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Annie was a 26 year old single woman living in Sandymount Dublin at the time she vanished. She was originally from Bayport Long Island NY and had moved to Ireland firstly in 1987 to study teaching at St Patrick’s College. Annie returned to New York during 1990, but decided to relocate to Ireland again in early 1993. During the morning of Friday the 26th of March 1993 Annie called her friend Anne O’ Dwyer, to see if she would like to go hiking with her in the Dublin and Wicklow mountains later that day. Unfortunately Anne had recently injured her foot and was unable to accompany Annie. It then appears that Annie decided to go hiking in the Dublin and Wicklow mountains by herself, however it cannot be ruled out that she arranged to meet with someone else that day but, no evidence of this has ever emerged.

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On the morning of Friday the 26th of March 1993 Annie’s two housemates left their apartment to return to their homes in the countryside for the weekend. Annie decided to knit until roughly 11am and then decided to run a few errands. She visited her local bank on Sandymount road and then bought some groceries from Quinnsworth also on Sandymount road. Annie returned home at 3pm, but left quickly at 3.15pm she was spotted leaving her apartment building by a young plumber named Bernard Sheeran as he was carrying out work outside her apartment complex. Surprisingly Annie never unpacked her groceries, which her friends described as unusual for her. A few minutes later Annie was spotted by a local fast food shop owner named Bruno Borza walking along Newgrove Avenue towards a bus stop. Then Annie boarded the number 18 bus heading towards the upmarket Dublin suburb of Ranelagh. Her reason for travelling to Ranelagh was to board another bus the number 44 bus that would bring her to the picturesque village of Enniskerry in the Dublin and Wicklow Mountains. Annie was spotted queuing for the 44 bus by a former work colleague Eimear O’ Grady, they both bordered the bus but Eimear got off the bus before Annie did, they never spoke whilst on the bus, but Eimear is convinced she saw Annie that day and the Gardi had little reason to doubt her.

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Annie would have reached Enniskerry at roughly 5pm that evening, which is rather late to begin exploring the countryside considering sunset would start at 6:15pm at that time of year in Ireland. One thing that puzzled the Gardi at the time was that there was no positive sightings of Annie in the village of Enniskerry that evening. Annie was a tall woman at 5’8, had long flowing curly hair, was wearing a distinctive tweed jacket and had an American accent making it all the more surprising nobody in the village could remember seeing her or talking to her. One local woman thought that she had sold someone matching Annie’s description some stamps in the local post office, unfortunately there was no CCTV in the post office at the time and the woman who bought the stamps could not be confirmed as Annie.

A security guard, at a popular pub in the Dublin Wicklow Mountains known as Johnny Fox’s, came forward to Gardi claiming that he saw Annie in the pub the night she vanished. Sam Doran had spotted a woman matching Annie’s description talking with a man, Sam described the two as being “friendly with each other.”  He described the man as roughly 5’9, between the ages of 24 to 28, clean shaven, athletic build, brown hair and square jawed, but he had never seen the man in the pub before. Sam also remembered asking the man and woman to pay a small cover charge, which the man paid, allowing them access to the lounge area of the pub, as a band known as the Jolly Ploughmen were playing that night. A fellow security guard, Paul O’ Reilly, also told Gardi that he had seen a woman in the lounge area of the pub matching Annie’s description at roughly 9:30 pm that Friday night.

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Enniskerry is roughly five miles from Johnny Fox’s pub, easily allowing Annie enough time to walk from the village to the pub within the time frame of the security guard's account. Annie had been to pub before and would have no problem in finding it, and she had walked this area many times before. Gardi and media speculated at the time that Annie may have met the man she was spotted with in Johnny Fox’s whilst walking from Enniskerry to the pub. Unfortunately none of these events could ever be confirmed. This all left the Gardi and Annie’s friends and family with far more questions than answers; the four hours between Annie arriving in Enniskerry and being spotted at Johnny Fox’s where was she? How come nobody saw her in this period of time? How did she get from the village to the pub, did she walk or did she hitch a lift? Did she get picked up by someone she had a prearrangement with? To this day none of these questions have been answered, the man possibly spotted with Annie has never came forward, nor have any other witnesses and most importantly no trace of Annie has ever been found.

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Update

 

On the 26th of March 2023, the 30th anniversary of Annie's disappearance, the Gardi announced that the case has now been upgraded to a murder investigation. This upgrade was applied due to emergence of a suspect who was known to Annie. This particular individual resided in the Sandymount area at the time of Annie's disappearance. The Gardi also appealed for information concerning a brown leather handbag that Annie had in her possession. As of January 2024 no arrests have been made.