Death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier

[Herlock Sholmes]

I just finished watching the Sheridan series which is well worth watching and I’ve ordered the latest book on the case. I may be in a minority I’m not convinced that he was guilty. A man goes out in the middle of the night and bludgeons to death a woman that there’s no real evidence that he’d actually know then he goes around telling everyone that he’s done it? Then the only witness admits that the police got her to lie about seeing Bailey?

Yes Bailey is an eccentric and was undoubtedly capable of violence when drunk on spirits but even his partner (who has since split with him) appears to believe 100% in his innocence and she didn’t strike me as a lady who would be intimidated. What happened to the coat they asked? It was on the police evidence list. They took it away and found nothing. Not a single piece of evidence against Bailey. He supposedly had scratches on his hands but he had been cutting down a tree which his wife confirmed and a third person witnessed a recently cut tree. Why did the police take no holograph of these scratches?

Surely there has to be, at the very least, enough of a level of doubt here? To me it smacks a little of Colin Stagg and the Rachel Nickell murder. They made their minds up that the ‘weirdo’ must have been guilty. He might have been guilty of course but I’m not convinced.

[erobitha]

Ian Bailey to me is a classic psychopath with huge narcissistic tendencies.

I was asked by my wife, if he was a psychopath why would he not have killed again? The simple answer is not all psychopaths have bloodlust. He is not a serial killer. He is mostly narcissistic. Over 1% of the world suffer from psychopathy and in most cases it is undetected. The person who has it is most likely unaware of such a fact. Often the mix of intoxicants and the impulsiveness nature of their condition is not a good mix.

I think Bailey truly believed du Plantier would hear or read his poetry and they would start some kind of torrid Anglo-French love affair based on two creative souls colliding in the picturesque surroundings of West Cork. Under the influence of alcohol he believed she would instantly fall in love with him and validate his creativity. She did not do that. She may have even insulted his atrocious attempts at poetry. My guess is that is what set him off.

She was not being what he wanted her to be. She was not bending to his will or falling for his "charm". In fact, the thing he has deluded himself most with, some lost tortured creative genius, she most likely dismissed easily and quickly. Drunk and angry he reacted in a way only a violent narcissist would do. Teach that person a lesson. She had no chance against such rage.

Then ever since, he has courted the limelight and revelled in the fanfare and attention.

Every body language expert out there knows he is guilty too.

His biggest fear is DNA. He knows technology has moved on. If I was challenging him I would focus on that. He is very worried about that.

[MrBarnett]

As recently as two months ago he was pushing for a fourth review into the police handling of his case, citing a conspiracy to frame him. The three prior reviews led to the same outcome. Failings in the original investigation but no evidence of framing. He is obsessed with staying front and centre. Two documentaries, two books and a podcast out.

Wonder aside from ego could be his motivation to keep in the news?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crim...rder-1.4572952

Also an interesting interview here:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-40333916.html

Thanks, E.

I have been trawling the net for articles on the case. I’ll probably fork out for one, or both, of the books too.

I stumbled on the case while randomly looking for online info about West Cork for genealogical reasons. It hadn’t received much coverage in the U.K. press prior to the films being promoted - as far as I can remember at least.

I’m finding (or imagining) echoes of Tabram here. The apparently frenzied attack with multiple wounds and the possibility that discussions between the police and medics on the scene might have released details about the crime into the public domain. But that’s for another thread.

[erobitha]

As recently as two months ago he was pushing for a fourth review into the police handling of his case, citing a conspiracy to frame him. The three prior reviews led to the same outcome. Failings in the original investigation but no evidence of framing. He is obsessed with staying front and centre. Two documentaries, two books and a podcast out.

Wonder aside from ego could be his motivation to keep in the news?

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/crim...rder-1.4572952

Also an interesting interview here:

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-40333916.html

[MrBarnett]

Gents,

Thanks for the interesting responses.

Bailey’s got to be guilty, hasn’t he? He’s such a nasty shite. But what real evidence is there against him?

Marie Farrell’s two sightings, one of him apparently following Sophie in Schull a couple of days before her death and the other of him near the murder scene on the night she was killed, were pretty damning - but she retracted her evidence saying the Guards had pressured her to ID Bailey. Perhaps Bailey threatened her or offered her money to change her statement.

I’ve not yet got the timeline fixed in my head, but couldn’t his apparently inexplicable knowledge of the crime/crime scene have been revealed to him by a Guard he knew and had used in the past to provide him with inside info on local crimes? Or through the local grapevine in some other way?

The various references to the long black coat need to be set in precise chronological order:

Marie Farrell’s two sightings.

The sighting of it soaking in a bucket.

The bonfire - Dwyer said the coat had been burnt.

The police report mentioning the confiscation of the coat.

The Christmas swim event when Bailey was filmed wearing the coat.

Of course there could have been more than one long black coat…

I need to watch both films again with a notepad and pen. :-)

[erobitha]

I watched the Netflix series on the crime, and I'm halfway through Jim Sheridan's series.

Ian Bailey did this murder 100%. It has shown the inadequacies of our provincial police forces here, and I don't believe much has changed since. We still only have one state pathologist covering the whole of the Republic. It was the first murder in a hundred years in West Cork, and the local police had no clue how to handle a crime scene or optimally handled forensics. Dwyer also shot himself in the foot by meeting Bailey 'Man to Man' in private. Of course, Bailey would play the victim card. He's a narcissist! Everything the local police and the press did at that time played into his egotistical mindset, and he believed he was smarter than everyone else. Since then, he has played the victim card all the way through this. He thrives on attention. He basks in its glory.

He even described how she was killed in one of the early articles he wrote. He was the first reporter to print that she was not sexually assaulted. The sheer audacity of the man knows no bounds. The man's poetry is vandalism against art itself.

To paraphrase Stephen Morrissey, "Oh, I didn't realise that you wrote poetry. I didn't realise you wrote such bloody awful poetry, Mr Bailey."

The du Plantier's have to take it out of Ireland's hands and pursue it through the EU legal system. As France is a major member state and the case resonated with the French public, I'm sure such a route would find favourable success for the family. I'm almost certain the EU can overrule Ireland on this matter.

[rjpalmer]

STdP received 50 blows from a rock and was finished off by a concrete block being dropped on her head. A pretty grisly death, the police and the priest who attended the scene were clearly deeply affected by the sight of the body.

Bailey comes across as a very unpleasant individual. His partner of almost 30 years, who suffered domestic violence at his hands, has finally plucked up the courage to turn him out of her house. He is now apparently looking for a new partner via an online dating site.

He should be convicted on his bad poetry alone.

But seriously, the recent bonfire outside Bailey's backdoor, that included rubber boots, clothing, and a mattress, was particularly damning.

Also the fact that he cancelled his appointments that morning, and referred to a murdered French woman--which he shouldn't have even known about.

His 'black humour' excuse for his tortured confessions is beyond lame.

We had a strong circumstantial murder case here in the U.S. against a New York millionaire named Robert Durst, suspected in three homicides.

The case twirled and twirled in limbo for many years until Durst stupidly agreed to be in a documentary. His guilt then became so apparent that he was subsequently arrested and charged with murder, and is currently on trial.

It will be interesting to see whether the two documentaries involving Bailey will lead to the same result. They made him look very bad indeed, and the Irish probably won't want to look like idiots.

I'm thinking that Bailey, if he is even capable of sweat, is sweating right now.


[P.S. I stupid wrote 'the Crown.' I've been living so much in the 19th Century these days, I still think of West Cork as part of the Union!]

[erobitha]

Netflix have recently released one of their true crime documentary series on the case recently 'Sophie: A Murder in West Cork'. It includes interviews with many of the people involved in the case, including interviews with Ian Bailey, the suspect. Which if he is actually a sociopath who glorifies in the attention, as some allege, he will have been given exactly the attention he craves by the film-makers.

Sociopath is not in the diagnostic handbook. It’s a made-up term by psychologists to make ‘psychopath’ sound better. There is no clinical difference.

Ian Bailey from the little I have seen presents as a psychopath.

[MrBarnett]

Marie Farrell claimed the man she had seen outside the shop in Schull and at Kealfadda Bridge was wearing a long black overcoat - a type of garment that Bailey was in the habit of wearing.

A few days after the murder, a friend of Bailey’s partner’s daughter went to stay at The Prairie, the house where Bailey and his partner lived. She claimed that she saw a black overcoat soaking in a bucket of water in the bathroom there.

[MrBarnett]

At one time, she did claim Bailey had intimidated her and spoke of fears of repercussions of testifying against him. It's claimed she has also attempted to sell her story. Her motivations might be complicated/ conflicted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/16/ireland

Yes, I think her change of heart came about when Bailey was suing the press(police?) for slandering him. Perhaps he offered her a share in any compensation he received. It was said in the Sheridan documentary that the Guards did a few favours for Marie Farrell after she had made her statement identifying Bailey.

[seanr]

Yes, there’s also a 5-part Sky documentary by Jim Sheridan.

https://www.sky.com/watch/murder-at-the-cottage

Perhaps the weirdest aspect is the witness who claimed she saw Bailey following the victim outside her shop on the day of the murder and saw him again near the murder scene in the early hours of the next morning. After several years, she recanted her statement, claiming the police had encouraged her to ID Bailey. She went on to identify the man she had seen as someone from Paris with connections to STdP.

At one time, she did claim Bailey had intimidated her and spoke of fears of repercussions of testifying against him. It's claimed she has also attempted to sell her story. Her motivations might be complicated/ conflicted.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/oct/16/ireland

[MrBarnett]

STdP received 50 blows from a rock and was finished off by a concrete block being dropped on her head. A pretty grisly death, the police and the priest who attended the scene were clearly deeply affected by the sight of the body.

Bailey comes across as a very unpleasant individual. His partner of almost 30 years, who suffered domestic violence at his hands, has finally plucked up the courage to turn him out of her house. He is now apparently looking for a new partner via an online dating site.

[MrBarnett]

Netflix have recently released one of their true crime documentary series on the case recently 'Sophie: A Murder in West Cork'. It includes interviews with many of the people involved in the case, including interviews with Ian Bailey, the suspect. Which if he is actually a sociopath who glorifies in the attention, as some allege, he will have been given exactly the attention he craves by the film-makers.

Yes, there’s also a 5-part Sky documentary by Jim Sheridan.

https://www.sky.com/watch/murder-at-the-cottage

Perhaps the weirdest aspect is the witness who claimed she saw Bailey following the victim outside her shop on the day of the murder and saw him again near the murder scene in the early hours of the next morning. After several years, she recanted her statement, claiming the police had encouraged her to ID Bailey. She went on to identify the man she had seen as someone from Paris with connections to STdP.

[MrBarnett]

I hadn't heard of this, so I followed the link and read the article. Did this Bailey guy ever explain his scratches and strange behavior following the murder?

He claims he got the scratches while climbing a pine tree to saw the top off to use as a Christmas tree. His ‘confessions’ he says were attempts at black humour.

[seanr]

Netflix have recently released one of their true crime documentary series on the case recently 'Sophie: A Murder in West Cork'. It includes interviews with many of the people involved in the case, including interviews with Ian Bailey, the suspect. Which if he is actually a sociopath who glorifies in the attention, as some allege, he will have been given exactly the attention he craves by the film-makers.