In the 1990s, eight women mysteriously disappeared in an area of southeast Ireland that is now referred to as Ireland’s “Vanishing Triangle.”
The women were all young, and each vanished without a trace, leading many to believe that a serial killer may have been at work in Ireland during the time period.
Today, the mystery of the Vanishing Triangle still haunts the families of the missing women, the police, and the entire nation of Ireland.
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The disappearances, which began in March 1993, started with a woman who was not a native of Ireland; Annie McCarrick, a 26-year-old American from New York, vanished into thin air on March 26, 1993.
When McCarrick failed to show up for a dinner party, her family and friends knew something was terribly wrong.
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McCarrick was seen at a pub in Enniskerry, Ireland with an unidentified man that night, and then never again. Her parents flew to Ireland from New York to help search for their daughter, but they returned to the U.S. after six months without any solid leads or information.
The next woman to disappear was 39-year-old Eva Brennan, in July 1993. Brennan disappeared after she left a family gathering on a Sunday afternoon.
As in the case of Annie McCarrick, no promising evidence or information turned up for Brennan’s family. She was simply gone.
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Over the next five years, until July 1998, six more families were devastated as six more women went missing in the Vanishing Triangle, some in broad daylight.
The victims ranged in age from 17 to 25 years old, and they all disappeared within an 80-mile radius of Dublin.
Police and citizens feared that a serial killer was on the loose, preying on unsuspecting young women who had their whole lives ahead of them.
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Police have considered a few suspects over the years, the most promising a criminal named Larry Murphy, who had a rap sheet including rape and attempted murder.
Murphy went to prison on charges unrelated to the Vanishing Triangle, and served 10 years of his 15-year sentence before being released in 2010. While Murphy was in prison, no other women disappeared from the Vanishing Triangle.
The women who disappeared in the Vanishing Triangle have never been found. Their families continue to hope and pray that more information will lead to the capture of the person responsible, or, at the very least, to the locations of their loved ones.
Only time will tell if Larry Murphy, or another suspect, will eventually be charged with the crimes.
Until then, the troubling case of the eight missing women will continue to hang over Ireland.
