Original subtitles

Gardai are still checking on information

supplied by members of the public

in response to Garda... ..the search has all

the hallmarks of a murder inquiry.

..the family say her disappearance is totally out of character.

This is a story in two parts.

..to her family, she never arrived...

Throughout the 1990s,

a series of young women vanish without a trace.

..the American student Annie McCarrick disappeared...

..Someone knows...

..Patricia McGauley... ..Mary Cummins...

..found traces of blood in the house.

Now Gardai believe Deirdre Jacob was killed....

If there is no body, then you have no crime scene.

Leaving their families in the dark.

We had a call that Annie was missing.

I was 4 years old when my mam never came home.

Looking for answers.

It was as if she had disappeared into thin air.

In three of the cases,

there were very good suspects.

A false alibi hindered the case greatly.

Most of these cases remain unsolved decades later.

Raising fresh questions about how they were investigated.

What were they appealing for? She was giving them the information,

but nobody came to get it from her.

Is this a missing case,

or is it a murder case?

What else could they have missed?

Today Gardai upgraded the Anna McCarrick case to a murder inquiry.

Prompting fears that the same killer may have abducted some of these women.

There could be a serial killer roaming Kildare, Dublin, the mountains.

Dumping their bodies.

# (music)

Within an area that becomes known as the Vanishing Triangle.

It's Friday the 26th of March 1993.

A young American woman gets on a bus towards Wicklow.

She has plans with friends over the weekend.

And is excited about a visit from her mother.

But the 26 year old never keeps those plans.

Annie McCarrick vanishes without a trace.

She is the first of a number of women to go missing

in a five year period, whose bodies are never found.

In time, some of these cases will provoke fears of a murder triangle

stretching from Dundalk in the north, to Wexford in the south,

and Tullamore in the midlands.

My name is Nancy McCarrick and Annie was my daughter.

Oh yes Mom, I can fit in a white dress now.

I feel so stupid looking at this camera.

I'll look at you instead.

There.

Um...

"Most people now think I'm Irish.

Can I have the keys, Mom?"

Oh sure.

Annie was my only child.

"I don't know what to do. What do I do?"

Well, talk to Nana and Poppa, yeah.

Um...

Okay, let's be natural about this.

That was funny.

She was funny.

Yeah, she was very reliable.

She was conscientious.

She wasn't fearful.

Can't wait to see ya at Christmas.

Couldn't find fault with Ireland.

..maybe a sunshower or something outside.

Saw a double rainbow the other day.

Hi Mom.

Let's go, Annie!

A day after she is last seen alive,

Annie's friends begin to worry.

She has failed to turn up for a prearranged dinner in her apartment at evening.

24 hour later, one of those friends contacts Gardai to report her missing.

It is Sunday the 28th of March.

Val Smith is one of the first detectives the scene.

I remember it well.

The groceries was there. She was after doing shopping that day.

And I dunno why a girl would go out and do shopping

and leave the shopping there if she didn't intend coming back.

The girls said she was very solid,

and she didn't seem to be a girl that was just going to go missing.

Detective Tom Rock also joins the investigation.

She made no contact with anybody over the weekend of the Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

You have people going missing for all sorts of reasons.

But in this case, there was absolutely no reason for Annie McCarrick to go missing.

Gardai examining financial records discovered...

Gardai quickly establish a timeline of her movements.

..because Annie McCarrick is wearing the same jacket,

carrying the same handbag, and wearing her hair...

On the day she disappears, Annie visits the AIB bank in Sandymount.

Where she is captured on CCTV

before going grocery shopping in a nearby supermarket.

..Gardai can place her in Ranelagh at 3:30,

when she took the 44 bus to Enniskerry.

The last sighting of Annie McCarrick was getting on the bus.

At 3:40.

Going towards Enniskerry.

And that was Annie seen by a person who knew her from work.

And she saw her going upstairs,

and getting on that particular bus.

For her family in New York,

Annie's disappearance is completely out of character.

Maureen Covell is Annie's aunt and confidante.

I would try to be the mature older sister, although an aunt.

And talk her through different things here and there.

It was very scary, and obviously,

even more so being 3,000 miles away.

Was no real way to track her, so things were very confusing,

and we were trying to decipher

if she was behaving completely out of character.

Our suspicions and worries were heightened very quickly.

Within hours of hearing her daughter is missing

Nancy decides to act.

No one had seen or heard from her since Friday.

So I booked a flight on Aer Lingus

as soon as I could and I went over to Ireland.

I arrived on the following Tuesday.

Went to see the Garda, we asked them to investigate

her disappearance.

They really felt she could very easily have gone off on an adventure.

And I said, "No, living in Ireland was her dream,

and her adventure.

She would certainly not be out on her own any place else."

But they did explain that because of her age,

they had to wait a certain period of time

before they could actually start looking for her.

By now, frantic with worry

and unhappy with the pace of the Garda investigation,

her family organise their own searches.

If they couldn't start looking, we would.

If Annie sees this, what would you like to say to her?

Let us know where she is. She doesn't even have to do that.

Just let us know she's alright.

Annie's father John, and her uncle,

also John, arrive to help with the search.

She was seen taking the 44 bus down to Enniskerry...

News report: For Annie McCarrick's family,

it's been a living nightmare.

The first couple of days was just trying to get a sense of where she might have been.

We did a lot of just kind of on our own, um...

We went up to Powerscourt, Enniskerry.

We tried to retrace any steps we thought Annie might have made.

..some clue as to her whereabouts.

And I remember spending time walking through the woods,

and walking through the hells.

Annie McCarrick's mother had been due to visit

her daughter a few days after she went missing.

But this morning her father was at pains to prep the Gardai,

and the public for all their help.

John and John Covell were meeting with the Garda,

and asking them to please, please start a search for her.

..that for John McCarrick and his wife Nancy,

the waiting goes on.

The Garda, they were empathetic, sympathetic.

Nobody was rude or dismissive, but it's just,

you know, "Give it time, give it time." Um...

That didn't satisfy us.

A week after she is reported missing,

a Garda incident room is established.

In total, there would have been 50 detectives allocated.

And I took charge of that incident room.

Meanwhile, the family continue their attempts to locate Annie.

They hire a respected private detective named Brian McCarthy.

We were able to compile quite a good image and a description,

and that was put out in posters all across Dublin city.

DART stations, bars, restaurants,

the usual places where people would congregate.

The McCarricks also canvassed locals in Enniskerry village.

This soon yields results.

Annie McCarrick, who was living in Dublin,

got a bus to Enniskerry on March 26th,

she bought stamps at the local post office at about 4 o'clock...

The post mistress tells them she sold stamps to a woman

fitting Annie's description on the day she disappeared.

Gardai say the search will continue here

for the next few days.

Gardai appeal for anyone who may have received post from Annie to contact them.

Nobody came forward and said they had received

any letter or postcard in the post.

As a result of that information which was provided by the post mistress,

we also did a mass canvas on Enniskerry and its surrounds.

And nobody again came forward.

Then a breakthrough.

Sam Doran, a doorman at Johnnie Fox's Pub

deep in the Dublin Mountains recalls seeing Annie there.

The girl - she came in and she strolled over just to about there.

And at that stage, I just caught her by the arm and said, "Sorry,

love, there's a cover charge in here."

At that stage, she stopped.

And she looked in her bag as if she was looking for money,

but wasn't like as if she was going to get money.

At that stage, the chap behind, he said, "I'll get that."

That was a sighting from a description,

and from photographs shown to him.

This evening, the Gardai released a computer fit of the man.

He's in his mid 20s, between 5'9" and 5'10",

with dark brown hair...

The whole focus of the investigation then,

for a good couple of weeks,

switched to Johnnie Fox's and its surrounds.

We established a mobile communication centre out there.

And we issued questionnaires to everybody,

and we sought anybody who was in Johnnie Fox's that night

to come forward and assist us in our investigation.

She indicated that she was going to Enniskerry in County Wicklow

for a walk. But despite expensive Gardai inquiries...

..and John McCarrick from...

The McCarricks' search for their daughter

attracts widespread media attention.

Senior US politicians lobby the Irish government

to allocate resources to the investigation.

By now, almost 50 detectives are involved.

But it still remains classified as a missing persons case.

We gotta keep looking, gotta keep hoping.

That's all we can do. That's what

I think a father and mother have to do.

You know?

Uh...

We won't give up hope.

John was the front man.

I felt at the time that anything

that put her name forward was fine.

Today, hundreds of volunteers turned up

to try to find some trace of Annie McCarrick.

The search was directed by the Dublin Mountain Rescue Service,

who left people in no doubt about how grave the situation was.

Em...

you're searching for a missing person today,

in whatever shape or form that may take.

You're also looking for any item of either clothing,

or I believe Annie had a large shoulder bag.

Despite extensive inquiries, and searches,

no further trace of her has been found in that area...

Despite weeks of detailed searches,

detectives fail to corroborate the sighting of Annie

in Johnnie Fox's on the night she disappeared.

We couldn't find any trace of Annie McCarrick

in Johnnie Fox's, other than the sighting by the doorman.

On the way in.

We couldn't prove or disprove that she was there.

That doorman was a solid, good witness. And I was impressed with him.

You say she wasn't in Johnnie Fox's?

She certainly, I presume, was up around Enniskerry area anyway,

so we were in the right general area where she was last seen anyway.

Sure it'd have been lovely if we had gotten people to come forward

to say that she was in Enniskerry that day.

Nobody ever came forward to say she was anywhere else.

But could vital clues have been missed 30 years ago?

This is Una Wogan.

Her late mother Margaret was working in Poppies Cafe

in Enniskerry village on the day Annie disappeared.

This is her first broadcast interview.

My mam never doubted that she saw Annie McCarrick

with a man in Enniskerry the day she went missing.

Mammy went forward and spoke to a detective.

And I'm very curious as to why the guards never followed up,

never contacted her to get more details.

On the 26th of March, the day Annie disappeared,

she was seen getting on a bus for Enniskerry.

26-year-old Annie McCarrick has disappeared without a trace.

"Her disappearance remains a mystery."

She has gone missing in an area that will in time become known as the "Vanishing Triangle".

The Garda search is in Enniskerry in Co. Wicklow

and the nearby Johnnie Fox's Pub produce no new leads.

"She had a drink here in the Dublin Mountains, then she mysteriously vanished."

"Since Annie disappeared, her bank cards have not been used."

But has something been missed?

This is Una Wogan.

On the day Annie disappeared, her mother Margaret is finishing a shift

in Poppies Cafe in Enniskerry Village.

My mam told me that she was 100 percent sure that Annie was in Poppies with a man that afternoon.

My mam had a very good description of the whole interaction she had with the couple who came in.

She could describe everything about them and she conveyed that to us.

At the end of her shift, she was ready to go around 4 o'clock

but she had stayed a little bit over.

The American woman came in with a man and they ordered some food.

She served them and that was the last person she served that day before she left.

Two things I do remember very clearly that the man was shorter than Annie

and that he had a square face.

The jaw was quite square lined, the whole face, so that's what stood out to her about him.

Mammy's description was that he was a bit gruff.

She was much more friendly and smiley and he was a bit gruff.

He didn't really speak.

Teams of detectives in Enniskerry Village are eager to talk to anyone who can place Annie there.

Una's mother reports what she has seen.

A detective came in and asked did they have any information about Annie.

This is some time after she disappeared.

Mam sat down at the table in Poppies and gave a full account of the interaction she had

and why she thought it was Annie.

She thought it was odd that he didn't write anything down

but she assumed that somebody would come and take a statement from her.

But that never happens.

She never doubted herself.

She thought it was strange that nobody came, even to disprove it.

It niggled at her and she repeated it many times.

The last conversation I had about it with her was 2018.

She said one of her biggest regrets was that she saw Annie's parents on

the town clock when there was a re-enactment being filmed.

She wanted to go over and say to them, I'm sure I saw your daughter

but because they were surrounded by guards and other people,

she thought maybe her story was disregarded so she didn't go over

but she said she regretted that.

For those involved in the investigation,

Margaret Wogan's sighting at Poppies Cafe is puzzling.

I can say for definite that was not brought to the notice of an investigation team.

I was managing the incident room.

It is strange because whoever that person was and if that incident happened

again that would have been followed up and investigated to a conclusion.

Una Wogan says that her mother attempted to contact Gardai again

after seeing a public appeal for information.

But nothing happened.

She felt then that maybe what she remembered didn't fit into the narrative

and maybe that's why the guards didn't come back to her.

They had certain information and the timeline or the narrative didn't fit.

We were stone mad looking for a witness that would say that she saw Annie McCarrick in a cafe.

She would be so valuable.

Even if she didn't report it to the incident room, if she reported it to any guard

or detective, they would pass it on. Why wouldn't you pass information like that, sure.

Frustrated by the lack of an official response,

in July 2020, Una Wogan shares her mother's story with the McCarricks' private investigator Brian McCarthy.

If this lady had given a member of the Garda information that she

believed she seen a female and a male in Poppies Cafe,

are there other people who have given information that's never been followed up on,

that could well provide an answer to some of the questions we are asking.

My mam passed away in 2020.

But in 2021, the guards contacted me and came and took a statement from me,

which was a secondhand statement really. I couldn't give the details that my mam could.

She wanted to get her story out there and thought it might help.

She felt for Annie's mother. She has five daughters of her own.

There was an appeal after appeal every year, every 10 years, every anniversary.

What were they appealing for?

She was giving the information but nobody came to get it from her.

There are other questions about Annie's disappearance that trouble her family.

Her room was mostly a big huge brass bed that we laid around on

and chatted and listened to music and did silly things that teens do.

Linda Ringhouse is one of Annie's closest childhood friends.

Anne was my first and oldest best friend

from four years old on.

Anne and I lived close until she was 12 years old.

After that the family bought a beautiful house on a canal

in the next town over.

Linda visited Annie in Ireland shortly before she disappeared.

It was a magical time.

Really got to see her in her new element.

Why don't you all come move over here?

It's great over here.

You'd love it!

Back in the United States, a few days after Annie disappears,

Linda and Annie's aunt Maureen contact her close US friends

to see if they might know something.

What they hear alarms the family.

They now begin to wonder if Annie has been taken by someone she knows.

We found out from her friends that she had been having

quite a bit of difficulty with someone she knew.

We were totally unaware of that.

She hadn't let us know about it.

I guess she thought she could handle it herself and things would be alright.

She had confided that someone she knew was harassing her.

She had confided that she messed up bad

and that she had been with this person a week before she went missing.

Maureen also discloses some disturbing new information.

I was told something in confidence by Anne, that someone that Annie had known had struck her,

when they were in a drunken state.

These things were coming out as we were all brainstorming on what could have happened.

I wanted to make sure that information was put out there,

should it be pertinent to any investigation or suspicions.

Deeply concerned, they decide to act.

Four or five of us each faxed our statements over.

The faxes are sent to the B and B in Dublin where Annie's uncle John Covell is staying.

He is certain he passed this information on,

including the reference to Annie having been struck.

Immediately we took that right to the Gardai and gave that to the Gardai.

None of the information in these faxes is made public at the time.

Meanwhile, the Garda and media focus remains on Johnnie Fox's and the surrounding area.

As the searches continue, Annie's family and friends begin to wonder

if the Gardai are looking in the wrong place.

I don't think she was at Johnnie Fox's that night.

She was very chatty, she really liked to have conversations and meet people.

Between her beauty and just how kind she was and she was an American,

there would have definitely been more than just a doorman remembering her.

The media say Annie McCarrick was in Johnnie Fox's.

People believed she was in Johnnie Fox's

and then it itself grew legs.

No-one else could verify Annie was there.

No-one seen her outside Johnnie Fox's, no-one seen her get into a car at Johnnie Fox's.

No-one put her in any place near Johnnie Fox's,

at any time on that particular day.

One of the things that's really frustrating is that we were never contacted by the Garda,

regarding our faxes and some of the information we put in.

Information that to us was very telling at least.

Something to be questioned but it never happened.

As far as I can remember.

But might there be another reason for this?

These faxes never came into the possession of the investigation team.

I was never aware of these faxes.

They definitely would have taken the investigation in a different direction.

That is a source of annoyance and frustration to me

and I would know to be a source of annoyance and frustration to all of the investigation team.

Val Smyth was the detective who questioned the people named by Annie's family.

He too did not know about the faxes.

I'm not aware that anyone known to Annie hit her.

There was never any question of assault on Annie at any time.

Val Smyth is confident the team fully investigated all leads,

based on the information available to them at the time.

Anyone I ever took a statement off in relation to Annie McCarrick,

they were alibied. We'd go back on everything they said that she was

and where they were and that sort of thing.

We would either prove it true or false.

Mr McCarrick will be meeting senior Garda officers tomorrow to review the case.

But do they think Annie is still alive?

No.

As hopes of finding Annie alive begin to fade, and increasingly frustrated with the investigation,

the family compile a list of questions they want answered.

You just don't know which way to turn.

Or whom to think the worst of.

You're afraid to do that because you don't want to accuse someone who's totally innocent.

But then you wonder would they have hurt her?

Would they have just gone off and done something totally unintentional?

At least that way she wouldn't have suffered.

But you're just left not knowing anything.

On March 26th, Gardai are more than 99 percent sure

she was at Johnnie Fox's pub in Glencullen...

The McCarricks had reservations that grew in the months that followed,

when they found that they weren't getting answers to questions that

they were putting out there and asking legitimately.

The whole relationship had broken down and certainly the McCarricks

felt had broken down with the Garda.

Armed with these questions, the family attend a meeting with senior Gardai.

They had a daughter who was missing and there was questions that needed to be answered.

John actually made a stamp that he used for months:

"Someone Knows".

He used to put it on all his letterheads.

Brian McCarthy is present at this meeting in Donnybrook Garda Station

It takes place a year after Annie's disappearance.

The Gardai were sitting across from us, so it was more inquisitorial.

The meeting turned into a you said, we said, they said,

in that it was just finger-pointing.

John himself got a little bit upset.

He walked out of the meeting.

Eventually, John is convinced to rejoin the meeting.

The family hoped that the Garda could have shared some information with them.

No-one was asking them to share confidential information.

People were asking them for specific questions

that could have been a yes or no answer.

That meeting was confrontational from the point of view

that Mr McCarrick was quite adamant that he wanted these questions answered.

The Gardai were quite prepared to deal with the questions

and to provide the answers to him as best we could.

As the meeting concludes, it is agreed that Tom Rock will meet with

another security expert hired by the McCarricks,

in the hope that it will address the family's concerns.

I spent the full day with him and I gave him access to all of the statements

and particularly some of the statements that he wanted

particularly to read.

But one of the things he did was he expressed total confidence

in the way the Gardai had investigated it.

I can understand the feelings of the family

and I can understand at times their anger and their discontent with the Gardai.

You have to remember that we were still looking ahead

that if Annie McCarrick was found and it was proven that she had died a violent death,

we would be dealing with a court case.

A trial

in the Central Criminal Court.

So there was certain issues there that we could not disclose from that point of view.

Annie has now been missing for three decades.

The woman told Gardai she saw a woman resembling Annie

trying to hitch a lift on the evening she disappeared.

In the intervening years, Gardai follow a number of fresh leads

but the mystery of Annie McCarrick's disappearance remains.

It leaves her family still seeking answers.

There were many questions that John and Nancy certainly had and we all had that...

OK, if there was a person in Annie's recent past that was violent towards her,

do you know that person's whereabouts every minute of every hour of the day Annie went missing?

Never ever did we get an answer to that, which was disappointing.

Officially Annie McCarrick has listed as a missing person

but privately detectives fear the most.

"That there's someone out there could have that vital piece of information."

Until March of this year, the disappearance of Annie McCarrick

remained officially classified as a missing person's case.

"and the file will remain open until she is found."

Two days before the 30th anniversary of Annie's disappearance,

that all changed after Nancy wrote directly to Garda Commissioner Drew Harris,

requesting an upgrade.

Today Gardai at Irishtown Station upgraded the Annie McCarrick case

to a murder inquiry.

This morning I'm making a public appeal for information.

I want to speak to any person who met, spoke with or had any

interaction with Annie McCarrick on the 26th of March 1993.

There is a person or persons who have information,

who haven't yet spoken to Gardai or who may have spoken to us already.

but were not in a position to tell us everything at the time.

The new team of investigators have pledged to leave no stone unturned.

Myself and the senior investigating officer have recently visited

Nancy McCarrick and some of her family in New York.

I and the investigation team are determined to gather all

information and evidence available to us to find answers

and to bring the matter to a positive conclusion.

We will be exploring all avenues.

It makes a huge difference to hear that her case has been upgraded to a murder investigation.

You never know, it might prompt someone to come forward after all these years

and as hard as they have worked to investigate it through the years

and as many programmes as they've done and newspaper articles,

but it evidently requires that upgrade in order for a re-investigation to take place.

Her father John passed away in 2009 without knowing what happened to his daughter.

The decision to upgrade Annie McCarrick's case to murder after 30 years,

gives her family renewed hope.

Because in a murder case, Gardai have more powers to arrest and detain suspects.

If there is no body, then you have no crime scene.

But with the additional resources and personnel available to a murder investigation,

an upgrade can sometimes help to produce real results.

Unlike Annie McCarrick, the disappearances of two other women

in the early 1990s, initially attracts few headlines.

Patricia McGauley is reported missing in September 1991

But her name is not included on the Garda Missing Persons List that year.

There's little public reaction to the disappearance of another woman,

Mary Cummins six months later.

Two years after Annie goes missing,

a young detective uncovers enough evidence to have the cases of

Patricia McGauley and Mary Cummins upgraded to murder.

They disappeared within the same geographical area as other women

whose cases became linked in the media to a vanishing triangle.

In many ways, their stories have been forgotten until now.

But with the extra resources and powers of a full murder inquiry,

Detective John Cribben is able to bring closure to their loved ones

by catching a killer.

My name is John Cribbin, in June 1992

I was a detective Garda in Kevin Street Garda Station

in Dublin city,

and I was investigating the missing person case of Mary Cummins,

who went missing on the 23rd of June.

Mary was... was last seen in Carr's pub on Francis Street.

Thursday evenings, she used to go,

when she'd get her children's allowance,

she might go one night a week, just to take a break,

and her friends would look after her daughter, Samantha.

And, eh, her friends came at six o'clock in the evening,

collected Samantha, and that was the last they seen of...

of Mary.

I don't really know much other than what people have told me,

I wouldn't even remember her voice, or...

only for I have pictures, I wouldn't really...

know... anything, at all.

The night she went out, I was with my mam's friends,

em, and obviously, when she didn't come back,

they alerted the police.

We felt something suspicious was going on.

She wasn't a lady that went missing...

As John Cribbin builds a picture of Mary's movements

on the day she disappeared,

he hears an unfamiliar name.

One of the customers was an elderly gentleman, he was ex-British army,

he informed me that he had recalled seeing Mary in the pub

with her child, and playing with another child,

of a certain gentleman who was a caretaker,

he informed me at that stage too

that this particular gentleman's wife

had, em, left... their family, and that the information he had

that the wife had gone to England.

I discovered his name was Michael Bambrick.

Detective Cribbin begins to investigate

Michael Bambrick's background,

focussing on the disappearance of his partner, Patricia McGauley,

in September 1991.

Patricia McGauley was seen by a neighbour

leaving the house at half eight one evening.

She knew from the clothes she was wearing

that it was Patricia McGauley.

She had not been seen or heard from since then.

He soon uncovers two vital clues.

Michael Bambrick was into cross dressing.

He... he dressed up as a woman.

This now added to... to the sighting, that...

of Patricia McGauley, it threw that sighting, in my mind, into doubt.

Did she ever leave the house?

Was that her that the neighbour had observed walking out?

A quick glance out, it may have been Patricia McGauley,

but it could be Michael Bambrick.

He also had a fetish for bondage,

part of it was that he was into choking his partners...

Finding that information out was very significant for... for myself,

because I knew this man was... could be dangerous.

At the time, the disappearances of both women remained classified

as missing person cases.

There was no law at that particular time,

that we could take this evidence

and search Michael Bambrick's house

for Patricia McGauley, now our problem with Mary Cummins was

we couldn't put Mary Cummins into the house.

Without a body or a crime scene,

Cribbin's investigation comes to a standstill.

It's hard to go back to somebody with no news,

but... but it doesn't mean that the cases are shut, they're not.

And they're never shut in the minds and the hearts

of the Gardai involved in them, because

we take a... a personal...

stake, in... in the investigations.

Two years passed with no new leads.

Then, Cribbin gets a breakthrough.

A young woman

went into Ronanstown Garda Station,

and made serious allegations against Michael Bambrick.

We also learnt that a woman

answering Mary Cummins's description

had been in the house,

and the next morning Michael Bambrick

was seen burning her runners.

At the same house in Clondalkin

where forensic experts found traces of blood in the house...

I think it was April '95,

in two days we dug up the garden,

but we found no bodies.

Gardai began digging in a number of specific...

December 1992, at his home

at St Ronan's Park, Clondalkin... The dig began after they received

new information... There was a lot of blood staining found

on timber within a box room.

We were very concerned that we were actually dealing with

two bodies.

Unfortunately, we didn't find any... anybody there.

Forensic and ballistic experts were also involved in the dig...

I just felt another... we'd hit another stone wall.

Now where are they?

But with the new forensic evidence now available,

Cribbin's superiors decide to launch a full murder inquiry.

Once it... it became a full-on, what we believed

to be a double murder investigation,

that was a game changer.

Approximately 15 to 20 detectives

of all ranks were now involved in the investigation,

and this meant that the investigation could be

broadened, you know, to see was there any other suspects,

and if there was, to try and either put them in the picture

or eliminate them... I think we did 500 statements,

and 300 different lines of inquiry.

So the investigation moved from just...

from my point of view, a one-man band...

investigation to, now, a full orchestra of Gardai.

Investigation went right back,

and started off again.

Investigation then comes to its own conclusion,

not my conclusion.

At the end of it all it was...

we had one suspect.

On the 24th of June 1995,

Michael Bambrick is arrested

and brought to Kevin Street Garda Station.

He confesses to both crimes.

I was told... he had admitted that he'd killed them...

the two women, and that he was going to show us

where he'd them buried.

He showed Gardai where he had disposed of

the women's dismembered bodies.

He also told Gardai he did not know how to explain it.

He said he'd panicked... He had dismembered Patricia McGauley,

put her into black bags,

and with his bicycle, he'd moved her from the house,

with Mary Cummins he'd done the same thing,

but it was with a wheelbarrow...

And his... the instruments he'd used was

a knife and a junior hacksaw.

Officers first discovered the skeleton of Mary Cummins

in a shallow grave.

Skull fragments believed to belong to Patricia McGauley

were found a short time later.

These two women weren't buried,

they were literally dumped,

the... as if they were household garbage.

em...

it was... it was emotional.

Yeah.

You know, I was now able to get Samantha and the McGauley family,

we were able to tell them what happened,

and hopefully bring home their loved ones.

In... in some... in some manner.

Be able to give them closure.

Bambrick received 18 years for the manslaughter

of Mary Cummins, and 15 years for the killing of Patricia McGauley,

both sentences to run concurrently.

And the judge pessimistically... We wanted him

to be locked up longer. It... the problem that the DPP had

was that... we couldn't... physically prove that he'd...

he'd murdered somebody. And all we had was

his scenario - it was more accidental

than pre-meditated murder, he didn't intend to kill anyone.

I only have one photo of my mother Mary,

it is from the hospital, the day I was born, em,

with me father, Luke.

I look at the picture every day, I have...

the picture up on the wall, em,

and it's nice to have the... although it's the only one,

it's nice to show the kids that, listen,

there's your nanny there's your grandda,

and there's your ma!

Me heart definitely goes out to the families that

are wondering every day, is someone gonna come through the hall door?

Are we gonna get a phone call?

Are gonna actually be able to put closure in our lives, and know...

they're not coming home.

Even though my mam was found

the way she was found, I have a remains.

I got that closure, and so many families

like that don't get that closure.

As far as justice or retribution,

I have no interest in it at all.

My fondest wish would just be

to find out what happened to her.

To be able to have a grave to visit,

eh, it would... it would be very nice...

to be able to do that.

Mm.

Mm.

As fears grow this evening for the safety

of Josephine Dullard... And a widespread search

has been made for some of her belongings.

We beg of you, please let her go!

Fiona Pender was last seen at her home...

Fiona was my baby.

And I need to find her.

Two years after Annie McCarrick disappears,

more young women go missing. 19-year-old mother of one

Fiona Sinnott from Wexford... Fiona Sinnott disappeared...

Somebody knows where Fiona is.

But we don't.

When 17-year-old Ciara Breen went missing from her home...

There are people out there that know.

Deirdre Jacob was last seen in the town... We're begging

and asking people, the public out there, to help us.

It actually scares you to think that

somebody can actually go missing. Just like that.

Gardai are under pressure.

There's a noticeable change

in people's attitude towards walking streets at night,

thumbing lifts and things like that...

As the disappearances generate headlines...

If you have information, please make contact with us.

Might the unsolved cases of Annie McCarrick

and some of the other missing women

whose bodies had never been found be linked?

The vanishing triangle captures that.

Six women disappeared, vanished,

without trace, their bodies never found,

it's scary for the public.

Detectives from Operation Trace

review the cases... There were suggestions

that there was a serial killer,

and of course we had to take that, all that, seriously.