Missing (4 page)
Authors: Barry Cummins
Annie McCarrick
I
n March 1993, 26-year-old Annie McCarrick was abducted and murdered in the Wicklow Mountains. A native of Long Island, New York, she had left her
home in Sandymount, Dublin, late on the afternoon of Friday 26 March. She travelled to nearby Ranelagh, where she got on a bus heading for Enniskerry, the picturesque village in north Co. Wicklow,
just east of the Wicklow Mountains. This was the last definite sighting of Annie McCarrick. Some hours later a woman matching her description was seen by members of the staff in Johnnie Fox’s
Pub, just north of Enniskerry, in the company of a man in his twenties. Annie McCarrick was known to have visited this pub before, where she loved to listen to bands playing Irish and country
music.
Despite numerous appeals for information, the woman matching Annie McCarrick’s description has never been found. Perhaps crucially, the man spotted with that unidentified woman has never
come forward. Was it Annie and the man who would later murder her? The investigation into Annie McCarrick’s disappearance was privately classified as a murder investigation almost
immediately. The fact that she was probably murdered by a man who has attacked or murdered other women has caused immense frustration for gardaí, who admit they never got a break in the
case.
Annie McCarrick’s disappearance was totally out of character. She was no stranger to Ireland, having lived in Dublin for three years while studying in Dublin and Maynooth. Her murder, and
the fact that her body has not been found, has caused unimaginable distress for her parents, John and Nancy McCarrick, who have lost their only child. They are now divorced and deal with their pain
separately.
In January 1993 Annie McCarrick left New York for the last time to travel to Dublin. She wanted to see, once and for all, whether she would settle down and make her home in Ireland. Three months
later she would be abducted and murdered.
Just after three o’clock on the afternoon of Friday 26 March 1993, Annie McCarrick pulled the door shut on her apartment in Sandymount. It was a dry, fresh day, and she
was planning a walk in Enniskerry. Earlier that day she had phoned her friend Anne O’Dwyer in Rathgar, asking her if she would like to join her for a stroll in the foothills of the Wicklow
Mountains. Anne had hurt her foot and told Annie she wouldn’t be able for the trip. Annie wished her friend a speedy recovery and decided to head for Enniskerry by herself. It was a day off:
she wasn’t due back in work in Café Java in Leeson Street until the next day. She had arranged for two friends to call over the following evening for dinner, and she might meet another
old college friend for a drink on Sunday. Today she was at a loose end, and it was just the weather for a walk in a part of Ireland she had grown to know and love. She put on her favourite tweed
coat, grabbed her handbag, and headed out the door.
As AnnieMcCarrick left her apartment at St Catherine’s Court in Sandymount, a plumber, Bernard Sheeran, was working at a nearby apartment. He spotted her leaving her home and heading down
the road. She was also seen by Bruno Borza, who ran the local chip shop: he saw her heading down Newgrove Avenue towards the terminus of the number 18 bus. This would bring her over to Ranelagh,
where she would get a number 44 to Enniskerry. By now, Annie had the knack of Dublin transport.
She saw a number 18 at the terminus but was still about a hundred yards away when the bus began to leave. She ran towards it, trying to catch the driver’s attention. He spotted her, and
slowed down to let her on. She paid the fare to bring her to Ranelagh. Within hours she would be abducted and murdered.
Annie McCarrick loved Ireland. By March 1993 she had spent many years travelling back and forth between Dublin and New York. She first arrived in Ireland for a week’s
holiday at Christmas 1987, when she was twenty, as part of a group led by her cousin Danny Casey, who taught Irish studies at the State University of New York. She instantly fell in love with the
country and the people. Her great-grandfather and grandmother on her mother’s side had left Ireland many decades previously. On her father’s side there were also strong links with
Ireland. Annie grew up among many Irish-American influences on Long Island, New York. Two Irish people who were friends of the family lived with the McCarricks for a time, and many members of a
local order of nuns who knew the McCarricks were originally from Ireland.
When Annie McCarrick arrived in Ireland for the first time she felt as if she was coming home. She lived in Ireland for three years while she studied at St Patrick’s Training College in
Drumcondra, Dublin, and later at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth. In between her studies in Ireland she returned to her home in New York in 1990 to continue her studies there for a year. But
she missed Ireland, she had made so many friends. By Christmas 1992 she had decided that she wanted to return to Ireland. She discussed the matter with her parents, telling them she wanted to see
once and for all if she wanted to make her life in Ireland, to see if she could settle here. They didn’t want to see their only child leave America again, but they knew Annie was restless and
had her heart set on returning to Ireland. On 6 January 1993 they kissed their daughter goodbye for the last time. Annie stepped on board a plane at JFK airport and left for Dublin. They would
never see their daughter again.
Annie McCarrick spent the first eighteen years of her life in the leafy suburbs of Bayport on the south shore of Long Island, New York. Bayport had become famous as the setting for the fictional
exploits of the Hardy Boys, in which the teenage detectives Frank and Joe Hardy solved numerous crimes. Bayport is an hour’s drive from JFK Airport and an hour and a half south-east of
Manhattan. It is a prosperous town, with wide, clean streets and large detached houses with low walls. Just south of Bayport is the Atlantic Ocean, where Annie spent many happy hours standing on
the shore looking across at the lights on the islands south of Bayport.
Annie McCarrick’s parents are both New Yorkers. From the mid-1960s until the mid-90s they lived together in Bayport, raising one daughter, Annie Bridget McCarrick. They divorced in the
wake of Annie’s abduction and murder; both still live on Long Island, but at separate ends. John is suffering considerable ill-health. Nancy told me that Annie had a very happy childhood here
in the quiet streets of Bayport.
Annie was born in March 1967 at Bay Shore, just a few miles from here. When Annie was about fourteen months we moved into our first house at Delores Court, which is just a
few hundred yards from here. When she was twelve the three of us moved to Bayview Avenue. Annie was living there right up until she went to Ireland. For her primary, middle and high school
Annie went to the local school for the towns of Bayport and Bluepoint. I worked as a secretary in the school, and her father was a teacher. This is the area where Annie spent the first eighteen
years of her life. She had so many friends. It was wonderful.
It was from their home at Bayview Avenue that, on an evening in late March 1993, Nancy McCarrick rushed to JFK Airport to get a flight to Dublin. A phone call from Hilary Brady,
a friend of Annie’s in Dublin, had set alarm bells ringing in the minds of John and Nancy. Nobody had seen Annie in Dublin for more than three days. She hadn’t turned up for work, and
wasn’t to be found in her apartment. Nancy remembers that they knew immediately something was terribly wrong.
Annie’s friend Hilary had phoned on the previous Saturday to say he was trying to reach Annie in Dublin and had forgotten her phone number. He said there was no
answer from her apartment and they were meant to meet for dinner. We thought nothing of it, but it was a couple of days later that Hilary phoned again. He still hadn’t spoken to Annie.
But now alarm bells started to ring. Hilary had gone to where Annie worked on Leeson Street and discovered she hadn’t turned up for work. Her flatmates who had returned to Dublin after
the weekend hadn’t seen her either. When he phoned that second time, Hilary said to me, ‘No-one has seen Annie.’ I just knew something was wrong. Within four hours I was at
JFK Airport and on a flight to Dublin.
Nancy McCarrick arrived in Dublin the next morning. Hilary Brady met her at the airport. They travelled to the Garda station in Irishtown, where Nancy McCarrick formally
reported her daughter missing. John McCarrick arrived over shortly afterwards. The McCarricks still hoped that there might be some news of Annie at any moment. They didn’t know it then, but
they would be staying in Ireland for the next two months. By the time they left Ireland broken-hearted in May 1993, they would be faced with the terrible realisation that their daughter would not
be coming home.
When Annie McCarrick was formally reported missing, the Gardaí in Irishtown had a difficult job in trying to piece together her last known movements. The fact that she was going about her
normal routine made the job even more difficult. The Gardaí had no crime scene. There was no scream, there were no personal belongings found on the roadside. In tracing all Annie’s
known friends, detectives were quickly able to establish that she had intended travelling to Enniskerry; but had she made it there? One detective noted that the last positive sighting is very
helpful in this regard.
We knew that Annie had got on the number 18 bus from Sandymount. We knew that she would have intended getting off in Ranelagh to connect with the 44 to Enniskerry. But we
had to consider every possibility, like whether she fell asleep on the 18 and ended up across Dublin city, miles from her intended destination, or whether she felt unwell and got off the bus
before Ranelagh. These were all things we had to consider; but then we got a positive sighting from a former workmate of Annie’s that put her on a number 44 in Ranelagh. All the
indications are that she was going to Enniskerry.
Just before four o’clock on the afternoon of Friday 26 March 1993, Annie McCarrick joined the queue at the bus stop in Ranelagh, opposite the Ulster Bank. She had walked
around from Chelmsford Road after getting off the number 18. She was wearing her dark tweed jacket, a pair of jeans, and oxblood-coloured boots. She carried her tan-coloured shoulder bag. Also
waiting for a bus was Éimear O’Grady, who was ahead of Annie in the queue. She recognised Annie from their time working together in the Courtyard Restaurant in Donnybrook the previous
month.
The number 44 arrived, and Éimear got on. She sat downstairs, because she was only going a short distance to her home at nearby Milltown Court. She saw Annie get on the bus after her and
go upstairs. This is something that happens thousands of times on public transport every day—one person recognising another. Little did she know it, but Éimear’s sighting of
Annie going upstairs on the bus was to be of immense importance and led to the Gardaí concentrating the bulk of their subsequent investigation on the Wicklow Mountains. Éimear
O’Grady got off the bus a short time later, unaware that she was now the last person to positively identify Annie McCarrick. Within hours, Annie would be murdered.
The positive sighting of Annie on the number 44 bus gave the Gardaí encouragement that they might be able to trace her movements after she got on the bus. However, all their inquiries to
establish where she went after that led nowhere. The driver, Paddy Donnelly, couldn’t remember Annie being on the bus. None of the passengers who came forward could remember her getting off
the bus at the terminus in the centre of Enniskerry, or at any stop before that. One detective remembered the frustration felt by the Garda team.
Annie was a striking-looking girl, and she stood out because of her accent. She was tall, and when she disappeared she was wearing a distinctive jacket and cowboy-type
boots. And yet nobody saw anything. We knew from Éimear O’Grady that Annie had got on the number 44 bus, and this would correspond with her telling her friend Anne that she was
planning to go to Enniskerry. But after that we don’t have any positive sighting of her. We know she had to get off the bus somewhere between where Éimear got off the bus at
Milltown and the last stop at Enniskerry. All our instincts say Enniskerry. But there is no-one to positively identify her there.
Three miles east of Enniskerry is the seaside town of Bray; to the west lie the Dublin Mountains and hundreds of acres of forest. Less than a mile south are the Powerscourt
Estate and Gardens— a popular venue for visitors. If Annie McCarrick did get the bus all the way to Enniskerry, she would have got off in the centre of the village, which is shaped like a
triangle, with three converging roads and a monument in the centre. If she did get the number 44 to Enniskerry she would have arrived there before five o’clock. As day began to turn to dusk
there would still have been at least a good hour of daylight left on that March evening. Did she decide to wander south towards Powerscourt waterfall? This would have been a logical journey for a
young woman out enjoying the Co. Wicklow countryside. It would bring her along a fairly busy road, which heads on towards the Great Sugar Loaf. But this is speculation. No-one has ever reported
seeing Annie McCarrick heading out of Enniskerry towards Powerscourt. Even more frustrating, noone has ever reported a positive sighting of Annie in Enniskerry.
