For several weeks he had been secretly living in a safehouse above a pub in Langside Road
Five prominent members of the Conservative party died and several others were seriously injured after the bomb went off on the final day of the Conservative Party conference in October 1984.
Five prominent members of the Conservative party died and several others were seriously injured after the bomb went off on the final day of the Conservative Party conference in October 1984. But by this time, he was well away from the scene of his crime, and nobody knew where he could be found.It would be five months later when a chance encounter at a railway station would lead police to his Glasgow hideout.
Detectives also had to establish if the bomber had been a hotel guest or simply visited a guest's room.It was a formidable task.Instead, police had to rely on handwritten registration cards, phone records, cash receipts and other documents.Scores of officers carried out a fingertip search of the wreckage.
Fingerprint experts examined the hotel registration cards one by one focusing on cards from Room 629.No one who lived there had ever heard of Walsh, nor had any of the neighbours. The surveillance team - who hadn't been told Magee was a suspect for the Brighton Bombing - were waiting for him when he arrived in the city.The problem was that the surveillance team had no idea which of the eight flats in the block the pair had gone into.Firearms were issued, just in case. But sending in an armed team was deemed too risky because of the possibility of a major shoot-out which could affect families in the block.
Police then discovered that weapons and explosives had been kept in the flat and a cellar downstairs. On June 10, 1986, he was convicted of all seven including the attempt to assassinate the Prime Minister and her Cabinet. Lead prosecutor Roy Amlot, QC, said Magee had planted the time bomb in Room 629, about 24 days before the explosion.Magee had booked into Room 629 and concealed a bomb of between 20 and 30 pounds of gelignite behind the panels of a bath.He returned to Belfast at the age of 18 in 1969 and joined the Provisional IRA soon afterwards.The court heard that the bomb plot had been devised in 1981 because of Mrs Thatcher's attitude towards the death of republican hunger striker and MP Bobby Sands.
All the hotel receptionist could recall of Magee was that he had paid £180 in cash in advance for a three-night stay.On the final day of his stay, a waiter had delivered tea and turkey sandwiches. Sir Donald McLean and his wife Muriel booked into Room 629 on October 9, at the start of the conference week.
The 'Roy Walsh' signature and address were examined by handwriting experts who concluded that they were Magee's handwriting. The eighth was for the separate conspiracy to bomb the 16 targets in London and resorts around Britain.When he sentenced Magee, Mr Justice Boreham also voiced his satisfaction at the length of time he would serve."I must be grateful that in recent years legislators have raised the maximum sentence from a mere 20 years to life imprisonment for explosive offences."
The following year the Brighton Bomber admitted in a newspaper interview that he carried out the attack but claimed he hadn't left a fingerprint on the registration card, saying:"If that was my fingerprint, I did not put it there.” Harvey Thomas, a senior adviser to Thatcher who survived the bombing, forgave Magee in 1998 and cited his Christian faith as the reason.
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