Missing, Presumed

Between 1993 and 1998 six Irish women, ranging in age from eighteen to twenty eight, disappeared. The area in which these disappearances occurred shortly became known in the media and the public as ‘The Vanishing Triangle.’ To date, none of the missing females have ever been located.

These six unsolved cases resulted in the creation of the specialist Garda taskforce Operation T.R.A.C.E. in the hopes of finding a connection between the women, but none was found. The taskforce went on to investigate dozens of unsolved cases of women gone missing in Ireland. Alan Bailey served as the National Coordinator for the taskforce for thirteen years, and the stories in Missing, Presumed all come from his personal experiences.

Missing, Presumed sets out in detail the Garda investigations into the disappearances of fifteen women. These women disappeared over a period of twenty years, and in almost half the cases their badly mutilated bodies were recovered, sometimes months later, buried in shallow graves. Each chapter focuses on one woman’s story, from the moment of her disappearance through the investigation up to – when lucky – a conviction. These stories are haunting, terrifying, and true.