Probe into Blue Point woman's 1993 disappearance in Ireland revived by search for possible new evidence

Irish police investigating the 1993 disappearance of Blue Point native Annie McCarrick this week detained, then released, a man questioned in connection with the murder that once made international headlines.

The national police, known as the Gardai, said Friday in a release that "searches in relation to this investigation remain ongoing and are being supported by a cadaver dog from an external agency."

Gardai had earlier announced that officers had detained a man in his 60s and were searching a house in Clondalkin, about seven miles southwest of downtown Dublin.

"Elements of that house and garden will be searched and subject of both technical and forensic examinations," Gardai said in a Thursday news release. The Gardai did not explain the connection between the man and the house, but Irish media have reported that the property was previously linked to him. Gardai did not agree to an interview or answer emailed questions.

An enduring mystery

McCarrick’s disappearance is one of "the most enduring mysteries in the country’s history," said Sorcha Crowley, a reporter who has covered the case for the Irish Examiner newspaper. The case generated thousands of newspaper stories and documentaries, some spinning theories that she had been the victim of an IRA man or a serial killer.

"She was an only child, beautiful, intelligent, and she loved Ireland so much that she came to live here," Crowley said. For Irish natives, "there was a kind of shame that she’d been betrayed in some way," she said.

McCarrick’s mother, Nancy McCarrick, 81, of Bayport, a retired school secretary whose daughter was 26 and living in Dublin when she disappeared, said in an interview Friday: "We are hoping to have her identified and to know what happened to her, to bring her home." She said that "seeing her brought home" was far more important to her than seeing the person or persons responsible for her disappearance brought to trial.

Nancy McCarrick said that the detective inspector in charge of her daughter’s case told her they detained their suspect after getting a tip from a former neighbor. She declined to name the suspect, whom police have not publicly identified, but said he and her daughter were "well-acquainted." She did not specify the nature of their relationship, other than to say that they were friends.

Michael Griffith, an Amagansett lawyer who previously worked on behalf of the McCarrick family to aid their search, said a source close to the investigation told him that the detained man "may have been a former friend or boyfriend of Annie’s."

Crowley said Friday it would be a mistake to read much into the police release. Irish law permits the initial detention of a suspect for 24 hours, during which they can be questioned. "It’s quite common to arrest and release," she said. Police have sealed the house off with high metal fencing, she said, and were searching property she described as extensive.

Unpacked groceries, a missed dinner date

On March 26, 1993, McCarrick vanished from the Dublin apartment she shared with two other women.

Years before, she had studied at St. Patrick’s College, Drumcondra, and at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth. In January, she had returned to build a life, working as a waitress at a coffee shop and earning extra money selling homemade pies.

Gardai said that she never unpacked the groceries she bought on the morning of the 26th. Friends became alarmed when she missed a planned dinner date on the 27th. She was reported missing on the 28th.

A July 1993 Newsday story described how her parents had spent the previous two months in Dublin posting notices about their daughter, organizing search parties and working with a private investigator. John McCarrick, her father, told Newsday at the time that his daughter’s money, jewelry and a passport were still in the apartment when she vanished. "She loved Ireland," he said. "She felt comfortable and safe there — that’s what’s so upsetting."

The former Bayport-Blue Point teacher died in 2009, according to an online obituary.

Griffith described a week he and John McCarrick had spent in Ireland after Annie’s disappearance, coordinating a phone bank for tips from the Irish public.

"It was terrible, terrible. We got these phone calls and most of them went nowhere." At the time, he said, the Gardai were willing to take tips but divulged nothing to people outside the investigation, even to the McCarrick family.

"I had a very good relationship with her father — he’s been to my home," Griffith said. "I wanted a judicial ending to this, where the person who did this would be prosecuted and convicted and Annie’s remains returned to her family."

Time working against the case

Kenneth Strange, a Thousand Oaks, California-based writer and former Department of Justice investigator who was John McCarrick’s student in Bayport-Blue Point schools, said that the decades before the apparent break in the case this week would work against police looking for holes in a suspect’s story.

"You would assume that this person, after 32 years, is not going to give up anything — he’s thought it all through, tied up all the loose ends, gotten all his alibis squared up."

But, he added, "this person or persons, while they may maintain a confident demeanor on the surface, they are shaking in their boots, deep down. All it takes is one slip-up... They’re nervous, and that’s when criminals make mistakes."

Ireland, a nation of 5 million, recorded 77 crime incidents involving homicide and related offenses in 2024, but in the early 1990s, that number was far lower, said Crowley.

The possible break in the case this week was "a huge story, leading all the news outlets," she said. "Everybody would love to see justice for Annie."