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The woman with the suspiciously heavy French accent told her accomplices to grab the most valuable paintings in the collection: a Vermeer, a couple of Gabriël Metsus, a Goya, an early Velázquez, Frans Hals’ Portrait of a Cavalier. “In one stroke, in a matter of minutes, you’ve lost one of the greatest collections of paintings in the world,” said Simpson to Sir Alfred in the BBC’s report. The baronet agreed, adding, “No money could possibly compensate for the loss of these beautiful objects.”
The canvases taken by the gang were small enough to fit in their Ford Cortina estate car, and they sped off. Half an hour later, Sir Alfred struggled free and called the police, who set up roadblocks and put the airports and seaports on high alert.
A few days after that, a ransom demand arrived, calling for the transfer to a Northern Ireland prison of Marian and Dolours Price, two sisters jailed in England for an IRA car bomb attack on the Old Bailey in London in 1973.
Sir Alfred insisted that he would not have anything to do with the “violent and ruthless people who carried out the raid”. Already wanted for the helicopter bombing, Dugdale was now also suspected of this robbery. Chief Superintendent James Murphy, who would later lead the ill-fated hunt for kidnapped racehorse Shergar, told reporters she had not been ruled out of his inquiries.
Married in the prison chapel
The search ended at a holiday cottage in Prison Cove, near Glandore in West Cork, about 190mi (306km) from where the paintings were taken. Two policemen were making routine door-to-door inquiries when they became suspicious. A local farmer told them he had rented the bungalow to a man and woman two days before the robbery had occurred. After calling for backup, the officers entered the empty property and spotted some documents referring to the paintings.
Supt Thomas Barrett told BBC News that when the woman returned home, she appeared flustered. A colleague told him of an interesting discovery outside. “In the car we found six bundles which appeared to be paintings. They were very well-packed and I feel they were ready for transport.”
Dugdale recalled in 2012: “I remember I came out in my little wig and tried to speak French to let on that I was a foreign tourist, but apparently it didn’t convince them.”
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When she appeared in court for sentencing, she declared herself “proudly, incorruptibly guilty”. She was jailed for nine years for receiving the stolen paintings, with another nine years to run concurrently for the helicopter hijack.
During her trial, she discovered that she was pregnant. The father was Eddie Gallagher, her accomplice in both crimes. Asked by Dugdale’s biographer, Sean O’Driscoll, how their relationship developed, Gallagher said: “You know the way when you are thrown together and there is a shower of hounds chasing you to try and put you in prison, and you end up in the one bed. So what are you going to do, like? You can only talk for so long.”
Dugdale gave birth to her son, Ruairi, in Limerick Prison, and, in 1978, Dugdale and Gallagher were married in the prison chapel.
Dugdale was released in 1980 and moved to Dublin to raise her son. While her early days as an IRA wannabe may have been faintly absurd, her later years took a deadlier turn. Sean O’Driscoll, author of Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber: The Extraordinary Life of Rose Dugdale, told the BBC that there was evidence she was involved in developing IRA arms, describing how she regularly visited a County Mayo safe house where they would test weapons on the beach.
Dugdale died in March 2024, aged 83. That same month saw the release of Baltimore, a film depicting the art robbery, with Dugdale played by Imogen Poots. Dugdale was unrepentant to the end, telling O’Driscoll that “the happiest day of her life” was the helicopter hijacking. “It was the first time I felt like I was really at the centre of things, that I was really doing as I said I would do.”
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