Missing (6 page)
Authors: Barry Cummins
No-one has ever been arrested for the abduction and murder of Annie McCarrick. There is no prime suspect. A number of men have been interviewed at length, but no-one has ever been detained for
questioning. One detective told me how three years after the abduction they thought they might have been on the verge of a breakthrough.
I remember it was in early 1996. Gardaí in Blanchardstown in west Dublin were investigating the rape and murder of Marilyn Rynn, who was attacked as she was walking
home following a Christmas party. During that investigation an extensive trawl was undertaken to establish who Marilyn had been in contact with in the hours before her death. And out of the
blue, it hit us. One of the men who had been in Marilyn’s company, just hours before her terrible death, had also known Annie McCarrick. He had met Annie a number of times in the
Sandymount area. Alarm bells started going off. Could we be about to get a break in Annie’s case? Could this be it? But it wasn’t: it was just a total coincidence. Another man,
David Lawler, who was not known to Marilyn Rynn, was caught and convicted for her murder. The other man who knew both Marilyn and Annie was out of the loop. It was just a bizarre
coincidence.
The Garda investigation extended to the Continent, where a former employer of Annie’s was travelling at the time. He had no information with which to help the
Gardaí. Within weeks of Annie’s disappearance, John McCarrick decided to hire a private investigator to help find his daughter. The investigator, Brian McCarthy, had been recommended
by an official at the US Embassy in Dublin. However, he also failed to turn up any solid leads. Detective-Inspector (now Chief Superintendent) Martin Donnellan said the search for Annie was
exhaustive.
We carried out massive searches on foot, inch-by-inch physical searches. We chased up leads right around the country, such as when a lorry driver came forward to say he gave
a woman matching Annie’s description a lift from Mount Juliet in Kilkenny to Waterford. There were other reported sightings in Cork. Any person who we knew had a history of sexual
assaults was looked at. A pet cemetery in Enniskerry was also searched, and indeed there were numerous searches throughout north Co. Wicklow. Right from the start, Annie’s case was
treated like a murder investigation. A retired superintendent from Scotland Yard came over at John McCarrick’s request, and he reviewed the file. He was satisfied with the scope of our
investigation. But, at the end of the day, Annie is still out there somewhere.
In June 1997 new information was given to detectives about suspicious activity seen near Enniskerry on the day Annie McCarrick had vanished four years before. A decision was
taken that a pet cemetery near Enniskerry should be searched. The search, involving twenty gardaí, began on the morning of Monday 16 June. Gardaí from the Forensic Science and
Ballistics sections were on hand to provide guidance on the unpalatable but crucial job of searching through the graves. The information given to the Gardaí consisted of a report of a large
box being buried at the pet cemetery shortly after Annie McCarrick had disappeared. As word spread of the search, two men contacted the Gardaí. They told detectives they had buried a
greyhound in the cemetery in late March 1993. The men’s story was borne out when the remains of the dog were unearthed a short time later. By one o’clock the following afternoon, the
search of the pet cemetery was completed. There were no new leads.
Annie McCarrick wanted to be a teacher. When she arrived again in Ireland in January 1993 she planned to get any job to tide her over and then to begin studying for the higher diploma in
education, which would allow her to teach in secondary schools. When she started her studies in 1988 she went to St Patrick’s Training College in Drumcondra. As part of her studies she worked
as a junior assistant teacher at Our Lady of Victories National School in Ballymun. She absolutely loved it: she loved the interaction with the children, who were in turn fascinated by
Annie’s tales of New York. She later studied at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, entering in the second year of a course in which she studied sociology and English. It was here she met
Geraldine Delaney, a fellow-student, who is now a teacher in a secondary school in Palmerstown, Co. Dublin, the kind of job that Annie McCarrick would have happily ended up doing, and that she
should be doing now. Geraldine Delaney has many fond memories of Annie McCarrick.
Annie was an only child, and so was I, so we had a particular bond. Annie was what you’d call a real Celtic woman. She wore lovely cloaks and knitwear. And she was
such a reliable person—even to the extent that when we studied in the reading room in the Arts Block in Maynooth, if Annie took a break she’d write on a note the time she had left.
She’d leave the note on top of her books. She was that reliable, that predictable. I also visited her in New York after she finished her studies here. We would have great chats about
everything. On the night before Annie disappeared, the Thursday, we had a chat on the phone. She was really looking forward to her mother, Nancy, coming over to visit her the following week,
and she had made plans for what they would do together. We said we might meet up for a drink on the Sunday night. Annie was to call me. She never did.
Back in New York, Nancy McCarrick told me how she was looking forward to that coming visit to Annie in Dublin when she got the phone call to say her daughter was missing. During
a subsequent search of Annie’s apartment in Sandymount, gardaí found theatre tickets that Annie had bought in anticipation of her mother’s visit. During the time Annie was living
in Ireland, Nancy would visit her every Easter, staying for about a week or ten days. Nancy and Annie were very close, much like sisters. Nancy told me a simple story that shows how resilient and
confident her daughter was.
It was the summer of 1989, and Annie was in Germany. She was there with her college friends from Maynooth. They all went to work there for the summer, and they had jobs
already arranged in a pickle factory near Hamburg. But when Annie went to start work there she was told that she couldn’t work with her friends in the factory, because she didn’t
have a European passport. She didn’t have the right permit to let her work there. Undeterred, Annie went down to the local fruit market, and within minutes she had found a job with a
stallholder. I remember she phoned me and she was joking, saying, ‘I’m lifting all these wooden crates; wait till you see the muscles I’ve developed.’
Annie McCarrick was a self-confident woman who saw the best in people. One of her lecturers at Maynooth was Father Mícheál Mac Gréil, who taught her
sociology for one year.
Annie was a most trusting person, someone without guile. She was a fine young person, and she had a deep love for Ireland. She was an outgoing person, always in good humour,
always enthusiastic. To think that someone might have breached Annie’s trust, and hurt her, is so sad. To think that some violent person may have let the whole country down, it is truly
awful.
Nancy McCarrick does not blame Ireland or Irish people for her daughter’s murder. There are many examples of young Irish men and women travelling to America on student or
work visas and becoming the victims of murder, while the abduction and murder of Annie McCarrick is but one of a small number of violent attacks that American citizens have suffered in Ireland.
Annie loved the way of life in Ireland, the culture, the music, the people. Some time late on 26 March 1993 some violent person shattered that view of Ireland. But Nancy McCarrick bears no ill-will
towards the country and people with whom Annie chose to live.
When I left Ireland in May 1993 without any news of Annie, I was just devastated. I managed to return to Ireland in August of that year for about a week. I didn’t go
back there for a long time after that. John and I later divorced. I feel as close to Annie here in New York as when I would visit Ireland. It was another eight years after Annie disappeared
that I went back to Ireland. I went over in 2001, and I met a number of gardaí, including the Assistant Commissioner, Tony Hickey, who briefed me on their investigations into whether a
serial killer might be involved in Annie’s case. Despite the reason for my return there, I was very happy to visit Ireland. I don’t blame Ireland at all. Even now, Dublin is a much
safer place than parts of New York. There is just no comparison.
I asked Nancy about her feelings towards the person who murdered Annie. She paused, thought carefully, and after a few moments replied:
I feel that if in any way Annie’s death was not what the person intended to happen, or if it was accidental, and if that person responsible was not to harm anyone
else, I would have no interest in seeing any person punished. I just want Annie back. I want her home.
John McCarrick has also been devastated at the loss of Annie. He now lives in Mattituck, a town on the north-eastern fork of Long Island. He did everything he could possibly do
to find his daughter: he made numerous appeals on radio and television; he hired both a private investigator and a retired English police officer to review the Garda investigation; he offered a
$150,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of Annie’s remains. The loss of his only child shattered him. He now suffers considerable ill-health and spends much of his time in
hospital. Despite this, his message to the person responsible for killing his daughter is as clear today as it was in 1993: ‘Whoever is responsible better realise that I’m not giving
up. Whoever murdered my daughter had best realise I’m not going away.’ Before his health deteriorated he brought an Irish film crew to Bayport to show them where Annie grew up. He
brought them along Bayview Avenue, down Delores Court, and down to the beach from where the popular Fire Island is visible across the bay. During the summers when Annie was a teenager, she and her
father used to stand on the beach and look at the glistening lights across the bay, where groups of young people would party into the early hours. With tears streaming down his face, he told the
film crew that if he could have one wish, he would like nothing else than to be standing on the same beach with Annie by his side just like the old times, with them both listening to the sound of
the water and looking across the bay.
Hundreds of acres of woodland and bogland have been searched in an attempt to find Annie McCarrick’s remains. The search of the pet cemetery in Enniskerry, four years after her
disappearance, is but one example of many searches that have been made for her some years after her disappearance. Another tip-off, that Annie would be found in a well in Co. Wicklow, was also
investigated but led nowhere. Other information led to a search of Crone Wood, three miles south-west of Enniskerry, which also yielded nothing. Every lead must be followed up; every anonymous
tip-off must be investigated. One detective told me you never know when a break will come.
Look at the investigation into the murder of Phyllis Murphy, who was murdered in 1979. It was over twenty years later before a breakthrough was made in that investigation.
Now I know the circumstances were different, in that there was a body found in that case, but in any case that you are investigating you never know when the break will come. You never know when
that crucial bit of information will come in. It might be someone coming in to tell us they gave a false alibi for someone on the day in question and they want to make amends for the lie. It
does happen.
Looking at the time that elapsed before Annie McCarrick was reported missing, the killer had at least forty-eight hours to cover his tracks. While it is a remote possibility
that he may have driven Annie back towards Dublin, this is thought to be unlikely, for the simple reason that there would not be as many places in which to conceal a body. The feeling of detectives
involved in the case is that Annie is buried in the Dublin or Wicklow Mountains. The Gardaí are conscious that there are miles and miles of bogland in which her remains may lie. This is the
type of terrain in which Antoinette Smith’s body was found in 1988 and Patricia Doherty’s body was found in 1992. Did the killer travel west of Enniskerry and Glencullen towards the
mountains at Glendoo, or Tibradden, or Kippure? Did he go south-west towards Powerscourt Mountain or Djouce Mountain? And what about the forested land that extends for twenty miles along the
Wicklow Way from just south of Rathfarnham to deep within mid Co. Wicklow, close to Roundwood? These are all possible places where Annie’s remains may lie. This seems the most likely
explanation; but without a witness, or a confession, or a chance discovery, it may never be proved.
By the time Operation Trace came to analyse Annie McCarrick’s case—together with those of five other missing women in the Leinster area—one extremely violent man had not yet
come to the attention of the Gardaí. The violent acts carried out by Larry Murphy on the night of 11 February 2000 shocked the most hardened detectives. He kidnapped a woman in Carlow and
brought her in the boot of his car to an isolated spot near Athy, Co. Kildare, where he raped her. He then brought her to an isolated woodland area at Kilranelagh, Co. Wicklow, were he attempted to
murder her by putting a plastic bag over her head. The place where Larry Murphy tried to kill his victim and the village of Enniskerry, from where Annie McCarrick is believed to have disappeared,
are on opposite sides of Co. Wicklow. Between the two places there lies more than ten miles of dense woodland and mountainous terrain. Murphy knew the back roads of the Wicklow Mountains and had
hunted in the area of west Wicklow. He would have an intimate knowledge of many of the remote woodland areas in Co. Wicklow. However, when detectives from Operation Trace went to Arbour Hill Prison
to speak to him about Annie McCarrick, he simply told them he knew nothing and politely ended the conversation.
Annie McCarrick touched the lives of many people in her twenty-six years. Apart from her devastated parents, she is survived by many aunts, uncles and cousins on both the McCarrick side and the
Dungate side. And she left behind many friends in Ireland, people who knew her in college and in work. The two men with whom she had serious relationships later met their future partners and have
settled down. Both have their own private memories of Annie. In private conversations with those close to her, Annie would talk of settling down and of one day having a family. Dermot Ryan, who
went out with Annie for over two years, later met an Italian woman at Maynooth, whom he since married. He was nineteen when he started going out with Annie, who was a year older than him. He told
me he often dreams about her.
