Annie McCarrick

Annie Bridget McCarrick (born March 21, 1966)^[1][2] is an American woman from Long Island, New York who went missing under suspicious circumstances on March 26, 1993, while she was residing in Ireland.^[3]

McCarrick was born on Long Island, New York and she lived there until her move to Ireland in January 1987.^[2][4] She was the only child of her parents John and Nancy.^[5]

McCarrick visited Ireland on a school trip as a teenager and fell in love with the country.^[5] She studied at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra and St Patrick's College, Maynooth in the late 1980s, then returned to New York and began studying at Stony Brook University in 1991.^[5]

McCarrick moved to Ireland permanently on 4 January 1993,^[5] living in rented accommodation in Sandymount with two other tenants.^[5]

She attended the Saint Patrick's Day parade with friends.^[5]

On 25 March, she dropped in to Café Java on Leeson Street to collect her wages, but as the wages were not ready, she arranged to return the following day.^[5] McCarrick worked at Café Java as a waitress and also at the Courtyard Restaurant, Donnybrook^[5] She later visited friends and stayed for dinner.^[5]

On Friday, 26 March, she spoke to her flatmates, who were going to go home for the weekend.^[5] She visited the AIB branch in Sandymount shortly before 11 am - this is the last confirmed sighting of her.^[5]

Her mother was due to visit her on 30 March and Annie was looking forward to seeing her.^[5]

McCarrick disappeared on Friday, March 26, 1993.^[6] She had left her apartment in Dublin so that she could go to the Wicklow Mountains for the day. She had asked a friend to accompany her, but her friend declined. CCTV captured images of McCarrick in the Allied Irish Bank location in Sandymount, where she was seen withdrawing money from her bank account. She did some shopping at Quinnsworth supermarket before returning to her apartment at 3:00 pm. She was seen on a bus at about 3:40 pm in Ranelagh^[1] heading toward Enniskerry. Some time later that evening between 8 pm and 10 pm, the doorman at Johnnie Fox's pub in Glencullen claims to have seen McCarrick at the pub accompanied by a young man who was wearing a wax jacket. Allegedly, McCarrick had gone to see an Irish music and dancing show, a traditional event called the Hooley Show, but did not realise that there was a cover charge. McCarrick's male friend then paid for her, accompanying her to watch the show. Nobody saw either McCarrick or her male friend leave the pub, and the man's identity has never been discovered. However, this sighting at Johnnie Fox's has been disputed over the years. As it was dark and wet outside that night, it seems unlikely that McCarrick would have walked all the way from Enniskerry to Glencullen, which was 6 km (4 miles) away.^[6]

Numerous searches by authorities in Ireland have turned up nothing in McCarrick's disappearance. The authorities focused their search on the Wicklow Mountains and wider Leinster area as many women have gone missing there (the "Vanishing Triangle") since 1990.^[1] Gardaí believe that McCarrick may have been murdered by the same serial killer involved in the other disappearances.^[2]

In 2008 the case was reopened.

In 2014, in a new book called Missing, Presumed by a detective named Sergeant Alan Bailey, it was revealed that an IRA killer and child abuser was established as a "credible suspect" in the disappearance of McCarrick.^[7][8]

In March 2020, it came to light that a woman named Margaret Wogan spotted a woman matching the description of Annie McCarrick, in Poppies cafe in Enniskerry on the Friday afternoon that she went missing. According to Wogan, McCarrick was accompanied by a man with a "square face". Private investigators now believe that this is a vital piece of information in the McCarrick case.^[9]

In July 2020, a New York-based lawyer named Michael Griffith announced that he had received a significant new lead in relation to the Annie McCarrick case.^[10] In September 2020, a U.S-based team of private investigators announced that they had identified the suspect whom they believe murdered Annie McCarrick. The investigative team believes that McCarrick never actually made it to Johnnie Fox's pub and that the alleged sighting at the pub was a case of mistaken identity. Instead, the team believes that McCarrick went missing some time after arriving in Enniskerry. Michael Griffith stated that the pieces of the puzzle were slowly coming together.^[11] Michael Griffith stated that the new lead they are working on involves someone whom McCarrick may have dated.^[12]

In February 2023, Spanish television channel La Sexta aired a three-part documentary "Anglés: Historia de una fuga" claiming that the notorious criminal Antonio Anglés might have been responsible for her disappearance.^[13][14]

On 24 March 2023, two days before the 30th anniversary of McCarrick's disappearance, Gardaí stated they had upgraded the investigation to a murder inquiry. They also announced that they had identified two men of interest in regard to McCarrick's disappearance and that these two individuals had lived near her in Sandymount.^[15][5]

The case was discussed in episode 4 of the 2015 investigative series Donal MacIntyre: Unsolved entitled: The Case of Annie McCarrick.

McCarrick's disappearance is covered in MISSING: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle, a two-part true crime documentary first aired in May 2023 on RTÉ One.^[16]

The case is also at the centre of the documentary Six Silent Killings: Ireland's Vanishing Triangle, which first aired on 12th November 2023 in the UK.

• List of people who disappeared