The chilling true story behind new C5 drama The Vanishings

Channel 5's new drama The Vanishings is set to air on Thursday night, and sees Downton Abbey star Allan Leech team up with Normal People's India Mullen to tell the chilling true story based on a series of disappearances in Ireland in the 1990s.

The series synopsis reads: "A journalist’s fight to save a women’s shelter unearths a chilling link to her mother’s murder. As the past resurfaces, she teams up with a detective to uncover a deadly secret tied to a new disappearance."

In the show, journalist Lisa and Detective David Burkely investigate her mother's murder, eventually realising that it is linked to an Amy Reynolds. But what is the truth behind the case?

The disappearances certainly did take place, and was coined by Ireland's Vanishing Triangle at the time by the media to refer to the boundaries of Leinster, around 80 miles from Dublin.

What happened?

Women including Annie Bridget McCarrick, 26, Eva Brennan, 39, Imelda Keenan, 22, Jo Jo Dullard, 21, Fiona Pender, 25, Ciara Breen, 17, Angie Greene Smith, 27, Patricia Moriarty Doherty, 29, Deirdre Jacob, 18, and Marie Kilmartin, 35, all went missing between the years of 1993 and 1998. The women who were found dead - Angie, Patricia and Marie - were all strangled to death.

The disappearances include some key similarities, including the women's ages, who were between their late teens to late 30s, the inexplicable nature of their disappearances, and the lack of any evidence about their whereabouts.

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Due to the connections in the crime, police believed that the disappearances could be the work of a serial killer, and set up Operation Trace in 1998, offering a substantial reward for any information regarding a recovery of a body. However, no one has ever come forward with any helpful information regarding the cases.

Has the culprit ever been found?

Despite a huge investigation, no major clues or evidence has ever been found in the search for the missing women, who the Gardai believe could be buried in bog, forests or fields in remote parts of the country.