Nancy McCarrick has only one abiding wish: it is to bring her daughter Annie’s missing remains back home for a proper burial in her native Long Island.
It is the only reason the sprightly 80-year-old, who still cycles everywhere, would ever return to Ireland. It may have been the country whose culture and literature her daughter loved but it robbed her, and her late husband John, of their only child.
Annie had first visited Ireland on a school trip and returned to study at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, during the late 1980s, moving back again in January 1993 having completed a master’s at Stony Brook University, New York.
Rational, stoic and comforted by her great religious faith, McCarrick is very impressed by the “attention to detail” applied by the new Garda team now investigating the unexplained disappearance of the 26-year-old American on Friday, March 26th, 1993.
“Members of the team have visited me twice and their forensic attention to detail has been impressive. They have started from the beginning again and are re-examining every detail,” she says.
“They have also kept in regular contact since last year and I am aware they are continuing to track down people who may be in a position to help with their inquiries.”
Two separate and significant developments occurred one year ago around the 30th anniversary of Annie’s disappearance from her flat at St Cathryn’s Court in Sandymount, Dublin 4.
Garda Commissioner Drew Harris upgraded her disappearance to a murder inquiry on the recommendation of the force’s serious crime review team and the broadcast of an RTÉ documentary, Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle, challenged many strands of the accepted narrative around her disappearance.
Her family and friends had always questioned the reliability of a sighting by an acquaintance of Annie going upstairs on the Number 44 bus on a rainy March day to walk through the Dublin hills.
A series of interviews of students on the upper deck of that bus has concluded Annie did not board it. Further interviews with a group of French tourists at a gig in Johnny Fox’s pub in Glencullen also dispelled the veracity of an alleged sighting by a security man.
Even more significantly the forensic diligence of this new Garda investigation team has uncovered the fact that widely-used CCTV footage of Annie standing in a queue in the Sandymount branch of the AIB was not, in fact, taken on the day she disappeared – as originally believed – but 11 days earlier, on March 15th. This was confirmed on Friday night by the Garda Press Office.
Meanwhile, for Linda Ringhouse, the quest to find her best friend from childhood has never waned over the decades. She has strong views about what may have happened to her but is also very aware of the fact that the case is still under investigation.
“On the day Annie went missing there are only a few things we know for sure happened. For the record, I don’t believe Annie was ever on the bus to Enniskerry or in Johnny Fox’s that night. I don’t think she went for a hike on a dreary cold rainy evening alone, wearing cowboy boots, with no plan to get home,” says Ringhouse.
“We know for a fact she purchased groceries and we know she called a friend from the phone box just down the street from her flat. Most importantly, we know she left her groceries on the floor just inside the entrance door. This was always the most important detail to me. In my opinion that means she was likely met at the door by someone or someone followed her in their car. I believe she left quickly and abruptly, expecting to arrive back soon, since some of her shopping items were perishable and she was due to bake pies for the restaurant where she worked that evening.”
Ringhouse reiterates her puzzlement as to why faxes sent by her and members of Annie’s family about the problems in her personal life at the time of the original investigation were not taken seriously enough by the then Garda team.
“When you figure in what was happening in her life at that time, what she confided to close friends about past issues with someone and current issues since she’d moved back to Ireland earlier that year, surely it should have been important?” asks Ringhouse.
“We always believed that these factors should have been considered seriously. Of course, you just never know. There lies the madness of it all. If you factor in the statistics of murder victims being killed by someone they know versus by a serial killer, well, there’s just no comparison.”
Ringhouse recalls how upset Annie was while attempting to deal with these issues when she visited her in Dublin six weeks before her disappearance.
“It is hard to believe anyone who knew her would murder her, even by accident, and be able to continue on with their life. Of course, the difficulty in talking about any of this is we could be completely wrong,” she says.
Ringhouse gave a full and detailed statement to the gardaí when she was in Ireland last year.
“I understand that I cannot go into details here as the investigation is still ongoing and frankly I am still hopeful something will come of it. I am confident in the team of gardaí who are doing a thorough job by going right back to the beginning as they told Mrs McCarrick they would do. They have also been kind and considerate to all those involved in this tragic loss,” she says.
Annie’s childhood friend says she would love nothing more than to see justice for Annie and for Nancy, who, she says, has given her great guidance in her own life.
“Annie absolutely loved Ireland in every way. After all these years it is still so hard to comprehend that she is gone. It’s never too late for someone to speak up,” she says.
“Someone knows something and isn’t it just the right thing to do?”
On Tuesday, the 31st anniversary of Annie’s disappearance, Gardaí will renew their appeal to the public for any information that may shed light on her murder.
“Individuals who may have interacted with Annie on or after March 26th, 1993 are urged to come forward and assist in the investigation,” they will say in a statement.
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