Annie McCarrick had been stalked and assaulted just weeks before she vanished without a trace, it has emerged.
The bombshell revelation comes in a new RTE true crime documentary – focusing on her disappearance and the cases of other missing women.
The first episode of Missing: Beyond the Vanishing Triangle airs on RTE 1 tonight at 9.35pm.
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It deals with the case of Ms McCarrick, an American student teacher who vanished in 1993.
The 30th anniversary of her disappearance fell in March and gardai have now upgraded her case to a murder inquiry – even though her remains have never been found.
The hard-hitting documentary reveals Annie’s family and friends tried to highlight concerns that someone she knew had struck her before she went missing.
But gardai involved in the original investigation tell the programme the information was not brought to their attention at the time of her disappearance.
Annie’s mother Nancy McCarrick tells the documentary: “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.”
The last confirmed sighting of Annie, 27, was captured on CCTV shortly before 11am at the AIB on Sandymount Road in South Dublin on the day she went missing.
There were also reported sightings of her boarding the No 44 bus for Enniskerry, and she was also allegedly seen in the village and at Johnnie Fox’s pub.
But the documentary reveals that Annie was seen with a man in Poppie’s cafe in Enniskerry on the day she disappeared.
Una Wogan told the programme her late mother Margaret saw her as she was about to leave work.
Una said: “At the end of her shift she was ready to go around four o’clock... and the American woman came in with a man and they ordered some food.
“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.
“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?”
Former Garda detective Tom Rock, who led the Annie McCarrick missing persons incident room, said neither he nor the investigation team ever received the faxes.
He said: “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.”
His colleague, Val Smyth, was the detective tasked with questioning the people named by Annie’s family at the time of her disappearance.
He said: “I’m not aware that anyone known to Annie hit her.
“There was never any question of… assaulting Annie at any time.”
Gardai are believed to be focusing their investigation on a suspect who lived close to Sandymount in the same neighbourhood as the missing woman.
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