Gardaí travelled to France in February to interview a one-time friend of missing American woman Annie McCarrick who disappeared in 1993.
The McCarrick case was upgraded to a murder investigation in 2023. Tomorrow marks the 32nd anniversary of the then 27-year-old’s disappearance.
Detective Inspector Ronan Lafferty, who is leading the cold case team, confirmed earlier this year to Ms McCarrick’s octogenarian mother, Nancy, that they hoped to carry out the interview in consultation with French police.
The man interviewed by investigators is originally from Dublin. The Irish Times understands that two interviews were carried out by the Garda team in a hospital as the man has been in long-time ill-health. A Garda spokesman confirmed the developments in the case.
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“While An Garda Síochána does not comment on specific lines of inquiry, as part of ongoing investigations into the disappearance and murder of Annie McCarrick investigators have interviewed a number of witnesses located in other jurisdictions,” he said.
Gardaí remain “committed to uncovering the truth” around the case and appealed to anyone with “any information that may shed light on Annie’s disappearance and murder” to come forward," he said.
Any person who may have interacted with Ms McCarrick on or after March 26th, 1993, is asked to contact their local Garda station or the Garda confidential line.
Speaking to The Irish Times from her home on Long Island this week, Ms McCarrick’s aunt, Maureen Covell – Nancy McCarrick’s younger sister – welcomed this development and praised An Garda Síochána for “their forensic diligence and kindness to her sister”.
With only a nine-year age gap between herself and Ms McCarrick, Ms Covell said they were really “like sisters”.
“We were very very close and we pretty much went around together all the time and had a lot of fun. We are so delighted that the gardaí are continuing to investigate Annie’s disappearance and we were told at the weekend that they had worked diligently with the French police to interview the man,” she said.
Two years after the case was upgraded to a murder investigation, gardaí have told the family they remain committed to resolving it.
They have already uncovered a litany of errors in the original investigation. Among them was the revelation last year by The Irish Times that the picture of Ms McCarrick queuing in the Sandymount branch of the AIB bank which was for years widely publicised as the last definitive sighting of her on Friday, March 26th, 1993, was in fact captured 11 days earlier, on March 15th of that year.
I’m a strongly opinionated New Yorker and find it very frustrating that all the faxes our family and friends sent to the gardaí after Annie’s disappearance about significant issues in her personal life were ignored
— Maureen Covell
A fresh forensic examination of the original case has challenged the accepted narrative around her last movements and the investigation into her disappearance is now focusing closer to her then home in Sandymount and no longer on Johnnie Fox’s pub, Glencullen, in the Dublin mountains where it was initially thought she had disappeared from.
“The gardaí have visited us on two occasions since the case was upgraded and their re-examination of all the details appears to have confirmed that a young woman from Boston who looked like Annie was in Johnnie Fox’s pub with her mother on that night,” said Ms Covell.
“When they showed us her photograph, extracted from video footage on the night, we understood how the mistake could have been made, as she had long wavy hair too.”
Ms Covell said she believed many errors had been made by gardaí at the outset of the case.
“Unlike Nancy, who has remained so graceful and stoic throughout this 32-year ordeal, I’m a strongly opinionated New Yorker and find it very frustrating that all the faxes our family and friends sent to the gardaí after Annie’s disappearance about significant issues in her personal life were ignored,” she said.
“Indeed a member of the original investigating team, who was interviewed for the 2023 RTÉ documentary, Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle, stated they had never seen these faxes and that this line of inquiry was not pursued at the time.
“We were so frustrated and upset about this revelation and also the attitude, at the time, that she was a 27-year-old girl and could be just enjoying life and off having fun somewhere. We had told them in a fax, for example, that days before her disappearance, whilst celebrating after the St Patrick’s Day Parade she had confided to me that ‘she’d messed up' with someone who was causing difficulties in her life.”
Ms Covell stressed that “if there is any important take-away regarding such cases in the future, it is that investigators must heed the families of the victims and not discount their opinions since they know the person best”.
“But they had no interest in listening to us 32 years ago,” she said.
For Ms Covell, Nancy McCarrick and their close-knit family, which has deep roots in Roscommon and Louth, the passage of time leaves them with little hope of a resolution.
“No matter how many attempts have been made, there are not any conclusive or definitive answers. While there is speculation, there is nothing solid after all these years other than the fact that Annie is gone. That is all we can say,” Ms Covell added.
She remembered her niece as “a lot of fun”.
“She truly found the best in people and would light up the room. She was beautiful both spiritually and visually,” she said.
“I would say that what was so refreshing about her was that she had no pretences, she had no agenda, she was simply a very genuinely loving kind person.”
Ms McCarrick’s best friend from childhood, Linda Ringhouse, has supported the family and campaigned about the case since the start. Speaking to The Irish Times, she reiterated the personal difficulties Ms McCarrick was experiencing at the time of her disappearance.
“I believe Annie was met either at the door of her apartment or someone pulled up in a car as she came home from her shopping. She dropped everything, thinking she would be home shortly,” said Ms Ringhouse.
“I believe she knew the person responsible for her death. She was in a tumultuous situation with this person at the time.”
It has been widely documented that Ms McCarrick’s shopping, with perishables and a receipt, was left on the table in her home and some of her clothes were soaking in a sink.
Ms Ringhouse said it was ”great news" that gardaí had travelled to France to interview a man.
“It is so hard not to get depressed and give up hope when another two years have gone by, since the case was reopened and upgraded, even though we know the detectives are still working on the case,” she said.
“Hopefully, the interview in France provided answers to questions we have had for 32 years. So happy to hear the current detectives were able to get it done. They have continued to come through for Mrs McCarrick and for that we are very grateful.”
