Annie McCarrick, a native of Long Island, New York had travelled back and forth to Ireland since 1987. An independent young woman, she moved to Ireland in January 1993, to study in St Patrick’s training college, Drumconda. Her flat mates, Jill and Ida last saw Annie when they left their flat to go to the country for the weekend, on the Friday 26th March 1993.
Annie left their apartment to walk a short distance to Quinnsworth in Sandymount. A receipt showed that she purchased goods at 11.02am. Annie had told a friend that she had decided to take a stroll in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains. A witness remembered her running to catch the bus to Ranelagh as part of her journey. Hilary Brady, a male friend of Annie’s grew concerned about her whereabouts when she didn’t answer his calls about a pre-arranged dinner on the Saturday evening.
He called into her workplace Café Java on the Monday but Annie had not appeared in work on Sunday either. The groceries she bought on the Friday were still on the kitchen table. Hilary started to worry and reported Annie as missing to police. He also contacted Nancy and John McCarrick in Long Island.
The investigation into Annie McCarrick’s disappearance was privately classified as a murder investigation almost immediately. The search for Annie was exhaustive. There was an inch-by-inch, hand/foot search through hundreds of acres of woodland, particularly Crone wood, 3 miles south of Enniskerry. After a couple of weeks of televised, print and radio appeals, new information came in about Annie’s last known movements, when a doorman at Johnnie Foxes’ pub reported seeing Annie on Friday night, in the company of a man in his twenties. The man in his twenties paid the cover charge for the two. This individual has never come forward with information, and could hold the link to Annie’s movements on that night.
During the investigation, any person with a history of sexual assaults was investigated. Recently convicted rapist, Larry Murphy was questioned about the case but he told officers he knew nothing. Gardai are also investigating connections with `Wolfman’ Robert Howard, later convicted of the murder of Hannah Williams. One year after Annie’s disappearance, Howard was the last person to see Arlene Arkinson alive.
Despite several theories concerning known sexual offenders and violent men, nothing to date has shed any light on the fate or whereabouts of Annie Mc.Carrick, and the man she was last seen with has never made himself known to Gardai to clear his name. Who was he? Could he hold the answer to this mystery?
There is a commonly-held belief that Annie is buried somewhere in either the Dublin or Wicklow mountains, yet her body has never been found.
Her parents cherish the memory of their free-spirited daughter who loved Ireland, but until her remains are found, they have no closure, and the mystery of Annie’s disappearance remains unsolved.
CRACKING CRIME IS PRODUCED BY STIRLING FOR RTE TELEVISION.