Missing and Unsolved: Ireland's Disappeared

n February 2000, more than four years after Jo Jo Dullard disappeared, 35-year-old Larry Murphy, a self-employed carpenter and father of two, abducted a woman in Carlow. He disarmed her by punching her in the face, fracturing her nose. He bound and gagged the terrified woman, who he placed in the boot of his car, then drove her first to an isolated spot at Beaconstown, Athy, and then to a forest at Kilranelagh, near Baltinglass, Co. Wicklow. At both places he subjected the woman to prolonged sexual assaults. He then attempted to murder her by putting a bag over her head. Two men stumbled upon Murphy and his victim, and Murphy fled. He was arrested the following day, and once the full picture of his terrible crime was established, detectives from Operation Trace were immediately alerted. They were conscious that the route Murphy had travelled that night, with his victim in the boot of his car, was very close to both Moone and Castledermot. In driving her from Athy to Kilranelagh he had crossed over the N9 road close to where Jo Jo Dullard had been hitching a lift in November 1995. Murphy had never come to the attention of the Gardaí before he repeatedly raped and attempted to murder the woman in February 2000. After he had been sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, two senior gardaí went to meet him in prison. He politely told them he had no information about any missing women.

o. Wicklow. Between the two places there lies more than ten miles of dense woodland and mountainous terrain. Murphy knew the back roads of the Wicklow Mountains and had hunted in the area of west Wicklow. He would have an intimate knowledge of many of the remote woodland areas in Co. Wicklow. However, when detectives from Operation Trace went to Arbour Hill Prison to speak to him about Annie McCarrick, he simply told them he knew nothing and politely ended the conversation.

Annie McCarrick touched the lives of many people in her twenty-six years. Apart from her devastated parents, she is survived by many aunts, uncles and cousins on both the McCarrick side and the Dungate side. And she left behind many friends in Ireland, people who knew her in college and in work. The two men with whom she had serious relationships later met their future partners and have settled down. Both have their own private memories of Annie. In private conversations with those close to her, Annie would talk of settling down and of one day having a family. Dermot Ryan, who went out with Annie for over two years, later met an Italian woman at Maynooth, whom he since married. He was nineteen when he started going out with Annie, who was a year older than him. He told me he often dreams about her.

By the time Operation Trace came to analyse Annie McCarrick’s case—together with those of five other missing women in the Leinster area—one extremely violent man had not yet come to the attention of the Gardaí. The violent acts carried out by Larry Murphy on the night of 11 February 2000 shocked the most hardened detectives. He kidnapped a woman in Carlow and brought her in the boot of his car to an isolated spot near Athy, Co. Kildare, where he raped her. He then brought her to an isolated woodland area at Kilranelagh, Co. Wicklow, were he attempted to murder her by putting a plastic bag over her head. The place where Larry Murphy tried to kill his victim and the village of Enniskerry, from where Annie McCarrick is believed to have disappeared, are on opposite sides of