US investigators identify main suspect in murder of American Annie McCarrick in Ireland

Private investigators probing the murder of American woman Annie McCarrick in Ireland in 1993 believe they have identified a suspect responsible for her murder.

Michael Griffith, a New York-based lawyer hired by the McCarrick family in the 1990s to assist with the investigation, and Kenneth Strange, an ex-FBI agent, believe that they have uncovered new evidence which could potentially lead to a breakthrough in the 27-year-old case.

Annie McCarrick vanished without a trace on March 26, 1993, and was last seen in the Wicklow town of Enniskerry. She is presumed murdered, but the trail has gone cold.

Now, however, investigators are hopeful that they have finally cracked the case.

Griffith traveled to Dublin earlier in September to meet with members of An Garda Síochána about the investigation and said that the meeting was positive.

"We spent almost two hours talking about the case and we have agreed to share information," Griffith told the Irish Independent.

Griffith said that he is hopeful he can finally get justice for the McCarrick family after a number of people contacted him and Strange about the case following an appeal for information.

While almost all information led to dead ends, information from one source appears to be the key to cracking the case, Griffith said.

"In the case of this person, the details provided could lead to the breakthrough we need. They gave specifics relating to one individual that warrants careful investigation."

Griffith said that he couldn't go into specifics about the information but said that the witness's account tied in with information provided by a separate witness.

Griffith said that the second witness did not formerly give evidence to the gardaí at the time of McCarrick's disappearance, but he believes that her evidence is more important than originally thought.

A woman named Margaret Wogan, who has since died, is believed to have seen McCarrick with a man in a cafe in Enniskerry on the day of her disappearance.

Wogan, who worked in Poppies Cafe in Enniskerry, told gardaí at the time that she saw a man approach McCarrick in the cafe and offer to buy her a slice of cake.

She never gave a formal statement about the incident but told her daughter about what she saw. Now, the team of private investigators thinks that this piece of information could be crucial to solving the mystery of McCarrick's murder.

"The pieces of the puzzle are slowly coming together," Griffith said.

He said that the investigators were now focused on one particular suspect and urged anyone with information to get in touch.

The American team of investigators is also working with Brian McCarthy, an Irish-based private investigator who was hired by the McCarricks when their daughter went missing.

Griffith and his team are also working with John Covell, Annie McCarrick's uncle, to help bring closure to the McCarrick family.

Annie McCarrick's father John died in 2009 with no idea of what happened to his daughter.

McCarrick's disappearance was highly-publicized and she was the first of eight women to vanish in the Leinster area in the 1990s in a series of attacks that were thought to be connected. She was last seen taking a bus to Enniskerry in County Wicklow on March 26, 1993, and disappeared close to where Larry Murphy lived at the time.

Murphy, who was later convicted of rape, was one of the chief suspects in her disappearance and was a person of interest in all seven other disappearances.