For more than 30 years Annie McCarrick’s best friend from childhood has been steadfast in the campaign to uncover the truth about her fate.
So when Linda Ringhouse awoke on Thursday morning to news that a man had been arrested in connection with her disappearance, she broke down and cried.
Ms McCarrick (26), a young American woman who was living in Ireland at the time, went missing on March 26th, 1993.
Ms McCarrick was born in 1967 and grew up in Long Island, New York but fell in love with Ireland and wanted to settle here.
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Speaking to The Irish Times from her home on Long Island, New York, her best friend Linda Ringhouse said: “Well, I’m in shock. I’m overwhelmed with emotion this morning and crying over my coffee.”
She said she couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw the breaking story on Irish news media.
“I’ve seen this play out in my head, just like this, for 30-plus years. I knew when I met with the new detective team in charge, both here in Bayport and in Dublin, that they were really determined to get to the truth of what happened to Annie. Mrs McCarrick, her family and myself finally knew we were in good hands,” she said.
“I’m thinking of all the heartbreak and courage endured by Mrs McCarrick over all these years. So let’s just see what the coming days bring.”
In an Irish Times report earlier this year, marking the 32nd anniversary of Annie’s disappearance, Ringhouse reiterated “the personal difficulties Ms McCarrick was experiencing at the time of her disappearance”.
She observed that Annie was “in a tumultuous situation” with a person she knew at the time.
“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.
The Garda cold case investigation into Annie McCarrick’s disappearance from her flat in Sandymount on March 26th, 1993, has uncovered a litany of errors since the case was upgraded to a murder investigation in 2023.
Linda Ringhouse and her family always challenged some of the assumptions around McCarrick’s disappearance, including the suggestion that she was in Johnnie Fox’s pub in Glencullen on the night she went missing.
She maintained all along that “there would have been a different outcome if concerns expressed by both the family and friends had been taken more seriously by gardaí from the outset”.
