Ireland's Vanishing Triangle

Ireland's "Vanishing Triangle"[1][2][3] is a term commonly used in the Irish media when referring to a number of high-profile disappearances of Irish women in the mid to late 1990s.

Background

The "Vanishing Triangle" disappearances cases all appeared to share some common characteristics, for example; the women were all young, ranging from their late teens to forty years of age; they disappeared inexplicably and suddenly and no substantial clues or evidence of their fate has ever been found despite large scale searches and campaigns by the Irish police force, or Gardaí, to find them. Another important characteristic is that all disappearances occurred in a geographal area which subsequently became popularly known in the media as "The Vanishing Triangle". This area is a triangle located in the eastern part of the island vertices approximate the boundaries of Leinster.[1] To date the unofficial list of Ireland's missing women holds six names. Due to these similarities in the cases, a popular hypothesis is that they may be the result of a serial killer or killers being active in the same geographical area during this period. The cases of these missing women feature in the Irish media periodically and the disappearances have been the subject in a number of unsolved crime documentaries, the TV-3 (Irl) production "Disappeared in the Mountains" being one example.[4] Irish police set up Operation Trace to focus on unsolved disappearance but to date this has failed to turn up any substantial clues as to the fate of the women despite a €10,000 reward being on offer for information which would result in recovery of the body.

The missing women

The following women are usually included in the unofficial listing:

  1. Annie McCarrick, disappeared 1993. A 26-year-old American student living in Sandymount, she was last seen outside Johnny Fox's Pub in Glencullen, County Dublin.[5]
  2. Eva Brennan, 40. She disappeared in 1993. After leaving her parents house to return to her apartment she was never seen again.
  3. Imelda Keenan, 22. Originally from Mountmellick, Co. Laois, Imelda disappeared on 3 January 1994 with the last confirmed sighting of her being in Lombard Street, Waterford.[6]
  4. Josephine (JoJo) Dollard, 21,[7] disappeared 1995. Vanished in the Moone area while hitch-hiking home from Dublin to Kilkenny one night; a witness saw her using a payphone. She was never seen again.
  5. Ciara Breen, 17, went missing in 1997 from the Dundalk area
  6. Deirdre Jacob, 18, vanished without trace just yards from her parents home as she walked home in 1998. This particular case is often said to be the most puzzling as the girl was almost home, passing motorists witnessed the girl approaching within yards of her parents drive-way, but for some reason, she never made it to her house. No trace has ever been found.
  7. Fiona Pender, 25, stepped out of her flat one evening in 1996 and was never seen again. Fiona was seven months pregnant when she disappeared.
  8. Fiona Sinnott, 19. In 1998 she was last seen leaving a pub in Broadway, County Wexford.

The last disappearance to be included on the list was Ms. Sinnott in 1998. Since then, no case of disappearances has been of a nature so unexplained and random as to be added to this list.[8]

Renewed interest in 2012

The disappearances came to an end by the year 2000 but in late October 2012, there was renewed interest in the unofficial list of missing women when news broke of a 30-year-old pregnant Laois woman named Aoife Phelan who inexplicably disappeared as she walked home from a house of a friend.[9][10] Her remains were later found and a 24-year-old man who was known to her has been charged with her murder,.[11] He is too young to have been connected with the other cases, which occurred when he would have been aged five to ten.

Possible explanations and suspects

It is widely suspected that at least some if not all of the disappearances were due to a possible serial killer, acting either alone or with an accomplice, in the Leinster area in the 1990s. Irish police have often claim that Larry Murphy (a native of Baltinglass, a village well within the triangle.[12] is the main suspect in at least some of the cases. Mr. Murphy was convicted and imprisoned in 2001 for the rape and attempted murder of a Carlow business woman in 2000. He was attempting to strangle her in a wooded area of the Wicklow Mountains at night when he was surprised by two hunters who happened upon the scene and intervened, saving the woman.[13] Mr. Murphy has maintained that he is unconnected with the disappearances and has been questioned on the cases on numerous occasions by the police. To date there has been no solid evidence connecting Mr. Murphy with the disappearances.[14] It is widely known, though, that Mr Murphy, a carpenter, had completed some work in a shop owned by Ms. Jacob's grandmother.[15] Ms. Jacob's mother was interviewed on the Ray Darcy show saying that they knew Ms. Jacob's killer and that it wasn't Larry Murphy. Other commentators frequently cite that since Larry Murphy was imprisoned throughout most of the 2000s no other women have disappeared until 2012. Others comment that this however, is purely conjectural evidence.[16]

See also

References

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