00:00:41
Welcome to True Crime Garage. Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, thanks for listening. I'm your host Nick and
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with me as always is a man that does this job simply for the thanks of a great nation. He is the captain.
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I just do it for the free booze. It's good to be seen and it's good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for
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telling a friend. This week we are featuring Smithwick's Irish Red Ale brewed by Guinness. You're
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going to love the clean and refreshing taste. I love the ruby red color. Garage rate three and a half bottle caps out of
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five. And now let's give some thanks and praise where it is most certainly due. First up, a big cheers and a bunch of
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Beach, California. Now let's go local, Captain. From here in Columbus, actually in the
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Everyone we just mentioned went to truecrimegarage.com and contributed to this week's beer fund
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and for that, we thank you. If you'd like to get more True Crime Garage, check us out on the Stitcher app
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for all of our old episodes and our bonus show called Off the Record on Stitcher Premium. And that's enough of
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the business. everybody gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime.
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This week, we load up the flying garage ship for a tragic mystery far away. Some may say across the pond.
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Over to an island in the North Atlantic. Touching down in Ireland. As of 2016, the population of Ireland was about 6.6
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million people. Ranking it one of the most populous islands in all of Europe. The geography of Ireland comprises of
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low-lying mountains surrounding a central plain. The climate is influenced by the
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Atlantic Ocean and thus very moderate. The winters are milder than most would anticipate.
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But the summers are cooler than most of those in continental Europe. Irish culture has significantly influenced
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other cultures and shares many features with that of Great Britain including the English language and
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sports like football, rugby, horse racing, and golf. But none of that, of course, is why we
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are here. No. We are here due to the result of circumstances that are truly unpleasant.
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We are here because of Ireland's vanishing triangle which is a term commonly used by the
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media when referring to a number of high-profile disappearances. During the '90s, over a span of about 5
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years and 4 months, at least eight women vanished from an 80-mi area outside Dublin
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in the Leinster area in what became known as the vanishing triangle. Six of these cases are particularly well
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known because of the investigations they precipitated. Due to similarities, some believe a
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serial killer or serial killers were active in this area during this time. The Irish police have set up many
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investigative operations and unfortunately much of this effort has failed to produce any substantial clues.
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We often see that law enforcement will not show their hand in most investigations as a simple
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but intelligent strategy. It is only when desperation truly sets in that they do so and that is the case
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here with the triangle. You see, the nature of these disappearances are so unexplained and
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random that the Irish media needed to create an ominous moniker similar to that of the Bermuda Triangle to truly
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convey the full scope of this mystery. But the name was created by the media and therefore it does not tell us with
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the level of desperation on the part of the investigators. No, it is their actions that take us
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beyond the curtain. Most rewards are offered up as a bounty for an arrest leading to a conviction of
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a perpetrator of a crime or crimes. In these cases, a reward is offered up for information resulting in the recovery of
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a body. This week join us as we take a focused look at the first case in a series of
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disappearances of young women so patterned and perplexing it became known as Ireland's vanishing triangle. This is
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True Crime Garage and this is the case of Annie McCarrick. Annie McCarrick was the only child of
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parents John and Nancy McCarrick. She was born in March of 1966 and lived with her parents in Bayport on Long Island in
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the great state of New York. She was very close with her parents. John was a retired New York City police officer,
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cheers to the boys and girls in blue, and Nancy was a school administrator helping to educate and raise America's
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youth. Nancy's parents were born in Ireland and Annie grew up loving Irish culture. In
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fact, Bayport was populated with thousands of Irish immigrants and Annie grew up steeped in Irish culture and
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Irish Catholic traditions. While she was enrolled at Skidmore College, this was in 1987,
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Annie took a trip to the Emerald Isle. She fell in love with Ireland and transferred to National University of
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Ireland at Maynooth in Dublin to finish her BA. After she graduated, her parents
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insisted that she return to the US to get a graduate degree, which she did, obtaining a master's degree in English
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from SUNY Stony Brook. But in January of 1993, against mom and dad's best wishes,
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the then 25-year-old Annie returned to Ireland. Now, she had lots of friends from her college days there, and it
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sounds like that's really where her heart was. Well, she is going to need somewhere to
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live when she returns there. So, while looking for a flat to lease, she's going to shack up with some of her old
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friends. This is an engaged couple. Their names Hillary Brady, which just point out that's that's a man, baby.
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And Rita Fortune. Hillary was the brother of an ex-boyfriend of Annie's. His name is Philip Brady.
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She eventually settled in the idyllic, upscale seaside suburb of Dublin called This is called Sandymount, where one of
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her literary idols, the poet James Joyce, had once resided. Even though she already had a graduate
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degree, Annie planned to take courses at St. Patrick's Training College to get her degree in education so she could
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teach high school English. She supported herself by working long hours as a waitress at a place called
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Cafe Java, where customers loved the the pretty sweet young American girl that worked there.
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Her best friend from Bayport-Blue Point High School on Long Island, Linda Ringhouse, said of Annie,
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"She had a love affair with Ireland. Quote, she loved the food, she loved the people, she loved the music, she loved
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the books, and she loved the scenery." She jokingly says she even loved the plants.
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Linda said that Annie told her, "Quote, it's almost like I lived there in a previous life."
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Annie was 5 ft 8 in tall, so a a tall woman with strong features, intense eyebrows, and an unruly curly dark hair.
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She has been described as vivacious and friendly, a total people person who loved company, who was always smiling
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and outgoing, but probably a little naive in general about people. Now, let's take a moment here to address
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the setting for our listeners who aren't familiar with Ireland and the Dublin area specifically.
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The Republic of Ireland is a democratic nation, which had a population in 1993, the year that Annie moved there, of
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about 3.58 million people. Now, it's a separate country from Northern Ireland, which is
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much smaller and is part of the United Kingdom. The quiet residential area of Dublin
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where Annie lived is just 6 km, or about 3.75 mi, from downtown. Ireland is a very safe country in
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general. In 2017, for example, there were only 41 homicides. Sandymount, where Annie's flat was, was
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one of the safest areas of Dublin. Annie told friends that she felt much safer there than she did back home in
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New York. In fact, one of the women who worked with Annie at Cafe Java said that Annie would often walk home
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alone. Sometimes, this is even at like 3:00 in the morning. Mhm. All right, Captain. On to the
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disappearance. A little warning here, though, first. Annie was not abducted in the sense that
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no one claims to have seen her being tossed into a vehicle or to have heard a scream or really anything of that
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nature. So, we are going to go through about 3 days of what we know. And included in this are some things that
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have been reported, but may not actually be confirmed. These could Some of these
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things are unconfirmed. So, as you will see, there is no clear timestamp here in our timeline
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where we can say for certain, "Okay, here is when things started to go wrong." Or at this time, we know Annie
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is in trouble. The 3 days we are going to go through will be a Thursday, Friday, and
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Saturday. With really the day in question primarily being the Friday. March 26th,
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1993. Okay, so listen closely, and Captain, chime in if anything I say gets confusing, okay?
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The police or gardaí, as the Irish national police force is called, were able to reconstruct some of Annie's
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movements leading up to her disappearance. We know that she worked at Cafe Java on Thursday evening.
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And when she finished her shift, she had said that she would come in the next day, which would be Friday, this to
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collect her wages and drop off some homemade pies. She was a was quite the baker.
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So, often the restaurant or whatever you want to call Cafe Java, they would pay her to to bake things at
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home and then she would bring them in and they would they would sell them there.
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Mhm. Her next scheduled shift was on Saturday. Okay, so Thursday evening she works,
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tells her employer or co-workers, I'm coming in tomorrow to collect my wages and drop off these homemade pies.
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However, she's not technically working on Friday. That's her day off. Her next actual work shift schedule
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is on Saturday. So, this leads us to the Friday morning. Yes, that's correct. What we know that
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takes place early on Friday morning, we have her two roommates who says that they they kind of say goodbye to Annie
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at this point. These are two ladies that she shared her flat with in Sandymount in a complex called St. Catherine's
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Court. The two other ladies, this is Eada Walsh and Jill Tuomey were headed off to visit their families.
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And what they popped into Annie's room simply just to say goodbye. Hey, we're getting ready to leave.
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At this time they say that Annie was sitting up in bed and she was knitting. She told Eada and Jill that she planned
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to go for a walk that day. And we're going to refer to this as I I This to me seems more of a like
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planned hike. Not just a walking around town situation. But, in all the reports it's
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often referred to as a walk. Hiking seems to be something that Annie did fairly regularly and we'll get into
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that a little bit more as that's fairly important to this the story. Now, the two of them, her two roommates,
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say that they left the flat at 8:50 a.m. And so now Annie is going to have the apartment to herself for
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that weekend. She did have some upcoming plans as well. She planned a dinner party
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for herself at the flat with friends to celebrate her birthday. Now, her birthday was a
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about what, 5 days before? Yeah. So, we know that she had some plans and we have a general version for
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that weekend of what the plans are to be, but now we're going to start getting into some things that we don't know
00:16:00
exactly what happened. But we also know that the following weekend, so she has plans for that
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weekend. Saturday, I'm going to make some food for my friends. We're going to have a
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little get-together here. Following week, my mother's going to come into town. Correct. So, she's got things that she's
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looking forward to as well. You know, she's got Friday off. Well, depends on if you like your mother
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or not. Or your friends. Um she's got Friday off. She tells her her employer, "Hey,
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I'm going to stop by for these reasons." We know she's scheduled to work on Saturday. Her dinner party's going to be
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after her shift on Saturday. Mhm. And then as you stated, mom is coming into not town, not just the town, into the
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country to visit me in about a week. Now, we do know some things that happened for certain. One, we have CCTV
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footage that captured Annie at the Allied Irish Bank in Sandymount sometime before 11:00 a.m.
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Right. I get a little frustrated here with these reports, Captain, because it's it's closed
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circuit TV footage saying that this is sometime before 11:00 a.m. So, to me it's not really clear how this time
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frame is not more specific or more exact considering that she's on video. CCTV camera, their clock is always
00:17:28
wrong. Yeah, we're on we've done like 380 episodes. So, we've covered well over 100 cases,
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and anytime there's security footage involved, they've never seemed to have the clock right.
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Right. It's a tricky thing. It's It's It's very What time is it now? Nobody knows.
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Nobody knows. So, it says sometime before 11:00 a.m. in the reports that I found. Now, she is
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visible on the CCTV footage wearing a knee-length coat and carrying a satchel. At the bank, she is there chatting and
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talking with staff who say they knew her. These are people that say, "Not only was that Annie, but we we know her
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not just, you know, as a as a customer or whatever. We've seen her multiple times."
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There apparently there are a few different versions, and you and I were talking about this in the garage earlier
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of what her activities were were that day at the bank. Where were Mhm. What time is it now?
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Uh who knows? Um Clocks are off by about an hour. There are stories that say she was
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simply making a deposit or a withdrawal. The more specific reports that I've read, Captain, say that she was actually
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transferring an account to this branch from another branch from a different area of town
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and making a bit of a leap here. Right, and I've heard the opposite, that she's actually taking her money out of
00:19:02
this bank to open up a different uh different account at a different bank. Okay.
00:19:08
I'm I'm making a bit of a leap here, but if we go back to what we do know, we know that she fairly recently moved to
00:19:16
this specific area. Mhm. So, it does seem likely that she could be transferring an account to this
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branch. Mhm. Uh she has a car. But, the car you will notice is really absent from this story. My understanding
00:19:31
is that it was a manual transmission. And you know how it is, some people buy those and they don't know how to operate
00:19:39
a manual transmission. It sounds like she wasn't comfortable doing so. And so, you'll see throughout this story, she's
00:19:45
often walking places Yeah, but that's that's how our community was set up anyways.
00:19:53
It was not that far from Dublin, so it was considered the best spot to live if you wanted to commute in and out of
00:20:00
Dublin. This this sounds like a idyllic place to live if you like, okay, you got a little
00:20:06
bit of schooling you want to finish up. Mhm. You got this cool job working at Cafe
00:20:10
Java. You can walk basically everywhere that you need to get, be it to a pub or to the bank or wherever.
00:20:17
Mhm. Sounds like a fantastic place. Now, my thought is because she's recently moved there, maybe she was transferring
00:20:25
an account for whatever reason. Regardless of what she was doing there that day, we know several things. One,
00:20:30
she's seen by people that know her. Right. And she is captured on surveillance footage.
00:20:37
Yeah, and you can see the footage for yourself and just by looking at a handful pictures of Annie and then
00:20:43
looking at that footage, it's very clear that's 100% her. And I'm going to make another leap here
00:20:48
that I think is spot on, my friend. Not only because we've seen it a million times,
00:20:52
Mhm. but the next part of the timeline kind of clears this up, right? So, she then
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goes to the Quinnsworth Supermarket. Mhm. Where her receipt, which would later be
00:21:07
found in her apartment. The receipt is timestamped for 11:02, 11:02 a.m. for that day. So, that tells
00:21:17
you that yes, the the clock on the surveillance footage is wrong, and so they they know that it was before
00:21:23
11:00 because she was at the supermarket at 11:00 making these purchases. On her way back to her flat, she used a
00:21:31
public phone kiosk to make two phone calls that we know of. She could have I want to stress this, she could have made
00:21:39
more calls, but we are aware of what two of these calls were. And Again, this is 1993, so there'd be
00:21:46
public phones everywhere. Yeah, payphone, a public phone kiosk sounds so much nicer than payphone. And
00:21:55
I don't know if it's the same thing. And maybe you don't have to pay, I don't know. But
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my understanding is that the phone they had in their flat, their landline, Mhm. it didn't always work.
00:22:09
Mhm. And so it was not uncommon for her to use one of these public phones. Now, let's get to the calls. One of the phone
00:22:17
calls was to her friend Hillary, uh just confirming that he and Rita would be coming over for dinner on
00:22:25
Saturday. Mhm. Just affirm that up a bit. The second call was to a female friend named Ann
00:22:32
O'Dwyer. Annie invited Ann to go hiking with her later that day. The chosen location for
00:22:39
the hike is an area called Enniskerry. Mhm. According to their visitor website, the
00:22:46
village of Enniskerry is located just 30 minutes south of Dublin City and is the
00:22:53
gateway to Wicklow, which is referred to as the garden of Ireland. Mhm. Widely regarded as one of Ireland's most
00:23:02
charming villages in is Kerry is a wonderful place to visit, live, and work in. That's not my endorsement, that's
00:23:09
from their website. Yeah, but I don't think their website's going to go, "Come here."
00:23:14
It's It's a real dump. dump. More importantly to our story is that one of Annie's favorite This is one of
00:23:22
her favorite areas to hike, and she had been there many times before, often with
00:23:28
this friend that she's calling and asking, "Hey, do you want to go with me later today for a hike?"
00:23:33
Right, right. We've done this before, let's do it again. Again, judging from what I could see on
00:23:38
their site on their website, this is a very scenic area with waterfalls and gorgeous views. So
00:23:45
I've seen pictures, it's a real dumpster fire. It makes sense that this would be a
00:23:49
desired place to go hiking. Now, Ann, her friend, not Annie and Ann, it gets a little confusing. Ann, her friend that
00:23:57
she invited, had recently suffered an injury to her ankle, an ankle injury, and she told Annie that she could not go
00:24:05
along with her that day. Annie then tells Ann, "Hey, that's fine. I hope you feel better, but I might go
00:24:12
anyway by myself." So, this call to Ann was really the last known contact Annie had
00:24:22
with any of her friends. At this point, it appears that Annie returned to her flat.
00:24:28
Right. It is not known exactly what she did in the next couple of hours, but it seems
00:24:35
that she made some pies and did some laundry. Sometime after 1:00 p.m., a plumber saw
00:24:43
Annie leaving the apartment complex heading toward the Newgrove Avenue bus stop.
00:24:49
Mhm. He says the two said hello as they recognized each other. A second witness,
00:24:55
this is Bruno Borza, owner of a shop nearby, says he saw Annie flag down the departing number 18 bus shouting for it
00:25:06
to stop. This bus was headed along to a westerly route to Roundwood. And it did not run very often, Captain,
00:25:13
so Annie's flagging this bus down rather than waiting and waiting and waiting for
00:25:19
the next one to arrive. Mhm. The bus stopped and she boarded the bus and the bus drove off.
00:25:28
Before we move on, I do want to note something here. We have the plumber who says that sometime around
00:25:36
1:00 is when he saw Annie. Mhm. I don't know what he's using to judge this this time
00:25:45
off of, you know, I don't Sundial. I don't think he's saying that hey, I looked at my watch and I saw her walk by
00:25:51
at 10:10 after 1:00. Mhm. Regarding the the items that we get into after this in the timeline, it would
00:25:58
actually seem that that time stamp should be pushed back a little further, that this likely happened
00:26:05
around 2:00 or 2:30, which doesn't really mean much. I mean, we just have somebody an eyewitness saying,
00:26:13
"Yeah, I saw her leaving the complex and I believe it was around this time." It might in fact be just a little bit
00:26:18
later. Now, in Roundwood, Annie was seen by a former colleague, someone who says they knew her well.
00:26:29
She's seen waiting in line for the number 44 bus. This is around 3:40 p.m. Mhm. This bus was the one that ran to
00:26:39
Enniskerry, which would be about 12 miles away in the Wicklow Mountains, where Annie told her friend Ann
00:26:48
that she had planned to go on the hike. Right. The colleague named Amir O'Grady did not get a chance
00:26:57
to speak to Annie as she sat downstairs on the bus while Annie sat in the upper deck.
00:27:05
While when Amir got off, I guess they got off in in Milltown. Is Amir a guy or a girl?
00:27:13
Uh a girl. All right. Uh she says that she did not see Annie get off the bus at any time. So, her
00:27:21
assumption is that Annie was still on the bus when Amir gets off. Mhm. And then, you know, she gets Annie's
00:27:28
getting off at a different stop later. What's strange about this is according to this timeline, Annie would not have
00:27:36
arrived in the mountains to begin her hike until around 4:15 p.m. In late March, sunset was typically at
00:27:48
6:45 p.m. So, a lot of people have brought this up that it seems like she's going to a lot of trouble to go on a
00:27:56
hike that might be less than 2 hours or last about 2 hours. She's taking two buses. That's not that
00:28:03
big of a deal. Well, but she's traveling far from home to a desolate area. It's not that far.
00:28:09
Mhm. I I think I think I think that's debatable. Under 20 miles. I think that's debatable. Where where I
00:28:14
can bat that that debate is I'm a person that enjoys hiking. However, most of the hikes I go on are
00:28:23
fairly short. And in fact, they're shorter than 2 hours. So, um Kind of seems like you don't like
00:28:28
hiking. No, the the trail that I like is is close to my home and you can take it
00:28:34
three different routes. One would take you about an hour and a half, one takes an hour, one takes about 40 minutes. I
00:28:41
prefer the hour-long one uh selfishly because a lot of the podcasts I listen to are about an hour long. So, the the
00:28:49
hour-long trail works well for me, but to to the defense of the people that say, "Hey, this seems like a lot of
00:28:57
movement here to go hiking by yourself for a short period of time." The trail that I take that's on that
00:29:04
short hike is is very close to my home. It's it's incredibly convenient. Mhm. Nevertheless, all of these sightings of
00:29:13
Annie on Friday the 26th seem to be accepted by the Guardi as pretty reliable. Which I I guess it seems pretty logical
00:29:24
because either the witnesses were all people who were acquainted with Annie, you know, such as the the former
00:29:31
colleague Amir. Right. Or they were able to describe her accurately enough that police were
00:29:37
comfortable that their information was correct. dive into that right after this quick
00:29:43
beer break. All right, we're back. Cheers, mates. Cheers to you, Captain. Cheers to the
00:30:10
Dayton Flyers. I'm a huge Dayton Flyers fan now. Mhm. Obi Toppin, my boy. My boy, we're going
00:30:15
to go win a championship. You're going to go to the Final Four in basketball. I got the Buckeye, yeah.
00:30:20
Are you into basketball as much as you are into hiking? More so because it requires no hiking.
00:30:27
Um these next two sightings of Annie are much more up for debate. And rightfully
00:30:33
so because I think you'll agree with me, Captain, there are some serious question
00:30:38
as to whether they are accurate or not. So, a woman who worked at the post office in Ennis Kerry,
00:30:48
who was interviewed, this is in the weeks after Annie's disappearance, said that a tall American woman came in on
00:30:57
that Friday to buy some stamps. Remember that since Annie was not native to Ireland, she would have stood out
00:31:05
simply by virtue of her accent. Right. And remember also that these are small towns, really villages, where people
00:31:13
know each other and recognize faces. But let's keep in mind, no one can say for certain if it was Annie that the
00:31:23
postal clerk saw, but let's say that it was and that the clerk is correct. If she was correct, then Annie was at
00:31:32
the post office in Ennis Kerry between 4:00 and 5:00 p.m. This would mean that perhaps Annie
00:31:38
decided to hang around in Ennis Kerry rather than go hiking. The next sighting is one that is
00:31:46
hotly debated. It is a sighting supposedly of Annie at Johnny Fox's pub between 9:00 p.m. and
00:31:55
11:00 p.m. This pub, dating all the way back to 1798, Mhm. is a known tourist destination referred
00:32:06
to as Ireland's highest pub because of its mountain setting at 920 ft above sea level.
00:32:13
Mhm. And Annie had been there before. This would not be her first rodeo, as they
00:32:19
would say. is a tourist hotspot. There you go. There There were an estimated 350 people there
00:32:28
that evening. of people at a bar. After seeing Annie on the news, a bouncer named Sam Duran came forward and
00:32:37
told the Gardai that he remembered seeing a woman that night who he was certain was Annie.
00:32:44
Right. He was the guy the bouncer at the front of the bar collecting there was a cover charge
00:32:50
that night because there was music. That's correct. Yeah. She's trying to get into this it's like a separate event
00:32:58
area of Johnny Foxes the Hooley room that was putting on a traditional Irish folk music show
00:33:07
where I would be seen there river dancing my face off. Right. The bouncer told her that there was a
00:33:14
two pound cover charge and he says that she seemed surprised by this and began to you know she's
00:33:22
rummaging through her bag looking for money to pay the cover. Well and this gentleman has a very thick
00:33:28
Irish accent. And so that's another thing that would give Annie away would be the fact that
00:33:34
she was American spoke English but with American accent. Right. Well and I this is where I think
00:33:42
the the Unless she was like one of those posers that started like trying to talk like she's Irish.
00:33:49
Just cuz she's living there. Or or an Irish lady that is a poser trying to speak sound American.
00:33:55
Right. What what is that movie um uh Crap I can't think of it. It's one of the Well that doesn't help much.
00:34:04
one of the Die Hards where Right. where the foreign terrorist guy he's like all you have to do is chew gum and
00:34:09
you sound American. Oh. It's pretty easy to do apparently. So Just say Walmart a lot.
00:34:15
The the thing though too that I think it's a little dicey with a lot of this is 5'8" is fairly tall. You know it's
00:34:22
above average height for a lady. Uh she has an American accent. It's almost like
00:34:30
But the tough thing though too is that she does have Irish features. She does. But could you see a situation
00:34:36
where somebody gets confused because they saw a tall American woman and just made the leap
00:34:44
that it was in fact a Annie, especially in a place like this that is known for tourism. You know, to have a lot of
00:34:51
tourists visiting. This seems like a very American thing to go to if you're visiting Ireland.
00:34:56
Well, first we have the plumber. I I question that just based on the time. As far as like did he see her? Probably.
00:35:03
He saw her. What time was it 1:00? Was it closer to 11:00? We've seen constantly with eyewitness reports them
00:35:12
being completely wrong. Mhm. And so could he have Did he see Annie on her way to the bank?
00:35:19
I don't know, but at least we know that somebody saw her that day, but that doesn't matter anyways because we have
00:35:25
her on CCTV. Then she's flagging down this bus. Possibly. Uh she would probably be more known to
00:35:34
people in her area anyways because she's working at a coffee shop and how many of those individuals go in and get
00:35:40
coffee and and and see her and maybe not know her personally, but know her through the
00:35:45
coffee shop. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's and there's probably not you know, that these there's a handful
00:35:51
of American students in school with her. And so they were all kind of popular by
00:35:57
default. So we don't know we have no 100% proof that she got on that bus. We don't have any kind of record that
00:36:08
she bought a you know, a a token or bought a pass for the bus. We have no clue. So we have no clue if she
00:36:17
even got on the bus. From there we have somebody that supposedly knows her, but doesn't
00:36:25
actually make contact with her. Doesn't speak her. Yeah. Right. So, again, there's been several times that I've
00:36:33
been places where I thought I saw somebody, "Oh, that's my buddy." And you start walking over, "Nope, that's not my
00:36:39
buddy." Is that possible? It's definitely possible here. So, really, we have no proof
00:36:47
where she's at at all. And so, can we you know, there was actually a um investigator
00:36:58
from Scotland Yard Mhm. that worked this case, and he he kept saying, "If you get to this point that we're at
00:37:07
this bar, and you believe this individual, and you believe this uh bouncer, and he says, 'I know 100% for certain it
00:37:19
was this girl.'" Again, he doesn't know her. Right. So, other than pictures and his memory,
00:37:26
And he's he sees her on the news, and he's like, "Oh, yeah, I that Friday, she was in line, and I I remember telling
00:37:33
her it's £2." So, it's not even like it's it's not later that night he's telling somebody this. It's not I And
00:37:39
look, again, I'm not faulting this this man. Right. I just I believe he's trying to help
00:37:47
Mhm. the situation. I just question if seeing that many people that night in a touristy area,
00:37:55
if he was in fact right. And here's the other thing, too. When you see a picture
00:37:59
of somebody on the news, you know, we've done this with other disappearances or or really other victims in general,
00:38:06
Right. you see one picture of that person, and I mean, with Amy Mihaljevic, she's
00:38:12
got that one famous missing person's poster, the flyer. And if you look at some of her other pictures or that video
00:38:19
of her up in front of the classroom giving a presentation. She doesn't look like that famous photo
00:38:25
of her. Yeah. And what I'm getting at with that is what did this gentleman see on the news
00:38:31
to lead him down the road of oh yeah, I saw her. And I think we should add a little more detail cuz he does have a
00:38:37
little more detail to his uh sighting, let's say. was saying that she was searching for
00:38:42
the money and then this gentleman behind her was like, "I'll pay for both." Yeah, he says a
00:38:48
a man in his late 20s who was standing behind her in line offered to pay for them both.
00:38:55
But this also makes somewhat sense because they would have been similar ages. And he said regardless if it was Aim or
00:39:02
Annie or not, the woman accepted his offer. Right. The bouncer says that this man was at
00:39:11
least 5 ft 8 in tall wearing a 3/4 length waxed canvas jacket. Uh he's of athletic build, clean-shaven with a
00:39:21
short military-style haircut. He was holding a pint of beer. The as we said, the man paid and Annie or
00:39:30
the woman thanked him and she walked into the Hooley room with him. The bouncer called this gentleman flat-chested
00:39:39
with broad shoulders. Which is you know, I've never actually heard that term. He was describing an athletic build.
00:39:47
Mhm. So I I've never heard um flat-chested what what that would mean that for a man.
00:39:56
Flat-chested, broad shoulders. I'm guessing just maybe skinny. Yeah, athletic build.
00:40:02
But but he would have a good Okay, if Annie's 5 8 and let's just assume it's her,
00:40:09
then he would have a good indication of how tall this individual was. Oh, he's roughly about the same height as her,
00:40:15
maybe a little bit taller. So 5 8 to 5'10". Yes, and that's what I think the the
00:40:20
specific report says that in that 5'8" to 5'10" range. He also says that he does not recall seeing Annie or at least
00:40:30
the woman he believes to be Annie again at any time that night. And according to
00:40:36
the Long Island Daily News, an exhaustive canvassing of the area turned up no one else who recalled seeing her
00:40:44
at Johnny Foxes that night. Well, see, yeah, I have different reports that a handful of people
00:40:52
said it was possible that they saw that they saw her that that night. Backed up the bouncer's story.
00:40:59
But what we can agree on here is it's far from clear whether Annie was actually at Johnny Foxes at all that
00:41:05
night. Or if there was just a American brunette American roughly 5'6" to 5'8" in this
00:41:12
pub. Yeah. That's a tourist hotspot. The other thing, too, is the pub, Johnny Foxes, is about 3.5 mi from Ennistymon
00:41:21
Kerry and the village of Glen Cullen. If Annie was there, we don't have anybody telling us how she
00:41:28
got there. And and what was she doing in the Ennistymon area all evening leading up to this cuz this is between
00:41:38
9:00 and 11:00 p.m. at night that she's supposedly seen at at Johnny Foxes. Right.
00:41:45
So, there's nearly a 4-hour time period between these supposed sightings of when
00:41:50
Annie was I mean, she's unaccounted for. So, something really This could If this
00:41:56
is not Annie at all in these other sightings, then something happened before this. Well before this.
00:42:01
Right. It's really difficult, but most investigators believe the friend that saw her getting onto the
00:42:09
next bus to take her to her destination, take her to the place that she told people she
00:42:14
was going to go hike that day. Mhm. Most investigators believe that eyewitness. So, if you believe that
00:42:23
eyewitness, she is in that area. Yes. Right. This pub is 3.7 mi away. That's not that far,
00:42:33
depending on which part did she hike? Did she meet up with people? Did she call her friend in
00:42:40
you know, Ann, and her leg was you know, hurt, and she called somebody else. Is there somebody that she knew from her
00:42:49
past, male or female, that she just was like, "Well, I'll call them when I get up there."
00:42:55
Or she made additional calls at that that public phone that we we just don't know of. I mean
00:43:01
possibly made another stop at a different phone, because again, I don't know how big that city
00:43:07
is, but back in the early '90s, there's payphones all over the place, at least here.
00:43:14
So, I'm just assuming that there'd be more than one local phone that she'd make calls at.
00:43:20
The other thing that we have to question, too, is at some point in the night, the buses will stop running. So,
00:43:27
if she was at at Johnny Foxes at 11:00 p.m., you know, yeah, that's at the later end
00:43:35
of that possible sighting of her, but if she is there at that time, how was she planning on getting back home to
00:43:43
Sandymount, if in fact she intended to go there? Right. And I did see um our friend Jessica pointed out that
00:43:51
somebody on Reddit, so take this with a grain of salt. We don't know. I take everything with a grain of salt.
00:43:58
Which I got She said that somebody on Reddit stated that taxis back in 1993 in that area
00:44:04
were very uncommon. So, once the buses were done, it seems like your public transportation options are nil.
00:44:13
So, you're going to have to rely on somebody else to get you back home or stay with somebody that night.
00:44:20
let's break this down real quick. So, we know that she hits the bus roughly about 1:00 something.
00:44:28
That leads her to another bus around 3:00 something, right? Yeah, well, okay, so
00:44:35
Okay, so that that bus would get her into this area about 3:30, maybe 4:00. Yes, she would have been there
00:44:46
uh at 4:15. Okay, so roughly 4:00. And when we get there, let's just if I'm going to go on a hike,
00:44:55
let's say it's 2 hours. That's going to put me at in about 6:15, 6:30. Yep. By then, I need to make
00:45:06
my plans on if I'm going back. Right. But if you're hanging out with some friends, right?
00:45:13
You made some other arrangements. You're meeting up with a guy. Now you have other options.
00:45:22
And so, what's interesting is we have these sightings of Annie, but in this crucial time, like you said,
00:45:32
where you're going to have to make some arrangements, seems like we have no sightings of her.
00:45:37
Right, and here's the other thing that you have to consider in this thought. If she made plans with other people or
00:45:44
another person that we are just unaware of, Right. we're unaware of that person because
00:45:49
they chose not to come forward and tell us, "Hey, I hung out with Annie that evening." That means that person did
00:45:54
something is responsible or knows what happened to her. Yeah. So, here's some other things that that I
00:46:03
think we should consider as well. And this is where it makes it even more confusing regarding the
00:46:11
the whole Johnny Fox possible sighting. It was later discovered that there was another American woman there at Johnny
00:46:19
Fox's that night, that Friday night. Mhm. Who actually resembled Annie and was dressed in a similar manner. Apparently
00:46:28
this other woman really confused things in the course of the Guardi's investigation because it
00:46:35
was unclear which you know, which sightings were of this other woman and which sightings were
00:46:42
that of Annie. So much and so much so that in fact the Guardi tracked down this other woman
00:46:49
and asked her not to wear certain types of clothing because when she when she did they kept
00:46:56
getting phone calls saying, "Hey, I spotted Annie at this place. I spotted I saw Annie, the missing woman, at this
00:47:02
place." Right, we're going to need you to only wear bikini tops from now on. Yeah, and it it turned out to be
00:47:08
you know, it turned out to be her. Now, the man but here's what we know for certain.
00:47:12
This this lady went to that bar. There's eyewitnesses of the that girl being at that bar. They tracked her
00:47:19
down. She's alive. And I'm going to tell you that to me this this sighting doesn't mean anything later.
00:47:26
But we'll have to get there. Well, what what I have in my notes here is that the woman, as you said they
00:47:33
spoke with her, she says that she she was not the woman in line that got paid for the cover charge got paid for
00:47:41
by some man that she didn't know. Right. She says, "I was there with my mother."
00:47:46
Mhm. So And she would have remembered, "Hey, this guy paid for me." Right? Like So I I think that
00:47:56
clears up that there was another American girl in that bar. Somebody paid for her way in, not this lady.
00:48:03
According to a 2019 article appearing in University Express entitled Ireland's Vanishing Triangle Unanswered
00:48:14
Annie McCarrick this alleged sighting, the Johnny Fox one that we've really gone round and
00:48:20
round about Right. is now strongly believed not to have been Annie at all, but just as you
00:48:28
stated some other American person, likely a tourist. Other sources are certain that the bouncer saw Annie
00:48:37
that night, but truly what I think we can agree on here, Captain, the upshot here is we don't know for certain
00:48:44
whether it was Annie or not. It sounds like both you and I are leaning toward that it was not.
00:48:50
No, that's not my That's not what I think. Oh, I'm sorry. No. I I was just saying it's a
00:48:56
possibility. Got you. But but that's weird that they're they're making claims that they don't
00:49:02
think it's her. You know, the only other claim we have other claims of people in the bar that say
00:49:08
that they possibly saw her. It could have been the other girl that looked like her.
00:49:11
Mhm. But we have another like you're saying the stamps was within that vicinity as well.
00:49:22
Yes, much earlier, but but uh about 3 and 1/2 4 mi away. Right, but again, it's maybe 15 minutes to walk a mile.
00:49:34
Right. So. Now, one thing we do need to state here, and our regular listeners will not be
00:49:41
happy to hear this at all. This is according to Irish Times, to an Irish Times article about Annie's
00:49:47
disappearance. She was known to hitchhike around Dublin even at night and even by herself.
00:49:56
Apparently, many young people at the time considered this a valid form of transportation, that it was safe to do
00:50:02
this in this area. We did mention how safe Ireland is and this area specifically.
00:50:08
So, Yeah, it's so safe that we have a a triangle of missing women. Right. Right.
00:50:13
It's so safe. So, is it possible that that it was Annie at the pub and maybe she planned
00:50:19
to hitchhike her way back to the apartment complex after the pub closed or after that going
00:50:26
to that show. And when she did, something bad happened. Or as we said, perhaps she met up with
00:50:34
someone or perhaps she hit it off with the man who paid for her in line and then things
00:50:39
went bad. Yeah, but they also a lot of people at the bar believe that not only did this
00:50:45
man pay for her to get in, but that they sat together and he actually bought her drinks all
00:50:50
night. Now, if that's true, and a lot of people believe that if it was Annie in the bar,
00:50:55
that she would have had to be there with somebody paying for things because she didn't have the kind of money
00:51:01
that she could go to This is a This is not just a normal pub there. This is a tourist hotspot. So, what do they do
00:51:09
with the prices? They jack them up, my friend. Right, they jack them up. Top dollar.
00:51:14
Yeah. That's what she said, jack them up. Um but So, a lot of her friends, a lot of
00:51:21
people speculate if she was in the bar that she would have had to be with somebody
00:51:26
that would be paying for the drinks. And to me, that's more likely that she'd be
00:51:30
getting a ride back to their place or they would or they told her, "I'll give you a ride back." Or whatever it would
00:51:37
be, but it's also, like I said, it's not extremely far away. It's not like she's
00:51:43
50 miles from home, 100 miles from home. She's within 20 miles from her house. Yeah, and again, that leads us to the
00:51:52
other problematic portion of the story. If in fact, she did meet up with this man, this man in his 20s, who
00:52:02
it sounds like the bouncer has reason to believe that this man didn't did not know Annie prior to offering to pay for
00:52:09
the two of them to get in. We've already mentioned her picture on the news. We've already mentioned that
00:52:16
this was actually a really big investigation over there at this time. Part of that is because it's an American
00:52:23
woman in another country who went missing. Right, part of that is we have a lot of
00:52:28
missing girls. Now, on top of that, we have a missing American. Well, she's the first in
00:52:34
she's the first in the series. So, these other ones haven't occurred yet. Oh, well, don't rain on my parade.
00:52:40
We'll get into that in in tomorrow's episode. But, what I want to point out here, again, we have another situation
00:52:48
where we talked about earlier. If she's meeting up with somebody that knew her that was supposed to be her friend, and
00:52:53
they've never come forward, that's highly suspicious. Same situation here. If she sat and spoke with this man, hung
00:53:00
out with him that night long enough for him to get to know her, and he's never come forward, then you
00:53:06
have to be highly suspicious of this unidentified young man that was at Johnny Fox's.
00:53:12
That's why I believe the bar the bouncer sorry, the bouncer assumed that these two were together.
00:53:19
The actions and with a I'm looking for money. Oh, don't worry about it. I got it.
00:53:25
Again, if it was just somebody that you just bumped into in line, and you heard about this girl going missing, and you
00:53:31
knew it Oh, I paid for her way to get into that pub. Make a phone call to the police. Oh, by
00:53:37
the way, I was the man that paid for that lady's way to get into the pub. I don't know her.
00:53:43
I was there with another group of friends. We didn't even sit with her. Or maybe we
00:53:49
did sit with her. But we don't know what happened to her cuz we never saw her leave.
00:53:54
You know what I mean? Mhm. If it was purely innocent or the person didn't know this girl,
00:54:00
then why wouldn't they come forward? And just say, "Oh yeah, we saw her at the bar. I paid for her way to get in."
00:54:05
And now they say, "I don't know her." But so to me, if this girl was Annie, she was there at
00:54:12
a bar with somebody that she knew. What we do know that happened is the following day on Saturday, Annie did not
00:54:22
show up for her shift. She had a morning shift at work. She does not arrive to this. This is completely out of
00:54:29
character for her. Yeah, it's like a part-day shift. Yeah. And then she's going to have her friends
00:54:34
come over. Friends come over and she's not there. Mhm. Yeah. So, no one, I guess, really raised the alarm
00:54:45
when she didn't show up for work. It sounds like the alarm bells start going off that Saturday evening when Hillary
00:54:53
and Rita, the two friends, showed up at the flat at Annie's flat at 8:00 p.m. This is for their planned dinner party.
00:55:01
They say no one answered the door after repeated knocking. The pair eventually decided, "Hey, let's go to this pub, sit
00:55:09
down for a little bit. Maybe she's running late or whatever's going on and she's not home yet. We'll kill about a
00:55:15
half an hour." They tried to They tried to it was, the words. Yeah, sorry about that. They go to the
00:55:22
pub and then about a half hour later they return to Annie's flat. They're knocking again, knocking again, still
00:55:28
receiving no response. Eventually, they went home. Yeah, probably a little confused, a
00:55:34
little upset. They had plans. a dinner. Right. Right. They decided to try to call the flat to try to call Annie.
00:55:44
But apparently, I guess they realized they did not have the number. So, they called Nancy, Annie's mother,
00:55:52
who was at home just to get the number. Say, "Hey, we're trying to get a hold of
00:55:55
Annie. We realized we don't have her phone number." Right. They told Nancy that Annie wasn't home
00:56:01
for their planned dinner date, but Nancy too did not really make much of this. Well, she could have got stuck at work.
00:56:11
There could have been an emergency that she just didn't let anybody know about yet. No no need to panic after a couple
00:56:17
hours. Correct. Meanwhile, Annie's roommates, they returned Sunday evening and found that Annie had never unpacked
00:56:27
her Quinns Worth bag of groceries that she had bought She made these purchases on Friday. It was
00:56:34
It was sitting just inside the front door with things like meat, cream, and butter inside. Things that should have
00:56:41
been refrigerated. Mhm. It was later confirmed that the bag contained everything Annie purchased at
00:56:47
the grocery store that Friday. They also found wet laundry. This is Annie's clothing. Wet laundry in the
00:56:56
communal washing machine for the apartment complex. This is where it's so confusing for me. First, it seems like
00:57:04
that time where you got friends coming over the next day. Mhm. You you you went and did the
00:57:11
um that little errand. Maybe got money from the bank, maybe switched your account. Then you get little food from
00:57:18
the grocery store. Now you got to come back. You're doing a bunch at once. Going to do a little cleaning. Got to
00:57:23
put the groceries away. I got to do a little load of laundry. But normally, you don't
00:57:30
those things you finish. At least you get the the the clothes from the washer into the dryer. You at
00:57:37
least put the food into the refrigerator. It seems like all that got stopped. And and it's so strange to me that
00:57:48
people just assume that all those things got stopped and then she jumped on a bus
00:57:54
and went for a hike. Yeah, that's what's troubling here. And they also found a pie on the counter.
00:58:03
You know, we said Annie was making some pies and some baked goods for Cafe Java. That she was going to
00:58:11
drop off on Friday. Remember that's the day in question. There's a pie on the counter.
00:58:17
So, this is what the roommates find when they get home Sunday evening. And eventually they hear from Hillary, the
00:58:24
friend that was supposed to come over Saturday evening. Right. They call the flat. He calls the flat, speaks with the
00:58:30
two roommates who have now returned and says, "Look, yeah, she wasn't home when we tried to go there yesterday for
00:58:36
our scheduled birthday dinner party." And now the roommates and the friends over the phone are starting to put some
00:58:44
things together and say, "Hey, this doesn't seem right here. Something here just does not feel right." So, Hillary,
00:58:51
the friend, calls up Nancy McCarrick, Annie's mother. Right, calls her again and and
00:58:58
Remember she wasn't worried the first time, but now by this point she Annie could have been missing for 72 hours.
00:59:05
She didn't show up for work or for her own dinner party. Right, but if I go over to my buddy's
00:59:09
house and I open up the washer and there's a load of clothes in it, no big deal.
00:59:15
People do that all the time. But if I walk into somebody's house and there's bags of groceries, maybe just a
00:59:21
couple of them, but has maybe milk or meat or whatever, something that could go bad.
00:59:27
I'm going there there's a issue here. To me, that's a big red flag. That's right.
00:59:43
All right, thanks for joining us here in the garage. For more True Crime Garage,
00:59:47
check us out on the Stitcher app, and check out our bonus show called Off the Record. We have over 90 episodes
00:59:54
available of Off the Record. That's on Stitcher Premium. We got a lot more to get to in this case. Please join
01:00:00
us back here in the garage tomorrow. Until then, be good, be kind, and don't litter.