Read Missing for Free Online Page A

postcards. This would be in keeping with Annie’s habit of staying in regular touch with her friends and family by post. Unfortunately, there
was no closed-circuit television tape of Annie in the post office. This is the closest the Gardaí have come to placing Annie McCarrick in Enniskerry.
    As the search entered its second week, a conference was held among detectives attached to Irishtown, Enniskerry and Bray Garda Stations. It was decided that a further appeal would be made for
information. A photograph of Annie was circulated to television and newspapers. And then a man came forward with information that would shed new light on Annie’s disappearance.
    Sam Doran was working as a doorman at Johnnie Fox’s pub on the night of Friday 26 March. He phoned the Gardaí to say he recognised the woman featured on the missing person posters:
she had been to Johnnie Fox’s that night. Another doorman, Paul O’Reilly, also told the Gardaí that a woman matching her description had been in the back lounge of the pub at
about 9:30 that evening. It was a busy night, and the Jolly Ploughmen were playing into the early hours. Sam Doran was able to recall that the woman was in the company of a young man. He remembered
telling the couple that there was a £2 cover charge for the lounge; the young man had paid for both of them, saying something like ‘I’ll take care of that.’
    If Annie McCarrick did get to Enniskerry by five o’clock that evening, and if she was the woman seen in the pub four hours later, where was she in the meantime? How did she get to Johnnie
Fox’s pub? She was known to be a keen walker and could definitely have walked the four miles in that time. If so, did she just meet the mysterious man at Johnnie Fox’s, or had she
arranged to meet him? Did she hitch a lift, or did she bump into someone she knew, someone who has never come forward? The Gardaí had, and continue to have, many such questions.
    Assuming that the woman identified in the pub by Sam Doran and Paul O’Reilly was Annie McCarrick, detectives now had a description of a man they would like to question. He was described as
being in his mid-twenties, clean-shaven, of average build, with dark-brown hair. But despite repeated appeals for information, neither the woman nor the man has ever come forward. One detective
believes this is significant.
    For one person to remain silent is not uncommon, but for two people not to come forward is highly unusual. If they were entirely innocent, surely one, if not both, would
     have come forward, even years later. It made us think that perhaps the woman was actually Annie, and the man in question was the man who would later attack her. It’s still a valid theory;
     but it doesn’t really get us any further. If it was Annie, nobody could identify the man she was with. Nobody saw them leave the pub.
    There was another American woman in Johnnie Fox’s pub that night, who looked somewhat like Annie McCarrick; but this woman was with her mother. Detectives who would later
work as part of Operation Trace would revisit the description of the man seen in Johnnie Fox’s. One detective believes this unidentified man could hold the answer.
    If you consider the description of this fellow—clean-shaven, in his mid-twenties, and with dark-brown hair—it actually matches a man who is the closest we have
     really come to in recent years in relation to a suspected serial killer. This man only came to our attention years later for a horrific attack on a young woman in Co. Wicklow. During the attack
     this man, who was in his mid-thirties by this time, tried to kill his victim. He had never come to our attention before. We suspect he has attacked other women. It would make you wonder if he
     was the man in Johnnie Fox’s. But in other ways, the description of a clean-shaven man in his twenties with brown hair is one which matches thousands of men. But we haven’t ruled
     this man out. He was always clean-shaven; he