Missing by Barry Cummins Read Free Book Online Page B

caught and convicted for her murder. The other man who knew both Marilyn and Annie was out of the loop. It was just a bizarre
     coincidence.
    The Garda investigation extended to the Continent, where a former employer of Annie’s was travelling at the time. He had no information with which to help the
Gardaí. Within weeks of Annie’s disappearance, John McCarrick decided to hire a private investigator to help find his daughter. The investigator, Brian McCarthy, had been recommended
by an official at the US Embassy in Dublin. However, he also failed to turn up any solid leads. Detective-Inspector (now Chief Superintendent) Martin Donnellan said the search for Annie was
exhaustive.
    We carried out massive searches on foot, inch-by-inch physical searches. We chased up leads right around the country, such as when a lorry driver came forward to say he gave
     a woman matching Annie’s description a lift from Mount Juliet in Kilkenny to Waterford. There were other reported sightings in Cork. Any person who we knew had a history of sexual
     assaults was looked at. A pet cemetery in Enniskerry was also searched, and indeed there were numerous searches throughout north Co. Wicklow. Right from the start, Annie’s case was
     treated like a murder investigation. A retired superintendent from Scotland Yard came over at John McCarrick’s request, and he reviewed the file. He was satisfied with the scope of our
     investigation. But, at the end of the day, Annie is still out there somewhere.
    In June 1997 new information was given to detectives about suspicious activity seen near Enniskerry on the day Annie McCarrick had vanished four years before. A decision was
taken that a pet cemetery near Enniskerry should be searched. The search, involving twenty gardaí, began on the morning of Monday 16 June. Gardaí from the Forensic Science and
Ballistics sections were on hand to provide guidance on the unpalatable but crucial job of searching through the graves. The information given to the Gardaí consisted of a report of a large
box being buried at the pet cemetery shortly after Annie McCarrick had disappeared. As word spread of the search, two men contacted the Gardaí. They told detectives they had buried a
greyhound in the cemetery in late March 1993. The men’s story was borne out when the remains of the dog were unearthed a short time later. By one o’clock the following afternoon, the
search of the pet cemetery was completed. There were no new leads.
    Annie McCarrick wanted to be a teacher. When she arrived again in Ireland in January 1993 she planned to get any job to tide her over and then to begin studying for the higher diploma in
education, which would allow her to teach in secondary schools. When she started her studies in 1988 she went to St Patrick’s Training College in Drumcondra. As part of her studies she worked
as a junior assistant teacher at Our Lady of Victories National School in Ballymun. She absolutely loved it: she loved the interaction with the children, who were in turn fascinated by
Annie’s tales of New York. She later studied at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, entering in the second year of a course in which she studied sociology and English. It was here she met
Geraldine Delaney, a fellow-student, who is now a teacher in a secondary school in Palmerstown, Co. Dublin, the kind of job that Annie McCarrick would have happily ended up doing, and that she
should be doing now. Geraldine Delaney has many fond memories of Annie McCarrick.
    Annie was an only child, and so was I, so we had a particular bond. Annie was what you’d call a real Celtic woman. She wore lovely cloaks and knitwear. And she was
     such a reliable person—even to the extent that when we studied in the reading room in the Arts Block in Maynooth, if Annie took a break she’d write on a note the time she had left.
     She’d leave the note on top of her books. She was that reliable, that predictable. I also visited her in New