393: Secret Lover, Millionaire Brothers, & A Stalker | Who Took Annie McCarrick?

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Her parents tried in vain to find her.

“I would love, I would just love to be able to find her.”

I'm emotionally drained, but we've got to keep looking. We got to keep all.

Hey Drew Crane Besties. Welcome back to an all new episode of Seriously. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome back to an all new episode of Seriously With Me, your host Annie Lease, your true crime bestie, and I am here to break down another case for you today.

“Now before we get into this case, you got to do me a quick solid, okay? If you're watching this on YouTube, hit the like button, go ahead, oh wait, hit the like button, there you go.”

Now hit the subscribe button, and if you're following this on the podcast, make sure you are listening. If you're listening to this on the podcast, make sure that you're also following the podcast and that you're following. My second true crime podcast, 10 to life, because between the two of them, we put out episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and every other Friday. So you're going to want to make sure that you don't miss any of those between the two. Now let me talk to you about today's case, okay? I hate this word, but I'm going to say it. It's a very perplexing case, and the reason I hate that word is because I just feel like, I don't know, I just feel like it's not in my rotation of vocabulary, but it is very perplexing.

There is a lot going on within this case, and a lot of things that truthfully just don't make a whole lot of sense. And when I first started researching it, I kind of felt like, okay, I know where this is going, or I have a gut feeling of like, what truly happened. But then when I got to the point in my research of, okay, yeah, my gut feeling was right, it was actually completely wrong, and ended up being a red herring and not at all what the truth is in this case. And it's an international one, so you may not be familiar, but it is extremely interesting, fascinating, and obviously equally devastating. So I wanted to just jump right into it.

It all took place on March 28, 1993. Now, this was a day that was pretty typical for John and Nancy McCarrick. It was just, you know, a run of the mill usual Sunday, they were living in New York, but then it very quickly spiraled into a day that they would never forget. So like I said, it was a Sunday, and it was just two days before Nancy was set to fly to Dublin, Ireland, so that she could visit their one and only daughter 26 year old Annie. However, instead of spending that weekend relaxing, soaking up some time together before the trip, because it was only going to be Nancy traveling to Ireland, the two of them received a phone call that would change their lives forever.

“First, they thought that it might be one of Nancy's friends calling to wish her safe travels, possibly being like, hey, we know you're coming into town travel safely, Annie so excited to see you something to that degree, right?”

They thought that maybe it could even be Annie. It was an Ireland area code after all. It looked like it was an international call, so maybe it was Annie calling to talk through all the plans that they had for when her mother Nancy arrived.

So when they answered the call, something immediately felt off, because it wasn't Annie. Instead, it was one of her friends from Dublin, a man named Hillary Brady.

Now, from the moment that he introduced himself on this phone call, there was this instant just gut-level feeling that something wasn't right. Annie's friends, truthfully, had no reason to be calling her parents in New York, even if it was, to say, hey, we know you're coming into town, they didn't have that kind of relationship with her friends, so that wasn't making sense, they were just trying to make sense of seeing this phone call, right? But the truth was that if anything was going on, Annie would be the one to reach out, not her friends, so before he even really got into it, Nancy and John already knew. Something was definitely wrong, and unfortunately, that gut feeling was right, because Hillary told her parents that Annie was missing.

He just wanted to call her parents first so that they weren't blindsided by everything. Now, of course, Annie's parents immediately started trying to rationalize this situation, you know, what do you mean you don't know where she is?

“Could she kept gone somewhere and maybe just hasn't checked in with you guys, maybe she just didn't tell you her plans like, what do you mean, what is going on here?”

They didn't want to believe that this situation was as serious as it sounded, but Hillary made it clear.

He didn't think that this was a misunderstanding, not even close. And here's why, the day before, remember, he made this call on Sunday, so the day before on Saturday, Annie had plans with Hillary and with his girlfriend. They were supposed to have a dinner party at Annie's apartment, and this wasn't a last minute thing either, where it's like, oh yeah, come over tonight for dinner, well, hang out, this had been planned in advance. However, when Hillary and his girlfriend showed up to Annie's apartment, Annie wasn't there, and looked to play doubles advocate, some people may not think that that's a huge deal, right?

“Maybe it slipped Annie's mind, plans fell through, sometimes people are forgetful, things come up like, maybe it's not that serious of a situation, but Annie's friends knew her, and this, this was completely out of character.”

So they started digging a little bit deeper, and they reached out to Annie's two roommates to figure out when anybody had last seen or spoken with her.

And I say reached out because there are actually conflicting reports here when it comes to this detail, I've seen some sources say that they spoke to the roommates in person, while others say that it was over the phone, but either way, they got in contact with them, and both roommates told Hillary the same thing. The last time that they saw Annie was actually the day before on Friday, March 26th, so one day before the missed dinner party, and two days before Hillary made the phone call to the parents.

Now multiple sources say that that morning was pretty typical. She said goodbye to her roommates, because both of them were heading out of town for the weekend to go visit their families, and it seemed just kind of like, you know, you're run out of the mill morning, like, okay, see you guys later have a great weekend, like talk to you later, and another source says that one of those roommates left for work that morning at around 8. So that was the last time that she saw Annie when they exchanged those goodbyes. Now that same source though doesn't clarify where the second roommate was at that point in time, or what her plans were of what time she was going to leave, but she's like, I saw her at 8.50, that's when we said goodbye, check in with the second roommate for the exact details.

And there are some gaps when it comes to the exact timeline of the roommate's movements, but what we do know for sure is this. The last confirmed sighting of Annie was the morning of March 26th, that Friday, and before we do go any further, I want to just flag something really quickly. This case has a lot of conflicting information. Don't worry, I get that too, and I tried to like go through all of it to make as much sense as we possibly could, but there is a lot of conflicting information. That's just the truth of the matter.

And I don't know if that's because so much time has passed, or because the case got so much media attention that a lot of details started getting misreported, but there are definitely some inconsistencies across sources. So if you hear me say, you know, one source says A and the other source says B, that's intentional, because I'm just trying to keep this as accurate and as transparent as possible and give you all of the information. So then you can, you know, try to work through it in your own mind and make sense of this, but back to what Annie's roommates had told Hillary, because there was another detail that really stood out in all of this.

When they came back to the apartment, they said that they noticed grocery bags sitting on the kitchen counter and the groceries had been unpacked from these grocery bags and just left there in the open on the counter. And they immediately knew that these groceries were Annie's because she had been planning to go grocery shopping on Friday the 26th, but when they found the bags later that weekend when they returned days later, Annie wasn't there. The groceries were just sitting on top of the counter and it looked odd because these weren't just random items that you would unpack and leave out like a loaf of bread or crackers or apples, even.

Some of these groceries needed to be refrigerated and now days had gone by and they hadn't been refrigerated.

“They had been just left there, meaning they had been sitting there all weekend, which of course some of them would have gone bad by that point, right?”

And it also reminds me when I first got to this detail in the research, it reminded me a lot of Ellen Greenberg.

I'm sure you're familiar with that case. If you're not definitely a search it on my feed because it is a very interesting case that has a lot of red flags in my opinion, but Ellen, it was ruled that Ellen took her own life.

And when they found her, all of this fruit salad was still out, hadn't been touched, hadn't been eaten, the knife was still there on the plate had just been cut. And although this is a different circumstance because Annie didn't take her own life, it is similar, at least to me, what made me think it was similar and some parallels between the two is that there was this untouched food that shouldn't have been out there that is odd in this situation.

“And I, you know, maybe it's nothing but I just wanted to call it out in case you were thinking it as well, it just really rained true to me.”

And there's another point throughout this two, I was kind of like, oh, it's given a little bit of Ellen Greenberg vibes, but without the, you know, self-harm element. So anyway, we have this food that is left on the counter that has now gone bad, and not to mention, there's kind of that unspoken rule when you have roommates that you don't just leave your stuff all over shared spaces. And Annie really rang true to that rule. She wasn't messy. She got along very well with her roommates. There were no issues, no arguments about cleanliness, or being messy, nothing like that.

So this immediately stood out to them. So when they looked inside these grocery bags, they found a receipt. And this receipt was dated from Friday, the 26th. That last day that Annie was seen. And the timestamp on this receipt was 11 0 2 a.m. So now we have a timestamp and can really start building the timeline here. Now it's one thing to drop groceries off on the counter, then go run out maybe for another quick errand. Maybe you're running downstairs or upstairs or have where the layout is to grab the mail out of your complex and then you're coming right back.

I mean, that's fine. You drop it all off. You're unloading. You go run do something else, and then you're going to come back and finish, you know, unloading everything. Maybe you get distracted even and something comes up who knows. But to leave them sitting there for days. That definitely did not make sense. And then there was one more thing in all of this. Hillary realized that Annie hadn't shown up for her scheduled shift at work on Saturday. And this was also completely unlikely. Annie was extremely reliable. She showed up on time. She showed up to every shift. She didn't just skip work without notice.

“Not unless there was a very serious reason. So that really was the key detail that pushed Hillary from just this space of, you know, this is weird.”

Something's not making sense all the way to no something is definitely wrong here. So that's when he made that phone call to her parents. And after hearing all of this information, Nancy and John felt the exact same way. They knew their daughter and none of this behavior lined up with who she was.

And as a parent to you, I have to say, hearing that your child is missing, no matter how old they are and Annie was 26, that is still something that you never ever want to hear.

And to make it even worse, Nancy and John were all the way in New York. Annie and the people trying to find Annie were all the way across the world in Ireland. Imagine that panic and that fear of being so far away and just feeling helpless in those moments. This was their absolute worst nightmare because even though Annie was yes, technically an adult, she was their baby. She was their only child. And not to mention this all happened in March and she had just moved to Ireland permanently in January of that year.

Living there had really been a dream of hers as well, even when she was younger. She always talked about how she felt like she was meant to be somewhere else somewhere bigger.

And at the time, she didn't know that that place would ultimately be Ireland, but once she found it, everything clicked. It was like the stars aligned and everything fell into place.

Both Nancy and John also had deep Irish roots with extended family still living there. So Annie grew up with this kind of constant awareness of Ireland and the corners of her mind as well. This sense of connection and curiosity about where her family came from. And then when she finally visited as a teenager on a school trip, I mean, that was it. It was one of those moments where you see a place for the very first time and you just, you know, instantly know like, this is where I'm supposed to be.

“And I don't know if you've ever had one of those moments, I certainly have it was New York and that's why I moved to New York.”

The very first time I ever went there, I was like, this is where I belong. And this is where I meant to live, like, and I still feel that way, but due to personal reasons, I am here in California.

I have men not to derail, but just saying, you know, there is just kind of this gut feeling sometimes you get in of, you know, that's drawing you somewhere that it feels like that's where you're meant to be. And that's how Annie felt about Ireland. So after high school, she went and studied abroad at St. Patrick's College in Ireland, and there she completed her degree. She built a life there. She made close friends and she connected with family. She's the one to pulled all the roots out.

Went and saw my wife's relatives, my relatives, and she established this huge network. And by the time my wife and I got over there, it was, I felt that we were gone back home and really strange feeling.

But even then, though, the plan was always the same. Nothing had changed. She knew that after getting her master's, she was going right back to Ireland.

“So in 1993, Annie went back. This time planning to stay in Ireland permanently, not just as, you know, a student studying abroad.”

But even though she had only been living there a few months at this point, she was already building the life that she had always imagined. She was working two jobs. One is a waitress at the courtyard restaurant in Donniebrook, and another at a coffee shop called Cafe Java.

As I said to, she got along very well with her roommates. She very quickly built this large circle of friends, and she was fully immersed in life as a local.

The exact life that she had dreamed about for years. But while Annie was, yes, thriving there and enjoying life, not everyone in her family felt the same way.

“One source noted that her father, John, was not supportive of her decision to move to Ireland permanently.”

Apparently, he hated the idea of her living so far away, and he didn't agree with the move. I was very upset at this very upset. I guess it was one of the biggest family crises we've had. She wanted to go back to Ireland, and I was dead set against it. I thought she should get on with her life. You know, I thought she was at a high educational level and had time enough to do the flipping about that she loved to do, but off she went. Now, it's not entirely clear why John was so against Annie living in Ireland. Maybe it was as simple as not wanting his only child living far away in another country, you know, hours away if something ever went wrong.

“Maybe it was just him being a protective dad who knows, but her mom Nancy, on the other hand, she felt very differently.”

She could see how happy Annie was, and she could see the joy that Ireland brought her. She wanted that for her daughter. And in fact, when Annie left in January to make the permanent move to Dublin, John was so against the idea that he apparently did not even go to the airport to say goodbye. He later said that he just, you know, couldn't handle, quote, airport goodbye, but he didn't go. He didn't see his daughter off. And as I mentioned earlier, her mom Nancy had been planning this trip to Ireland to go visit Annie. And when I first came across that, I remember wondering why her dad, John also wasn't going on this trip.

But now looking at everything, you know, combined together, I think that maybe there was still not resentment, but like hard feeling. So he's like, no, I'm not going to go visit her. You go or maybe there was some sort of rift who knows, but it was only going to be Nancy going to Ireland. But even with that, even with the disagreement, I mean, still no matter what both John and Nancy loved their daughter. We don't know all of the details of their family dynamic, but I also do think it's very fair to assume that at least some of John's resistance came from a place of love and concern. So in that moment when they realized that Annie was truly missing, I mean, none of the other stuff mattered.

They packed their bags and they got to Ireland as quickly as they could, which I can't even imagine what that flight must have been like sitting there for hours, unable to relax, knowing that by the time you land your entire life could be completely turned upside down and just that growing fear and that feeling of helplessness during that entire flight. It's unbearable. It's just the worst. And sure enough, in their case, when they landed, their life was turned upside down, because not long after they landed, one of the most well-known missing persons investigations in Ireland was now underway.

Two days after that phone call from Hillary, on Tuesday, March 30, once John and Nancy now had arrived in Ireland, they went to the authorities in Dublin and they officially reported Annie missing. And from that moment on, what started as one young woman vanishing would slowly unravel into something much larger. Strange clues, conflicting stories, conflicting sightings, a serial killer theory and multiple disappearances that were tied to something called Ireland's vanishing triangle. And ultimately, it led to questions that even decades later still don't have answers.

Because the deeper that the investigators looked into Annie's disappearance, the less sense that it made.

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And he's disappearance didn't make sense for a multitude of reasons. First, she was a young attractive woman who had recently moved to Ireland chasing dreams of a home and dreams of belonging.

She was well liked social and had no known enemies. So there was no obvious reason for anybody to want to hurt her and cases like that tend to stick with people don't they it's easy to see yourself or somebody you know in a situation like that right. But beyond that I mean the details of her disappearance they were just strange so I want to walk through the timeline of where everything stood at this point and just keep in mind these details were not all clear right away. It took weeks months and in some cases even longer to piece this together. In some cases you see warning signs in the days or weeks even leading up to a disappearance, whether that's behavior changes fear or just your gut intuition telling you that something feels off.

That didn't seem to be the case here. On March 17th, Annie had attended a scene Patrick stay parade with her friends and she was her normal bubbly self. It was a big public event too she was seen by plenty of people and nothing stood out as unusual. No signs that she felt unsafe, no indication that she was being followed or watched. It was just a very regular day Thursday March 25th the day before the last sighting of Annie was also on eventful. Annie wasn't scheduled to work that day at cafe job, however she did stop by any way to see if her paycheck was ready. She was told that it wasn't and that she would need to come back the next day on the 26 to pick it up.

After that she went home and then she later met up with some friends of hers for dinner and it's unclear whether Hillary that same friend who later reported her missing was there for this dinner or not or if this was possibly a different group of friends remember I actually had a very large social circle so either is possible but she had dinner and then went to bed. When we get to Friday March 26th and this is where things start to get a little unclear. There are conflicting reports about her roommates which is incredibly frustrating because it is actually a very important detail knowing whether they were home all weekend or when they left to go out of town to visit their families and what that timeline looked like it could completely change how quickly concerns should have been raised in this situation.

It wasn't the last time that Annie was seen just before 11 a.m. Annie went to Allied Irish Bank on Sandy Mount Road not far from her apartment. The bank had luckily working security cameras and they captured footage of her standing in line. So this became the last confirmed footage of Annie before she disappeared. Now in this clip and I'm going to play it for you if you're watching the video version of this episode. She's standing there with her purse on her shoulder, her wallet in her hand and just looks completely normal.

Bank employees later told investigators that she was there to simply change her bank branch. Nothing unusual, nothing alarming. And honestly I think it would maybe be a little bit more alarming if she had been withdrawing all of her money or maybe doing something drastic. Then that would be a very different story but she wasn't. So she finished up at the bank and she left. Now from there based on the receipt that had been found in her apartment in that grocery bag investigators believe that she went to a nearby supermarket.

“Remember that receipt was timestamped at 11 a.m.”

And the store itself was only a few hundred yards from both the bank and her apartment. So at this point it seems like she was just moving through her neighborhood checking off her list of errands. Going to the bank, going to the grocery store, going back to her apartment, which might not seem very important, but it actually does tell us something. She didn't travel very far. She was also in a very familiar and populated area. Another detail is she was on foot. Meaning she didn't get followed home by somebody who saw her on public transportation or somebody following a car that she was in.

And all of these neighboring errands were nearby each other so she wasn't walking alone for a long period of time either. Now at some point during all of this, Annie stopped at a phone booth and she called a friend of hers named Anne. And she asked Anne if she wanted to go for a walk later that afternoon, which remember this was 1993. So using a phone booth completely normal.

“That's what people did. They didn't have cell phones, but Anne told her that she couldn't go.”

That she had hurt her ankle and that she could barely walk, which that detail ended up being really significant in all of this. Because even though it doesn't give us an exact timeline, it shows that Annie was planning to go somewhere. Somewhere beyond just running errands and then heading home, she was going to go to a local destination to go for a walk. She had told Anne that she wanted to go to the Wicklow Mountains just south of Dublin. And it's a very popular spot for day trips and it was actually one of Annie's favorite places to go whenever she wanted to get outside.

So at this point, everything still seems pretty normal. However, this is where things start to shift.

Now at first, I wondered if investigators thought that maybe something had happened to Annie at her apartment.

Maybe somebody had followed her home, maybe something happened inside, maybe that would explain why these groceries were left sitting out. Maybe somebody was helping her carry them up and then blitz attacked her or when she was going back to get another bag outside or something to bring in. Maybe something happened who knows. But the point being, I thought, okay, maybe the investigators think that whatever happened happened inside her apartment.

“And that's why even though refrigerated groceries were left on the counter.”

But as I looked deeper into the case, that's not what the investigators believed. Because as strangers those groceries may seem, they actually think that the explanation is something much simpler. Who knows what was going through our mind and perhaps we all do things like that that we stick a bag on the ground and say, I must start that out in a few minutes and then something else distracts you. Now from here on out, the timeline becomes much less concrete and it really relies heavily on eyewitness accounts.

And as we'll get into in a little bit here, those accounts, they're not always the most reliable.

But according to multiple witnesses, Annie was seen getting on a bus at around 340 p.m. And she was apparently heading toward the Wicklow Mountains, where she wanted to go for that walk. And the same place that she had told her friend Anne that she was planning to go. But that's where the trail ends. Sort of. There are additional eyewitness reports placing Annie in other locations, but from what I can tell, investigators don't really consider those sightings very credible. The only eyewitness account that they do put weight on is the one placing her on the bus heading toward the mountains. So yeah, it's a little confusing, but that's also the reality of this case.

Now based on what we know, if something happened to Annie, it likely happened after she got on that bus.

And there are a couple of reasons for that. First, she was seeing heading toward the mountains, and it's believed that she had gotten there safely. She arrived there as planned.

Well, she never went back into grab her check, which that strikes me as pretty odd because she went to the bank that morning.

And if you were going to. I guess like if you're changing branches, maybe you're going to wait to pick up the check and then do it once that change is made.

“But I would think that you're doing like financial errands. You're probably going to want to pick up that check as well, right?”

I don't know, but anyway, they do believe that she arrived safely there at that point to the mountains. And when you're dealing with an area like the Wicklow Mountains, this isn't just a quick or simple search. The park spans roughly 80 square miles in enormous amount of ground to try and cover when you're looking for one person. That didn't stop people from trying. Search efforts ramped up very quickly. Volunteers came out in very large numbers.

Dublin Mountain Rescue got involved. People who knew the terrain and could navigate it effectively got involved and her parents were there too.

“I'm emotionally drained, but we've got to keep looking and got to keep open. That's all we, you know, all we can do, that's what I think a father and what I have to do, you know.”

We won't give up all four weeks. Search teams combed through this area. Holding on to hope that each day might bring a breakthrough, a clue, or better yet any herself. Today hundreds of volunteers turned up to try to find some trace of any mechanic. The search was directed by the Dublin Mountain Rescue Service who left people in no doubt about how grave the situation was. You're searching for a missing person today in whatever shape or form that may take. You're also looking for any item of either clothing or I believe Annie had a large shoulder bag.

Now I want to go back to something that you heard in that clip for a second.

From the very beginning of this case and even years later, Annie's handbag became a major point of focus because it was never found.

“And that really mattered in all of this because the investigators believed that if Annie had been taken and her bag hadn't been discarded somewhere,”

that there was a possibility that whoever took her kept her handbag as some sort of trophy or souvenir. And that's something that they actively shared with the public too, asking people to keep an eye out. Because when you really do think about it, if somebody recognized that bag somewhere in a house and apartment anywhere, it could potentially crack the entire case wide open. And I want you to just keep that detail in mind, the handbag of it all because we are going to come back to it. Now shortly after Annie disappeared, a man came forward with a tip.

Now he wasn't even sure if this tip was relevant or if he even had the right person, but it was something that had been bothering him enough that he felt like he needed to just say something. Just in case, just in case materialized into something helpful.

This man worked as a door man, basically like a bouncer, but a door man is like the technical term, and he worked at a pub called Johnny Foxes pub.

It's located about 30 minutes south of Sandy Mount. Now he claimed that on the night of March 26th, that Friday night, around 9pm, he saw a woman who matched the exact description of Annie. He said that the woman who he believed was Annie was inside the pub that night. But the part that really stopped these investigators in their tracks was this. She wasn't alone. She was there with a man. Finding the right doctor can feel like a full time job. So much so if you're like me, you like put it off and don't go for years.

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And select podcast in the survey and select our show and the drop down menu that follows. That skims.com, and you can also go to skims.com/anny. So according to the door man, this woman, who he believed was Annie, was at this pub with a man. He said that the two of them appeared to be together, that they were watching a show and also a traditional Irish dance performance that was happening that night. And he said that the man paid for both of their tickets and their drinks and that they stayed for roughly two hours.

However, that timeline isn't exact, though, because no one actually saw them leave. Not together, not separately, not at all. At some point, they were just gone. So the door man described this man as white, having sandy brown hair, and a noticeably square jaw. He estimated that he was between 5 a and 5 10 and likely in his mid to late 20s, which would be around Annie's age.

Remember, she was 26. So the investigators took this tip very seriously. I mean, it fit within the timeline, and no one had seen Annie the following day on March 27. So whether something happened to her in the mountains or after leaving the mountains and going to this pub or after leaving this pub, it seemed increasingly likely that whatever had happened to her must have happened on Friday the 26.

So naturally, the investigators started asking, "Okay, well, who was this man?" Because from the door man's account, it didn't sound casual.

“It sounded like the two of them were on a date, right?”

The guy was paying, he bought the tickets, they were having some drinks, they stayed together for hours. It wasn't just two people randomly crossing paths or meeting in the pub that night. But as far as Annie's friends knew, she didn't have a boyfriend. In fact, they weren't even aware that she was actively dating anyone. However, that said, one of her friends did admit that they couldn't quote "guarantee" that she wouldn't see a man in secret,

especially if it was something new. Meaning, look, it didn't seem like she was dating anybody, she didn't seem like she was actively on the dating scene. Then again, if it was somebody she had just met or if it was something new, maybe she wanted to keep it, you know, low profile, the M&C girl at sea, if it really meant anything before she shared the news with us. Which, I think that makes a lot of sense.

It's entirely possible that this was somebody that she had just started seeing, somebody that she hadn't mentioned to her friends yet. But no matter how much the investigators dug into this tip,

they were never able to identify this man.

Also, nobody ever came forward to say, "Oh, that was me." Or that was my friend that you saw, which really only made things more unsettling. Because this case was widely covered. It was all over the place. So many people were involved in the searches.

The media was picking it up. It was a very high profile case. So if that sighting had been a mistake and if it wasn't any, you would expect somebody to come forward and clear it up. And be like, "No, that was actually me and my friend Johnny, we were there that night."

“Or, "Oh, no, I think that was so and so."”

Or that was me, like, but nobody was doing that. Nobody was coming forward to correct the information of this tip, which, like I said, was unsettling. Does that mean that it really was Annie? Now, there are a few possible explanations for the silence.

I will say that. One is that the woman really was Annie, as I just said. Another is that the man just simply didn't want to get involved with the police. Whether he was innocent or not. Or possibly even that the door man's memory wasn't as accurate as maybe it seemed.

But ultimately, none of the information was confirmed.

Search teams even canvas to the area all around the pub, working under the assumption that the sighting could be legitimate, but they came up and dehanded. So then Annie's parents decided to take matters into their own hands. And that's when they hired a private investigator named Brian McCarthy, and what Brian claimed to find.

It didn't line up with the official investigation at all. According to Brian, after conducting his own extensive investigation, he didn't believe that Annie was ever at that pub in the first place.

Our own investigations have established that the sighting of her and the pub was a case of mistaken identity. This new information would tally with our belief that she didn't go to the pub.

“Which, honestly, that statement is really difficult to evaluate.”

Because the truth is, he never fully explained how he came to that conclusion.

He never explained what proof he had that shows that she was never in the pub or the proof that it was the case of mistaken identity. I mean, he never shared that information. So what did he uncover that the investigators didn't, especially considering how thoroughly the authorities had already

canvased the pub and the surrounding areas? Which, to this day, we still don't know who that man was whether the woman that was seen that night was Annie at all. And despite all of these efforts, the authorities, the private investigator, Annie's family and friends, hundreds of volunteers,

there were very few meaningful updates. Weeks turned into months and then months turned into years. I'm emotionally drained, but we've got to keep looking and got to keep open. That's all we can do.

“That's what I think a father and mother have to do.”

We won't give up hope.

Now this entire time, Annie's case remained classified as a missing person's case,

or missing person's investigation rather, which was obviously incredibly difficult for her family. Because they believed that the reality of the situation was far more serious that Annie had been taken and that she had likely been killed, but without a body, the investigators couldn't officially treat this as a homicide.

And like I said, months went by and years went by. And by the late 1990s, Annie's case was still being talked about, but for a very different reason. What people didn't initially realize was that Annie wasn't the only woman to disappear under suspicious circumstances from that area.

Between 1993 and 1998, six to eight women vanished within an 80 mile radius of Dublin. And I say six to eight because there are six core cases that are consistently cited around this situation. There's Annie.

There's a woman named Jojo Dullard. Fiona Pender. Fiona Sinot. Sierra Kira. Kira Breen.

And Dejra Jacob.

“Now each of these women disappeared under circumstances”

that didn't sit right with the investigators. Some cases received media attention. Others barely made the headlines at all. But for years, no one was connecting them. But then that changed once people started looking at all of these cases together.

And when they did, the media quickly gave it a name. Ireland's vanishing triangle. Now there are two additional women. Eva Breenen and Emelda Keenan. Some who believe should have been included in that group that was named.

But for the purposes of today's episode, I'm going to exclude them. Since the investigators themselves did not officially group them into the same pattern. In most sources, the number stays at six, not eight. But what makes these cases so unsettling is this.

All of these women disappeared under very strange and unexplained circumstances. And none of them have been found. So just like in Annie's case, investigators would examine the places that these women were last believed to have been and there was rarely anything useful left behind. No clear evidence, no obvious trail.

They were just gone. Now I want to make a couple of things clear about the vanishing triangle theory.

First, this wasn't just some internet theory that people stitched together years later.

The investigators themselves genuinely consider the possibility that a serial killer could be responsible here. In fact, they took it seriously enough that in 1998, they created a task force called Operation Trace. Now, it's purpose was to examine the six disappearances together as one larger investigation. Again, excluding the cases of Eva and Emela. And I'll be honest, as I was researching each of these cases,

could truly be its own full episode. But for the purposes of Annie's case, I do just want to briefly go through each woman and what happened. The first woman to disappear was Annie. And as you know, we've already covered how strange and unsettling her case was. But then, in July of 1995, Jojo vanished while traveling from Dublin to Calen.

A witness saw her leaning against the back of a dark colored Toyota, talking to the driver. But neither the driver nor the car was ever identified. And Jojo seemingly just disappeared into thin air. Then, in August of 1996, Fiona Pender went missing after she was last seen by her boyfriend leaving her home. She was seven months pregnant at the time.

Unlike the others, her disappearance left behind almost no clues.

a makeshift cross was found in the woods that had a note that read Fiona Pender buried here. August 22nd, 1996.

“Now, investigators didn't believe that it was a hoax or just some cruel prank.”

They genuinely thought that whoever was responsible for her disappearance must have placed this cross here. And that they were the one responsible for Fiona's death and disappearance. But then, after searching the area and searching this, you know, what appeared to be a grave site, they found nothing. And one of the strangest parts within all of that is that that no listed August 22nd as the date of her death, even though Fiona was last seen on the 23rd.

So, I don't know, to me, it does sound maybe like a hoax, but like I said, investigators didn't see it that way. They certainly took it seriously. Then, in 1998, another young woman named Fiona disappeared. Fiona synowed. She was just 19 years old and she was the mother of an 11-month-old baby.

The night before she vanished, she had been at a pub with her ex. He also was the father of her daughter, and they were there with some friends too.

“Everyone eventually went their separate ways, except for her ex, who stayed over and slept on the couch.”

And he later said that when he left the following morning, Fiona was still in bed and talking about making a doctor's appointment. But no one ever saw her again. Also, in 1998, 17-year-old Sierra went missing. According to her mother, the two of them had gone to sleep around midnight, but when she woke up a few hours later, he used the bathroom.

Sierra was gone. And the last woman was Deedra Jacob. She disappeared in the summer of 1998.

Witnesses saw her walking just yards from her parent's house, but she never made it inside.

Now on paper, it sounds like a positive thing that these investigators brought these cases together and started looking at them through the lens of one offender. That there is one perpetrator responsible for all of this. But the reality was, it didn't suddenly just blow the case wide open.

“The theory linking all of these cases together was mostly based on geography.”

The fact that these women all disappeared within a relatively close radius of Dublin. And the fact that none of them were ever found. But beyond that, there really wasn't some huge common thread tying all of them together. These were different women in different stages of life. Some mothers, some mothers to be.

Some young, 17-26, that's a pretty big swing. I mean, they all had different circumstances too surrounding their disappearances. It's not like they were all last seen at the same pub, or on the same street, or seen with the same unidentified man. So while the theory was, yes, absolutely worth exploring,

I don't know whether labeling these women as part of Ireland's vanishing triangle was ultimately a blessing or a curse. Because once you go public with a theory like that, a theory that there might be a serial killer targeting women, I mean, people are going to be terrified. Even worse, for years, even after Operation Trace was launched in 1998, there were still very few updates in any of the cases, including Annie's.

And this was for years, then in 2009, Annie's father John passed away. And I know that I say this a lot, but there is just something especially heartbreaking about a parent dying without ever knowing what happened to their child. Looking for our own piece of mind, we almost have to believe that somehow somewhere they've been reunited

and that they finally have the answers that they had never received.

But it's devastating to think about. And that also brings me back to Ellen Greenberg's case. Her parents luckily are still alive, but they are getting older and they have expressed that fear that they may pass without ever knowing what happened to their daughter. It's horrible to think about. And as I mentioned earlier, Annie was an only child.

So after Annie disappeared, and then after John passed away, from other Annie was the only one left to keep pushing Annie's case forward. And I have to say to her credit, she really did. She continued speaking publicly, continued advocating, and she did whatever she could to keep Annie's name in the conversation and to keep the investigation alive. In fact, Nancy said that for the first time in a long time, she actually felt like she had a voice in Annie's case,

that the Irish police, the Guardian, were finally listening to her.

Nancy was quoted as saying, "At the time, Ireland was very patriarchal." And both the media and the police were only interested in listening to what John had to say. I got used to it very quickly, and I would just sit in a waiting room while he did all the interviews. Then, as years went on, Nancy became more and more involved, and she even helped with a documentary called Missing Beyond the Vanishing Triangle.

But that wasn't the end of the story. For decades, Annie's case went nowhere.

After more than 30 years, everything changed. Clues about a major piece of evidence resurfaced.

And now, her case was upgraded to murder. And after that, the police finally arrested a suspect.

But what happened after that only makes this case more frustrating? Let me paint the picture for you, okay? You get home. You're exhausted, but you're hungry.

“You know that you should eat something healthy, but you just don't have it in you to, you know, muster up the energy to cook.”

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“As I said, Annie's case had gone unsolved for decades, but in 2023, there was major news involving one very important piece of evidence.”

Annie's handbag. A woman came forward to the authorities claiming that a man had messaged her on social media and he told her that he had found the bag that Annie was last seen caring all of those years ago. And even more than that, he said that he had turned it into the police, which that is a huge claim. You have found this bag, you've turned it into the police, a bag that they had been looking for through their all of their search efforts. I mean, especially because he said that he found it back in 1993.

Now, his name has never been made public, but according to reports, he said that he found the bag at Kylie's pub in Donniebrook.

This is a different pub from the one that she was reportedly seen at by that door man. But he said that he was at this pub, he was there with the friend, and he found this bag and he claimed he looked inside to see whether there was any identifying information, thinking that maybe the owner was still nearby, and he said that he saw multiple bank cards with Annie's name on them. So he then said that he turned this bag over to the police. So naturally, that triggered a major review in this case, because if that story was true, if Annie's bag had actually been handed over to the police way back in 1993.

Thirty years ago, then somehow it had never made its way to the investigative team that was working Annie's disappearance, that is massive. Now, of course, it's also possible that this guy was a creep, and he was making this entire thing up, which as awful as that would be. People do insert themselves into cases all the time. It happens way more times than you would think, and it's unnerving. But either way, in 2023, the authorities began trying to track down as many of the officers who had worked Annie's case back then as possible, hoping that someone might remember something.

But by that point, thirty years had passed. So many of those officers had died, and the ones who were still alive, they didn't remember anything useful.

“And honestly, the truth is that if the bag really had been turned in, but it was never flagged as important at the time, then it may have just been treated as some sort of insignificant item.”

And I don't know many people that would be able to recall the details of a seemingly insignificant day at work from three decades earlier. Like, you know, if today if somebody dropped off, you know, whatever, a purse, and they said they found it outside in the planter. And I was like, oh, okay, but like, if I thought it was insignificant or if I didn't tie it to anything, even though you would hope that the police would have realized it significance. I can't imagine that in thirty years if somebody's like, hey, do you remember that day in 2026?

Somebody brought a, you know, you're now, God, how old do I be? Almost, I'd be with God Annie. Can you do math? I'd almost be 70 years old.

If they're like, do you remember that day in 2026 when you found that handbag? And I'd be like, no, it was insignificant like at the time. I don't recall that. So it makes sense that the officers who were still, I've may not have been able to recall that information. But what's wild and all of this is that I couldn't find any real update on where that bag investigation ultimately landed.

“And honestly, I can believe either possibility in this, okay, one being that the man possibly fabricated the story or two that he really did turn it into the police and they just completely dropped the ball.”

But either way, whichever scenario is true, we don't know, but something even more significant happened in 2023 because Annie's case was officially upgraded from a missing person's case to a murder inquiry. Nancy had said that for years, a part of her head held onto this tiny unrealistic hope that one day Annie would somehow be found alive and that there would be some sort of miracle explanation for where she had been all of this time. After her case was upgraded to murder, she told the media that she no longer believed that what she still did believe though was that the case could be solved.

Whatever did before her, I mean, it may have been accidental, you know, so I would love, I would just love to be able to find her.

And then in 2025, there was another major development on June 12th, 2025, something happened in Annie's case that had never happened before.

The 62-year-old businessman has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of Annie McCarrick, the 26-year-old American woman went missing in 1993. Gardy are also searching a house in Klandoke and in Dublin as part of the investigation. So when a rest had finally been made, and this was huge, something that Annie's loved once had been waiting in hoping for for more than 30 years. And like you heard in that news clip, the person who was arrested was a 62-year-old man. So he would have been, yes, somewhat older than Annie when she disappeared, though, not by a huge margin.

I mean, 30 years ago, he would have been 32 years old, she was 26, like, not a huge swing. Now, the people who owned the property being searched were not believed to have any sort of connection to Annie's case. But investigators clearly believed that they were going to find something there in that search. Authorities searched to the scene. They even went so far as to temporarily restrict the airspace above the home, so that no drones or anything else could fly over.

“I mean, that's how serious this search was.”

Now, here's what we know about the man who was arrested, which, honestly, isn't much.

His name hasn't been made public. But the investigators said that he had been, quote, "well known" to Annie since the late 1980s. And that detail is interesting, because it suggests that this could have been someone that Annie met during her earlier time in Ireland. When she went there the first time to get her bachelor's degree in college. Remember, she had only been back living there permanently for a few months before she disappeared in 1993.

And she had gone back to the United States to complete her masters. So, if it's somebody that she knew in the 1980s, my initial thought was, "okay, could it be family? We know she had extended family there."

But if it was somebody that she had only had exposure to since the 1980s, it aligns with the timeline of that first stint in college when she went to Ireland.

Now, what's also unusual is that this man didn't actually live at the house that was being searched. His parents did. So now, you have even more questions, right? We don't know his name. We don't know why the investigators were so confident that searching his parents' house would lead to evidence, but they were.

And understandably, the lack of information had the public spiraling, because this was a very high profile case. And people wanted information, and now that they weren't sharing information, people were theorizing, people were getting upset, even though it's not unusual for investigators to keep details close to the vest in a case like this. But the house that they're searching in Klandokan. I mean, obviously, very carefully, the family that lived there in our absolutely no connection.

Well, it's been extensively renovated.

“When workers come on in the house, how much optimism can they be really that something significant will be found?”

Well, as well as the guard, they will be saying that they're doing their job. They have, you know, there's obviously a reason their church shows in this house. And as you say, it's important that the current tenants know where connected to Annie or her disappearance. But they obviously feel that there is reasonable grounds to move into this house, to seal it off, to do quite an invasive search of the house and the back garden. Like, there's equipment for, you know, coding concrete.

There's many digger in there. There's, you know, they will, they will have to do what they want to do and what they need to do to try and get evidence, which could lead to, to some answers about where Annie is and exactly what happened to her.

24 hours later, he was released.

Now, I can't even imagine what that moment must have felt like for her mother Nancy thinking that she was about to finally receive answers.

Maybe even find out where Annie was, only to have that hope pulled away almost immediately. When the arrest first happened, investigators emphasized that after upgrading the case in 2023, they had gone back through everything with fresh eyes. Conducting new interviews, re-examining old leads, and that that process had ultimately led them to this man. So it sounded like they had been building a case against him for quite some time before even making the arrest. So when then the news came out that he was released 24 hours later, it raised more questions like, "Okay, well, what has changed?"

If you've been looking at this guy for the last two years building your case, re-examining things, interviewing more people, and now you finally made the arrest.

“Well, it seems like there was a lot of work done leading to that point, but now you're going to release him? What's going on?”

Also, because based on what's been reported, it seems like the investigators believed that they had enough evidence to make an arrest. And that the search of his parents' home would potentially uncover evidence or even Annie's remains, essentially confirming the case that they had built. However, when that search didn't turn up any remains, it appears that they didn't have enough evidence to formally charge him. Now, I will say that last part is based on interpretation, because again, very little has been officially confirmed, which that's the part that makes this so incredibly frustrating.

As of now, that arrest in June of 2025, that's the last major public update. Since then, it's been quiet. Now, it's possible that the man who was arrested does have some sort of connection to Annie's disappearance, and it's possible that the investigators are continuing to work behind the scenes to build a stronger case.

“Or it's also possible that they've realized that they were on the wrong track, so now they're looking in a completely different direction, and that's why he was released.”

And then there's the bigger question in all of this. The question that still lingers all over this case is, "What does this mean for the vanishing triangle?" Could he be connected to the other disappearances? I mean, that theory dominated the headlines for years. There have been books, documentaries, endless speculation about whether one person could be responsible for multiple disappearances. So now you have this arrest in Annie's case. Then a release, no real clarity on how or if that connects to the other women.

So is the serial killer theory something that the investigators are still actively considering? Are they considering that this guy could be that serial killer? Or is Annie's case now being treated as something entirely separate? We don't know because they haven't shared. I mean, in a perfect world, the silence from the investigators would mean that they're close, right? The answers are coming, not just for Annie, but for the other women as well, and that they just don't want to tip their hand. And if that is the case, then that means that their families will finally be able to bring them home and get some kind of peace.

But the reality is, we just don't know if that is where this is headed at all.

Whatever did before her, I mean, it may have been accidental, you know? So I would love, I would just love to be able to find her. Yeah, Annie's case is heartbreaking from beginning to end. People always say, you know, time heals all wounds, just give it time, you'll move on, it'll be fine.

“But in cases like this, where there are no answers, no closure, no clues, no evidence, it almost makes it feel like time just makes the questions louder and kind of like opens the wound all over again, you know?”

I don't know, I'm curious to know what you guys think, do you think that this man is their guy and that it's kind of like a very more few situation where they're going to drop the charges or they're going to in his case, they're rotiner in this case. I should say they're releasing him because they don't have enough evidence and they don't want to fumble the charges, the investigation, the trial and so there's waiting for more evidence and they didn't find any at his parents house. Obviously, they must have had enough probable cause to get the warrant to search the house, so is it they just don't have enough to get the guy yet?

Do we think this is the guy? Do we think this is the guy who's also responsible for the other disappearances? Is he a serial predator? Like, I don't know. I don't want to obviously accuse someone who's innocent, but at the same time, I have to think if they made this connection to him and said that there was connection from the 80s, which aligns with her college years. They think it was someone she knew that they had enough evidence to get the warrant to search the property. They had enough evidence to, you know, make the arrest to begin with after investigating from 2023 onward, I would think this is their guy.

So, curious to know what you guys think and have you heard of this case, especially those of you who I know are in Ireland and live in Ireland, what do you think about this case? What do you believe?

Let me know in the comments section on YouTube or if you're listening to the audio version of this, let me know in the Spotify section. I'm curious to know your thoughts and, you know, for those of you who are listening on Apple, I'm not going to discard you, let me know in the review section.

“What do you think is the truth here and who do you think is responsible?”

All right, guys, thank you so much for hearing any story today. I really appreciate it. Let's pray, okay?

Let's pray that her mother Nancy gets answers before she passes away, so that she can finally rest and take a deep breath and just breathe after 30 years of uncertainty.

“It is the most excruciating kind of pain I think that I can even imagine. It's awful and it is so freaking heartbreaking.”

Okay, guys, I will be back on the mic with you this Thursday with an all new episode of headline highlights and if you feel like you need even more content this week to listen to whether you're on your commute or your cleaning or you're working out whatever it is, as a reminder, tomorrow.

This episode will release on my other true crime podcast feed, 10 to life, one zero to life. So if you haven't listened to that yet and you haven't started following it yet, totally free.

“You can listen to it wherever you get your podcasts, go over after this episode, type it into your podcast app, press the button, make sure you're following it, so that way you get that episode as well.”

All right, guys, until the next one, be nice, don't kill people, watch your back and just stay safe. Bye. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

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