Annie McCarrick /// Part 1 /// 380 | Forensic Files

Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and
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This week, we load up the flying garage ship for a tragic mystery far away. Some may say across the pond.
Over to an island in the North Atlantic. Touching down in Ireland. As of 2016, the population of Ireland was about 6.6
million people. Ranking it one of the most populous islands in all of Europe. The geography of Ireland comprises of
low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain. The climate is influenced by the
Atlantic Ocean and thus very moderate. The winters are milder than most would anticipate.
But the summers are cooler than most of those in continental Europe. Irish culture has significantly influenced
other cultures and shares many features with that of Great Britain including the English language and
sports like football, rugby, horse racing, and golf. But none of that, of course, is why we
are here. No. We are here due to the result of circumstances that are truly unpleasant.
We are here because of Ireland's vanishing triangle which is a term commonly used by the
media when referring to a number of high-profile disappearances. During the '90s, over a span of about 5
years and 4 months, at least eight women vanished from an 80-mi area outside Dublin
in the Leinster area in what became known as the vanishing triangle. Six of these cases are particularly well
known because of the investigations they precipitated. Due to similarities, some believe a
serial killer or serial killers were active in this area during this time. The Irish police have set up many
investigative operations and unfortunately much of this effort has failed to produce any substantial clues.
We often see that law enforcement will not show their hand in most investigations as a simple
but intelligent strategy. It is only when desperation truly sets in that they do so and that is the case
here with the triangle. You see, the nature of these disappearances are so unexplained and
random that the Irish media needed to create an ominous moniker similar to that of the Bermuda Triangle to truly
convey the full scope of this mystery. But the name was created by the media and therefore it does not tell us with
the level of desperation on the part of the investigators. No, it is their actions that take us
beyond the curtain. Most rewards are offered up as a bounty for an arrest leading to a conviction of
a perpetrator of a crime or crimes. In these cases, a reward is offered up for information resulting in the recovery of
a body. This week join us as we take a focused look at the first case in a series of
disappearances of young women so patterned and perplexing it became known as Ireland's vanishing triangle. This is
True Crime Garage and this is the case of Annie McCarrick. Annie McCarrick was the only child of
parents John and Nancy McCarrick. She was born in March of 1966 and lived with her parents in Bayport on Long Island in
the great state of New York. She was very close with her parents. John was a retired New York City police officer,
cheers to the boys and girls in blue, and Nancy was a school administrator helping to educate and raise America's
youth. Nancy's parents were born in Ireland and Annie grew up loving Irish culture. In
fact, Bayport was populated with thousands of Irish immigrants and Annie grew up steeped in Irish culture and
Irish Catholic traditions. While she was enrolled at Skidmore College, this was in 1987,
Annie took a trip to the Emerald Isle. She fell in love with Ireland and transferred to National University of
Ireland at Maynooth in Dublin to finish her BA. After she graduated, her parents
insisted that she return to the US to get a graduate degree, which she did, obtaining a master's degree in English
from SUNY Stony Brook. But in January of 1993, against mom and dad's best wishes,
the then 25-year-old Annie returned to Ireland. Now, she had lots of friends from her college days there, and it
sounds like that's really where her heart was. Well, she is going to need somewhere to
live when she returns there. So, while looking for a flat to lease, she's going to shack up with some of her old
friends. This is an engaged couple. Their names Hillary Brady, which just point out that's that's a man, baby.
And Rita Fortune. Hillary was the brother of an ex-boyfriend of Annie's. His name is Philip Brady.
She eventually settled in the idyllic, upscale seaside suburb of Dublin called This is called Sandymount, where one of
her literary idols, the poet James Joyce, had once resided. Even though she already had a graduate
degree, Annie planned to take courses at St. Patrick's Training College to get her degree in education so she could
teach high school English. She supported herself by working long hours as a waitress at a place called
Cafe Java, where customers loved the the pretty sweet young American girl that worked there.
Her best friend from Bayport-Blue Point High School on Long Island, Linda Ringhouse, said of Annie,
"She had a love affair with Ireland. Quote, she loved the food, she loved the people, she loved the music, she loved
the books, and she loved the scenery." She jokingly says she even loved the plants.
Linda said that Annie told her, "Quote, it's almost like I lived there in a previous life."
Annie was 5 ft 8 in tall, so a a tall woman with strong features, intense eyebrows, and an unruly curly dark hair.
She has been described as vivacious and friendly, a total people person who loved company, who was always smiling
and outgoing, but probably a little naive in general about people. Now, let's take a moment here to address
the setting for our listeners who aren't familiar with Ireland and the Dublin area specifically.
The Republic of Ireland is a democratic nation, which had a population in 1993, the year that Annie moved there, of
about 3.58 million people. Now, it's a separate country from Northern Ireland, which is
much smaller and is part of the United Kingdom. The quiet residential area of Dublin
where Annie lived is just 6 km, or about 3.75 mi, from downtown. Ireland is a very safe country in
general. In 2017, for example, there were only 41 homicides. Sandymount, where Annie's flat was, was
one of the safest areas of Dublin. Annie told friends that she felt much safer there than she did back home in
New York. In fact, one of the women who worked with Annie at Cafe Java said that Annie would often walk home
alone. Sometimes, this is even at like 3:00 in the morning. Mhm. All right, Captain. On to the
disappearance. A little warning here, though, first. Annie was not abducted in the sense that
no one claims to have seen her being tossed into a vehicle or to have heard a scream or really anything of that
nature. So, we are going to go through about 3 days of what we know. And included in this are some things that
have been reported, but may not actually be confirmed. These could Some of these
things are unconfirmed. So, as you will see, there is no clear timestamp here in our timeline
where we can say for certain, "Okay, here is when things started to go wrong." Or at this time, we know Annie
is in trouble. The 3 days we are going to go through will be a Thursday, Friday, and
Saturday. With really the day in question primarily being the Friday. March 26th,
1993. Okay, so listen closely, and Captain, chime in if anything I say gets confusing, okay?
The police or gardaí, as the Irish national police force is called, were able to reconstruct some of Annie's
movements leading up to her disappearance. We know that she worked at Cafe Java on Thursday evening.
And when she finished her shift, she had said that she would come in the next day, which would be Friday, this to
collect her wages and drop off some homemade pies. She was a was quite the baker.
So, often the restaurant or whatever you want to call Cafe Java, they would pay her to to bake things at
home and then she would bring them in and they would they would sell them there.
Mhm. Her next scheduled shift was on Saturday. Okay, so Thursday evening she works,
tells her employer or co-workers, I'm coming in tomorrow to collect my wages and drop off these homemade pies.
However, she's not technically working on Friday. That's her day off. Her next actual work shift schedule
is on Saturday. So, this leads us to the Friday morning. Yes, that's correct. What we know that
takes place early on Friday morning, we have her two roommates who says that they they kind of say goodbye to Annie
at this point. These are two ladies that she shared her flat with in Sandymount in a complex called St. Catherine's
Court. The two other ladies, this is Eada Walsh and Jill Tuomey were headed off to visit their families.
And what they popped into Annie's room simply just to say goodbye. Hey, we're getting ready to leave.
At this time they say that Annie was sitting up in bed and she was knitting. She told Eada and Jill that she planned
to go for a walk that day. And we're going to refer to this as I I This to me seems more of a like
planned hike. Not just a walking around town situation. But, in all the reports it's
often referred to as a walk. Hiking seems to be something that Annie did fairly regularly and we'll get into
that a little bit more as that's fairly important to this the story. Now, the two of them, her two roommates,
say that they left the flat at 8:50 a.m. And so now Annie is going to have the apartment to herself for
that weekend. She did have some upcoming plans as well. She planned a dinner party
for herself at the flat with friends to celebrate her birthday. Now, her birthday was a
about what, 5 days before? Yeah. So, we know that she had some plans and we have a general version for
that weekend of what the plans are to be, but now we're going to start getting into some things that we don't know
exactly what happened. But we also know that the following weekend, so she has plans for that
weekend. Saturday, I'm going to make some food for my friends. We're going to have a
little get-together here. Following week, my mother's going to come into town. Correct. So, she's got things that she's
looking forward to as well. You know, she's got Friday off. Well, depends on if you like your mother
or not. Or your friends. Um she's got Friday off. She tells her her employer, "Hey,
I'm going to stop by for these reasons." We know she's scheduled to work on Saturday. Her dinner party's going to be
after her shift on Saturday. Mhm. And then as you stated, mom is coming into not town, not just the town, into the
country to visit me in about a week. Now, we do know some things that happened for certain. One, we have CCTV
footage that captured Annie at the Allied Irish Bank in Sandymount sometime before 11:00 a.m.
Right. I get a little frustrated here with these reports, Captain, because it's it's closed
circuit TV footage saying that this is sometime before 11:00 a.m. So, to me it's not really clear how this time
frame is not more specific or more exact considering that she's on video. CCTV camera, their clock is always
wrong. Yeah, we're on we've done like 380 episodes. So, we've covered well over 100 cases,
and anytime there's security footage involved, they've never seemed to have the clock right.
Right. It's a tricky thing. It's It's It's very What time is it now? Nobody knows.
Nobody knows. So, it says sometime before 11:00 a.m. in the reports that I found. Now, she is
visible on the CCTV footage wearing a knee-length coat and carrying a satchel. At the bank, she is there chatting and
talking with staff who say they knew her. These are people that say, "Not only was that Annie, but we we know her
not just, you know, as a as a customer or whatever. We've seen her multiple times."
There apparently there are a few different versions, and you and I were talking about this in the garage earlier
of what her activities were were that day at the bank. Where were Mhm. What time is it now?
Uh who knows? Um Clocks are off by about an hour. There are stories that say she was
simply making a deposit or a withdrawal. The more specific reports that I've read, Captain, say that she was actually
transferring an account to this branch from another branch from a different area of town
and making a bit of a leap here. Right, and I've heard the opposite, that she's actually taking her money out of
this bank to open up a different uh different account at a different bank. Okay.
I'm I'm making a bit of a leap here, but if we go back to what we do know, we know that she fairly recently moved to
this specific area. Mhm. So, it does seem likely that she could be transferring an account to this
branch. Mhm. Uh she has a car. But, the car you will notice is really absent from this story. My understanding
is that it was a manual transmission. And you know how it is, some people buy those and they don't know how to operate
a manual transmission. It sounds like she wasn't comfortable doing so. And so, you'll see throughout this story, she's
often walking places Yeah, but that's that's how our community was set up anyways.
It was not that far from Dublin, so it was considered the best spot to live if you wanted to commute in and out of
Dublin. This this sounds like a idyllic place to live if you like, okay, you got a little
bit of schooling you want to finish up. Mhm. You got this cool job working at Cafe
Java. You can walk basically everywhere that you need to get, be it to a pub or to the bank or wherever.
Mhm. Sounds like a fantastic place. Now, my thought is because she's recently moved there, maybe she was transferring
an account for whatever reason. Regardless of what she was doing there that day, we know several things. One,
she's seen by people that know her. Right. And she is captured on surveillance footage.
Yeah, and you can see the footage for yourself and just by looking at a handful pictures of Annie and then
looking at that footage, it's very clear that's 100% her. And I'm going to make another leap here
that I think is spot on, my friend. Not only because we've seen it a million times,
Mhm. but the next part of the timeline kind of clears this up, right? So, she then
goes to the Quinnsworth Supermarket. Mhm. Where her receipt, which would later be
found in her apartment. The receipt is timestamped for 11:02, 11:02 a.m. for that day. So, that tells
you that yes, the the clock on the surveillance footage is wrong, and so they they know that it was before
11:00 because she was at the supermarket at 11:00 making these purchases. On her way back to her flat, she used a
public phone kiosk to make two phone calls that we know of. She could have I want to stress this, she could have made
more calls, but we are aware of what two of these calls were. And Again, this is 1993, so there'd be
public phones everywhere. Yeah, payphone, a public phone kiosk sounds so much nicer than payphone. And
I don't know if it's the same thing. And maybe you don't have to pay, I don't know. But
my understanding is that the phone they had in their flat, their landline, Mhm. it didn't always work.
Mhm. And so it was not uncommon for her to use one of these public phones. Now, let's get to the calls. One of the phone
calls was to her friend Hillary, uh just confirming that he and Rita would be coming over for dinner on
Saturday. Mhm. Just affirm that up a bit. The second call was to a female friend named Ann
O'Dwyer. Annie invited Ann to go hiking with her later that day. The chosen location for
the hike is an area called Enniskerry. Mhm. According to their visitor website, the
village of Enniskerry is located just 30 minutes south of Dublin City and is the
gateway to Wicklow, which is referred to as the garden of Ireland. Mhm. Widely regarded as one of Ireland's most
charming villages in is Kerry is a wonderful place to visit, live, and work in. That's not my endorsement, that's
from their website. Yeah, but I don't think their website's going to go, "Come here."
It's It's a real dump. dump. More importantly to our story is that one of Annie's favorite This is one of
her favorite areas to hike, and she had been there many times before, often with
this friend that she's calling and asking, "Hey, do you want to go with me later today for a hike?"
Right, right. We've done this before, let's do it again. Again, judging from what I could see on
their site on their website, this is a very scenic area with waterfalls and gorgeous views. So
I've seen pictures, it's a real dumpster fire. It makes sense that this would be a
desired place to go hiking. Now, Ann, her friend, not Annie and Ann, it gets a little confusing. Ann, her friend that
she invited, had recently suffered an injury to her ankle, an ankle injury, and she told Annie that she could not go
along with her that day. Annie then tells Ann, "Hey, that's fine. I hope you feel better, but I might go
anyway by myself." So, this call to Ann was really the last known contact Annie had
with any of her friends. At this point, it appears that Annie returned to her flat.
Right. It is not known exactly what she did in the next couple of hours, but it seems
that she made some pies and did some laundry. Sometime after 1:00 p.m., a plumber saw
Annie leaving the apartment complex heading toward the Newgrove Avenue bus stop.
Mhm. He says the two said hello as they recognized each other. A second witness,
this is Bruno Borza, owner of a shop nearby, says he saw Annie flag down the departing number 18 bus shouting for it
to stop. This bus was headed along to a westerly route to Roundwood. And it did not run very often, Captain,
so Annie's flagging this bus down rather than waiting and waiting and waiting for
the next one to arrive. Mhm. The bus stopped and she boarded the bus and the bus drove off.
Before we move on, I do want to note something here. We have the plumber who says that sometime around
1:00 is when he saw Annie. Mhm. I don't know what he's using to judge this this time
off of, you know, I don't Sundial. I don't think he's saying that hey, I looked at my watch and I saw her walk by
at 10:10 after 1:00. Mhm. Regarding the the items that we get into after this in the timeline, it would
actually seem that that time stamp should be pushed back a little further, that this likely happened
around 2:00 or 2:30, which doesn't really mean much. I mean, we just have somebody an eyewitness saying,
"Yeah, I saw her leaving the complex and I believe it was around this time." It might in fact be just a little bit
later. Now, in Roundwood, Annie was seen by a former colleague, someone who says they knew her well.
She's seen waiting in line for the number 44 bus. This is around 3:40 p.m. Mhm. This bus was the one that ran to
Enniskerry, which would be about 12 miles away in the Wicklow Mountains, where Annie told her friend Ann
that she had planned to go on the hike. Right. The colleague named Amir O'Grady did not get a chance
to speak to Annie as she sat downstairs on the bus while Annie sat in the upper deck.
While when Amir got off, I guess they got off in in Milltown. Is Amir a guy or a girl?
Uh a girl. All right. Uh she says that she did not see Annie get off the bus at any time. So, her
assumption is that Annie was still on the bus when Amir gets off. Mhm. And then, you know, she gets Annie's
getting off at a different stop later. What's strange about this is according to this timeline, Annie would not have
arrived in the mountains to begin her hike until around 4:15 p.m. In late March, sunset was typically at
6:45 p.m. So, a lot of people have brought this up that it seems like she's going to a lot of trouble to go on a
hike that might be less than 2 hours or last about 2 hours. She's taking two buses. That's not that
big of a deal. Well, but she's traveling far from home to a desolate area. It's not that far.
Mhm. I I think I think I think that's debatable. Under 20 miles. I think that's debatable. Where where I
can bat that that debate is I'm a person that enjoys hiking. However, most of the hikes I go on are
fairly short. And in fact, they're shorter than 2 hours. So, um Kind of seems like you don't like
hiking. No, the the trail that I like is is close to my home and you can take it
three different routes. One would take you about an hour and a half, one takes an hour, one takes about 40 minutes. I
prefer the hour-long one uh selfishly because a lot of the podcasts I listen to are about an hour long. So, the the
hour-long trail works well for me, but to to the defense of the people that say, "Hey, this seems like a lot of
movement here to go hiking by yourself for a short period of time." The trail that I take that's on that
short hike is is very close to my home. It's it's incredibly convenient. Mhm. Nevertheless, all of these sightings of
Annie on Friday the 26th seem to be accepted by the Guardi as pretty reliable. Which I I guess it seems pretty logical
because either the witnesses were all people who were acquainted with Annie, you know, such as the the former
colleague Amir. Right. Or they were able to describe her accurately enough that police were
comfortable that their information was correct. dive into that right after this quick
beer break. All right, we're back. Cheers, mates. Cheers to you, Captain. Cheers to the
Dayton Flyers. I'm a huge Dayton Flyers fan now. Mhm. Obi Toppin, my boy. My boy, we're going
to go win a championship. You're going to go to the Final Four in basketball. I got the Buckeye, yeah.
Are you into basketball as much as you are into hiking? More so because it requires no hiking.
Um these next two sightings of Annie are much more up for debate. And rightfully
so because I think you'll agree with me, Captain, there are some serious question
as to whether they are accurate or not. So, a woman who worked at the post office in Ennis Kerry,
who was interviewed, this is in the weeks after Annie's disappearance, said that a tall American woman came in on
that Friday to buy some stamps. Remember that since Annie was not native to Ireland, she would have stood out
simply by virtue of her accent. Right. And remember also that these are small towns, really villages, where people
know each other and recognize faces. But let's keep in mind, no one can say for certain if it was Annie that the
postal clerk saw, but let's say that it was and that the clerk is correct. If she was correct, then Annie was at
the post office in Ennis Kerry between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. This would mean that perhaps Annie
decided to hang around in Ennis Kerry rather than go hiking. The next sighting is one that is
hotly debated. It is a sighting supposedly of Annie at Johnny Fox's pub between 9:00 p.m. and
11:00 p.m. This pub, dating all the way back to 1798, Mhm. is a known tourist destination referred
to as Ireland's highest pub because of its mountain setting at 920 ft above sea level.
Mhm. And Annie had been there before. This would not be her first rodeo, as they
would say. is a tourist hotspot. There you go. There There were an estimated 350 people there
that evening. of people at a bar. After seeing Annie on the news, a bouncer named Sam Duran came forward and
told the Gardai that he remembered seeing a woman that night who he was certain was Annie.
Right. He was the guy the bouncer at the front of the bar collecting there was a cover charge
that night because there was music. That's correct. Yeah. She's trying to get into this it's like a separate event
area of Johnny Foxes the Hooley room that was putting on a traditional Irish folk music show
where I would be seen there river dancing my face off. Right. The bouncer told her that there was a
two pound cover charge and he says that she seemed surprised by this and began to you know she's
rummaging through her bag looking for money to pay the cover. Well and this gentleman has a very thick
Irish accent. And so that's another thing that would give Annie away would be the fact that
she was American spoke English but with American accent. Right. Well and I this is where I think
the the Unless she was like one of those posers that started like trying to talk like she's Irish.
Just cuz she's living there. Or or an Irish lady that is a poser trying to speak sound American.
Right. What what is that movie um uh Crap I can't think of it. It's one of the Well that doesn't help much.
one of the Die Hards where Right. where the foreign terrorist guy he's like all you have to do is chew gum and
you sound American. Oh. It's pretty easy to do apparently. So Just say Walmart a lot.
The the thing though too that I think it's a little dicey with a lot of this is 5'8" is fairly tall. You know it's
above average height for a lady. Uh she has an American accent. It's almost like
But the tough thing though too is that she does have Irish features. She does. But could you see a situation
where somebody gets confused because they saw a tall American woman and just made the leap
that it was in fact a Annie, especially in a place like this that is known for tourism. You know, to have a lot of
tourists visiting. This seems like a very American thing to go to if you're visiting Ireland.
Well, first we have the plumber. I I question that just based on the time. As far as like did he see her? Probably.
He saw her. What time was it 1:00? Was it closer to 11:00? We've seen constantly with eyewitness reports them
being completely wrong. Mhm. And so could he have Did he see Annie on her way to the bank?
I don't know, but at least we know that somebody saw her that day, but that doesn't matter anyways because we have
her on CCTV. Then she's flagging down this bus. Possibly. Uh she would probably be more known to
people in her area anyways because she's working at a coffee shop and how many of those individuals go in and get
coffee and and and see her and maybe not know her personally, but know her through the
coffee shop. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's and there's probably not you know, that these there's a handful
of American students in school with her. And so they were all kind of popular by
default. So we don't know we have no 100% proof that she got on that bus. We don't have any kind of record that
she bought a you know, a a token or bought a pass for the bus. We have no clue. So we have no clue if she
even got on the bus. From there we have somebody that supposedly knows her, but doesn't
actually make contact with her. Doesn't speak her. Yeah. Right. So, again, there's been several times that I've
been places where I thought I saw somebody, "Oh, that's my buddy." And you start walking over, "Nope, that's not my
buddy." Is that possible? It's definitely possible here. So, really, we have no proof
where she's at at all. And so, can we you know, there was actually a um investigator
from Scotland Yard Mhm. that worked this case, and he he kept saying, "If you get to this point that we're at
this bar, and you believe this individual, and you believe this uh bouncer, and he says, 'I know 100% for certain it
was this girl.'" Again, he doesn't know her. Right. So, other than pictures and his memory,
And he's he sees her on the news, and he's like, "Oh, yeah, I that Friday, she was in line, and I I remember telling
her it's £2." So, it's not even like it's it's not later that night he's telling somebody this. It's not I And
look, again, I'm not faulting this this man. Right. I just I believe he's trying to help
Mhm. the situation. I just question if seeing that many people that night in a touristy area,
if he was in fact right. And here's the other thing, too. When you see a picture
of somebody on the news, you know, we've done this with other disappearances or or really other victims in general,
Right. you see one picture of that person, and I mean, with Amy Mihaljevic, she's
got that one famous missing person's poster, the flyer. And if you look at some of her other pictures or that video
of her up in front of the classroom giving a presentation. She doesn't look like that famous photo
of her. Yeah. And what I'm getting at with that is what did this gentleman see on the news
to lead him down the road of oh yeah, I saw her. And I think we should add a little more detail cuz he does have a
little more detail to his uh sighting, let's say. was saying that she was searching for
the money and then this gentleman behind her was like, "I'll pay for both." Yeah, he says a
a man in his late 20s who was standing behind her in line offered to pay for them both.
But this also makes somewhat sense because they would have been similar ages. And he said regardless if it was Aim or
Annie or not, the woman accepted his offer. Right. The bouncer says that this man was at
least 5 ft 8 in tall wearing a 3/4 length waxed canvas jacket. Uh he's of athletic build, clean-shaven with a
short military-style haircut. He was holding a pint of beer. The as we said, the man paid and Annie or
the woman thanked him and she walked into the Hooley room with him. The bouncer called this gentleman flat-chested
with broad shoulders. Which is you know, I've never actually heard that term. He was describing an athletic build.
Mhm. So I I've never heard um flat-chested what what that would mean that for a man.
Flat-chested, broad shoulders. I'm guessing just maybe skinny. Yeah, athletic build.
But but he would have a good Okay, if Annie's 5 8 and let's just assume it's her,
then he would have a good indication of how tall this individual was. Oh, he's roughly about the same height as her,
maybe a little bit taller. So 5 8 to 5'10". Yes, and that's what I think the the
specific report says that in that 5'8" to 5'10" range. He also says that he does not recall seeing Annie or at least
the woman he believes to be Annie again at any time that night. And according to
the Long Island Daily News, an exhaustive canvassing of the area turned up no one else who recalled seeing her
at Johnny Foxes that night. Well, see, yeah, I have different reports that a handful of people
said it was possible that they saw that they saw her that that night. Backed up the bouncer's story.
But what we can agree on here is it's far from clear whether Annie was actually at Johnny Foxes at all that
night. Or if there was just a American brunette American roughly 5'6" to 5'8" in this
pub. Yeah. That's a tourist hotspot. The other thing, too, is the pub, Johnny Foxes, is about 3.5 mi from Ennistymon
Kerry and the village of Glen Cullen. If Annie was there, we don't have anybody telling us how she
got there. And and what was she doing in the Ennistymon area all evening leading up to this cuz this is between
9:00 and 11:00 p.m. at night that she's supposedly seen at at Johnny Foxes. Right.
So, there's nearly a 4-hour time period between these supposed sightings of when
Annie was I mean, she's unaccounted for. So, something really This could If this
is not Annie at all in these other sightings, then something happened before this. Well before this.
Right. It's really difficult, but most investigators believe the friend that saw her getting onto the
next bus to take her to her destination, take her to the place that she told people she
was going to go hike that day. Mhm. Most investigators believe that eyewitness. So, if you believe that
eyewitness, she is in that area. Yes. Right. This pub is 3.7 mi away. That's not that far,
depending on which part did she hike? Did she meet up with people? Did she call her friend in
you know, Ann, and her leg was you know, hurt, and she called somebody else. Is there somebody that she knew from her
past, male or female, that she just was like, "Well, I'll call them when I get up there."
Or she made additional calls at that that public phone that we we just don't know of. I mean
possibly made another stop at a different phone, because again, I don't know how big that city
is, but back in the early '90s, there's payphones all over the place, at least here.
So, I'm just assuming that there'd be more than one local phone that she'd make calls at.
The other thing that we have to question, too, is at some point in the night, the buses will stop running. So,
if she was at at Johnny Foxes at 11:00 p.m., you know, yeah, that's at the later end
of that possible sighting of her, but if she is there at that time, how was she planning on getting back home to
Sandymount, if in fact she intended to go there? Right. And I did see um our friend Jessica pointed out that
somebody on Reddit, so take this with a grain of salt. We don't know. I take everything with a grain of salt.
Which I got She said that somebody on Reddit stated that taxis back in 1993 in that area
were very uncommon. So, once the buses were done, it seems like your public transportation options are nil.
So, you're going to have to rely on somebody else to get you back home or stay with somebody that night.
let's break this down real quick. So, we know that she hits the bus roughly about 1:00 something.
That leads her to another bus around 3:00 something, right? Yeah, well, okay, so
Okay, so that that bus would get her into this area about 3:30, maybe 4:00. Yes, she would have been there
uh at 4:15. Okay, so roughly 4:00. And when we get there, let's just if I'm going to go on a hike,
let's say it's 2 hours. That's going to put me at in about 6:15, 6:30. Yep. By then, I need to make
my plans on if I'm going back. Right. But if you're hanging out with some friends, right?
You made some other arrangements. You're meeting up with a guy. Now you have other options.
And so, what's interesting is we have these sightings of Annie, but in this crucial time, like you said,
where you're going to have to make some arrangements, seems like we have no sightings of her.
Right, and here's the other thing that you have to consider in this thought. If she made plans with other people or
another person that we are just unaware of, Right. we're unaware of that person because
they chose not to come forward and tell us, "Hey, I hung out with Annie that evening." That means that person did
something is responsible or knows what happened to her. Yeah. So, here's some other things that that I
think we should consider as well. And this is where it makes it even more confusing regarding the
the whole Johnny Fox possible sighting. It was later discovered that there was another American woman there at Johnny
Fox's that night, that Friday night. Mhm. Who actually resembled Annie and was dressed in a similar manner. Apparently
this other woman really confused things in the course of the Guardi's investigation because it
was unclear which you know, which sightings were of this other woman and which sightings were
that of Annie. So much and so much so that in fact the Guardi tracked down this other woman
and asked her not to wear certain types of clothing because when she when she did they kept
getting phone calls saying, "Hey, I spotted Annie at this place. I spotted I saw Annie, the missing woman, at this
place." Right, we're going to need you to only wear bikini tops from now on. Yeah, and it it turned out to be
you know, it turned out to be her. Now, the man but here's what we know for certain.
This this lady went to that bar. There's eyewitnesses of the that girl being at that bar. They tracked her
down. She's alive. And I'm going to tell you that to me this this sighting doesn't mean anything later.
But we'll have to get there. Well, what what I have in my notes here is that the woman, as you said they
spoke with her, she says that she she was not the woman in line that got paid for the cover charge got paid for
by some man that she didn't know. Right. She says, "I was there with my mother."
Mhm. So And she would have remembered, "Hey, this guy paid for me." Right? Like So I I think that
clears up that there was another American girl in that bar. Somebody paid for her way in, not this lady.
According to a 2019 article appearing in University Express entitled Ireland's Vanishing Triangle Unanswered
Annie McCarrick this alleged sighting, the Johnny Fox one that we've really gone round and
round about Right. is now strongly believed not to have been Annie at all, but just as you
stated some other American person, likely a tourist. Other sources are certain that the bouncer saw Annie
that night, but truly what I think we can agree on here, Captain, the upshot here is we don't know for certain
whether it was Annie or not. It sounds like both you and I are leaning toward that it was not.
No, that's not my That's not what I think. Oh, I'm sorry. No. I I was just saying it's a
possibility. Got you. But but that's weird that they're they're making claims that they don't
think it's her. You know, the only other claim we have other claims of people in the bar that say
that they possibly saw her. It could have been the other girl that looked like her.
Mhm. But we have another like you're saying the stamps was within that vicinity as well.
Yes, much earlier, but but uh about 3 and 1/2 4 mi away. Right, but again, it's maybe 15 minutes to walk a mile.
Right. So. Now, one thing we do need to state here, and our regular listeners will not be
happy to hear this at all. This is according to Irish Times, to an Irish Times article about Annie's
disappearance. She was known to hitchhike around Dublin even at night and even by herself.
Apparently, many young people at the time considered this a valid form of transportation, that it was safe to do
this in this area. We did mention how safe Ireland is and this area specifically.
So, Yeah, it's so safe that we have a a triangle of missing women. Right. Right.
It's so safe. So, is it possible that that it was Annie at the pub and maybe she planned
to hitchhike her way back to the apartment complex after the pub closed or after that going
to that show. And when she did, something bad happened. Or as we said, perhaps she met up with
someone or perhaps she hit it off with the man who paid for her in line and then things
went bad. Yeah, but they also a lot of people at the bar believe that not only did this
man pay for her to get in, but that they sat together and he actually bought her drinks all
night. Now, if that's true, and a lot of people believe that if it was Annie in the bar,
that she would have had to be there with somebody paying for things because she didn't have the kind of money
that she could go to This is a This is not just a normal pub there. This is a tourist hotspot. So, what do they do
with the prices? They jack them up, my friend. Right, they jack them up. Top dollar.
Yeah. That's what she said, jack them up. Um but So, a lot of her friends, a lot of
people speculate if she was in the bar that she would have had to be with somebody
that would be paying for the drinks. And to me, that's more likely that she'd be
getting a ride back to their place or they would or they told her, "I'll give you a ride back." Or whatever it would
be, but it's also, like I said, it's not extremely far away. It's not like she's
50 miles from home, 100 miles from home. She's within 20 miles from her house. Yeah, and again, that leads us to the
other problematic portion of the story. If in fact, she did meet up with this man, this man in his 20s, who
it sounds like the bouncer has reason to believe that this man didn't did not know Annie prior to offering to pay for
the two of them to get in. We've already mentioned her picture on the news. We've already mentioned that
this was actually a really big investigation over there at this time. Part of that is because it's an American
woman in another country who went missing. Right, part of that is we have a lot of
missing girls. Now, on top of that, we have a missing American. Well, she's the first in
she's the first in the series. So, these other ones haven't occurred yet. Oh, well, don't rain on my parade.
We'll get into that in in tomorrow's episode. But, what I want to point out here, again, we have another situation
where we talked about earlier. If she's meeting up with somebody that knew her that was supposed to be her friend, and
they've never come forward, that's highly suspicious. Same situation here. If she sat and spoke with this man, hung
out with him that night long enough for him to get to know her, and he's never come forward, then you
have to be highly suspicious of this unidentified young man that was at Johnny Fox's.
That's why I believe the bar the bouncer sorry, the bouncer assumed that these two were together.
The actions and with a I'm looking for money. Oh, don't worry about it. I got it.
Again, if it was just somebody that you just bumped into in line, and you heard about this girl going missing, and you
knew it Oh, I paid for her way to get into that pub. Make a phone call to the police. Oh, by
the way, I was the man that paid for that lady's way to get into the pub. I don't know her.
I was there with another group of friends. We didn't even sit with her. Or maybe we
did sit with her. But we don't know what happened to her cuz we never saw her leave.
You know what I mean? Mhm. If it was purely innocent or the person didn't know this girl,
then why wouldn't they come forward? And just say, "Oh yeah, we saw her at the bar. I paid for her way to get in."
And now they say, "I don't know her." But so to me, if this girl was Annie, she was there at
a bar with somebody that she knew. What we do know that happened is the following day on Saturday, Annie did not
show up for her shift. She had a morning shift at work. She does not arrive to this. This is completely out of
character for her. Yeah, it's like a part-day shift. Yeah. And then she's going to have her friends
come over. Friends come over and she's not there. Mhm. Yeah. So, no one, I guess, really raised the alarm
when she didn't show up for work. It sounds like the alarm bells start going off that Saturday evening when Hillary
and Rita, the two friends, showed up at the flat at Annie's flat at 8:00 p.m. This is for their planned dinner party.
They say no one answered the door after repeated knocking. The pair eventually decided, "Hey, let's go to this pub, sit
down for a little bit. Maybe she's running late or whatever's going on and she's not home yet. We'll kill about a
half an hour." They tried to They tried to it was, the words. Yeah, sorry about that. They go to the
pub and then about a half hour later they return to Annie's flat. They're knocking again, knocking again, still
receiving no response. Eventually, they went home. Yeah, probably a little confused, a
little upset. They had plans. a dinner. Right. Right. They decided to try to call the flat to try to call Annie.
But apparently, I guess they realized they did not have the number. So, they called Nancy, Annie's mother,
who was at home just to get the number. Say, "Hey, we're trying to get a hold of
Annie. We realized we don't have her phone number." Right. They told Nancy that Annie wasn't home
for their planned dinner date, but Nancy too did not really make much of this. Well, she could have got stuck at work.
There could have been an emergency that she just didn't let anybody know about yet. No no need to panic after a couple
hours. Correct. Meanwhile, Annie's roommates, they returned Sunday evening and found that Annie had never unpacked
her Quinns Worth bag of groceries that she had bought She made these purchases on Friday. It was
It was sitting just inside the front door with things like meat, cream, and butter inside. Things that should have
been refrigerated. Mhm. It was later confirmed that the bag contained everything Annie purchased at
the grocery store that Friday. They also found wet laundry. This is Annie's clothing. Wet laundry in the
communal washing machine for the apartment complex. This is where it's so confusing for me. First, it seems like
that time where you got friends coming over the next day. Mhm. You you you went and did the
um that little errand. Maybe got money from the bank, maybe switched your account. Then you get little food from
the grocery store. Now you got to come back. You're doing a bunch at once. Going to do a little cleaning. Got to
put the groceries away. I got to do a little load of laundry. But normally, you don't
those things you finish. At least you get the the the clothes from the washer into the dryer. You at
least put the food into the refrigerator. It seems like all that got stopped. And and it's so strange to me that
people just assume that all those things got stopped and then she jumped on a bus
and went for a hike. Yeah, that's what's troubling here. And they also found a pie on the counter.
You know, we said Annie was making some pies and some baked goods for Cafe Java. That she was going to
drop off on Friday. Remember that's the day in question. There's a pie on the counter.
So, this is what the roommates find when they get home Sunday evening. And eventually they hear from Hillary, the
friend that was supposed to come over Saturday evening. Right. They call the flat. He calls the flat, speaks with the
two roommates who have now returned and says, "Look, yeah, she wasn't home when we tried to go there yesterday for
our scheduled birthday dinner party." And now the roommates and the friends over the phone are starting to put some
things together and say, "Hey, this doesn't seem right here. Something here just does not feel right." So, Hillary,
the friend, calls up Nancy McCarrick, Annie's mother. Right, calls her again and and
Remember she wasn't worried the first time, but now by this point she Annie could have been missing for 72 hours.
She didn't show up for work or for her own dinner party. Right, but if I go over to my buddy's
house and I open up the washer and there's a load of clothes in it, no big deal.
People do that all the time. But if I walk into somebody's house and there's bags of groceries, maybe just a
couple of them, but has maybe milk or meat or whatever, something that could go bad.
I'm going there there's a issue here. To me, that's a big red flag. That's right.
All right, thanks for joining us here in the garage. For more True Crime Garage,
check us out on the Stitcher app, and check out our bonus show called Off the Record. We have over 90 episodes
available of Off the Record. That's on Stitcher Premium. We got a lot more to get to in this case. Please join
us back here in the garage tomorrow. Until then, be good, be kind, and don't litter.

Annie McCarrick /// Part 1 /// 380

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Brief Summary

Annie McCarrick vanished in Ireland in 1993, with unclear sightings and a mysterious timeline surrounding her disappearance.

Key points

Annie McCarrick's Disappearance. Explore the mysterious case of Annie McCarrick, a young woman who vanished in Ireland.
Annie's Last Sightings. Witnesses report seeing Annie on buses and in towns leading up to her disappearance.
Debate Over Eyewitness Accounts. Eyewitness reports of Annie's whereabouts raise questions about their accuracy.
Confusion at Johnny Fox's Pub. A possible sighting of Annie at a pub leads to uncertainty about her presence there.
Annie's Possible Sighting. Eyewitnesses claim to have seen Annie at a bar, but uncertainty remains.
The Hitchhiking Culture. Annie was known to hitchhike around Dublin, raising questions about her safety.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She had a love affair with Ireland.

Annie's friend describes her passion for Irish culture.

9:49WatchNov 17, 2022

Tension

55/ 100Some tension

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