The Vanishing Triangle

by Claire McGowan

You might think this sounds like an American story, from a land of lonely highways and armed cops, but in fact it happened near Dublin, Ireland,

And it wasn’t even unusual. The worst part was – it had happened before. Possibly many times.

eighty miles around Dublin, leading some to nickname it the ‘vanishing triangle’.

The 2018 murder stirred up memories for me too, and made me want to explore this question further.

Northern and Southern Ireland also don’t work together as well as they could, especially given how easy it would be for a killer to cross the border.

when you grow up in a country saturated with death and violence, that you would be drawn to the dark side.

Killers go undetected, sometimes for ever.

I wanted to know what kind of country Ireland really is.

Or did the disappearances perhaps not fit with people’s view of Ireland as wealthy, successful, effervescent, and so they weren’t given the attention they deserved?

But which is worse – one killer or several?

Still, it’s encouraging to see that these cold cases, thirty years old now, aren’t forgotten.

these disappearances or murders took place near Christmas – does it bring out the violence in people?

Is the violent death of women actually more common in Ireland than we’d like to admit?

If you raise your daughter in New York, dangerous and crime-ridden in the nineties, surely you don’t expect her to go to Ireland, land of leprechauns and craic, and vanish there.

This throwaway comment made me think about how we judge women, how we are blamed for our own rapes and murders.

Becauce she should of not been out alone for a walk

You can’t hide things in a country this size. Not unless people keep quiet. Which we have a lot of practice of, in Ireland.

just how many sexual predators were there in Ireland at this time?

So if you can’t take a taxi, or a trusted lift, or a random lift, or walk, what can you do?

There must be better ways to keep women safe than by imposing a virtual curfew, or a tax, via expensive trips home, on not getting raped and murdered.

This was Ireland, not America.

What does that even mean?

The future they’d planned was taken from them when their steps put them in the path of someone evil.

Violence against women, both from men they know and from strangers, is sadly commonplace in Ireland.

It’s one thing to know that someone is guilty, and quite another to prove it in court.

not having any idea what happened to your daughter, or knowing exactly what did, and having to see the man who hurt her walking around every day in complete freedom.

golden-boy poet, Yeats, wrote: ‘Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the heart’.

The important thing is not to forget their names,