THE FAMILY of murdered Annie McCarrick have claimed that someone she knew was harassing her to her prior to her disappearance in 1993.
The 26-year-old American disappeared without a trace from her home in Sandmount, Dublin on 26 March 1993.
30 years later, her case remains unsolved.
McCarrick’s case was formally upgraded to a murder investigation in advance of the 30th anniversary last March, following a written request from her mother Nancy McCarrick to Garda Commissioner Drew Harris.
Her story is a focal point of a new true crime documentary series on RTÉ, Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triange, which looks at the idea of a ‘vanishing triangle’ stretching from Dundalk to Wexford and across to Tullamore.
The show will feature new in-depth interviews with family members, investigating gardaí and journalists, and examines the question of whether a serial killer may have been at large.
In the first episode, airing tonight, Nancy McCarrick claims that her family attempted to highlight their concerns that someone known to Annie was harassing her prior to her disappearance.
“We found out from some of her friends that she had been having quite a bit of difficulty with someone she knew and we were totally unaware of that. She hadn’t let us know about it. I guess she thought she could handle it herself and things would be alright,” she says.
Annie McCarrick’s aunt, Maureen Covell, adds: “I was told something in confidence by Anne that someone that Annie had known had struck her when they were in a drunken state.”
Her childhood best friend, Linda Ringhouse, also claims that she and a group of Annie’s friends and family sent faxes to Ireland just over a week after Annie went missing, to highlight their concerns to gardaí.
Ringhouse says none of them were contacted by gardaí in relation to the faxes.
“Four or five of us each faxed statements. One of the things that’s really frustrating is that we were never contacted by the garda regarding our faxes and some of the information we put in, information that to us was very telling at least, you know, something to be questioned but it never happened as far as I can remember,” she said.
However, former detective Tom Rock, who led the McCarrick incident room, says neither he nor the investigation team ever received the faxes.
“These faxes never came into the possession of the investigation team. I was never aware of these faxes. They definitely would have taken the investigation in a different direction. That is a source of annoyance and frustration to me and I would know to be a source of annoyance and frustration to all of the investigation team,” Rock says.
His colleague, Val Smyth, was the detective tasked with questioning the people named by Annie’s family at the time of her disappearance.
“I’m not aware that anyone known to Annie hit her,” he says. “There was never any question of … assaulting Annie at any time.”
Tonight’s episode also presents fresh evidence that Annie McCarrick was seen with a man in Poppies Café in Enniskerry on the day she disappeared.
Enniskerry local Una Wogan’s late mother Margaret was finishing a shift in Poppies Café in the town on the day McCarrick vanished.
“At the end of her shift she was ready to go around four o’clock … and the American woman came in with a man and they ordered some food. Two things I do remember very clearly that the man was shorter than Annie and that he had a square face … the jaw was quite square lined, the whole face, so that’s what stood out to her about him,” Wogan says.
She says her mother told gardaí about this sighting when detectives canvassed Enniskerry in the days after Annie’s disappearance.
“My mam never doubted that she saw Annie McCarrick with a man in Enniskerry the day she went missing. Mammy went forward and spoke to a detective and I’m very curious as to why the guards never followed up, never contacted her to get more details,” Wogan says.
Episode One of Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle airs on RTÉ One and RTÉ Player tonight at 9.35pm.
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