'I've never been unmannerly... apart from the crimes' – double murderer Malcolm Macarthur breaks his four-decade silence

His crimes are notorious but the killer’s own account has not been heard – until now. Over a year of conversations with the double murderer, Mark O’Connell discovered an often contradictory character who insists he does feel remorse

Malcolm Macarthur

Mark O'Connell

Among Irish people old enough to remember the summer of 1982, Malcolm Macarthur is as close to a household name as it is possible for a murderer to be. Though his name is not surrounded by anything like the miasma of malice and depravity that arise from, say, the name Peter Sutcliffe in the UK or Jeffrey Dahmer in the United States, it carries, in this country, a similar generational weight.