Roger O'Neill was a Northern Irish public relations consultant who was employed by the Conservative Party. He died from an assumed cocaine overdose in 1991, though was actually murdered by Francis Urquhart after he secretly put rat poison in his cocaine.
Biography[]
Roger O'Neill was born in Northern Ireland to an Irish Catholic family, and he was a top arithmetic student and a fly-half for the All-Ireland Under-14s as a boy. He became a public relations consultant during the 1980s, working with future Labour Party MP Stephen Kendrick before working for the Conservative Party as its press chief. O'Neill was unstable and addicted to cocaine, and he embezzled money in order to pay for his drug habit. He also had a relationship with Penny Guy, who also had a brief affair with MP Patrick Woolton.
In 1990, O'Neill succeeded in working towards the Conservative victory in the general election, but Chief Whip Francis Urquhart, aiming to blackmail O'Neill into working for him, told him that the party had scapegoated him for the loss of seats, and also revealed that he knew about O'Neill's illegal habits. In exchange for keeping these secrets, Urquhart had O'Neill swear his allegiance to him, and O'Neill was manipulated into helping Urquhart with his elimination of his rivals within the party. His work helped in removing Prime Minister Henry Collingridge from office, and Urquhart decided to murder O'Neill before the final ballot in the leadership elections, hoping to cover his traces. He invited O'Neill to his country house near Southampton, got him drunk, and put rat poison in his cocaine as O'Neill blacked out. On his way home, O'Neill stopped at a motorway lavatory, where he sniffed his cocaine, killing him.
Trivia[]
- Peter Russo is Roger's counterpart in the US series of House of Cards.
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