GARDAI INVESTIGATING the disappearance and presumed murder of American student Annie McCarrick have interviewed two new suspects.
The suspects were identified after the Garda's cold-case review squad recommended a reinvestigation of the case by gardaí in Bray, Co Wicklow.
The case was formally handed over during the summer and has now resulted in the identification of two new suspects in the presumed murder of the New Yorker.
The Irish Times understands the investigating team selected the two men for interview based on a review of statements taken when Ms McCarrick disappeared 15 years ago and also based on more recent information from members of the public.
Gardaí believe Ms McCarrick was last seen in Johnnie Fox's pub in Glencullen, Co Wicklow, on March 26th, 1993. She had been living in Sandymount, south Dublin.
While a convicted jailed rapist has long been mooted in the media as a suspect, neither of the men interviewed is a prisoner. Both were living in Co Wicklow at about the time the 26-year-old went missing.
While both men have been interviewed, they were not arrested and questioned under caution. Neither of the suspects has a criminal record.
Their replies will be included in a report to be prepared by Bray gardaí for the cold-case team. It will be reviewed and the next stage of the investigation put into action.
Ms McCarrick's disappearance has been one of the most high-profile unsolved crimes in the history of the State. She was one of a number of women who disappeared, presumed murdered, in the Leinster area in the 1990s.
In 1998, the then Garda commissioner Pat Byrne established Operation Trace to investigate possible links between six cases. No links were ever established.
When Ms McCarrick disappeared, the then US ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith made representations to president Mary Robinson, taoiseach Albert Reynolds and minister for justice Maíre Geoghegan-Quinn.
There followed one of the biggest missing persons investigations ever in Ireland. However, despite the investigation and an offer of a cash reward for information, nothing has ever emerged as to what happened to Ms McCarrick.