Foot and Mouth
107
If he is apprehended there is no way in which he can help you as he will not know these locations. No.3. Our messanger is quiet prepared [for] the risk of being apprehended when he collects the money. Are you prepared to risk apprehending him? The decision is yours. You will have received this letter by the end of November. On Saturday the 8th December we would like you to reply to us, once again through the Personal Column in the Irish Times. If you agree to pay the money you will simply state ‘Tom Smith has read your proposals and will agree to your conditions’. You will then recieve a letter early in January giving you details of how the money is to be paid. However should this notice not appear as requested we will assume that you are not prepared to meet our demands and we shall then prepare to carry out our plans in due course. Trusting this will not be necessary. Yours sincerely.
As they said, the ball was back in our court. We were beginning to get some sort of a psychological profile on the gang, or at least on ‘Unsigned’, and it seemed to us that this was an intelligent, thoughtful, strategic person. Spelling mistakes apart – and these could have been down to his flaws as a typist – he came across as highly literate and probably well educated. But beyond that, we didn’t have much to go on. The Garda Document Section
