Ireland's Vanishing Triangle

Ireland's Vanishing Triangle[1][2][3] is a term commonly used in the Irish media when referring to a number of high-profile disappearances and murders of Irish women in the mid-to-late 1990s. Several other women were also murdered within the triangle and their cases remain unsolved as well.[4] All of the cases appeared to share some common characteristics. The women's ages range from their late-teens to late-30s, they disappeared inexplicably and suddenly, and no substantial clues or evidence of their fate has ever been found despite large scale searches and campaigns by the Irish police force to find them. Police believe their remains are likely to be buried in remote fields, bogs and forests. The triangle is in the eastern part of the island, roughly the boundaries of Leinster, in an 80-mile area outside Dublin.[1]

Due to similarities in the cases, a popular hypothesis is that they may be the result of a serial killer or killers being active in the area during this period.[1] The cases of these missing women feature in the Irish media periodically and the disappearances have been the subject in a number of unsolved crime documentaries.[5] Irish police set up an investigation task force in 1998 to focus on the unsolved disappearances and homicides, but to date this has failed to turn up any substantial clues as to the fate of the women despite a €10,000 reward offered for information resulting in the recovery of a body.[1]

Victims

Missing
  • Annie Bridget McCarrick, 26, of Long Island, New York, was living in Sandymount, County Dublin when she went missing on March 26, 1993.[6][7] The last confirmed sighting of her was at a post office in Enniskerry, County Wicklow. However, there was an unconfirmed sighting of her outside Johnnie Fox's Pub in Glencullen, County Dublin. This sighting was by a doorman of the pub who said she was with an unknown man.[8] They left the lounge of Johnny Fox's Pub and entered the cabaret room where the unknown man paid for both of them to enter. McCarrick had invited her friend, Hilary Brady and his girlfriend, Rita Fortune to dinner at her apartment the next day.[9] When McCarrick was not there, they contacted her parents in New York and she was reported missing. McCarrick's parents, John and Nancy McCarrick arrived in Ireland shortly after their daughter was reported missing, but left after a six-month long unsuccessful search for McCarrick.[10] A private investigator hired by McCarrick's father believes McCarrick was never at Johnnie Fox's Pub on the night of her disappearance based on another sighting of McCarrick. The witness who worked at a small coffee shop called Poppies claimed she saw McCarrick with an unidentified man on the afternoon of her disappearance. The man left with McCarrick. On March 24, 2023, authorities announced that they upgraded her missing persons case into a murder inquiry.[11][12]
  • Eva Brennan, 39, of Rathgar, County Dublin, went missing on July 25, 1993. She was depressed at the time and she disappeared when she left a family lunch at her parents’ house after a small argument in Terenure, Dublin. Brennan's father went to her apartment because she had not come to the family home for two days. He rang the door bell. He then went over to the Horse and Hound Pub which the Brennan family owned and asked a barman to come over and they broke a window to get in. The jacket she had worn on the day she was last seen was there, so Brennan must have gone back to her apartment that day.[13][14] There was no initial Gardaí investigation known to the family for around three months. The Brennan family have criticised the Gardaí on how they dealt with Brennan's disappearance. When last seen Brennan was wearing a pink tracksuit and leggings, she wore a man's wristwatch with a brown strap and carried a red leatherette handbag about 8"x10" with a flap to the front.
  • Imelda Keenan, 22, of Mountmellick, County Laois, was living in Waterford City, County Waterford when she disappeared on January 3, 1994. She had initially gone to stay with one of her brothers in Cobh, County Cork, but left after a short while when she went to stay with two other brothers in Waterford City. She was living with her boyfriend, Mark Wall, and they both lived in an apartment in the town on William Street. Keenan attended the Central Technical Institute in Waterford where she undertook a computer course for a short period. Keenan told Wall that she was going to the post office. Keenan left the apartment at 1:30 p.m. and walked down William Street onto Lombard Street. The last confirmed sighting of Keenan is at this time when she was seen crossing the road by a local doctor's secretary who knew her well. The secretary and a friend observed Keenan crossing the road at the corner of the Tower Hotel and Lombard Street. She was never seen again.[15]
  • Josephine "JoJo" Dullard, 21, of Callan, County Kilkenny, was living in Harold's Cross, County Dublin when she went missing on November 9, 1995. She had recently dropped out of a beauty therapy course after finding it very difficult to juggle work and college. On the day she disappeared, she was planning on moving home to Callan. She had missed her bus home to Callan and had to take a bus to Naas, County Kildare instead. She disappeared in the Moone area of Kildare. She was hitchhiking home from Dublin to Kilkenny. She had been driven from the Dublin area to Kilcullen, County Kildare and then from Kilcullen to Moone. She was last seen using a payphone and through telephone records, police found out the call was made at 11:37 p.m. to Dullard's friend, Mary Cullinan. She ended the call as she was about to enter another car. There was also an unconfirmed sighting of her walking along the road in Castledermot, County Kildare. The driver of the car has never been identified.[16]
  • Fiona Pender, 25, of Tullamore, County Offaly, went missing on August 23, 1996. She was last seen leaving her ground-floor apartment by her boyfriend, John Thompson, in Tullamore.[17] Pender was seven months pregnant at the time of her disappearance. Fiona left her passport, clothing and credit cards behind. However, there were no signs of a struggle found in the apartment and it is believed that she left of her own accord and got in a vehicle. In 2008, a small wooden cross bearing the name "Fiona Pender" was found on The Slieve Bloom Way at the border between Laois and Offaly, which led to the belief that Fiona was buried in the Slieve Bloom Mountains.[18]
  • Ciara Breen, 17, of Dundalk, County Louth, went missing on February 13, 1997, on Bachelor’s Walk in Dundalk. She was last seen by her mother Bernadette, who said at the time that they had both gone to bed just after midnight. That day they had gone to a local café for dinner then returned home. According to Bernadette, she was due to get the results of a biopsy the following morning and Ciara was worried about this.[19] The two had a short conversation on Bernadette’s bed before going to sleep at around midnight. After 2 a.m., Bernadette got up to go to the bathroom and discovered Ciara was missing. She had left a window on the latch and it is believed she did so, so that she could climb back in.[20] It is considered the most likely scenario in Ciara’s case that she decided to leave her home to attend a pre-planned meeting with someone that night but this has never been verified. In 2014, two credible witnesses came forward with sightings of Ciara from the night she disappeared and in 2015, a man was arrested, but released without charge.[21] The male suspect was arrested again in 2017 for an unrelated drink-driving charge and died of a drug overdose while in custody.
  • Fiona Sinnott, 19, of Rosslare, County Wexford, was living in Broadway, County Wexford when she went missing on February 8, 1998. Fiona was last seen leaving Butler's Pub in Broadway. She left the establishment with her ex-boyfriend and father to her eleven-month-old daughter, Sean Carroll. Carroll told investigators that he had walked Sinnott back to her house in Ballyhitt, Wexford and that he had spent the night sleeping on her couch.[22] Sinnott had gone directly to bed after complaining of pains in her arm and upper body, and the next morning, on February 9, Carroll claimed that he entered Sinnott's bedroom and discovered that she was awake and she told him that she was planning to get a ride to her doctor later that day. Sinnott vanished without a trace. She did not visit a doctor that day, and there were no records of her having gone to any of the local surgeries. On September 12, 2008, a memorial plaque for Sinnott was stolen from a cemetery in Our Lady's Island in Wexford. The marble plaque, which had been cemented into the wall, was removed the night before it was due to be unveiled. In 2005, her case was upgraded to a murder investigation.[23]
  • Catherine "Kate" Madigan, 35, was a primary school teacher and mother of one, who disappeared after she left St. Patrick's University Hospital in Dublin on May 14, 1998. She was admitted to the hospital on February 5, for treatment for a mental illness which caused her to be severely depressed.[24] At 2 p.m., she left the hospital on her own. Hospital staff informed authorities that she was going for occupational therapy. She was seen on closed-circuit television leaving the hospital and was reported missing to the Kilkenny police that same day. Catherine is presumed dead, but her body has never been found. Her clothes were found at Bray Head on May 20, 1998.
  • Deirdre Jacob, 18, of Newbridge, County Kildare, went missing at about 3 p.m. on July 28, 1998.[25] She was living in Twickenham, London and studying at St Mary's University but was home for the summer.[26] She had gone to the Newbridge branch of Allied Irish Banks to get a bank draft to pay for student accommodation at the university, then went to the post office to post the bank draft. She disappeared just yards from her parents' home as she walked home. Passing motorists witnessed Jacob approaching within yards of her parents driveway, but she never made it to her house. No trace of her has ever been found and she was never seen again.[27][28] In 2018, the case was reclassified as a murder enquiry because of new information and a review of the case.

Murdered
  • Antoinette “Angie” Greene Smith, 27, a mother of two young daughters, disappeared at 3 a.m. on July 12, 1987, after attending a David Bowie concert at Slane Castle in County Meath the previous evening. She had returned to Dublin by bus after the concert at about 11:30 p.m., and went to the Harp Bar on O'Connell Bridge before going on to a nightclub, La Mirage Discotheque, in Parnell Street with a female friend. While in the club they met two men that they knew.[29] They all left shortly after 2 a.m. Antoinette’s friend parted company when they left the club. Antoinette remained with the two men until all three walked to the taxi rank on O’Connell Street. The men got a taxi to the Ballymun area, while Antoinette continued to walk by the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street towards O’Connell Street Bridge.[30] Her disappearance was reported by her estranged husband. Her remains were discovered on the Glendoo Mountains near the Lemass monument close to Glencree and Enniskerry, on April 3, 1988. Forensic examination of her body showed she was raped and strangled. Her head had been covered by a plastic bag.[31]
  • Patricia Moriarty Doherty, 29, a prison officer at Mountjoy Prison, had returned home in Tallaght, Dublin just before 9 p.m. on the evening of December 23, 1991, however she soon went to the Old Bawn Centre to buy Santa hats for her children. On Christmas day, Patricia’s husband reported his wife missing. The Gardaí where able to find a witness who reported seeing Patricia at 9:20 p.m. on December 23 walking past Bridget Burke’s Pub towards Old Bawn Shopping Centre.[32] A second witness came forward stating that he saw a woman matching Patricia’s description entering a red car at the entrance to Old Bawn Shopping Centre. On June 21, 1992, a man was cutting turf in the Wicklow Mountains in an area known as Glassmucky Breaks, less than a mile from where Smith’s body was found, when he also found human remains. These were identified as Patricia’s by the Gardaí through dental records. It was concluded that Patricia was most likely strangled as there was no signs of trauma.[33]
  • Marie Kilmartin, 35, of Beladd, County Laois, attended work at a local nursing home at 11 a.m. on December 16, 1993. At 4 p.m., two of Marie’s female co-workers dropped her home and watched her walk to her front door. When Marie’s housemate arrived home from her job at 6 p.m. she found that Marie was not at home and that none of the lights in their house had been switched on. The housemate also found Marie’s groceries unpacked on their kitchen table.[34] A forensic examination of Marie’s home uncovered no evidence as to what may have led to her sudden disappearance, Gardaí did however, discover that at 4:20 p.m. on December 16 a phone call was made to Marie’s landline which lasted for two minutes. The call was traced to a payphone in Portlaoise near St. Fintan's Hospital. A witness later came forward stating that she saw a lone male entering the phone box at the time the call was made. She described the man as 30 years of age, 5’6 to 5’9 in height and having dark hair. This particular individual has never been identified.[35] On June 10, 1994, her body was discovered in Pims Lane near Mountmellick, County Laois, sixteen kilometres from Marie’s home. She was in a bog beside a drainage ditch with a cement block placed on the body. A post-mortem revealed she had been strangled and there was no evidence of sexual assault.[36]

Investigation and suspects

The last disappearance believed to be related was Jacob in 1998 and since then, no case of disappearances has been of a nature so unexplained and random. It is widely suspected that at least some if not all of the cases were due to a possible serial killer, acting either alone or with an accomplice, in the Leinster area in the 1990s. As a result of Jacob's disappearance, Operation TRACE (Tracing, Reviewing And Collating Evidence) was set up by former Gardaí Commissioner Pat Byrne to investigate the disappearances of Fiona Sinnott, Josephine Dullard, Deirdre Jacob, Ciara Breen, Fiona Pender and Annie McCarrick who all vanished from the Leinster area between 1993 and 1998. Its objective, aside from solving the cases, was to try and establish if a serial killer was actually involved. As a result of their investigation, Irish police identified Larry Murphy, a native of Baltinglass, a village within the triangle,[37] as the main suspect in at least some of the cases. Murphy was convicted and imprisoned in 2001 for the rape and attempted murder of a Carlow business woman in 2000.[38]

During the ordeal, Murphy kidnapped the woman and locked her in the boot of his Toyota Corolla car. He then drove to Kilkea in County Kildare, where he repeatedly raped and beat her. She was then locked in the boot again while he drove to Spinans Cross in the Wicklow Mountains where he again raped her several times vaginally, anally and orally.[39] The woman began to fight back and Murphy produced a plastic bag, which he placed over her head in an attempt to suffocate her. He stopped his assault when two hunters came across the scene and recognised Murphy.[40] Murphy fled the area and returned to his home.[41]

The hunters then escorted the terrified woman to the police station in Baltinglass, where they identified Murphy as her attacker. Murphy was arrested the next morning when members of the Garda Síochána came to his home. He knew why they were there and admitted what he had done the previous day. Murphy was later tried and convicted of rape and attempted murder. He was released on August 12, 2010, after serving only ten years. His release caused a public outcry, particularly as he had refused treatment while in prison and never demonstrated any remorse.[42][43][44]

During questioning about the woman's injuries, it was reported that Murphy commented, "Well, she's alive isn't she?" and "She was lucky".[45] However, Murphy has maintained that he is unconnected with the disappearances and has been questioned on the cases on numerous occasions by the police. Murphy has been ruled out of involvement in the cases of Ciara Breen, Fiona Pender and Fiona Sinnott but Operation TRACE concluded that there was a strong likelihood he was involved in the cases of Annie McCarrick, Jo Jo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob, all of whom vanished close to the area where he lived at the time. To date there is no solid evidence connecting Murphy with the disappearances.[46] It is widely known, though, that Murphy, a carpenter, had completed some work in a shop owned by Jacob's grandmother.[47]

See also

References
  1. ABC News. "Ireland's 'Vanishing Triangle'". ABC News.
  2. PATRICK COOPER (19 July 2010). "FBI identify Irish rapist as a serial killer". IrishCentral.com.
  3. "Never forgotten". Independent.ie.
  4. "Fresh appeals over three deaths". RTE.
  5. "IRELAND'S MISSING WOMEN". missingmadeleine.forumotion.net.
  6. "Annie McCarrick". www.crimeinmind.com. Retrieved 27 November 2016.
  7. "The Charley Project: Annie Bridget McCarrick". www.charleyproject.org. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
  8. "Annie McCarrick: American missing in Ireland since '93". IrishCentral.com. 19 February 2010. Retrieved 27 November 2016.
  9. "CRACKING CRIME | RTÉ Presspack". presspack.rte.ie. Retrieved 19 December 2016.
  10. "Mother of American student missing from Dublin for 23 years says she just wants a grave". TheJournal.ie. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
  11. O'Brien, Fergal (24 March 2023). "Murder inquiry launched into disappearance of Annie McCarrick". RTÉ News. Retrieved 24 March 2023.
  12. Barry, Aoife (24 March 2023). "Investigation into disappearance of Annie McCarrick 30 years ago upgraded to murder inquiry". TheJournal.ie. Retrieved 25 March 2023.
  13. Holland, Kitty. "Family of woman missing 20 years issue new appeal". The Irish Times.
  14. Ring, Evelyn. "Eva's family still grieve nine years later". The Irish Examiner.
  15. "Reward of €10,000 for new information on missing Imelda". Munster Express Online.
  16. "Jo Jo Dullard Missing Person". Archived from the original on 3 June 2013. Retrieved 16 September 2013.
  17. "Who is Fiona Pender? The tragic story behind the memorial where Ashling Murphy was killed". Evoke.
  18. "Fiona Pender: A look back through an 18-year mystery". The Journal.
  19. "Ciara Breen: Mystery tipoff could end 18 years of hell for missing girl's mum". Irish Mirror.
  20. "Ciara Breen: Irish police begin search for girl missing since 1997". BBC News.
  21. "Chief suspect in murder of missing teenager Ciara Breen dies in Garda custody". Independent.
  22. "Fiona Sinnott's family: 'We know who murdered Fiona'". The Irish Examiner.
  23. "Fiona Sinnott 25 years on: Some people in Wexford carry key to teenage mother's disappearance". Independent.
  24. "'Suicidal' new mum missing since walking from hospital". Independent.
  25. "Deirdre Jacob's disappearance in 1998 treated as murder". BBC News. 14 August 2018. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  26. Tobin, Sharon (15 August 2018). "Murder investigation opened into Deirdre Jacob disappearance". RTÉ News. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  27. Hennessy, Michelle (27 April 2015). "'It just never goes away': Parents of Deirdre Jacob still hoping for answers". TheJournal.ie. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  28. "Deirdre Jacob". Garda Síochána. Retrieved 12 September 2018.
  29. "DAUGHTERS' APPEAL 26 YEARS AFTER MUM'S MURDER". Dublin People.
  30. "Daughters of murdered Dublin mum Antoinette Smith claim she knew killer". Irish Mirror.
  31. "Appeal for information on 1987 murder of Antoinette Smith". The Journal.
  32. "The mystery of those who were never seen again". The Irish Times.
  33. "Nightmare of not knowing". Independent.
  34. "Marie Kilmartin murder: Three still being questioned". Irish Examiner.
  35. "Daughter's appeal on unsolved Laois murder". RTE.
  36. "On the trail of a killer". The Irish Times.
  37. "Wicklow: Evil Baltinglass Rapist And Suspected Serial Killer Larry Murphy Due For Release From Prison". ARCHIVE: Citizens Free Press Ireland.com. 4 August 2010.
  38. "Murphy link as search for body begins". Independent.
  39. Cormac Byrne (22 January 2010). "Soon back on our streets, the monster who said of his rape victim 'she was lucky'". Herald.ie. Retrieved 22 November 2012.
  40. "Notorious rapist Larry Murphy released from prison". The Irish Independent. Retrieved 11 December 2016.
  41. "Larry Murphy released from prison". Raidió Teilifís Éireann (13 August 2010). Retrieved 22 November 2012.
  42. "A litany of mysteries remain as the dark nights draw in". Independent.ie (15 August 2010). Retrieved 22 November 2012.
  43. Marisa Mackle (13 August 2010). "Marisa Mackle: My fears after the release of Larry Murphy and my memories of my vanished friend Annie McCarrick". Herald.ie. Retrieved 22 November 2012.
  44. Barry O'Kelly (15 July 2001). "`4 killers' found in murder probe". tcm.ie
  45. Cormac Byrne (22 January 2010). "Soon back on our streets, the monster who said of his rape victim 'she was lucky'". Herald.ie. Retrieved 22 November 2012.
  46. Susan Daly (29 October 2010). "'New leads' in disappeared women cases". The Journal.
  47. "Freed rapist Murphy now in 'safe house' as he considers therapy". Herald.
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