User:Erikeltic/Ireland's Vanishing Triangle

Ireland's Missing Women is a term commonly used in the media of the Republic of Ireland when referring to a number of high profile dissappearances of Irish women in the mid to late 1990s. These disappearances were grouped under this title as all of the cases shared some common characteristics such as; the women were all young, ranging from their late teens to forty years of age; the 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 Gardai, to find them. 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. . 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.

The Vanishing Triangle
Another common 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 whose vertices approximate the boundaries of Leinster. To date the unofficial list of Ireland's missing women holds seven names.

The missing women
The following women are usually included in the unofficial listing: The last disappearance to be included on the list was Ms. Pender in 1998. Since then, no case of disappearances has been of a nature so unexplained and random as to be added to this list.
 * 1) Annie McCarrick, disappeared 1993. A 26 year old American student visiting the Wicklow area was last seen outside a pub in Glencullen, Co Wicklow.
 * 2) Eva Brennan, 40. She left her parents house to return to her appartment and was never seen again.
 * 3) Josephine (JoJo) Dullard, 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.
 * 4) Ciara Breen, 18, went missing in 1998 from the Dundalk area
 * 5) 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.
 * 6) 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.
 * 7) Fiona Sinnott, 19. In 1998 she was last seen leaving a pub in Broadway, Co. Wexford.

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. Again, wide searches by police of the surrounding areas and the nearby River Barrow have, to date, failed to reveal any evidence.

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 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. Mr. Murphy has maintained that he is unconnected with the disappearances and has been questioned on the cases on numerous occasions by the Gardai. To date there has been no solid evidence connecting Mr. Murphy with the disappearances. It is widely know, though, that Mr Murphy, a carpenter, had completed some work in a shop owned by Ms. Jacob's grandmother. 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.