MacArthur released 30 years after the murder that shocked the nation

The country’s most infamous prisoner, Malcolm MacArthur, is a free man after serving 30 years for the violent murder of a nurse in Phoenix Park.

The 66-year-old, one of the State’s longest-serving prisoners, left Shelton Abbey on Monday after being approved for reviewable temporary release under the supervision of the Probation Service.

In a case that shocked the nation, MacArthur was arrested at the home of attorney general Paddy Connolly in Aug 1982 — and the crime and its aftermath was described immortally by then taoiseach Charles Haughey as “grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, and unprecedented”.