January 29, 2021 • 51 mins
Inspired by a listener mail, the guys explore an enduring, disturbing mystery from across the Atlantic: Between 1993 and the late 1990s, multiple women disappeared in an 80-mile area outside Dublin, which came to be known as the "Vanishing Triangle." But what led to these disappearances? Could one or more of them be connected? Tune in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Mission Control deconds. Most importantly, you are you, You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Uh.
Student listeners, you'll notice that in our strange news and
(00:46):
listener mail segments, we will occasionally note a topic that
bears further investigation. Uh. And to be candid, you know,
we work assiduously not to accidentally turn those se f
it's into you know, a full episode, but we do
keep notes. We're not just blowing smoke when we say
(01:06):
we're going to follow up on something. And that brings
us to today's episode. In a previous Listener Male segment,
we learned of Ireland's Vanishing triangle. So thanks again to
Kira for alerting us to this troubling tale. Today will
be exploring a series of as of yet unexplained disappearances
(01:29):
that have haunted the Nation of Ireland for decades. These
cases remain unsolved today. Here are the facts. I guess
we should start with, what is the Vanishing Triangle? There
always there's so many triangles, you know. There's like the
Bermuda triangle exactly right your your mind immediately conjures like
(01:51):
some sort of mysterious vortex in the middle of the
sea where ships get you know, sucked down into the
great beyond. This is different. This is a geographical triangle
that is very much on land. Um. But the Vanishing
Triangle specifically refers to a series of mysterious and as
of yet unsolved disappearances in Ireland that took place in
(02:13):
the mid to late nineties specifically between nineteen and nine eight.
As you'll find out in the episode UM, this is
a very kind of small geographical location, so it really
has taken on kind of a life of its own
in the I guess lore of the of the region.
So there is an unofficial list of disappearances that includes
eight women ranging in age from seventeen to thirty nine
(02:36):
at the time of their disappearance. So why is it
called a triangle? Well, everyone who's listening you know that
people have gone missing in Ireland prior to that date
in nineteen nine, and people have gone missing after that date.
In this is specifically looking at a set of eight
(02:57):
women who who ranged in a ages, So we're looking
at younger women around seventeen or seventeen, all the way
up to women who were thirty nine at the time
when they meant when they went missing. And uh, it
really it's a triangle because it's just looking at the
places where these women were last seen. Really, that's that's
(03:17):
what we're focusing on. That's why it's a triangle. And
and part of this goes to the editorial choice of
various Irish media outlets. They used the phrase and this
is not a ding on them. It is uh, it
is common and some people may even argue necessary for
news organizations to find a an umbrella phrase that encapsulates
(03:44):
a series of events, people, places, or things. So the
reason they chose this phrase is because as we as
we said, all these disappearances take place in the same
rough area. If you pull up a map of Ireland
now you're looking at it, you'll see that, uh, you'll
see pay attention to the east coast. You'll see the
(04:05):
capital Dublin and then if you look up, if you
sort of let your eyes wander up the coast, you'll
see Dune Dalk and then if you let your eyes
wander all the way down you'll see Wexford also there
on the coast. And the way people usually think of
this is, as you said, Matt, based on where these
(04:25):
individuals were last seeing the furthest inland is kind of
the point of our triangle here. Uh. That is the
disappearance of Fiona Pender from Tullamore, which will will we'll
get into the stories of these individuals at this point.
But but as you mentioned, this encompasses a lot of
(04:49):
stuff urban areas, rural areas, the Wicklow Mountains, and we're
not talking about a huge region. If for example, you
wanted to drive from Wexford there in the south to Dublin,
it would take you about two hours, so it's not
you know, it's not the best commute, but there are
(05:09):
people who could live in Wexford and go to work
in Dublin every day. There are worse community even here
in the States. So at this point we need to
talk about the sequence of events, the circumstances of these individuals,
and keep in mind um keep in mind what we
said earlier. I love the point you made, Matt. There
(05:32):
obviously were people who went missing before and people who
went missing after. But the eight people we will introduce
you to today have never been found, no bodily trace,
no allegations that they contacted someone years later. They simply
(05:55):
seem to have disappeared the very first disappearance. Each of
these has unique distinct aspects, right, and we can't. I
think it's probably best to treat each one as a
unique case before we try to connect them all other
than with those three commonalities. All women, all disappearing in
(06:20):
this eastern Coast of Ireland area, and all still missing today.
First disappearance, Annie McCarrick, went missing in March. She was
not from Ireland, No, she wasn't, but she was of
Irish descent, or you know, at least had Irish roots,
(06:44):
Irish blood, and was very very interested in exploring that
on a solo trip to Ireland. She was from Long Island,
New York um and at the time of her disappearance
was living in Sandy Mount, which is a coastal suburb
of Dublin. She was twenty six uh. She was last
seen in the Wicklow Town of Nn Scary Uh, and
(07:06):
is presumed to be dead. And it's interesting too because
she was she she went to Ireland by herself. She's
clearly someone who was very let's say, self possessed and
had kind of drive because she wanted to explore this
part of her heritage. Uh. And she didn't have any friends,
and she was known to be pretty outspoken and good
(07:27):
at you know, kind of never never met a stranger
type person, you know. Yeah, and Uh. With her disappearance,
she was a bit far from where she lives in
Sandy Mount where we discussed that's where she was residing
at least while she was in Ireland. She was seen
at a post office down in I think it's what
do we say in the scary And she may or
(07:48):
may not have been seen at a place called Johnny
Fox's Pub, uh, which is a bit further away from
that area. And we tried, we just so everyone knows,
we attempted to make a Google Earth map of all
these disappearances and we're going to continue working on that
after this episode, but uh, you can It's it's interesting
(08:08):
to see how far some people traveled on the day
or night that they disappeared, how far they are they
are believed to have traveled exactly. We very quickly get
into situations where investigators have to question the credibility of
some witnesses, and you know, in defense of many of
(08:30):
the witnesses involved, h people will tend to be honest
when they say I saw something, I saw someone I
cannot confirm. Um, but you're you're right with the distances
because it was a dark, wet night, uh during during
the time of mccaric's disappearance, and it seems odd that
(08:52):
she would have walked what is its six kilometers distance
through the weather, you know, m but that seems to
be the case. She was, as we said, never never
seen again. However, stay tuned because at the end of
this episode, we do have some updates that may interest you.
(09:16):
Almost breaking news. Just a few months later, on July,
Eva Brennan from wrath Gard disappears. She was thirty nine
at the time of the disappearance, and she was last
she She was last seen leaving her parents house. She
(09:36):
had gone over there and grabbed lunch with the family.
Interesting part of this case. Despite the disappearance of McCarrick
just a few months earlier. Uh, the GUARDA did not investigate.
The authorities here did not investigate Brennan's disappearance for at
least three months. I was definitely a bit weird there
(09:59):
that they didn't do that. The problems, to my understanding,
is that she was an adult and there was no
sign of any kind of you know, break in at
the house or any kind of foul play. At least initially,
there was nothing that would speak to her disappearing for
any reason other than she just left. And that's, at
(10:21):
least according to the authorities, that was why there was
no investigation for that amount of time. But of course,
as the family knowing that your loved one is gone
and this is not normal for them, Um, that is
excruciating and I can't imagine what that family must have
gone through. And you hit the nail on the head there,
because again it's not the process of investigation moves differently
(10:47):
if we're talking about a thirteen year old person versus
a thirty nine year old person. So fast forward a
little less than a year January third, twenty two year
old Emelda Keenan disappears. She is from Montmelick or Mountain Melick,
So there there are a couple multiple witnesses who saw
(11:08):
her walking. She was last seen crossing the road at
a corner of the place called the Tower Hotel in
Lombard Street. This was mid afternoon. This wasn't in the
middle of the night. She had left her apartment around
one pm. I believe that's correct. Another really strange thing
because she's you know, we said she's from what was it,
(11:30):
Mountain Melick, which is quite a distance away from where
she was staying with her boyfriend. I think at the
time her boyfriend's name was Mark wall Um, and she
was living. Her place of residence was very close to
where she was last seen there by the Tower Hotel.
Just a weird situation the middle of the day and
then she's gone. Then we have a Josephine Dullard Jojo
(11:53):
to her friends, who disappeared on November nine at the
age of twenty one. She was the thing in Harold's
Cross and disappeared while hitch hiking home from Dublin. Um
and if I'm not mistaken, she was a waitress um
at a at a nearby restaurant and I had some
card trouble, I believe, and last was seen using a
(12:15):
pay phone. Police pulled the phone records and found that
she called her friend Mary Cullen in at seven and
end of the call just as she was about to
enter this other car uh, the driver of which remains unidentified.
And and with JoJo's case, there are conflicting witness stories
kind of as we mentioned with Annie's case, there's it's
(12:36):
tough to know who's telling the truth, who actually saw
Jojo get into or get out of a car, because
there were a few other witnesses that came forward, and
they're also some kind of strange reports and I don't
know what to believe or not because you know, I'm
looking at sources, sources like the Mirror dot Coda at
UK or the Mirror Irish, the Irish Mirror, I guess,
(12:58):
and it's just tough to know what's real or what's not.
But there are some stories in there about her possibly
getting into a car with two men um maybe not.
And there's even a story in the said mirror that
we can talk about later about a guarda member that
maybe knew the identity of her killer but was unable
(13:19):
to come forward with it. Now, is this the one
where there was also a story of someone seeing her
like get out of the car and and like under
duress and like runs kind of from the scene because
and I know one of these there was an account
of someone witnessing one of these women like actually very
violently exiting a car and then running away. You know, honestly,
(13:41):
I can't remember if that was Jojo or not. And
it's also a little bit hard to discern what is
here saying what's been kind of built into some of
the folklore of these stories over the years, because it's
very you could find you can find videos online of
people talking about this, and the story seemed to evolve
outside of what reporting exists. Yeah, there are a lot
(14:02):
of twist. Again, each of these cases is as distinct
as a fingerprint, and like the driver of that car,
Dollard has also never been found. Fast forward February. Cr
Breen from Dundalk disappears at the age of seventeen. She
(14:24):
this is this is different from some of the other
cases because she was at her mother's house. Her mother
is named Burned, and they went to sleep and according
to the mother's statement to authorities, she awoke a little
bit north of two am and decided to use the
restroom and when she did, she found her daughter missing
(14:47):
and a window propped open. This led her to believe
that her daughter had stuck out with the intention of
coming back. And there's been speculation that she was actually
sneak king away because she had a boyfriend that she
didn't think her parents would approve of. Further speculation that
(15:08):
this uh, this boyfriend may have himself been married. But
in either case, that was the last trace of her,
and we don't we don't have to get into her
right now, but there was a primary suspect in that
case that ends up being kind of important and connecting
to some other things. But then the leads, you know,
don't really appear to go anywhere, but we can. We
(15:30):
can jump into that later, and like you said, when
she she is still missing. So then let's go to
the next person that went missing. Fiona Pender. She was
from Tullamore and she went missing on August nine, six uh.
She was twenty five years old and unfortunately and terribly,
(15:50):
she was seven months pregnant when she went missing. That's
pretty rough. The last confirmed sighting of her was by
her boyfriend, man named John Thompson, and her boyfriend saw
her leave the apartment that they shared together. And there's
something a bit strange with this case. Um Ben, you've
you found this as well as I. Something happened in
(16:12):
two thousan Yes, yeah, over at the sleeve Bloom Way,
which is at the border of Awfully and forgive our
pronunciation here, folks uh loislaus l a O. I s
at that border on the sleeve Bloom Way, people found
(16:33):
a small wooden cross with the name Fiona Pender on it,
and this naturally led some people to believe that Pender
was buried somewhere in the sleeve Bloom Mountains. There's much
more to each of these stories. Again, we're just establishing
the bare bones facts here. So the seventh individual grouped
(16:57):
in the vanishing triangle is one Feo Synat. She disappeared
on February eight She was from ross Lair, but she
was living in Broadway at the time. She was last
publicly seen leaving a place called Butler's Pub with the
guy knew, Sean Carrol, who was her ex boyfriend and
(17:19):
the father of her then eleven month old daughter. The authorities,
of course, spoke to Sean Carol at length, and we
know we know his rough account of of the events
of the night. But we should also note that he
was not just to be clear, he was not accused
(17:41):
of having a hand in the disappearance. So here's what
Carol tells them. He said that he was with Snat
at Butler's pub. They left, he walked with her back
to her house and he slept on the couch, and
she said she had been complaining of some pay in
her upper body and her arms, and so she said, look,
(18:03):
I'm just going to go to bed straight away, call
it a night. And then, according again to his account,
on the next day, Monday, February nine, he walked into
her bedroom and he found her awake. She said she
was still hurting and she went to hitchhike take a
ride to see a doctor later in the day. He
(18:24):
says that she had no no money on her so
he gave her three pounds I think, yeah, and that
was it and then she was gone and we we
you know, it's terrible because we only have the story
of her her boyfriend at the time. It's just her
ex boyfriend I guess, and the father of her child.
(18:46):
So you know, obviously for authorities, he's going to be
suspect number one. Uh to to our knowledge, he was
never formally charged with anything dealing with Fiona's disappearance. But um,
there's still some weird stuff because there's discrepancies in the
story here. There were several There was no evidence that
(19:08):
she had either gone to the doctor or hitchhike at all. Also,
her house had been seemingly you know, kind of rolled,
uh stripped of notable personal belongings. Um. There is a
retired detective sergeant named Alan Bailey who said that there
was a quote complete absence of clothing and other personal
(19:30):
items indicating that a teenage girl and her eleven month
old daughter were actually living there. Uh so not necessarily
looking not necessarily the appearance that those things had been removed,
more so the appearance that there never were there to
begin with. Um. And then the news started to spread
of a disappearance, a local farmer came out to authorities
(19:52):
with the news that he had discovered a number of
black Duffel bags in the corner of one of his fields.
They had some pretty interesting and damning contents. And just
wanna remind everybody here were we mentioned just a moment
ago that there's no indication that a teenage girl lived there.
Or you know, a child of a baby. Um, we
(20:15):
should just note here that Fiona was only nineteen at
the time she disappeared. And back to this farmer. He
tells investigators that he found these these a number of
black backs, and inside these bags he found items and
documents that had Fiona's name written upon them. So this
(20:37):
is smoking gun evidence, right, This, This is something that
builds a serious case if it still existed, because you see, unfortunately,
the farmer said that he had burned these bags before
he realized how important they were. He thought this was
he had another case of illegal dumping, right, and he
thought there were just people who are littering or purging
(20:59):
the house and just throwing it to the wayside, which
is which is a shame that words have a tough
time really articulating, you know what I mean, that's weird
from all angles. I just want to be an investigator
on the ground there be like, oh really, okay, you
burned them all? Interesting? Okay, cool? Oh really so you
were slept on the couch. I just want to interrogate everybody.
(21:22):
Ben all right, let's go. So our last one here,
eighteen year old dear dreg Jacob. She is home she
was in London at the time, but she had traveled
home to Newbridge for the summer, and on July she
disappears in in in an enormously tragic way. She is
(21:47):
She's like on the way to her parents house. She's
very close to her parents house. Multiple witnesses in cars
saw her, like you're within yards of her parents driveway,
and she never made it. And no one knows what happened,
(22:07):
or no one has come forward with knowledge of what happened.
Like the other seven individuals, she too seems to have disappeared.
So some people have included additional disappearances as part of
a larger pattern here. But you'll find that most official
inquiries now list these eight individuals as the core the
(22:30):
core people in question, and in the decades following, a
multitude of authorities, journalists, authors and more have searched for
answers to these haunting questions. Should be no surprise that
theories abound. So what happened? We'll explore that after a
(22:50):
word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Be
behind the curtain, as we sometimes say, Uh, the three
of us were we're working over time to make sure
we were just putting out the facts in the beginning,
(23:13):
because these all have a number of theories from like
maybe possibly but no proof level of theories to disturbingly plausible.
Would you guys say that's accurate. I think that's extremely accurate.
And the big, the big question here is with all
of these eight disappearances, is it even possible that one
(23:35):
suspect could connect all of them or maybe a few
of them, maybe most of them. You know, it's not
it's within the realm of possibility. But as we've just
described to you before the break there that the many
of the disappearances do feel similar where there's a vanishing
in you know, out of nowhere, just in the middle
of the day, as with deer Drew there and a
(23:59):
few others that we talked about Emelda. A few others
feel a bit different and almost like they maybe shouldn't
even be added on this list because they appear to
have been, you know, with loved ones at the time
when they disappeared or right before they disappeared. There's just
some strangeness in here. But the big question is is
there any one person that connects more than one of
(24:21):
these victims? He the most the most telling connective element
is the fact that none of these have any there's
there's no body, you know, and and for it being
such a relatively small georaphical area. UM. You know, most
disappearances like this, if they were random, if they were
random abductions or you know, domestic or something like that,
(24:43):
you would have a body. I'm glad that you bring
that up, because that's that's something that's going to come
into played later. And I believe it was. I believe
it was in our earlier Listener male segment on this. Uh.
I can't remember whether it made it to air guys,
but there are rumors that areas of the Wicklow Mountains
(25:06):
are known uh body dumping spots for criminal elements. It's
a tremendously unpleasant thing. But I promise you whatever city
you live in, anywhere in the world, there are always
places like that. There's uh there's areas of a place
called Douglasville, which is outside the perimeter of Atlanta, which
(25:27):
is a known dumping spot. There are areas of southwest
Atlanta as well. And this is not This is not
to say Atlanta is any better, worse, or different. Places
like these are around. You just don't hear them. Talked
about too often. Yeah, and and Kira, you know who
is from Ireland. She identified that her father is someone
(25:48):
that would say, yeah, be careful the mountain range over there,
that is it's tough to even walk around in those
mountains without finding a body. That was the quote I
believe from her father. So, yeah, they exist in the
in this this area where this triangle is is one
of them. Uh. And and we'll we'll return to the
question of remains in a moment. Let's let's yeah, let's
(26:11):
look at whatever connective tissue may exist outside of the
circumstances of the disappearances. There is one name you will hear,
and you have heard this often if you're familiar with
the case, as of a criminal named Larry Murphy. Larry
Murphy has been convicted of rape. He's also been a
(26:36):
prominent person of interest for the disappearance the disappearances of
at least three of these eight individuals, Annie McCarrick, Josephine
jo Joe Dullard and dear dre Jacob. This is because
all three vanished close to the area where he lived
(26:57):
at the time in this mid to late nineties. Tie
him free. So let's let's learn a little bit more
about him and why so many people are certain that
he had some sort of involvement. It's very much not
a good person, by the way, spoiler alert. And the
dude is stinking famous in a gross way, yes, and
(27:19):
let's infamous perhaps, Yeah, well you decide. Uh. Murphy was
convicted and imprisoned in two thousand one for the rape
and attempted murder of a Carlo businesswoman the previous year.
In two thousands, 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
(27:40):
scene and took manners into their own hands thankfully. Do
you do you guys? Do you guys remember that story?
That was the one where he had assaulted her once,
like took her out of she he abducted her, assaulted
her once after he took her out of the vehicle,
put her back in the vehicle, drove her to another place,
and and was doing it again. So we see a
(28:01):
location change. Uh. We also see clear intent to murder
this person. And as we mentioned in that previous episode,
Murphy has claimed he is not connected to any of
the eight disappearances. He has been questioned multiple times, but
(28:24):
to date, the official position of the authorities is that
they don't have solid evidence linking him to a case,
Like they haven't found any um anything that they can
really build a bedrock case on here. And there are
(28:44):
a couple of things that do seem to connect him
right the he had I think he took a job
very close to one person that disappeared. Um it was
dear dre where where he was a carpenter correct, mm hmm.
And that was yeah, that was over in New Bridge.
I remember, I remember that. Um. I don't I don't
(29:05):
even want to like give this guy anymore. I don't
want to talk about him much more. But it is
weird to note that in Irish publications when this guy,
Larry Murphy got out of prison, he like he made
the news when he got out of prison because everyone
was aware of him. And then as he moves around
there are sightings of Larry Murphy that are rewarded all
(29:26):
over the place. It's noted in publications who he's hanging
out with, where he's hanging out. I guess that's what
I mean when by he's famous in a gross way. Um,
there's a fear about him, as there should be, I
would say, but but there's also a fascination with him.
I think, yeah, yeah, he's I would say notorious is
(29:50):
a good word as well. You're right he was. While
he was in Ireland, he was visited by a member
of the authorities every month because he was considered a
high risk of ent are also followed by playing clothes
police and so on. However, he did travel to Spain. Uh.
He was spotted in November in Amsterdam. Where's living with
(30:13):
a friend who is also a criminal, a violent sex offender. Uh.
And as often, he's believed to have moved to South London.
There's another part we need to put in here. That's
just about the timeline. Uh. No disappearances occurred while Murphy
(30:36):
was locked up in prison for his earlier attack. I
believe the court could have given him life in prison,
but he was only sentenced to fifteen years. So that's
part of the public outcry when he was released him.
For people who believe that Murphy is linked to all
of these the fact that no disappearances occurred when he
(30:58):
was imprisoned seemed to add wait to their case. But
you have to remember he was convicted in January of
two thousand one, and the last vanishing triangle case occurs
in nineteen So it's not it's not you know what
I mean, It's not the same thing as hard proof.
(31:21):
The other piece of proof, as we mentioned, is that
Murphy works as a carpenter, carpenter by trade, and he
had done he had done some work at that grandmother's
shop there in New Bridge. But also we have to
note that dear d Jacob's mother has publicly stated that
(31:42):
she does not believe Murphy was involved in the disappearance
of her daughter. You know that that is that is
the parent, that's not an official investigator. But I think
it's worth noting that the family members, the mother in particular,
does not leave that he had a hand in this.
(32:03):
Let's go back to the point you mentioned, Noll. The
were the most troubling commonality, the lack of a body.
It's unusual for people to vanish UH. If we take
the cases of Eva Brennan and Fiona Pender will find
that there there's been speculation that links them to UH
(32:25):
two other disappearances that later did prove to be murders.
There are two people whose bodies have been found Antoinette
Smith and Patricia Doherty. Yeah, I mean this this you
could argue this is like, this breaks the pattern. Um.
Eva Brennan and Fiona Pender have also been linked to
the murders of Antoinette Smith and Patricia Doherty. Smith, who
(32:50):
was a twenty seven year old separated mother of two,
went missing in July and her body was discovered the
following June in a shallow grave in Killikee. Uh. And
that's in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains. Uh. Doherty,
on the other hand, Age thirty four, disappeared while shopping
on the three December in ninete and her remains were
(33:12):
found in June of by men digging turf in the
same area of the Dublin Mountains. So what if they're
not actually connected? Um, I mean, you know, there's a
lot of woods in this part of the world. There's
a lot of like places to bury bodies. But then, Matt,
(33:33):
weren't you saying that? In the listener mail segment there
was somebody say almost practically like you walk around, you're
gonna stumble on a body. Yeah, yeah, that that was
what our our listeners father had to say about the
subject um. Just something something I want to point out here,
the Killikee or Killock, I don't know how to say,
the Killikee foothills of the Dublin Mountains. This is that
(33:55):
same mountain range that we were talking about is just
south of Dublin. If you're looking at a map, and
it would be like if you've lived in Dublin and
something had occurred there within the city or right in
the outskirts of the city, and you just drove towards
the mountains, that's where you would end up. Is killicky essentially. Yeah,
(34:16):
So let's say the quiet part out loud. Many many
people began to think this could be the work of
one person, if not necessarily uh Larry Murphy, who again
has not been convicted of anything related to these eight disappearances.
The word people had in the front of their minds
(34:39):
was serial killer or the term I should say the phrase.
And it is crucial to note that authorities have not
officially publicly stated they think whether they think it's all
the work of a single person. You'll find some reporting
on this issue. It seems to imply that the authorities
suspected a serial killer for all the disappearances. Remember, these
(35:02):
are still technically not murders at this point. This this
is somewhat misleading. For sure, there can be individuals in
law enforcement who may believe that to be true, but
that's not the same thing as as the authorities taken
an official position. In at least three of these cases,
(35:24):
the Guardia strongly suspect that there was a personal motive
to these murders. That has, regrettably so often happens. The
killer was someone the victim news, one from their own life,
and a different person each time. So cr Breen went
(35:45):
missing when she snuck out of the house to supposedly
meet this secret lover who may or may not have
been married. UH. Law enforcement for time had a specific suspect,
and they were They were a little vague, but pretty
clear that they think the answer to the case maybe
(36:09):
closer to home. They also say they believe Fiona Synots
killer was someone she knew. UH. In the Fiona Pender case,
there was a specific suspect who seemed to have dated
her for a time and was later tried for some
sexual assault crimes in Canada. UH. This this man was
(36:34):
forty one years old. He was arrested for assaulting and
threatening to kill his wife. This arrest later led to
what appeared to be new information in the Fiona Pender case. Uh,
the way that the way that the legalities of this work.
The man couldnt be publicly identified due to a ban
(36:57):
on anything that would I identify the victim in a
sexual assault case. So it's not for his protection, it's
for the victim's protection. So there's definitely more to discuss here,
and we're gonna, you know, we we've we've talked about
a couple of things that we're going to hit on
in just a few moments, but first we need to
take a break and we'll be right back after a
(37:20):
word from our sponsor. So we've covered some of the
other considerations here. Well, what about other people that weren't
missing during this time period? Also, why did the disappearances
stop or were they simply you know, not reported later.
(37:41):
These are important questions and there aren't solid answers yet,
but we do see some potential light at the end
of this tunnel in a couple of different cases. So
remember Annie mccaricic. Just this past September, man named Michael
griff a lawyer based in New York teamed up with
(38:02):
an ex FBI agent named Kenneth Strange. Michael Griffith was
hired by the Meccaic family back in the nineties to
assist with their investigation, and just just a few months ago,
Griffith and Strange came forward with their news. They believed
they found a new lead. There's a woman named Margaret
(38:24):
Wogan who says she saw Annie McCarrick on the day
of disappearance with a man in a cafe in is Scary.
Wogan unfortunately has passed on uh. She she was working
in the Poppies cafe and she said, I saw a
man approach to Annie McCarrick in the cafe and offered
(38:47):
to buy her a slice of cake. But she never
gave a formal statement about this incident. She told her
daughter about what she saw and now this team of
investigators believe this piece of information be the key to
solving her murder. As we record, they do say they've
(39:07):
identified a suspect. They've spoken with Irish law enforcement, but
this suspect's name has yet to be released to the public.
M Yeah, I actually heard this angle briefly discussed in
a in a podcast that I listened to UH the
other day called Morbid that I actually quite enjoyed. UM.
They did a two partner on this subject, and one
(39:28):
of the theories, UM that's being discussed a bit on Reddit.
There's a lot of deep conversation about this on Reddit
is you know, this was a person we described at
the top of the show kind of exploring her Irish roots,
who was very outspoken about how fascinated she was about
all things Irish um and you know, really wanted to
kind of have an authentic experience. And there's a theory
(39:49):
that the gentleman in question here could have been a
member of the former member of the i r a UM,
the Irish Republican Army. And as we know that they
they you know, they can get involved and it's it's
something resembling it's not I mean, it is like a
how would you describe the ira A. I mean, it's
almost resembling organized crime and the fact that they like
(40:10):
do they they have feuds and there's bombings and there's
lots of covert activities. Right, So the ira A, the
Irish Republican Army, you could describe them as paramilitary organizations,
but they've they've gone through quite a few changes over
over the years, even while even while we were alive,
(40:31):
you know, for sure, for sure, um. But the fact
is that there there are lots of illegal activities that
folks involved when the ira A can get into, including
bombings and you know, um strategic moves on rival factions.
And the theory that was discussed on this podcast, UM
was that that this gentleman was capitalizing on the fact that, uh,
(40:54):
this young lady was very interested in all things Irish
and perhaps got a little loose lipped about some of
his I r A activities while drinking um, you know,
at this pub, at this restaurant, and then perhaps sense
that she was starting to kind of get weirded out
a little bit, or that he had maybe gone a
little too far um and trying to impress her, and
(41:15):
then decided he needed to do something about it because
because Annie was the one who was possibly last seen
at that Fox is it wasn't Fox and Hound Pub,
that's interesting, the Johnny Foxes Pub. And we have further
updates in the case of Jojo Dullard in particular. We
have to remember that once these headlines leave the evening news,
(41:39):
the story continues and the investigation continues as well, and
even if years passed, cases like the Golden State Killer
proved that investigations can make breakthrough. So let's let's talk
a little bit about a little bit about Jojo, because
there's a allegation of a cover up in this one too,
I believe. Oh yeah, And it comes directly from from
(42:02):
the parents, from Mary and Martin, the parents of of
Jojo Dollard. And this was a story that was published
in ten in the Irish Mirror. Again it's the Irish Mirror.
We don't you know, who knows if it's fully true
or not, but the parents do seem to be involved.
There are pictures of the parents on the publication. Uh,
(42:25):
And we're just gonna tell you what it says. According
to the family, there was a meeting between the family
and some of the law enforcement there the GARDA, and
according to the family, there was a senior official that's
what they're calling this person, somebody high up in the
organization that for some reason let them know that the
(42:49):
authorities knew the identity of the person that had abducted, raped,
and killed their daughter, but they were unable to do
anything about it. They were unable to make the investigation
go any further, they said, quote the investigation won't go anywhere.
And apparently this person even gave intense details about what
(43:10):
happened to their daughter, about how she was quote wrapped
in plastic and buried ten feet underground, specifically using a digger,
all kinds of things that only someone who had actually
found a body would would know if if it was true,
right um. And according to the family, they believed this
(43:31):
person was telling the truth. They thought it was you know,
actual information they didn't understand. They also alleged that there
was some kind of smear campaign, and there was a
bit of a smear campaign that was put out against
Jojo Dollard. And this has happened before when women go missing,
where the character of the victim is called into question
(43:53):
for some reason or another, when you're thinking about motive
and suspect and who could have been um victim blaming
in a lot of cases is what you could probably
refer to it as there's just there's some really interesting
stuff that was laid out here by the family. The
biggest thing to note is that, according to this story,
(44:14):
the person that was being protected the you know, the
murderer or the suspect in this case was allegedly someone
in politics or close to politics or politics adjacent and
that's why this person was being protected. And this this
case continues. There are more updates here. We know that
later in twenty nineteen, an Irish priest came forward saying
(44:38):
that he received an anonymous letter that could help illuminate
the mystery what happened to Jojo Dullard. This this is
strange because he said that he received the letter after
there was another public appeal for more information about her disappearance,
(45:00):
and he received this letter in twenty sixteen. He says
he brought it straight to the authorities and that this
letter had the writer. The author of this letter stated
they had information uh in relation to missing persons, and
the priest believed it was in reference to Jojo Dullard,
(45:20):
although the anonymous author did not mention this person by name.
How does this all shake out at this point, we
don't know yet, but we can tell you that as
of October twenty twenty uh the GUARDIA has upgraded the
case of Jojo Dullard to a murder hunt. Their Serious
(45:41):
Crime Review Team and the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation
launched a review of the case back in February, and
they concluded that uh, serious harm was done to her,
that she died by some violent end, and they are
now treating her disappearance as a murder investigation. So something happened.
(46:03):
It's not public yet, but something is there, and something
convinced the investigators that there there was more to learn
about this case. Yeah, it really doesn't make you wonder
what caused, what triggered the investigation to turn this way
all of a sudden, all these years later. We're gonna
certainly keep our ear to the ground and see if
(46:24):
anything comes up. And in the meantime, we would like
to hear from you. Uh, this this case bears more investigation.
There there's some wonderful literature out on this if you'd
like to read more. But also recommend keeping an eye
on the developments in the investigation of law enforcement as
(46:47):
these As we said, uh, investigations into these cases continue today.
Let us know what you think. Do you think Larry
Murphy was involved? Do you think there is a cover
up of foot Do you think there is one person
responsible for these disappearances or do you believe it's multiple people.
We want to hear from you. We try to make
(47:09):
ourselves easy to find online. You can find us on
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It's for today, It's you can't find it at instagram
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(47:30):
the cream corn kid, not this time? Okay, all right, Well,
while you're searching for Matt's, you can find mine at
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I just kind of lark on Twitter. You can write
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(47:50):
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point out of frustration. But it's fine, who cares? But
what But what if you don't sip the social meads?
(48:13):
What what if you, like many other luminaries, have made
the decision to desocialize yourself online, But you still have
a tale to tell. Where do these people go? Mead
like the drink? I get it now, ben, Oh, yes, exactly, Well,
don't drink the meads sometimes it's it's just way too
sweet and it's just not what you're looking for. And
(48:36):
the honey, I don't know if there's something about it.
Doesn't it for a bit? Much of the gods? That's true.
But instead take a deep long sip of yie old
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(48:56):
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(49:18):
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(49:40):
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(50:04):
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Keep your eye on that. There's more to come. But
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(50:24):
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(51:05):
they Don't Want You to Know is a production of
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
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you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.
(00:26):
My name is Matt, my name is Noel. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Mission Control deconds. Most importantly, you are you, You are here,
and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Uh.
Student listeners, you'll notice that in our strange news and
(00:46):
listener mail segments, we will occasionally note a topic that
bears further investigation. Uh. And to be candid, you know,
we work assiduously not to accidentally turn those se f
it's into you know, a full episode, but we do
keep notes. We're not just blowing smoke when we say
(01:06):
we're going to follow up on something. And that brings
us to today's episode. In a previous Listener Male segment,
we learned of Ireland's Vanishing triangle. So thanks again to
Kira for alerting us to this troubling tale. Today will
be exploring a series of as of yet unexplained disappearances
(01:29):
that have haunted the Nation of Ireland for decades. These
cases remain unsolved today. Here are the facts. I guess
we should start with, what is the Vanishing Triangle? There
always there's so many triangles, you know. There's like the
Bermuda triangle exactly right your your mind immediately conjures like
(01:51):
some sort of mysterious vortex in the middle of the
sea where ships get you know, sucked down into the
great beyond. This is different. This is a geographical triangle
that is very much on land. Um. But the Vanishing
Triangle specifically refers to a series of mysterious and as
of yet unsolved disappearances in Ireland that took place in
(02:13):
the mid to late nineties specifically between nineteen and nine eight.
As you'll find out in the episode UM, this is
a very kind of small geographical location, so it really
has taken on kind of a life of its own
in the I guess lore of the of the region.
So there is an unofficial list of disappearances that includes
eight women ranging in age from seventeen to thirty nine
(02:36):
at the time of their disappearance. So why is it
called a triangle? Well, everyone who's listening you know that
people have gone missing in Ireland prior to that date
in nineteen nine, and people have gone missing after that date.
In this is specifically looking at a set of eight
(02:57):
women who who ranged in a ages, So we're looking
at younger women around seventeen or seventeen, all the way
up to women who were thirty nine at the time
when they meant when they went missing. And uh, it
really it's a triangle because it's just looking at the
places where these women were last seen. Really, that's that's
(03:17):
what we're focusing on. That's why it's a triangle. And
and part of this goes to the editorial choice of
various Irish media outlets. They used the phrase and this
is not a ding on them. It is uh, it
is common and some people may even argue necessary for
news organizations to find a an umbrella phrase that encapsulates
(03:44):
a series of events, people, places, or things. So the
reason they chose this phrase is because as we as
we said, all these disappearances take place in the same
rough area. If you pull up a map of Ireland
now you're looking at it, you'll see that, uh, you'll
see pay attention to the east coast. You'll see the
(04:05):
capital Dublin and then if you look up, if you
sort of let your eyes wander up the coast, you'll
see Dune Dalk and then if you let your eyes
wander all the way down you'll see Wexford also there
on the coast. And the way people usually think of
this is, as you said, Matt, based on where these
(04:25):
individuals were last seeing the furthest inland is kind of
the point of our triangle here. Uh. That is the
disappearance of Fiona Pender from Tullamore, which will will we'll
get into the stories of these individuals at this point.
But but as you mentioned, this encompasses a lot of
(04:49):
stuff urban areas, rural areas, the Wicklow Mountains, and we're
not talking about a huge region. If for example, you
wanted to drive from Wexford there in the south to Dublin,
it would take you about two hours, so it's not
you know, it's not the best commute, but there are
(05:09):
people who could live in Wexford and go to work
in Dublin every day. There are worse community even here
in the States. So at this point we need to
talk about the sequence of events, the circumstances of these individuals,
and keep in mind um keep in mind what we
said earlier. I love the point you made, Matt. There
(05:32):
obviously were people who went missing before and people who
went missing after. But the eight people we will introduce
you to today have never been found, no bodily trace,
no allegations that they contacted someone years later. They simply
(05:55):
seem to have disappeared the very first disappearance. Each of
these has unique distinct aspects, right, and we can't. I
think it's probably best to treat each one as a
unique case before we try to connect them all other
than with those three commonalities. All women, all disappearing in
(06:20):
this eastern Coast of Ireland area, and all still missing today.
First disappearance, Annie McCarrick, went missing in March. She was
not from Ireland, No, she wasn't, but she was of
Irish descent, or you know, at least had Irish roots,
(06:44):
Irish blood, and was very very interested in exploring that
on a solo trip to Ireland. She was from Long Island,
New York um and at the time of her disappearance
was living in Sandy Mount, which is a coastal suburb
of Dublin. She was twenty six uh. She was last
seen in the Wicklow Town of Nn Scary Uh, and
(07:06):
is presumed to be dead. And it's interesting too because
she was she she went to Ireland by herself. She's
clearly someone who was very let's say, self possessed and
had kind of drive because she wanted to explore this
part of her heritage. Uh. And she didn't have any friends,
and she was known to be pretty outspoken and good
(07:27):
at you know, kind of never never met a stranger
type person, you know. Yeah, and Uh. With her disappearance,
she was a bit far from where she lives in
Sandy Mount where we discussed that's where she was residing
at least while she was in Ireland. She was seen
at a post office down in I think it's what
do we say in the scary And she may or
(07:48):
may not have been seen at a place called Johnny
Fox's Pub, uh, which is a bit further away from
that area. And we tried, we just so everyone knows,
we attempted to make a Google Earth map of all
these disappearances and we're going to continue working on that
after this episode, but uh, you can It's it's interesting
(08:08):
to see how far some people traveled on the day
or night that they disappeared, how far they are they
are believed to have traveled exactly. We very quickly get
into situations where investigators have to question the credibility of
some witnesses, and you know, in defense of many of
(08:30):
the witnesses involved, h people will tend to be honest
when they say I saw something, I saw someone I
cannot confirm. Um, but you're you're right with the distances
because it was a dark, wet night, uh during during
the time of mccaric's disappearance, and it seems odd that
(08:52):
she would have walked what is its six kilometers distance
through the weather, you know, m but that seems to
be the case. She was, as we said, never never
seen again. However, stay tuned because at the end of
this episode, we do have some updates that may interest you.
(09:16):
Almost breaking news. Just a few months later, on July,
Eva Brennan from wrath Gard disappears. She was thirty nine
at the time of the disappearance, and she was last
she She was last seen leaving her parents house. She
(09:36):
had gone over there and grabbed lunch with the family.
Interesting part of this case. Despite the disappearance of McCarrick
just a few months earlier. Uh, the GUARDA did not investigate.
The authorities here did not investigate Brennan's disappearance for at
least three months. I was definitely a bit weird there
(09:59):
that they didn't do that. The problems, to my understanding,
is that she was an adult and there was no
sign of any kind of you know, break in at
the house or any kind of foul play. At least initially,
there was nothing that would speak to her disappearing for
any reason other than she just left. And that's, at
(10:21):
least according to the authorities, that was why there was
no investigation for that amount of time. But of course,
as the family knowing that your loved one is gone
and this is not normal for them, Um, that is
excruciating and I can't imagine what that family must have
gone through. And you hit the nail on the head there,
because again it's not the process of investigation moves differently
(10:47):
if we're talking about a thirteen year old person versus
a thirty nine year old person. So fast forward a
little less than a year January third, twenty two year
old Emelda Keenan disappears. She is from Montmelick or Mountain Melick,
So there there are a couple multiple witnesses who saw
(11:08):
her walking. She was last seen crossing the road at
a corner of the place called the Tower Hotel in
Lombard Street. This was mid afternoon. This wasn't in the
middle of the night. She had left her apartment around
one pm. I believe that's correct. Another really strange thing
because she's you know, we said she's from what was it,
(11:30):
Mountain Melick, which is quite a distance away from where
she was staying with her boyfriend. I think at the
time her boyfriend's name was Mark wall Um, and she
was living. Her place of residence was very close to
where she was last seen there by the Tower Hotel.
Just a weird situation the middle of the day and
then she's gone. Then we have a Josephine Dullard Jojo
(11:53):
to her friends, who disappeared on November nine at the
age of twenty one. She was the thing in Harold's
Cross and disappeared while hitch hiking home from Dublin. Um
and if I'm not mistaken, she was a waitress um
at a at a nearby restaurant and I had some
card trouble, I believe, and last was seen using a
(12:15):
pay phone. Police pulled the phone records and found that
she called her friend Mary Cullen in at seven and
end of the call just as she was about to
enter this other car uh, the driver of which remains unidentified.
And and with JoJo's case, there are conflicting witness stories
kind of as we mentioned with Annie's case, there's it's
(12:36):
tough to know who's telling the truth, who actually saw
Jojo get into or get out of a car, because
there were a few other witnesses that came forward, and
they're also some kind of strange reports and I don't
know what to believe or not because you know, I'm
looking at sources, sources like the Mirror dot Coda at
UK or the Mirror Irish, the Irish Mirror, I guess,
(12:58):
and it's just tough to know what's real or what's not.
But there are some stories in there about her possibly
getting into a car with two men um maybe not.
And there's even a story in the said mirror that
we can talk about later about a guarda member that
maybe knew the identity of her killer but was unable
(13:19):
to come forward with it. Now, is this the one
where there was also a story of someone seeing her
like get out of the car and and like under
duress and like runs kind of from the scene because
and I know one of these there was an account
of someone witnessing one of these women like actually very
violently exiting a car and then running away. You know, honestly,
(13:41):
I can't remember if that was Jojo or not. And
it's also a little bit hard to discern what is
here saying what's been kind of built into some of
the folklore of these stories over the years, because it's
very you could find you can find videos online of
people talking about this, and the story seemed to evolve
outside of what reporting exists. Yeah, there are a lot
(14:02):
of twist. Again, each of these cases is as distinct
as a fingerprint, and like the driver of that car,
Dollard has also never been found. Fast forward February. Cr
Breen from Dundalk disappears at the age of seventeen. She
(14:24):
this is this is different from some of the other
cases because she was at her mother's house. Her mother
is named Burned, and they went to sleep and according
to the mother's statement to authorities, she awoke a little
bit north of two am and decided to use the
restroom and when she did, she found her daughter missing
(14:47):
and a window propped open. This led her to believe
that her daughter had stuck out with the intention of
coming back. And there's been speculation that she was actually
sneak king away because she had a boyfriend that she
didn't think her parents would approve of. Further speculation that
(15:08):
this uh, this boyfriend may have himself been married. But
in either case, that was the last trace of her,
and we don't we don't have to get into her
right now, but there was a primary suspect in that
case that ends up being kind of important and connecting
to some other things. But then the leads, you know,
don't really appear to go anywhere, but we can. We
(15:30):
can jump into that later, and like you said, when
she she is still missing. So then let's go to
the next person that went missing. Fiona Pender. She was
from Tullamore and she went missing on August nine, six uh.
She was twenty five years old and unfortunately and terribly,
(15:50):
she was seven months pregnant when she went missing. That's
pretty rough. The last confirmed sighting of her was by
her boyfriend, man named John Thompson, and her boyfriend saw
her leave the apartment that they shared together. And there's
something a bit strange with this case. Um Ben, you've
you found this as well as I. Something happened in
(16:12):
two thousan Yes, yeah, over at the sleeve Bloom Way,
which is at the border of Awfully and forgive our
pronunciation here, folks uh loislaus l a O. I s
at that border on the sleeve Bloom Way, people found
(16:33):
a small wooden cross with the name Fiona Pender on it,
and this naturally led some people to believe that Pender
was buried somewhere in the sleeve Bloom Mountains. There's much
more to each of these stories. Again, we're just establishing
the bare bones facts here. So the seventh individual grouped
(16:57):
in the vanishing triangle is one Feo Synat. She disappeared
on February eight She was from ross Lair, but she
was living in Broadway at the time. She was last
publicly seen leaving a place called Butler's Pub with the
guy knew, Sean Carrol, who was her ex boyfriend and
(17:19):
the father of her then eleven month old daughter. The authorities,
of course, spoke to Sean Carol at length, and we
know we know his rough account of of the events
of the night. But we should also note that he
was not just to be clear, he was not accused
(17:41):
of having a hand in the disappearance. So here's what
Carol tells them. He said that he was with Snat
at Butler's pub. They left, he walked with her back
to her house and he slept on the couch, and
she said she had been complaining of some pay in
her upper body and her arms, and so she said, look,
(18:03):
I'm just going to go to bed straight away, call
it a night. And then, according again to his account,
on the next day, Monday, February nine, he walked into
her bedroom and he found her awake. She said she
was still hurting and she went to hitchhike take a
ride to see a doctor later in the day. He
(18:24):
says that she had no no money on her so
he gave her three pounds I think, yeah, and that
was it and then she was gone and we we
you know, it's terrible because we only have the story
of her her boyfriend at the time. It's just her
ex boyfriend I guess, and the father of her child.
(18:46):
So you know, obviously for authorities, he's going to be
suspect number one. Uh to to our knowledge, he was
never formally charged with anything dealing with Fiona's disappearance. But um,
there's still some weird stuff because there's discrepancies in the
story here. There were several There was no evidence that
(19:08):
she had either gone to the doctor or hitchhike at all. Also,
her house had been seemingly you know, kind of rolled,
uh stripped of notable personal belongings. Um. There is a
retired detective sergeant named Alan Bailey who said that there
was a quote complete absence of clothing and other personal
(19:30):
items indicating that a teenage girl and her eleven month
old daughter were actually living there. Uh so not necessarily
looking not necessarily the appearance that those things had been removed,
more so the appearance that there never were there to
begin with. Um. And then the news started to spread
of a disappearance, a local farmer came out to authorities
(19:52):
with the news that he had discovered a number of
black Duffel bags in the corner of one of his fields.
They had some pretty interesting and damning contents. And just
wanna remind everybody here were we mentioned just a moment
ago that there's no indication that a teenage girl lived there.
Or you know, a child of a baby. Um, we
(20:15):
should just note here that Fiona was only nineteen at
the time she disappeared. And back to this farmer. He
tells investigators that he found these these a number of
black backs, and inside these bags he found items and
documents that had Fiona's name written upon them. So this
(20:37):
is smoking gun evidence, right, This, This is something that
builds a serious case if it still existed, because you see, unfortunately,
the farmer said that he had burned these bags before
he realized how important they were. He thought this was
he had another case of illegal dumping, right, and he
thought there were just people who are littering or purging
(20:59):
the house and just throwing it to the wayside, which
is which is a shame that words have a tough
time really articulating, you know what I mean, that's weird
from all angles. I just want to be an investigator
on the ground there be like, oh really, okay, you
burned them all? Interesting? Okay, cool? Oh really so you
were slept on the couch. I just want to interrogate everybody.
(21:22):
Ben all right, let's go. So our last one here,
eighteen year old dear dreg Jacob. She is home she
was in London at the time, but she had traveled
home to Newbridge for the summer, and on July she
disappears in in in an enormously tragic way. She is
(21:47):
She's like on the way to her parents house. She's
very close to her parents house. Multiple witnesses in cars
saw her, like you're within yards of her parents driveway,
and she never made it. And no one knows what happened,
(22:07):
or no one has come forward with knowledge of what happened.
Like the other seven individuals, she too seems to have disappeared.
So some people have included additional disappearances as part of
a larger pattern here. But you'll find that most official
inquiries now list these eight individuals as the core the
(22:30):
core people in question, and in the decades following, a
multitude of authorities, journalists, authors and more have searched for
answers to these haunting questions. Should be no surprise that
theories abound. So what happened? We'll explore that after a
(22:50):
word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. Be
behind the curtain, as we sometimes say, Uh, the three
of us were we're working over time to make sure
we were just putting out the facts in the beginning,
(23:13):
because these all have a number of theories from like
maybe possibly but no proof level of theories to disturbingly plausible.
Would you guys say that's accurate. I think that's extremely accurate.
And the big, the big question here is with all
of these eight disappearances, is it even possible that one
(23:35):
suspect could connect all of them or maybe a few
of them, maybe most of them. You know, it's not
it's within the realm of possibility. But as we've just
described to you before the break there that the many
of the disappearances do feel similar where there's a vanishing
in you know, out of nowhere, just in the middle
of the day, as with deer Drew there and a
(23:59):
few others that we talked about Emelda. A few others
feel a bit different and almost like they maybe shouldn't
even be added on this list because they appear to
have been, you know, with loved ones at the time
when they disappeared or right before they disappeared. There's just
some strangeness in here. But the big question is is
there any one person that connects more than one of
(24:21):
these victims? He the most the most telling connective element
is the fact that none of these have any there's
there's no body, you know, and and for it being
such a relatively small georaphical area. UM. You know, most
disappearances like this, if they were random, if they were
random abductions or you know, domestic or something like that,
(24:43):
you would have a body. I'm glad that you bring
that up, because that's that's something that's going to come
into played later. And I believe it was. I believe
it was in our earlier Listener male segment on this. Uh.
I can't remember whether it made it to air guys,
but there are rumors that areas of the Wicklow Mountains
(25:06):
are known uh body dumping spots for criminal elements. It's
a tremendously unpleasant thing. But I promise you whatever city
you live in, anywhere in the world, there are always
places like that. There's uh there's areas of a place
called Douglasville, which is outside the perimeter of Atlanta, which
(25:27):
is a known dumping spot. There are areas of southwest
Atlanta as well. And this is not This is not
to say Atlanta is any better, worse, or different. Places
like these are around. You just don't hear them. Talked
about too often. Yeah, and and Kira, you know who
is from Ireland. She identified that her father is someone
(25:48):
that would say, yeah, be careful the mountain range over there,
that is it's tough to even walk around in those
mountains without finding a body. That was the quote I
believe from her father. So, yeah, they exist in the
in this this area where this triangle is is one
of them. Uh. And and we'll we'll return to the
question of remains in a moment. Let's let's yeah, let's
(26:11):
look at whatever connective tissue may exist outside of the
circumstances of the disappearances. There is one name you will hear,
and you have heard this often if you're familiar with
the case, as of a criminal named Larry Murphy. Larry
Murphy has been convicted of rape. He's also been a
(26:36):
prominent person of interest for the disappearance the disappearances of
at least three of these eight individuals, Annie McCarrick, Josephine
jo Joe Dullard and dear dre Jacob. This is because
all three vanished close to the area where he lived
(26:57):
at the time in this mid to late nineties. Tie
him free. So let's let's learn a little bit more
about him and why so many people are certain that
he had some sort of involvement. It's very much not
a good person, by the way, spoiler alert. And the
dude is stinking famous in a gross way, yes, and
(27:19):
let's infamous perhaps, Yeah, well you decide. Uh. Murphy was
convicted and imprisoned in two thousand one for the rape
and attempted murder of a Carlo businesswoman the previous year.
In two thousands, 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
(27:40):
scene and took manners into their own hands thankfully. Do
you do you guys? Do you guys remember that story?
That was the one where he had assaulted her once,
like took her out of she he abducted her, assaulted
her once after he took her out of the vehicle,
put her back in the vehicle, drove her to another place,
and and was doing it again. So we see a
(28:01):
location change. Uh. We also see clear intent to murder
this person. And as we mentioned in that previous episode,
Murphy has claimed he is not connected to any of
the eight disappearances. He has been questioned multiple times, but
(28:24):
to date, the official position of the authorities is that
they don't have solid evidence linking him to a case,
Like they haven't found any um anything that they can
really build a bedrock case on here. And there are
(28:44):
a couple of things that do seem to connect him
right the he had I think he took a job
very close to one person that disappeared. Um it was
dear dre where where he was a carpenter correct, mm hmm.
And that was yeah, that was over in New Bridge.
I remember, I remember that. Um. I don't I don't
(29:05):
even want to like give this guy anymore. I don't
want to talk about him much more. But it is
weird to note that in Irish publications when this guy,
Larry Murphy got out of prison, he like he made
the news when he got out of prison because everyone
was aware of him. And then as he moves around
there are sightings of Larry Murphy that are rewarded all
(29:26):
over the place. It's noted in publications who he's hanging
out with, where he's hanging out. I guess that's what
I mean when by he's famous in a gross way. Um,
there's a fear about him, as there should be, I
would say, but but there's also a fascination with him.
I think, yeah, yeah, he's I would say notorious is
(29:50):
a good word as well. You're right he was. While
he was in Ireland, he was visited by a member
of the authorities every month because he was considered a
high risk of ent are also followed by playing clothes
police and so on. However, he did travel to Spain. Uh.
He was spotted in November in Amsterdam. Where's living with
(30:13):
a friend who is also a criminal, a violent sex offender. Uh.
And as often, he's believed to have moved to South London.
There's another part we need to put in here. That's
just about the timeline. Uh. No disappearances occurred while Murphy
(30:36):
was locked up in prison for his earlier attack. I
believe the court could have given him life in prison,
but he was only sentenced to fifteen years. So that's
part of the public outcry when he was released him.
For people who believe that Murphy is linked to all
of these the fact that no disappearances occurred when he
(30:58):
was imprisoned seemed to add wait to their case. But
you have to remember he was convicted in January of
two thousand one, and the last vanishing triangle case occurs
in nineteen So it's not it's not you know what
I mean, It's not the same thing as hard proof.
(31:21):
The other piece of proof, as we mentioned, is that
Murphy works as a carpenter, carpenter by trade, and he
had done he had done some work at that grandmother's
shop there in New Bridge. But also we have to
note that dear d Jacob's mother has publicly stated that
(31:42):
she does not believe Murphy was involved in the disappearance
of her daughter. You know that that is that is
the parent, that's not an official investigator. But I think
it's worth noting that the family members, the mother in particular,
does not leave that he had a hand in this.
(32:03):
Let's go back to the point you mentioned, Noll. The
were the most troubling commonality, the lack of a body.
It's unusual for people to vanish UH. If we take
the cases of Eva Brennan and Fiona Pender will find
that there there's been speculation that links them to UH
(32:25):
two other disappearances that later did prove to be murders.
There are two people whose bodies have been found Antoinette
Smith and Patricia Doherty. Yeah, I mean this this you
could argue this is like, this breaks the pattern. Um.
Eva Brennan and Fiona Pender have also been linked to
the murders of Antoinette Smith and Patricia Doherty. Smith, who
(32:50):
was a twenty seven year old separated mother of two,
went missing in July and her body was discovered the
following June in a shallow grave in Killikee. Uh. And
that's in the foothills of the Dublin Mountains. Uh. Doherty,
on the other hand, Age thirty four, disappeared while shopping
on the three December in ninete and her remains were
(33:12):
found in June of by men digging turf in the
same area of the Dublin Mountains. So what if they're
not actually connected? Um, I mean, you know, there's a
lot of woods in this part of the world. There's
a lot of like places to bury bodies. But then, Matt,
(33:33):
weren't you saying that? In the listener mail segment there
was somebody say almost practically like you walk around, you're
gonna stumble on a body. Yeah, yeah, that that was
what our our listeners father had to say about the
subject um. Just something something I want to point out here,
the Killikee or Killock, I don't know how to say,
the Killikee foothills of the Dublin Mountains. This is that
(33:55):
same mountain range that we were talking about is just
south of Dublin. If you're looking at a map, and
it would be like if you've lived in Dublin and
something had occurred there within the city or right in
the outskirts of the city, and you just drove towards
the mountains, that's where you would end up. Is killicky essentially. Yeah,
(34:16):
So let's say the quiet part out loud. Many many
people began to think this could be the work of
one person, if not necessarily uh Larry Murphy, who again
has not been convicted of anything related to these eight disappearances.
The word people had in the front of their minds
(34:39):
was serial killer or the term I should say the phrase.
And it is crucial to note that authorities have not
officially publicly stated they think whether they think it's all
the work of a single person. You'll find some reporting
on this issue. It seems to imply that the authorities
suspected a serial killer for all the disappearances. Remember, these
(35:02):
are still technically not murders at this point. This this
is somewhat misleading. For sure, there can be individuals in
law enforcement who may believe that to be true, but
that's not the same thing as as the authorities taken
an official position. In at least three of these cases,
(35:24):
the Guardia strongly suspect that there was a personal motive
to these murders. That has, regrettably so often happens. The
killer was someone the victim news, one from their own life,
and a different person each time. So cr Breen went
(35:45):
missing when she snuck out of the house to supposedly
meet this secret lover who may or may not have
been married. UH. Law enforcement for time had a specific suspect,
and they were They were a little vague, but pretty
clear that they think the answer to the case maybe
(36:09):
closer to home. They also say they believe Fiona Synots
killer was someone she knew. UH. In the Fiona Pender case,
there was a specific suspect who seemed to have dated
her for a time and was later tried for some
sexual assault crimes in Canada. UH. This this man was
(36:34):
forty one years old. He was arrested for assaulting and
threatening to kill his wife. This arrest later led to
what appeared to be new information in the Fiona Pender case. Uh,
the way that the way that the legalities of this work.
The man couldnt be publicly identified due to a ban
(36:57):
on anything that would I identify the victim in a
sexual assault case. So it's not for his protection, it's
for the victim's protection. So there's definitely more to discuss here,
and we're gonna, you know, we we've we've talked about
a couple of things that we're going to hit on
in just a few moments, but first we need to
take a break and we'll be right back after a
(37:20):
word from our sponsor. So we've covered some of the
other considerations here. Well, what about other people that weren't
missing during this time period? Also, why did the disappearances
stop or were they simply you know, not reported later.
(37:41):
These are important questions and there aren't solid answers yet,
but we do see some potential light at the end
of this tunnel in a couple of different cases. So
remember Annie mccaricic. Just this past September, man named Michael
griff a lawyer based in New York teamed up with
(38:02):
an ex FBI agent named Kenneth Strange. Michael Griffith was
hired by the Meccaic family back in the nineties to
assist with their investigation, and just just a few months ago,
Griffith and Strange came forward with their news. They believed
they found a new lead. There's a woman named Margaret
(38:24):
Wogan who says she saw Annie McCarrick on the day
of disappearance with a man in a cafe in is Scary.
Wogan unfortunately has passed on uh. She she was working
in the Poppies cafe and she said, I saw a
man approach to Annie McCarrick in the cafe and offered
(38:47):
to buy her a slice of cake. But she never
gave a formal statement about this incident. She told her
daughter about what she saw and now this team of
investigators believe this piece of information be the key to
solving her murder. As we record, they do say they've
(39:07):
identified a suspect. They've spoken with Irish law enforcement, but
this suspect's name has yet to be released to the public.
M Yeah, I actually heard this angle briefly discussed in
a in a podcast that I listened to UH the
other day called Morbid that I actually quite enjoyed. UM.
They did a two partner on this subject, and one
(39:28):
of the theories, UM that's being discussed a bit on Reddit.
There's a lot of deep conversation about this on Reddit
is you know, this was a person we described at
the top of the show kind of exploring her Irish roots,
who was very outspoken about how fascinated she was about
all things Irish um and you know, really wanted to
kind of have an authentic experience. And there's a theory
(39:49):
that the gentleman in question here could have been a
member of the former member of the i r a UM,
the Irish Republican Army. And as we know that they
they you know, they can get involved and it's it's
something resembling it's not I mean, it is like a
how would you describe the ira A. I mean, it's
almost resembling organized crime and the fact that they like
(40:10):
do they they have feuds and there's bombings and there's
lots of covert activities. Right, So the ira A, the
Irish Republican Army, you could describe them as paramilitary organizations,
but they've they've gone through quite a few changes over
over the years, even while even while we were alive,
(40:31):
you know, for sure, for sure, um. But the fact
is that there there are lots of illegal activities that
folks involved when the ira A can get into, including
bombings and you know, um strategic moves on rival factions.
And the theory that was discussed on this podcast, UM
was that that this gentleman was capitalizing on the fact that, uh,
(40:54):
this young lady was very interested in all things Irish
and perhaps got a little loose lipped about some of
his I r A activities while drinking um, you know,
at this pub, at this restaurant, and then perhaps sense
that she was starting to kind of get weirded out
a little bit, or that he had maybe gone a
little too far um and trying to impress her, and
(41:15):
then decided he needed to do something about it because
because Annie was the one who was possibly last seen
at that Fox is it wasn't Fox and Hound Pub,
that's interesting, the Johnny Foxes Pub. And we have further
updates in the case of Jojo Dullard in particular. We
have to remember that once these headlines leave the evening news,
(41:39):
the story continues and the investigation continues as well, and
even if years passed, cases like the Golden State Killer
proved that investigations can make breakthrough. So let's let's talk
a little bit about a little bit about Jojo, because
there's a allegation of a cover up in this one too,
I believe. Oh yeah, And it comes directly from from
(42:02):
the parents, from Mary and Martin, the parents of of
Jojo Dollard. And this was a story that was published
in ten in the Irish Mirror. Again it's the Irish Mirror.
We don't you know, who knows if it's fully true
or not, but the parents do seem to be involved.
There are pictures of the parents on the publication. Uh,
(42:25):
And we're just gonna tell you what it says. According
to the family, there was a meeting between the family
and some of the law enforcement there the GARDA, and
according to the family, there was a senior official that's
what they're calling this person, somebody high up in the
organization that for some reason let them know that the
(42:49):
authorities knew the identity of the person that had abducted, raped,
and killed their daughter, but they were unable to do
anything about it. They were unable to make the investigation
go any further, they said, quote the investigation won't go anywhere.
And apparently this person even gave intense details about what
(43:10):
happened to their daughter, about how she was quote wrapped
in plastic and buried ten feet underground, specifically using a digger,
all kinds of things that only someone who had actually
found a body would would know if if it was true,
right um. And according to the family, they believed this
(43:31):
person was telling the truth. They thought it was you know,
actual information they didn't understand. They also alleged that there
was some kind of smear campaign, and there was a
bit of a smear campaign that was put out against
Jojo Dollard. And this has happened before when women go missing,
where the character of the victim is called into question
(43:53):
for some reason or another, when you're thinking about motive
and suspect and who could have been um victim blaming
in a lot of cases is what you could probably
refer to it as there's just there's some really interesting
stuff that was laid out here by the family. The
biggest thing to note is that, according to this story,
(44:14):
the person that was being protected the you know, the
murderer or the suspect in this case was allegedly someone
in politics or close to politics or politics adjacent and
that's why this person was being protected. And this this
case continues. There are more updates here. We know that
later in twenty nineteen, an Irish priest came forward saying
(44:38):
that he received an anonymous letter that could help illuminate
the mystery what happened to Jojo Dullard. This this is
strange because he said that he received the letter after
there was another public appeal for more information about her disappearance,
(45:00):
and he received this letter in twenty sixteen. He says
he brought it straight to the authorities and that this
letter had the writer. The author of this letter stated
they had information uh in relation to missing persons, and
the priest believed it was in reference to Jojo Dullard,
(45:20):
although the anonymous author did not mention this person by name.
How does this all shake out at this point, we
don't know yet, but we can tell you that as
of October twenty twenty uh the GUARDIA has upgraded the
case of Jojo Dullard to a murder hunt. Their Serious
(45:41):
Crime Review Team and the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation
launched a review of the case back in February, and
they concluded that uh, serious harm was done to her,
that she died by some violent end, and they are
now treating her disappearance as a murder investigation. So something happened.
(46:03):
It's not public yet, but something is there, and something
convinced the investigators that there there was more to learn
about this case. Yeah, it really doesn't make you wonder
what caused, what triggered the investigation to turn this way
all of a sudden, all these years later. We're gonna
certainly keep our ear to the ground and see if
(46:24):
anything comes up. And in the meantime, we would like
to hear from you. Uh, this this case bears more investigation.
There there's some wonderful literature out on this if you'd
like to read more. But also recommend keeping an eye
on the developments in the investigation of law enforcement as
(46:47):
these As we said, uh, investigations into these cases continue today.
Let us know what you think. Do you think Larry
Murphy was involved? Do you think there is a cover
up of foot Do you think there is one person
responsible for these disappearances or do you believe it's multiple people.
We want to hear from you. We try to make
(47:09):
ourselves easy to find online. You can find us on
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we are conspiracy stuff show hey. And you can even
find us individually on Instagram. Right Ken, Matt, what's yours today?
It's for today, It's you can't find it at instagram
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(47:30):
the cream corn kid, not this time? Okay, all right, Well,
while you're searching for Matt's, you can find mine at
how now Noel Brown, I'm pretty much just on Instagram.
I just kind of lark on Twitter. You can write
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at Ben Boling or you can do the same on
(47:50):
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just called mine underscore, I heart or something at this
point out of frustration. But it's fine, who cares? But
what But what if you don't sip the social meads?
(48:13):
What what if you, like many other luminaries, have made
the decision to desocialize yourself online, But you still have
a tale to tell. Where do these people go? Mead
like the drink? I get it now, ben, Oh, yes, exactly, Well,
don't drink the meads sometimes it's it's just way too
sweet and it's just not what you're looking for. And
(48:36):
the honey, I don't know if there's something about it.
Doesn't it for a bit? Much of the gods? That's true.
But instead take a deep long sip of yie old
one eight three three st d w y t K.
It's the most delicious beverage you'll have all week of
(48:56):
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(49:18):
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(49:40):
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(50:04):
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Keep your eye on that. There's more to come. But
if you don't like any of that, if you're if
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(50:24):
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