A one-time friend of missing American Annie McCarrick who gardaí recently interviewed in France is believed to be one of two brothers she knew at the time of her disappearance in March 1993.
Former FBI agent and family friend Kenneth Strange has welcomed the development as “encouraging”.
Gardaí confirmed in recent weeks that cold case investigators reviewing Ms McCarrick’s now-presumed murder “have interviewed a number of witnesses located in other jurisdictions".
The man, originally from Dublin, was interviewed in a French hospital due to long-term health issues and is believed to be one of two brothers who emerged as suspects in 2023.
“I think it's a good sign. I think they're actually headed in the right direction,” Mr Strange told the Irish Examiner from his home in California.
“It must have been difficult to actually get permission from the French government and the Gendarmerie to do that. And I know once that happened, it would take time, of course, with all the paperwork, but I'm glad they finally did that. And I think they mentioned there were two interviews with this brother, which is phenomenal,” he said.
It is not publicly known where the other brother lives. The brothers were spoken to by detectives in 1993 but they were reported to have had an “airtight alibi” involving rental cars and being away the weekend Ms McCarrick disappeared.
A documentary revealed her family had concerns the 26-year-old had been harassed and assaulted by someone she knew before she vanished.
The men were among Ms Carrick’s friends who assisted her late father John McCarrick and her uncle John Covell when they arrived in Ireland to search for her in 1993. Kenneth Strange, who has been looking into the case since 2005, recalls Mr Covell telling him of tensions with one of the brothers at that time.
“I remember John Covell telling me that it was just unusual that he was so curious about the progress of the investigation, what they were finding, what they were not finding, and he was right with them all the time, to the point where John McCarrick allegedly had to yell at him and say, you know, ‘Butt out. This is none of your business now, stand down’,” he said.
Mr Strange supports the belief Ms McCarrick never got a bus to Enniskerry that day and when he retraced her footsteps himself in 2021, he shared his doubts with gardaí. “One of the officers replied something along these lines of ‘you might not be wrong to think along those lines’. That kind of validated me and told me that they were exploring other possibilities, which was encouraging. It also validated what I was thinking, that that was not where we should be going. We should come back and look again at the inner circle of friends,” he said.
Mr Strange’s younger sister was a friend of Ms McCarrick, while her father John was his teacher. The former FBI terrorism specialist was one of four forensic experts who wrote an open letter to Garda Commissioner Drew Harris in March 2024, urging him to facilitate a search for human remains at a woodland site in Wicklow where several cadaver dogs have previously "shown interest".
The minister for justice Jim O’Callaghan has also been informed two specialist dogs from the Dublin Wicklow Mountain Rescue Team "showed interest" in the site as recently as October 2024.
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Thousands of people are reported missing every year, but only a few hit the headlines
