The investigating detective in the Annie McCarrick disappearance believes she died at the hands of a serial killer.
Retired Det Garda Thomas Rock also maintains that the case of the American woman, who vanished without trace almost 30 years ago, is linked to other missing women.
New Yorker Annie was last seen on a day trip to Enniskerry at the foot of the Dublin/Wicklow Mountains in March 1993, shortly after arriving in Ireland to study.
Baffled gardai probed a number of theories and her case has been repeatedly linked to those of other missing Leinster women including Deirdre Jacob and JoJo Dullard.
Recalling the case Mr Rock said: “It definitely wasn’t a coincidence that a number of different women travelling along the road went missing.
“Now looking back, it looks like it could have been the same person. There were similarities between three of the women who went missing.
“Deirdre Jacob, JoJo Dullard and Annie McCarrick were all walking on their own and they vanished.
“It was very unusual, whoever took her made sure that there was nothing left.
“It’s only when you go up there [mountains] and realise the size and remoteness of it, and the probability that a body could be buried up there and not be found.”
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The retired detective reflects on the enduring mystery on RTE’s Scannal outlining how gardai followed up over 100 lines of inquiry in the initial weeks of the investigation.
He said: “One of the major difficulties of solving a case like this is that you have no crime scene, you have no body, you have no material evidence.
“That definitely tells me that the person that carried out this crime was meticulous, and had thought the thing thoroughly through.”
Larry Murphy, who was jailed for rape and the attempted murder of his victim in the Wicklow Mountains, has allegedly been linked to several missing women cases over the years.
However the man once dubbed the Beast of Baltinglass was quizzed in prison over Annie’s disappearance and gardai failed to put him in the frame.
Annie’s childhood friend in Long Island, Linda Ringhouse, said the thought of what happened to one of her closest friends doesn’t bear thinking about.
In a recent social media post she described Annie, who would have been 55 on March 21, as her “first and oldest best friend”.
Linda this week told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “I very often think of what I would say or do to the person responsible, but I’ll keep that to myself.
“We were friends from four years old. As very young kids we walked to school together most days. Our houses were very close and just a small walk through the woods to each other.
“We had a great childhood together in Bayport and that friendship continued on into adulthood.
“We had a close group of friends here growing up together. We were very lucky.
“After all these years of not knowing what happened but knowing you won’t ever see her again, that’s still so difficult to comprehend.
“It’s a different kind of grief and loss because it’s so unusual to not know exactly what happened to someone.
“Of course it’s still very haunting. It’s a complete nightmare situation. The word everyone uses is closure.”
Annie’s heartbroken father died in 2009 but Linda says she still hopes her mother Nancy can get closure and find out what happened to the couple’s only child. She said: “She deserves that.
“I visited Anne shortly after she arrived in Ireland for her new adventure just about one month before she went missing.
“She showed me all of her favourite spots.
“We travelled through Dublin, Galway, Roscommon, Clifden and so many other beautiful stops.
“We had an amazing time and I absolutely understood her desire to live there even though I didn’t want her to leave us.
“I remember being jealous of Ireland, in a way, because it was taking her away from us. She was a true romantic with a big loving heart.”
Haunting archive footage of a carefree Annie thanking her Nana “so much for the money” sent to Dublin before she went missing forms the opening frames in a new Scannal documentary to air next week.
Marisa Mackle, who waitressed with the American student in the Courtyard Restaurant in Donnybrook, firmly believes Annie’s remains are somewhere in the Dublin Mountains.
She said: “Every single time I’m up there, I look around and think ‘Annie where are you?’
“When I’m up there I say a prayer for Annie, and I just hope one day somebody will find something.
“My personal belief is that there was a serial killer, I don’t think these were all random attacks by different men.”
Annie, 26, was last seen alive on March 26, 1993, buying stamps in the post office in Enniskerry after taking a bus there from her South Dublin flat.
Initially, a bouncer in Johnny Fox’s pub claimed to have seen her in the company of a man in the pub that night.
But ex-detective Thomas Rock said it was hard to come to a definitive conclusion “on one identification”.
It never rang true to novelist Marisa Mackle either.
She said: “I don’t believe Annie was ever in Johnny Fox’s. Annie would not have spent the night drinking on Johnny Fox’s with a stranger, she would not have spent the night drinking with anybody.
“That was always to me, a very, very unlikely story
“Annie was a very noticeable girl, knowing her personality, she would have spoken to the people around her.” As time went on, the McCarrick family brought in a private investigator, who called in a psychic medium, and they also offered a reward for information.
Kenneth Strange, a former FBI agent and McCarrick family friend, recalled taking an active interest in the case on the 10-year anniversary.
He said: “My gut tells me that she made her way to Enniskerry and she met someone there or was approached by someone there, maybe asked her for directions, and then by that time it’s over.
“I would call that person a psychopath.
“These are people that act alone, they have a place where they know they are going to dispose of the body.”
Nearly 30 years on, Annie’s mother, Nancy, is still waiting for answers but her father died without ever
finding out what happened to his only child.
Mr Strange said: “I think it had a devastating effect on John, this girl meant everything to him, I think it killed him in the end.”
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