Annie McCarrick: ‘No one considered a serial killer. That only happened in other countries’

One of the grisliest trends in UK broadcasting that has yet to catch on here involves raking through the coals of terrible crimes from the past. An entire documentary industry has sprung up around Fred and Rosemary West, whilst the Moors Murderers and the Yorkshire Ripper have also caught the attention of commissioning editors, leading to a wave of ghastly and voyeuristic true crime television.

Scannal’s short film (RTÉ One, Tuesday, 7pm) about the unsolved disappearance of American Annie McCarrick from Wicklow in 1993 is thankfully not that sort of programme. It is respectful and understated and does not seek turn a horrible occurrence into sensationalist fodder.

It is also haunting. McCarrick (27) was a Long Islander who had fallen in love with Ireland: in flickering home movie footage, she even seems to speak with an Irish accent. She vanished on March 26th, having left her apartment in Dublin apparently to spend the day in the Wicklow Mountains.

She was never seen again and despite reported sightings at Johnnie Fox’s pub in Wicklow her whereabouts at the time she vanished remain unknown. “She was tall, she was broad, she was feisty,” says novelist Marisa Mackle, who had worked with McCarrick at the Courtyard Restaurant in Donnybrook. “We couldn’t understand why someone from New York would come to Dublin.”

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Despite a huge Garda search and the best efforts of her parents, John and Nancy McCarrick, Annie was never found. The story made international headlines. “That just doesn’t happen over there,” said future Fox News host Bill O’Reilly when reporting on the case.

'Some people don't realise the massive size of the Wicklow and Dublin Mountains,' says the retired Detective who led the investigation

Then came the sickening postscript: the disappearance around Leinster of Fiona Pender, Deirdre Jacob, Jo-Jo Dullard and other women. And inevitably Larry Murphy enters the discussion. Convicted in 2001 for the rape and attempted murder of a young Carlow woman in the Wicklow Mountains, he denied having anything to do with McCarrick or any of the others.

“No one considered a serial killer. That was only something that happened in other countries,” says journalist Caoimhe Ni Laighin “But as time went on other women disappeared...”

What we do know is McCarrick’s remains have never been found and that her apparent murder devastated her family and probably contributed to the death in 2009 of her father. And now, nearly 30 years on, this unsolved mystery continues to haunt the lives of all of those with whom McCarrick came into contact.

“Some people don’t realise the massive size of the Wicklow and Dublin Mountains,” says retired Detective Garda Thomas Rock, who led the investigation. “It’s only when you go up there that you realise the size of that area, the remoteness of it – and the probability that a body could be buried up there and never found.”

“Every single time I’m up there,” says Mackle, “I look around and I think, Annie where are you…?”