, but fairly unusual just two hours south in pastoral Kildare. All this occurred during that the context is the troubles. Describe Northern Ireland at the time? So at the time when a first year, I was taken, we'd just come through a period in Northern Ireland, where there'd been many years of bombings and shooting, and killings.

The sectarian violence rocked Northern Ireland for almost 30 years, pitting Catholics against Protestants, mostly over questions of British rule. The IRA, the Catholic paramilitary group, raised funds for their campaign through bank and post office robberies, which provokes the question. What would the IRA want with a horse? Well, Shargoff wasn't any horse. He was the most expensive horse in the world. The bank robberies weren't paying off.

someone had come up with the idea of kidnapping Shaggar and holding them to ransom. This is transactional. This isn't symbolic. This is just pragmatically what's going to get us a lot of money. They want cash for guns. When police arrived at Bally Manning the next morning, there were hardly any clues. The following day brought an unusual call to Derek Thompson, who was working in London. The phone went off at 2 o'clock in the morning. This is a press association in Fleet Street. which is the main hub of newspapers, the kidnappers of Shogar, want to talk to you.

Said, what? They want you to fly out to Belfast in the morning. Unlikely hostage negotiators, Thompson and two other horse racing journalists were summoned to Belfast by the kidnappers. We just jumped out of the taxi and looked, and this was the Europa Hotel, the most bombed hotel in Europe.

And as soon as I walked in, A voice came over the hotel intercom. A phone call for Mr. Thompson. How far is that for the Belfast? A voice on the other end directed Thompson to a farmhouse 30 miles outside Belfast. And it was just amazing for the next 12 hours. We had phone call after phone call. Did they mention a ransom?

They said things are like, we've got the horse, we want you to negotiate a price for the horse. This is what we want. We want the money. The Aka Khan's office received calls too. Ransom demands kept changing. 40,000 pounds one day, two million the next. And three days after the kidnapping, a vague final call to Derek Thompson's camp.

The horse has had an accident. He's dead. And the phone went dead. That was the last contact you had with the kidnappers. That's the last we heard. With the champion stallion missing, the investigation continued. Police gave daily updates to say, Not much.

Are you any further ahead than you were yesterday? I regret to say that I'm not. The country became ever more captivated by the deepening mystery. Inevitably, an Irish folk song followed. You've baffled all the boys in blue. So it did become a circus. The circus included crime-solving clairvoyance. People kept turning up going,

we're going to find the horse, like, hey, I'm Doris and Jimmy, and I'm going to find the horse. And then there was people ringing up. The helplines were getting bongers, people saying, hey, we found the horse. And it wasn't. It was like a dead sheep. What happened to Shurgar? As the story became an international sensation, theories toggled between the preposterous and the merely unlikely, stolen to pay off U.S. mafia debt, shipped to Libya for Omar Gaddafi,

all unimaginable ends to an elite stallion from County Killed. air, where horses have the right of way. 80 miles of gallop surrounded by all that unplowed grass, rich in limestone, good for horse bones, and fertilized by Roman sheep. In other words, equine heaven. We met the de facto dean of the curah, Richard Brabazon, whose family has trained horses here for generations. Yeah, that's meant to be the way of saying hello.

you just breathe into their nose. But he's a particularly friendly horse. We asked him about Shurgar. I mean, no one knows what happened. I think it's fair to say there was an accident, you know, and he was killed. The only thing that puzzles me is it's a very big operation to take a horse. If you ask me to do it myself, I'd find it hard to cover it up. You know, and say, how do you deal with a big animal like this?

You know, not easy. I buried a donkey once, and it took me half the day. Donkey notwithstanding, most people here believe the kidnappers couldn't handle a stallion like Shurgar and shot him within a couple of days. That theory was circulated in a 1998 memoir of a former IRA member turned informant, Sean O'Callaghan, now dead. He wrote that the kidnappers drove Shurgar to County Lytram near the border with Northern Ireland. That's where we met journalist Tommy Conlin. Conlin wrote a book about another 1983 kidnapping, this one human, a supermarket executive,

rescued in the woods here after 23 days in IRA captivity. And Conlin says Shergar's captors would have found a soft landing in Lethrum. If the local leader here got a phone call saying, we need to dispose of this horse, there would have been people here to do it. And what's more, it's so sparsely populated, so remote, that it would be an ideal place you would think to bury a body that you never wanted found.

Conlon led us to boggy terrain, where, Lorhazet, the kidnappers disposed of Shurgar's remains. Akhnashila. Not bad, Akhnashelan. Akhn Shelan. In a winter's night in February, 1983, the place would have felt almost deserted. And more than likely, those who you did meet

on the road, but say nothing. Say nothing and keep saying it. We did hear whispers, though, from others who've looked into the story, about one man in particular, a convicted IRA operative once broken out a prison by a helicopter. Kevin Mallon is named an informant Sean O'Callaghan's book as the ringleader of Shergars kidnapping. Hello. Kevin Malin, please.

First, we tried calling. Yeah. Kevin, it's John. Worthheim with 60 Minutes, CBS News in New York. We're working on a piece on Shurgar. Sugargar the horse, and we... Then we got an address, a seaside house near Dublin. Hi, I'm looking for Kevin Malin.

Another phone call. It's John Worthheim with 60 minutes. I'm in town and would love to just come up and ask him a few questions about the horse. I sure. He wouldn't know anything about that. No, forget us. Okay. We're told he's one of the last people alive that might help solve the mystery.

Some cold cases do eventually thaw, the result of a crisis of conscience or a dying declaration. But in the case of Shurgar, sure seems like a long shot. I think there's a massive shame that they're right, took this on. What was the point of it? It was pointless. The horse is such a symbol of Ireland and, you know, free. and its beauty is wildness, it's magic. And there's a shame that they shot the most famous and killed the most famous horse in the world at that time.

The Last Minute of 60 Minutes is sponsored by United Health Care Medicare Plans, a Medicare experience designed for what's next. I'm Ariel Levy, one of the new contributors here at 60 Minutes. Recently, I went into a restaurant and was asked to lock up my phone before I sat down. It was great to be rid of it. The way we're all attached to our devices reminds me of the way we used to smoke cigarettes. We knew it was bad for us, but we did it anyway until they stopped letting us, in restaurants at the office, basically in public. It just got too inconvenient and too stigmatized to continue. I wish that would happen with phones. I'm already

starting to forget what life was like before I carried my pocket overlord. What I miss the most is the concentration we used to bring to daily life. That's what drew me to journalism, the chance to have intense, intimate conversations with the people who shape our world to try and understand them from the inside out. We'll do that together this season. Next Sunday, CBS brings you the MTV Video Music Awards. So we'll be back in two weeks with another edition of 60 Minutes. The critically acclaimed series Colin from Accounts returns for a brand new season You propose to me drunk out of nowhere

At my best friend's wedding I was being spontaneous You didn't have a ring It was just, it was embarrassing All episodes now streaming Still will they, won't they Who cares? But what is it?

We're friends We have together Lee We're friendly together With a dog Colin from Accounts New season now streaming Only on Paramount Plus Thank you.