Ireland Ireland - Sophie Toscan du Plantier, 39, murdered, County Cork, 23 Dec 1996

[JLy]

i think the witness that saw him on the bridge that night, did not want to be on trial again, because they would bring up her affair . This kind of reminds me of the OJ case. how he would beat up Nicole and make it sound like she could fight back.
he also lied about not knowing the victim and why would you tell people that you did?

 

[JLy]

She's lost all credibility at this point. At the end of the Netflix show, the lead detective, Dermot Dwyer, said that everything she says is a lie (or something to that effect).

I think the case rests on Bailey's physical condition the morning after, as attested to by his longtime companion and supporter; his changing story about what he did that night; his previous history of extreme domestic violence; the numerous incriminating statements he made to people in the village; and the fact that whoever did it was able to readily pick up a 55 lb concrete block. (That's probably most men, I think.)

Yes i think you are right all the evidence in the backyard, the cuts on his hands, and what the guest said about seeing the jacket in a bucket? plus having a history of being aggressive to the girlfriend .

 

[Mjjj14]

i think the witness that saw him on the bridge that night, did not want to be on trial again, because they would bring up her affair . This kind of reminds me of the OJ case. how he would beat up Nicole and make it sound like she could fight back.
he also lied about not knowing the victim and why would you tell people that you did?

Imo there’s much more to this witness than that, she completely inserted herself and then she absolutely flipped and went the other way entirely. The policeman’s wife’s comments about MF calling their house was also bizarre, not to mention the amount of different identities shes given to the person she allegedly had the affair with.

 

[fr brown]

i think the witness that saw him on the bridge that night, did not want to be on trial again, because they would bring up her affair . This kind of reminds me of the OJ case. how he would beat up Nicole and make it sound like she could fight back.
he also lied about not knowing the victim and why would you tell people that you did?

She's changed her story so many times.

I noticed her small smile when she was talking about her sighting on the bridge. I wondered what she was smiling about. Now I think it's duper's delight.

 

[fr brown]

Yes i think you are right all the evidence in the backyard, the cuts on his hands, and what the guest said about seeing the jacket in a bucket? plus having a history of being aggressive to the girlfriend .

It's quite possible that more people than just MF are making stuff up. The jacket was soaked in a bucket but also burned in the backyard? I'm dubious.

Would a huge man like Bailey grab the missing axe to attack her? He could knock her out with one punch. And she got pretty far away for someone who was only 5' 1". She would have gotten farther if her clothing hadn't gotten caught on barbed wire....

 

[fr brown]

Assuming it wasn't Bailey, does it have to be a man? Maybe Sophie was faced with a somewhat bigger woman, one armed with an axe. A woman could lift a 55 lb block--not over her head maybe, but a foot or two off the ground, enough to drop on the head of someone lying on the ground.

 

[Mjjj14]

It's quite possible that more people than just MF are making stuff up. The jacket was soaked in a bucket but also burned in the backyard? I'm dubious.

Would a huge man like Bailey grab the missing axe to attack her? He could knock her out with one punch. And she got pretty far away for someone who was only 5' 1". She would have gotten farther if her clothing hadn't gotten caught on barbed wire....

Oh yes agreed, there seems to be a lot of bizarre happenings.

I have a personal theory on MF but it wasn’t discussed on the podcast so I’m unsure if I’m allowed to speculate here, please let me know and I will delete if necessary. I’ve wondered whether
MF was perhaps having an affair with a police officer, she was happy to go along with them at the start of the investigation and then there was the wife of one policeman stating she would call him quite a lot, then she changes her story entirely. Perhaps her affair ended with the police officer and that prompted her to totally change her story. That could also explain why she would not reveal the identity of the person she was having the affair with, her husband knew there was an affair after awhile, why not just be honest about it. This is all just my speculative thoughts and not based on fact at all.

 

[fr brown]

Oh yes agreed, there seems to be a lot of bizarre happenings.

I have a personal theory on MF but it wasn’t discussed on the podcast so I’m unsure if I’m allowed to speculate here, please let me know and I will delete if necessary. I’ve wondered whether
MF was perhaps having an affair with a police officer, she was happy to go along with them at the start of the investigation and then there was the wife of one policeman stating she would call him quite a lot, then she changes her story entirely. Perhaps her affair ended with the police officer and that prompted her to totally change her story. That could also explain why she would not reveal the identity of the person she was having the affair with, her husband knew there was an affair after awhile, why not just be honest about it. This is all just my speculative thoughts and not based on fact at all.

But she did finally disgorge a name according to the Netflix show. I don't remember the details. By that time I had decided that nothing she said was worthy of consideration.

She's now identified the guy she saw outside her shop as a Frenchman.

 

[jslk]

Blimey, just watched the documentary.

I'm outraged this hasn't been solved.

I also didn't really get a clear idea of the sequence of things from the programme. Can anyone sketch a possible timeline please?

 

[fr brown]

The murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier and the conviction of Ian Bailey

1991 - Bailey moves to Ireland in 1991

1992 - Bailey moves in with his partner Jules Thomas in Schull

1993 - Sophie buys the holiday cottage as a retreat

December 20th 1996 - Sophie arrives in Ireland alone and plans to travel to Paris for Christmas

December 23rd 1996 - Sophie was beaten to death

Witness Marie Farrell claims she saw Bailey at Kealfadda Bridge at 3am

December 24th - 10am - Her body is found outside her remote cottage near the village of Schull in West Cork

December 27th - Bailey seen with scratches to face and hands

February 1997 - Malachi Reed says Bailey confessed to murder

Bailey is arrested and questioned. Released

Sunday Tribune News Editor, Helen Callanan says Bailey confesses the murder to her and says it was to 'resurrect his career'

January 1998 - Bailey is arrested and questioned. Released because police could find no forensic evidence linking him to crime

New Year's Eve 1998: Ritchie Shelly claims Bailey confessed to the murder

2001: Bailey was convicted of assault in Skiberreen District Court

2003 - Bailey loses a libel case against six newspapers

2007 - Sophie's family establish the Association for the Truth on the Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier nee Bouniol

2008 - Frustrated by the lack of progress in Ireland, the French authorities start their own investigation - even exhuming Ms Toscan du Plantier's body in the hope of finding further forensic evidence.

2010 - a European Arrest Warrant was issued by a French magistrate which led to the High Court in Ireland granting an extradition order. Bailey appealed at the Supreme Court.

March 2012 - The appeal was granted by the Irish Supreme Court. All five judges upheld the appeal on the ground that the French authorities had no intention to try him at this stage; four of the judges also upheld the argument that the European Arrest Warrant prohibited surrendering Mr Bailey to France because the alleged offence occurred outside French territory and there was an absence of reciprocity.

2015 - Bailey loses a wrongful arrest case against the Gardaí, minister for Justice, and Attorney General

2017 - Bailey is arrested in Ireland on foot of a European Arrest Warrant issued by the French authorities. The warrant sought to extradite Bailey to France to stand trial. Bailey avoided extradition.

2018 - French court ruled there was 'sufficient grounds' for Bailey to face trial in absentia.

May 2019 - Bailey was convicted of murder by the Cour d'Assises de Paris and sentenced to 25 years in prison.

He was tried in absentia in France after winning a legal battle against extradition.

2020 - Ireland's High Court ruled that Bailey could not be extradited

30th June 2021 - Sophie: A Murder in West Cork is set to be released

Bump

 

[Pimlipo]

Well I’ve binged both the sky 5 part and the Netflix documentaries today. I already knew about this case but wow, never have I ever gone from 100% guilty to not sure in the slightest, and then back and forth again and again.
Wondering if there is a definitive answer as to whether bailey was reporting details that were unknown to the public and if so who he says it came from.
MF is such a strange part of it too. She’s got the sighting in her shop AND the random sighting in the middle of nowhere at silly o’clock. Why is the man she was having an affair with impossible to name when her husband knows who it is because she said they had arguments in the past about the man.
And with all the questions this case leaves you with, Sophie’s family only have eyes for Bailey.
If he is guilty then surely Jules holds the answers, and she is free of him now it seems.

 

[jslk]

Bump

Thank you, this is really useful. I meant the sequence of events on the day Sophie died. And a couple of days prior maybe.

What do we make of Sophie's upset at seeing the White Lady? Did she have a foreboding because she knew about an upcoming rendezvous?

And what about the alleged meeting she had scheduled with a poet?

Did Sophie have a diary/online records that were ever examined? (Less likely to be online in 1996 but you never know)

 

[KarenUK]

She's lost all credibility at this point. At the end of the Netflix show, the lead detective, Dermot Dwyer, said that everything she says is a lie (or something to that effect).

I'm glad that was addressed in the Netflix show, I thought they let her off far too easily in Murder at the Cottage, they just took is as her lying at first, and then telling the truth. Personally I wouldn't trust her as far as I could throw her.

 

[KarenUK]

But she did finally disgorge a name according to the Netflix show. I don't remember the details. By that time I had decided that nothing she said was worthy of consideration.

She's now identified the guy she saw outside her shop as a Frenchman.

Apparently she gave two different names, I'm not sure what the first name was or if it has been reported.

"Ms Farrell then named the man she had been with as John Reilly, a factory worker from Longford whom she knew from childhood. She said he has since died.
However, it was put to her that she had previously given police another name for her companion.
She denied this and accused the police of inventing the other man's name."

 

[Anxala]

Well I’ve binged both the sky 5 part and the Netflix documentaries today. I already knew about this case but wow, never have I ever gone from 100% guilty to not sure in the slightest, and then back and forth again and again.
Wondering if there is a definitive answer as to whether bailey was reporting details that were unknown to the public and if so who he says it came from.
MF is such a strange part of it too. She’s got the sighting in her shop AND the random sighting in the middle of nowhere at silly o’clock. Why is the man she was having an affair with impossible to name when her husband knows who it is because she said they had arguments in the past about the man.
And with all the questions this case leaves you with, Sophie’s family only have eyes for Bailey.
If he is guilty then surely Jules holds the answers, and she is free of him now it seems.

^ The same here. It's fascinating.

 

[fr brown]

Thank you, this is really useful. I meant the sequence of events on the day Sophie died. And a couple of days prior maybe.

What do we make of Sophie's upset at seeing the White Lady? Did she have a foreboding because she knew about an upcoming rendezvous?

And what about the alleged meeting she had scheduled with a poet?

Did Sophie have a diary/online records that were ever examined? (Less likely to be online in 1996 but you never know)

I think someone else could answer this better. (I notice the timeline I bumped said Sophie's body was found on the 24th. It was on the 23rd.)

I know that Sophie talked to her husband in France at 11pm the night of the 22nd. It was thought that she was reading by the fire when her visitor knocked on the door.

Earlier in the thread I quote part of Thomas's account to the Guards of what she and Bailey did on the night of the 22nd and morning of the 23rd. That night they stopped their car at an overlook where Bailey remarked that he could see lights on in the Lyons home. When Thomas and Bailey got home he said he might go over to Alfie Lyons' place. That night Bailey tossed and turned in bed and got up at some point. Thomas next saw him at 9am on the 23rd. He had a cut on his forehead. In spite of the fact that Thomas signed her statement, she said that all the incriminating parts of this were made up by the Guards.

I don't make too much of Sophie seeing the White Lady. It's not mentioned in other accounts. Her husband said she sounded fine when he talked to her that night. If Sophie was really feeling dread, would she have opened her door in the middle of the night?

I think she probably had some acquaintance with Bailey because he had worked on the adjacent property. Whoever her visitor was, he might have used a pretext to get her outside. According to the police, there's no evidence that her murderer got inside. It was probably not someone she knew well.

 

[fr brown]

Bailey's journal was entered into evidence during his lawsuit against the newspapers. In it he had written that he intended to kill Jules during one of the beatings. (Oops.) When the "West Cork" podcasters interviewed Bailey about beating Jules, Bailey took total responsibility except that he didn't: they'd been drinking, she started it, it didn't happen all the time--the usual things guys say. But then he said, "It wasn't premeditated." Huh? Later he said it again. Then he said it again. So not first degree, I thought, because where I live "premeditation" is an element of a murder charge. When Jules was interviewed about Bailey's violence toward her, she said, "It wasn't premeditated." Apparently you can do something vicious and indefensible, but if it wasn't premeditated, it's not really that bad. But I think both of them were really talking about Sophie's murder.

Here's what I think might have happened: Bailey shows up at Sophie's door. She doesn't know him well so he's not coming in, but she's willing to open the door and go outside in her night clothes. Maybe he uses a pretext to get her to talk to him (car trouble?). He makes a move which she repels. He does something that makes her bleed--maybe he punches her in the nose. She grabs the small axe that lives there and cuts him on the forehead. He takes the axe away from her and blocks her when she tries to run towards Alfie Lyons' house. She takes the only remaining escape route, running around her house out to the road. He lets her go, but after a second or two decides he needs to kill her. (That's premeditation.) He follows and catches up with her. Why the overkill? Why drop a concrete block on her head? To obliterate evidence of an early bloody nose?

 

[Sonny Crockett]

Recently watched both the ST 3-part Netflix series & the 5-part Sky TV (UK) series on this horrible crime. Both were excellent, though I felt the Sky TV series was superior & much more thorough - due to the different approach & the longer running time.

I honestly had never heard of this horrific ST case prior to these latest documentary series. It's very obvious this crime tore this small community apart & had wide repercussions in France, due to the victim & the victim's family being from there.

So, the #1 question here is: Who did this, and why? The obvious suspect is IB, and both series focus on him. However, though there is a lot of circumstantial evidence surrounding his person/actions on the day(s) after the crime, I'm not convinced he did this...though he may have. It was stated several times in both series that there was no physical evidence (blood, DNA, hair, etc.) tying IB to the murder.

I do have a lot of questions about the case:

1) Did MF definitely see IB on the bridge @ 3:00am in the early morning hours after the crime, when she drove past a pedestrian walking alone? I wonder how she was initially certain it was him, especially given that she only would have gotten a quick glimpse of him late at night when visibility would have been poor & when she would probably have been focusing on driving. And, if she is sure she saw him - why did she change her story completely later?! Years later, she told the media that she didn't see him & she only said she did because the authorities told her to say this. And, did she also see IB hanging around outside her shop & see him follow ST down the street several days prior to her death?! Unclear what she actually saw, given that she has little credibility due to her story changing so much over the years.

2) Where did IB get the scratches on his arms/hands & cut on his forehead? Was it due to cutting down a Christmas tree & getting cut by a turkey flapping around, or from something else?

3) When exactly did the "rubbish burn" that was found outside IB's house occur? Some say it was in October/November 1996; and others say they saw it after the crime occurred, i.e. after 12/23/1996. And, what was being burned - other than a mattress, etc.?!

4) Did the Italian woman that stayed with JT's family briefly in late 1996 definitely see a "black coat" soaking in a bucket in the bathroom? If so, was this IB's? And, if so - why was it soaking?!

 

[Sonny Crockett]

Part 2 of my thoughts on this case:

IB obviously had anger issues, due to the terrible beating he inflicted on his long-time gf/partner JT in the 1980's. However, that doesn't necessarily mean he killed ST. But, the beatings/anger show that he may have been capable of this.

And, if IB didn't do this - who did? I doubt that the killer was a drifter passing through this small Irish town. The town was very far off the beaten path & ST's house was not even close to main roads, etc. So, whoever did kill her almost certainly targeted her & was probably someone who lived in the area. I suspect it was someone who was fixated on ST & had probably seen her in town in the short time she was there (she had only come into the area a couple of days before the crime), definitely knew where she lived, and almost certainly knew she was alone in the house.

I don't believe that ST had plans to meet anyone the night she was killed, but could be wrong about that. I do agree it was probably a guy who she opened the door for (since there wasn't obvious damage to the door itself & no indication that the door was broken down/broken int0). I agree that whoever it was probably made a pass at her, she turned him down & he probably attacked her due to anger at being turned down. I don't necessarily think the guy planned on killing her ahead of time, but who knows?!

Since there wasn't a lot of evidence that anything was disturbed in the house itself, it doesn't seem that there was much of a struggle in the home. Or if there was, it was probably cleaned up/straightened up by the killer afterwards - who may have worn gloves?!

 

[Sonny Crockett]

Several other points (no edit button on my last two posts, since I posted earlier today):

-Did IB ever officially meet ST, or not? ST's neighbors (the couple that lived in the house right near hers) stated that they had introduced IB to ST when IB was at their home doing gardening work. However, IB denied ever meeting ST - though did admit that the neighbors had mentioned her to him. If the neighbors are telling the truth - why did IB deny ever meeting her? Was it because if he admitted to meeting her, he thought that would further incriminate him?!

-Why did IB "sarcastically" and/or "jokingly" imply to several?! people that he had committed the crime?! Since he was obviously the prime suspect, if he was innocent you would think that he would do everything possible to avoid acting like he was guilty - even in jest.

-The idea that ST was killed by a "professional" hired by her "estranged" husband in France - is ridiculous. The murder was obviously very heat-of-the-moment (using a rock/stone that was close by), sloppy, and probably unplanned.

Assuming it wasn't Bailey, does it have to be a man? Maybe Sophie was faced with a somewhat bigger woman, one armed with an axe. A woman could lift a 55 lb block--not over her head maybe, but a foot or two off the ground, enough to drop on the head of someone lying on the ground.

Anything's possible, and I agree that a strong woman could have the strength to kill her. But, what motive would a woman have to do this? Sure, she could have been having an affair with a local man & a wife wanted revenge, or ST could have spurned another woman's advance & the woman got angry. However, I find either of these possibilities unlikely. I could be wrong, of course.

I find it far more likely that the killer was a man who wanted to sleep with ST, and when she turned him down - killed her in anger.