McCarrick had vowed to inform his girlfriend, sources say

ANNIE McCarrick decided to break off a secret relationship with the man suspected of murdering her just days before she vanished, it has emerged.

- BY MICHAEL O'TOOLE Crime and Defence Editor

We have learned that Ms McCarrick, 26, felt guilty about the fling - and decided to end it.

As gardai continue an invasive search of a house in Clondalkin, southwest Dublin, as part of the probe into the New Yorker's murder, sources have also told us Annie was planning to tell the suspect the relationship was over.

And we have also been informed that she knew the suspect's girlfriend, felt guilty about what had happened - and was intending to confess to her.

But she never got the chance to do either of those things, sources say.

Annie, who was last seen in the Sandymount area of Dublin on March 26, 1993, had last been with the suspect just over a week earlier.

It's understood she was with the suspect - who was arrested on suspicion of her murder last week - on Thursday, March 18.

That was a day after she had attended a St Patrick's Day parade in the city centre.

Investigators have established that the following day she was in a pub with the suspect on the southside of the city, before going to another location near Lucan with him.

But it is understood the following day she felt guilty about the secret fling - which began after she arrived back in Ireland in late January 1993 from New York - and decided to end it.