LONDON– Baroness Sharples, the widow of a Bermuda Governor who was assassinated on the island 49 years ago, has died at the age of 99.
Sir Richard Sharples was murdered on the night of March 10, 1973, with his aide-de-camp Captain Hugh Sayers, while strolling on the grounds of Government House after a small informal dinner party. The Governor’s dog, Horsa, was also killed in the attack.
The murders during a string of killings and gun crimes in Bermuda put the island’s racial and social strife under the microscope of the world’s press – and ended with the last executions under British rule anywhere in the world.
Two men were hanged in 1977, sparking the island’s worst social unrest in recent history.
Erskine Durrant “Buck” Burrows confessed to the shootings and was convicted of murdering Police Commissioner George Duckett the previous year.
Larry Tacklyn, his co-accused, was acquitted of the Government House murders but convicted of murdering two men at a Hamilton supermarket.
Responding in characteristic style, Lady Sharples, later Baroness Sharples, who married twice more, said: “Richard was doing such a good job, and so was Hugh.
“He was a very nice young man. And Horsa was a lovely dog. Our four children adored him.”
Instead of reacting with anger, she reflected on “what a terrible waste of lives it was.”
She wore white in the aftermath of the killings, which she referred to as “temporary insanity,” and on the day she returned to England at age 50, she said goodbye to the fishermen she had customarily bought fish from.
Made a life peer in July 1973, she sat in the House of Lords for 44 years before retiring.
Sir Richard was elected Conservative Member of Parliament for Sutton and Cheam in a 1954 by-election.
Following a general election in 1970, he served as Minister of State at the Home Office before resigning his seat in 1972 to take up the vacant post of Governor of Bermuda.
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