Parental discretion as advised violent sexual assault. The concept of vanishing might seem anachronistic in today's age of social media and surveillance capitalism, but few things have the capacity to frighten like the notion of completely falling off the face of the earth from the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony in the sixteenth century in what is today North Carolina, as covered in Season four, episode thirteen's Lost in Stormy Visions to images of lost children emblazoned on milk cartons
during the nineteen eighties. Vanishing speaks not only to our collective anxiety about mortality, but seems to pluck at the very fabric of existence itself. Culturally, some of us may be consoled by notions of an afterlife, wherein death is not treated as an end but a new beginning. But vanishing implies non existence without closure, perhaps because its physical intangibility seems to robbers of everything and everyone at once,
our presence, futures and pasts, and all unfulfilled potentialities. To disappear from sight is to disappear from memory, and to disappear from memory is to be as though we never existed at all. Conversely, for some, vanishing is an opportunity for freedom, an antidote to today's hyperconnected world, where cutting ties, going off grid and living on one's wits is an alluring alternative to the rat race. Thus romance, we're told in taking to the road, in starting it all again
without the pressures of the mundane. Such a notion might seem appealing until we consider the consequences and the pain we'd most likely leave in our wake. Given Island's tempestuous history during the Troubles and beyond of enforced disappearance by paramilitary organizations, clandestine state actors, and powerful drug gangs, the idea of disappearance in the form of secret abduction, imprisonment,
or murder cuts to the core of the concept. The vanishing triangle, a term coined by former crime correspondent Geraldine Nyland, refers to a number of high profile, possibly connected disappearances in Ireland that Nyland pursued between the mid nineteen eighties and late nineteen nineties. According to Nyland, up to fourteen women either vanished or were murdered within one hundred kilometer
radius of islands capital Dublin. She noted a number of eerie similarities not only of circumstances, but attributes shared by many of the women whose disappearances she investigated. The women's ages ranged from late teens to late thirties. Each of them disappeared inexplicably and suddenly, with no substantial clues or evidence ever being found, despite large scale searches and campaigns
by the National Police Force, the Garda Shiacona. Though the Guardee would eventually satisfy themselves that at least four of these cases were perpetrated by people unconnected with the other ten, questions still remain about whether a serial killer or killers was allowed to operate in the area known as the Vanishing Triangle for over a decade, and if ni Ellen's accounts of the disappearances that anything to go by, the main suspect may very well be walking free. To this day,
you're listening to Unexplained, and I'm Richard McLean Smith. It was a typically rainy day in the affluent suburb of Sandymount, County, Dublin, but twenty six year old Long Island native Annie McCarrick had good reason to be feeling optimistic. Annie had spent most of her life in New York, but fell in love with Ireland while training to be a teacher there in the eighties. After a short spell back in the United States studying at Stonybrook University, Annie returned to Ireland
in nineteen ninety three with plans to settle down. Something about the pace of life she'd enjoyed during her teacher training in Dublin had left a lasting impression on her, but it was also the way everyone greeted each other when they passed in the street, and the close circle of friends she'd made during her time there. Whatever it was, Annie was excited to tell her loved ones that she'd finally made a decision about what she was going to
do with her life. Passionate as she was about working with the children, there was no doubt in Annie's mind that following her ambition to become a teacher had to happen in her adopted country. Annie's other great passion in life was the great outdoors. In March nineteen ninety three, Annie arranged to go hiking in the nearby Wicklow Mountains
with one of her closest acquaintances. The next day, she had plans to meet other friends for dinner, and her mother, Nancy, was due to visit the following weekend, and so it was that on Friday, March twenty sixth Annie woke looking forward to taking in some crisp country air and maybe even calling into one of the traditional Wicklow pubs for a cold pint and to listen to some traditional music.
Later that night, Annie was preparing a list of provisions for herself when she got a call from her friend through a bunged up nose and the occasional splutter, The friend, clearly suffering from a cold, apologized profusely but they wouldn't be joining Annie on the walk after all. Though disappointed, Annie resolved to go it alone. Nonetheless, CCTV cameras tracked Annie as she made her way from her apartment in Sandymount to a local bank, where she deposited her wages
from the cafe she worked at. From there, she went to a nearby supermarket to pick up groceries for that night's dinner. Annieged a short time later with a bag of groceries before heading off away from the high Street in the direction of her apartment. That night, a near full moon, barely glimpsed through overcast skies, rose above the rugged heather covered terrain of the Wicklow Mountains. As the air cooled, a light mist came down, obscuring the mountain
peaks completely. The following day, Annie's friends gathered outside her apartment building, clutching bottles of wine. They rang the buzzer excitedly, keen to hear about Annie's hike from the previous day. Then they waited and waited. They checked their watches. Someone lit a cigarette. It was definitely today, wasn't it. They wandered amongst themselves. Either way, Annie wasn't home. One of Annie's friends knew the buzzer for the landlady who lived
in the same building. When she answered, they asked if she wouldn't mind letting them up into Annie's flat so they could come out of the cold and wait for her there. Moments later, they stood a little anxiously outside Annie's flat as the landlady turned the key and pushed open the door. Inside was dark and eerily quiet. They flicked on the lights and made their way toward the kitchen, where they soon spotted a bag of recently bought groceries
still unpacked, left out on the counter. She must have just popped out for a moment, they thought, until they found the receipt inside the bag. It was dated on the previous day and timestamped at eleven two. A m unsure what it all meant, Annie's friends called the police immediately to let them know that Annie appeared to have
gone missing. It wouldn't be until the following day, however, with the young American having then been missing for almost forty eight hours, that an official missing persons report was filed. Over time, a picture of Annie's last known movements was slowly pieced together. The last confirmed sighting of Annie was the morning of the twenty sixth at her local bank.
She also made a phone call that morning from a public phone box to her ex boyfriend's brother in the hope of trying to get in touch with her ex, who was out at the country at the time. What followed has only ever been considered anecdotal evidence. This conductor claimed to have seen a woman fitting Annie's description around three forty pm on the Friday, boarding a bus from Dublin to Enniskery in County Wicklow, about twenty five kilometers
south of Dublin. Later that night, according to a dorman and some others, Annie was seen at Johnny Fox's pub in the Glen Cullen area, a good few kilometers walk from Enniscerrey. The dorman working that night would later tell investigators that he saw a woman meeting Annie's description with a man whom he described as having short brown hair
and of rugby players built. The dorman remembered the interaction, he said, because the woman's accents stood out, and the man she was with offered to pay her cover charge for the venue. Annie had been missing for four days when her anguished parents, Nancy and John, arrived in Dublin to join the search. It seemed to Nancy and Annie's friends that the Guardy the Irish police only took the case seriously once Annie's father arrived on the scene. They
only took men seriously at that time, said Nancy. That's just how it was back in those days. The Guardian felt there was little reason to suspect anything suspicious had occurred. As tragic as it was, it was beginning to appear to them at least as though Annie had either gone missing of her own accord, or had simply got lost
or badly injured while out walking. Frustrated by what they saw as a lackluster response from the GUARDI, Annie's family hired private investigator Brian McCarthy to follow up on any potential leads that the police had missed. On McCarthy's advice, of one hundred and fifty thousand dollar reward was put up for any information that could solve the mystery of Annie's disappearance. Family friend and FBI special agent Kenneth Strange also offered to help securing resources from the US government
to open a separate stateside investigation into Annie's disappearance. However, concrete answers remained elusive. In comparison to Annie McCarrick, friends of twenty one year old Josephine or Jojo Dullart described her as a somewhat shy and reserved character. Back in November nineteen ninety five, Jojo was experiencing financial difficulties after
dropping out of her beauty therapy course in Dublin. Feeling a little insecure about the future, she decided to return home to the village of Callen County Kilkenny, about one hundred and fifty kilometers south of Dublin, to stay with her parents for a short time while she considered her next steps. She told her family to expect her on November ninth. At eleven thirty seven pm. On the evening of the ninth, the phone rang in the home of Mary Cullinant, one of JoJo's closest friends who also lived
in Callen. Mary picked up the phone to find Jojo on the other end of the line. It isn't known exactly why Jojo called Mary. Perhaps she didn't want to worry her parents or disturb them if they were already asleep. Despite being a little tired and cold, Jojo was otherwise in good spirits, as she explained to Mary. Although she'd missed her planned bus out of Dublin, she'd managed to get another one on to take her as far as
Nays in County Kildare. She was just calling to let Mary know in case anyone was worried that she was now in Moon After securing a few lifts from strangers. With another seventy kilometers still to go until Callan, Jojo was just waiting in the hope of finding another ride to get her home. Mary heard the sound of a vehicle approaching before coming to a stop near the phone box. Moments later, the phone line went dead. Jojo Dunnart was
never seen again. Despite JoJo's family's insistence that something untoward had taken place, the Guardie was said to be slow in taking her disappearance seriously. It wasn't until three days after she went missing that they opened a formal investigation. As the years passed, there were few developments in both Jojo Dullard and Ani mccarricks cases. Unbeknownst to their families. However, key figures within the Gardi Shia Khanna were starting to
hypothesize that something dark and disturbing was at play. Ever since Special Agent Kenneth Strange of the FBI opened his investigation into Anie McCarrick's disappearance in nineteen ninety three, resources were shared and theories discussed between the two international police bodies. In nineteen ninety eight, GUARDI detectives secured an invite to
the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Virginia for a consultation. There, they began to develop the theory that both Jojo Dullard and Annie had been abducted and murdered, and possibly by the same person. They even developed a profile of the likely assailant. The potential suspect they believed was likely to be a married man in its thirties with children, who
had no previous run ins with the law. In short, their perpetrator was probably someone who gave the appearance of being a law abiding citizen, and may even have ingratiated himself as a pillar of his local community. Ireland, it seemed potentially at its very own serial killer on the loose.
In response to this terrifying prospect, the GUARDI set up a dedicated task force named Operation Trace, with the express purpose of solving any and all unresolved disappearances and homicides in what had then become known as the Vanishing Triangle area. They offered a ten thousand year euro reward for any
information resulting in the recovery of a body. Despite the mood of general apprehension surrounding the Guardian investigation into the Vanishing Triangle, nineteen ninety eight was generally seen as an optimistic turning point for Irish society. In March of that year, the historic Good Friday Agreement was ratified into the Irish Constitution, effectively ending or at least quelling hundreds of years of animosity between the Irish and British states. Northern Ireland would
have its own devolved Parliament. The Irish Republic meanwhile, was in the nascent stages of a period of economic prosperity, which would eventually bloom and become known as the Celtic Tiger. Then, in July nineteen ninety eight, another young woman disappeared. Eighteen year old student Deirdre Jacob had returned home from London, where she was studying to spend the summer with her
parents in Newbridge, County Kildare. She just completed her first year at Saint Mary's University and was due to return to her accommodation in Twickenham, South London within the next few months. On the day of her disappearance, she completed some financial admin at the local branch of her bank, before going to the post office to complete a bank draft in anticipation of her return to London. This was the last known sighting of Deirdre. Sometime around three pm.
Some passing motorists said they saw Deirdre approaching her parents driveway a short time later, but she never made it inside. On this occasion, the guy body wasted little time and immediately opened an investigation once again. However, they quickly reached a dead end. Eighteen months later, one dark, cold night in early February two thousand, two men Ken Jones and Trevor Moody drove into the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains
to hunt for foxes. Coming up over a rise, the headlights from their jeep picked out a car in a lay by up ahead, and what appeared to be a pair of legs sticking out of the boot. There was a man there too, standing at the back of the car. Just then a woman burst out at the boot with what appeared to be a plastic bag stuffed in her mouth. She felt at the ground and crawled rapidly off into
the shadows. The man, suddenly disturbed by the lights of the jeep, darted into the car, reved up the engine, spun it around, and tore off, but not before the hunters saw his face. Pulling up the jeep, Jones and Moody sprinted toward a ditch where they thought the woman had gone. When they shone the torch into it, they gasped in horror. The woman lay trembling, caught on a fence of barbed wire. She was naked from the waist up, her face and body bruised and bloodied. It's okay, they
said to her. We want to help you. We know who that was. Four years ago, the man they saw tearing off in his car had sexually assaulted one of their friends in a pub not too far away. They were sure of it. The man they believed was from the bolting Glean about thirteen kilometers away. He was a carpenter and his name was Larry Murphy. Jones and Moody rescued the young woman from the ditch and drove her
immediately to bolting Glass police station. It was just after eight a m. The following morning when two car loads of guardie arrived at a small dormer bungalow about five kilometers outside of bolting Glass, the home of Larry Murphy, his heavily pregnant wife, and their two sons. Just like the FBI profile had predicted, Murphy was eventually found guilty of repeatedly and violently assaulting and raping a twenty six
year old woman. It was a terrifying and lengthy ordeal that began with her abduction from a car park in Carlo Town, about ninety kilometers southwest of Dublin and a good twenty five kilometers from where she eventually ended up in the foothills of the Wicklow Mountains. Larry Murphy, or the Beast of bolting Glass, as he was dubbed by the media, received just fifteen years in prison for his crime,
despite the seriousness of the incident. Murphy, like the men who caught him, was also known to be a hunter, having secured long term rights to hunt in Glen Cullen Forest, not far from where his survivor was found. He knew
the place like the back of his hand. Given what many considered to be the practice nature of the abduction and the fact that Murphy had traveled almost thirty kilometers from his home to Carlo Town before driving back to his own patch as it were, to commit the crime, suggested to police that he warranted further investigation as a suspect in the disappearances of Annie McCarrick, Jojo Dullart, Deirdred Jacob,
and potentially a dozen more women. During his incarceration, Murphy was scheduled to speak to the police about several of these disappearances, but failed to show for the interview after his lawyer pulled him away at the last minute. Another reason for Murphy's suspected involvement in these cases came about after a fellow inmate of Murphy's in Port leechh prison was heard to remark that he had enough to quote put Murphy away for a very long time. As it happened.
In July nineteen ninety six, Murphy was working in Newbridge, County Kildare, the place where eighteen year old student Deirdre Jacobs disappeared from the same month. Officers reviewing CCTV footage pulled from the post office the day Deirdre went missing got a shock when, about nine minutes before Deirdre appears on the tape the last known sighting of her, a customer enters the branch who looked a lot like Murphy.
Larry Murphy was released in two thousand and nine, having served just nine years of his fifteen year sentence for good behavior. There was no legislation at the time that required Murphy to register as a sex offender. When graffiti started to appear marking him out around his hometown of Boltinglass, he left the country to start a new life in England.
In twenty eighteen, did Drew Jacob's case was reclassified as a murder inquiry because of some new information the Guardy had received, including an alleged confession by Murphy to a fellow prison inmate. Officers attempted to interview Murphy on a voluntary basis, but failed to gain any further information about
his possible involvement in the various disappearances. If, as some senior GUARDI and FBI investigators seemed to believe Murphy was responsible for the disappearances of Annie McCarrick, Jojo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob, it leaves many uncomfortable questions which have yet
to be answered. For a start, what happened at the dozens of other women who were either murdered or disappeared in the Vanishing Triangle over the years, to twenty five year old Priscilla Clark and thirty nine year old Linda Cavanah, both of whom disappeared on a third of May nineteen
eighty eight, when Murphy was twenty three years old. The pair were last seen horse riding near Enniskerry, County Wicklow, and though Linda's body was recovered two days later from the River Dargle, no trace of Priscilla has ever been found. What about twenty two year old Emelda Keenan of Mount Melick, who vanished without a trace from her home in Waterford City on the third of January nineteen ninety four. Immelda was last seen by her boyfriend Mark Wall after leaving
their shared flat to go to the post office. Immelda left their apartment at one thirty pm, walked down William Street onto Lombard Street and was sighted for the last time crossing a road by a friend. Was never seen again. In Irish mythology, there is a concept known as chachron she, known in English as fairy stray or stray sod. A stray sod refers to a patch of ground which has been enchanted by the she or fairy folk, ostensibly as
a way of performing mischief on the human race. A person who finds themselves in the midst of a stray sod will instantly become disorientated, even lost, often in surroundings which are otherwise familiar to them. In order to break the enchantment, a person must turn an item of clothing inside out, thereby confounding that she who trick them in the first place. If they want to prevent it from happening at all, carrying a nail or salt in your pockets is said to ward off the influence of other
worldly magic. As with most Irish fairy stories, the concept of fairy straying is both fascinating and terrifying in equal measure, perhaps because, as with the concept of the after life in relation to death, it originated in the days before modern medicine as a way of explaining the disappearing of people who became lost or disorientated and never returned. It can be frustrating, then, to have to face down the
same kind of inexplicable disappearances in the modern age. Because we've come to think of ourselves as a progressive species, always pushing at the boundaries of science and reason to find answers to the questions which baffled our ancestors. It is a very particular gnawing that takes hold when for
all of our sophistication, things remain unanswered. The only thing that is certain about the victims of the so called vanishing triangle, if they were indeed abducted and murdered by a man, is that they will not be the last to suffer such a horrific fate. It's been said that back in nineteen ninety three, the Irish Gardi were too slow to consider a sinister motive for animccarrick's disappearance, because
essentially that sort of thing just doesn't happen there. Since nineteen ninety six, two hundred and sixty seven women are known to have been murdered in Ireland by men, eighty seven percent of whom knew their victims. It is a pattern of endemic male on female violence that is in no way restricted to Ireland. In fact, Ireland rates as con comparatively low on the internationally recognized Women Peace and
Security Index for danger. In the UK, it has been calculated that a woman is killed by a man every three days, and in the US three women are murdered by men every day. And these are just the crimes that are solved. For the families of those like Annie McCarrick, Jojo Dullart and Deirdre Jacob, whose fates remain unknown, it isn't so much that their loved ones have disappeared from the world, but that their worlds have disappeared without the
answers they so desperately crave. They live in a permanent suspension of the natural order of things, perhaps the cases of these missing women will remain unanswered for decades more to come, their family forever stuck in the most unutterable limbo. Or perhaps one day the truth will finally emerge, and in some small but vital way, their worlds will come back into view. This episode was written by James Connor Patterson and Richard McLean Smith. James is a brilliant writer
and poet. His debut collection of poems, titled Bandit Country, Exploring the hinterland between the North of Ireland and Republic, was shortlisted for the twenty twenty two T. S. Eliott Prize and is out now to buy. Do check it out. Thank you as ever for listening to the show. Please subscribe and rate it if you haven't already done so. Unexplained will be coming to YouTube very shortly in video form, so please watch out for future developments there. You can
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