When earlier this week Nancy McCarrick watched the RTÉ documentary, Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle, it was as if the video footage of her daughter, Annie, was in real time.
“Seeing the videos of her on the screen, smiling and laughing, it was almost as if that moment was just happening again. I found it comforting, lovely to see her like that,” she says.
It has been a long 30 years since the only daughter of Nancy and the late John McCarrick went missing on March 26th, 1993, from the South Dublin flat she shared with two other girls.
Until recently the main focus of Annie’s disappearance was on a sighting of her in Johnnie Fox’s pub in Glencullen. That has now been revised to a re-examination of the movements and interactions she may have had in the Sandymount area on the day she disappeared. This is part of the upgrading of the case by the gardaí last March to a murder inquiry.
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There is a certain sense of vindication now for her family and friends that issues raised about Annie’s personal life are now being treated as possibly central to solving the case of her disappearance.
“We are really grateful to the documentary team for bringing this new focus into the public domain and are very impressed by the professionalism and empathy of the gardaí who visited us here on Long Island earlier this year. We are confident now, in a way that we were not in the past, that Annie’s case will be fully investigated,” Nancy McCarrick tells The Irish Times.
She is talking from her home in Long Island, as she prepares dinner for her siblings and family members before heading off this weekend on a ferry to Massachusetts to visit her sister-in-law. The eldest of seven, Nancy carries the unimaginable grief of her daughter’s disappearance with grace, resilience and, it seems with the passing of time, a certain stoicism. The fact that her marriage to her teenage sweetheart ended a year after Annie’s disappearance has become just a detail of this dramatic story.
“Naturally, Annie’s disappearance put a huge strain on our marriage,” she says, but does not want to expand on that.
‘A very good baby’
Nancy and the late John McCarrick, who died in 2009, were still teenagers when they met while working summer jobs at Jones’s Beach, a New York state Park. She was born in Brooklyn and John in Queens, but both their families had moved out to Long Island when they were young. He was a high-school teacher, she was a secretary and the attraction was huge.
“I loved John very much, he was a very handsome man and we became serious very quickly and got married in 1965.”
Two years later, Annie was born on March 21st, 1967.
“She was a very good baby and since I was the eldest of seven, I was used to babies and it was all very easy. She was always a good little girl and never felt alone because she didn’t have siblings. When we moved into our first house, there were nine little girls under three living in the block. Linda Ringhouse, who was interviewed in the RTÉ documentary, was one of them. She has remained such a constant friend and support over the years,” Nancy recalls.
From an early age, Annie loved art and horses.
“Herself and Linda used to take lessons at a local stable and if you wanted extra lessons for free, you could muck out and, of course, that is what Annie did. She was always hard-working.”
That diligence defined her school and university years too, her mother says.
“Annie went to Bayport-Blue Point High School and was on the track team but also always worked hard at all her courses. We never had to put pressure on her. She had the same friends from kindergarten.”
Right-hand woman
When she was 12, John bought a delicatessen and she was his right-hand woman, helping throughout her teenage years, says Nancy.
It wasn’t all work, though. “John really enjoyed boating and we’d head off on our boat out to Fire Island. It is a barrier beach between Long Island and the ocean. We’d have picnics and sometimes she’d bring her friends.”
After graduating from high school in 1985, Annie spent two years at Skidmore College but a trip to Ireland over the Christmas of 1986 would ultimately change the course of her life.
“My cousin, Dan Casey, taught Irish studies at the State University of New York and he used to bring his students to Ireland over Christmas. I prevailed on Annie to go as I thought it would be something she would enjoy. Well, she enjoyed it so much, she didn’t want to come home. But I told her she’d have to finish her year at college first.”
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By the autumn of 1987 she was studying for her degree in English at Maynooth.
“John didn’t want her to go, but she had made up her mind and was delighted with herself. We were really close and we would come and visit her during her breaks and she’d show us the cultural and historic sites.”
Nancy remembers one wonderful night in particular.
“We went to dinner in some old manor house, I can’t recall its name, but there was a pianist singing Jerusalem and next thing a load of young men, carrying cocktail glasses, joined him. It was such a happy, heart-warming evening,”
After Annie completed her degree in Maynooth, she returned home and pursued a master’s in Literature at Stony Brook University, always with the intention of returning to Ireland.
“I was happy with her decision to move back to Ireland. I felt she had to find out if she wanted to make her life there.”
Everything changed
Everything changed when Annie’s friend, Hilary Brady, phoned Nancy on Saturday night, March 27th, 1993. He and his girlfriend had been invited to dinner at Annie’s flat that night but there was no reply.
Nancy had been due to fly to Ireland later the following week to celebrate Annie’s recent birthday. She changed her flight and came earlier. It was the first of many pilgrimages across the ocean for Nancy and John.
“At the time, Ireland was very patriarchal and both the media and the gardaí were only interested in listening to what John had to say. I got used to it very quickly and would just sit in a waiting room whilst he did all the interviews.”
Thirty years later, the experience with both the gardaí and the documentary-makers has been very positive.
“I don’t want to get my hopes up too high but I am really impressed by the thoroughness of the gardaí and the documentary-makers. They have really listened to what we have to say.”
Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle is available to watch on RTÉ Player.
