Murder at the Cottage | Sky

OwlsZat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907482#Comment_117907482

Because forensic science is an evolving field and this is an unsolved murder with few pieces of evidence. I also love the use of the word destroyed. Unless they melted it down in a furnace what they really mean is dumped.

Xander10

It was used as access to both Sophia's and Alfie's houses, so commonsense might say it should have been returned surely? So I stick with the belief the guards have no idea what happened with it.

mamboozle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907606#Comment_117907606

I should have also said that the lunatic was a particularly good journalist who managed to get a number of stories printed in national newspapers in the days immediately following the murder (while calmly going about bleaching clothes and setting big fires)whose partner is an ice queen who managed to keep calm under severe pressure and stick to a story immediately after and ever since and whose children are something similar.

kirk.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907639#Comment_117907639

Presumably someone or more knows

They have likely "forgot"

mamboozle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907653#Comment_117907653

Although if Helen Callanan is to be believed maybe the loon actually had all the stories ready to go and all he had to do was carry out the deed, which as I've pointed out would have been no bother to him.

We'll crack this case yet between us.

tinytobe

The interesting thought is, if Bailey would have done it, it would most likely have been his only killing. There were no other murders in the area, or of a similar brutality. Thus him being not in jail isn't a threat to the public. Thus I should think that the violence was exclusively directed at Sophie, but why? What kind of motive would Bailey make getting up in the night, walk over to Sophie's house commit the crime and then return?

I also think that from a pure financial perspective his journalism would have been the least financial motive of all motives. If the murder didn't happen he would have written other journalistic pieces for various papers.

Avoiding a costly divorce or covering up a drug activity would have been far greater financial motives for murder.

MoonUnit75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907639#Comment_117907639

There was a new gate there within days with a sign on it saying no callers or something like that. The gardai kept the original one for six years and then contacted the family to ask them it they want an old gate back. Neither they nor the gardai have any use for it, so it seems to have been dumped or destroyed.

We have to remember too that Bandon Garda station had a significant flood that destroyed documents and many of the ‘Bandon Tapes’ so it’s possible some kind of log book, separate from the case file, was destroyed which had a log of items sent for forensic testing to various places. Items went to the UK and the US and if the final results were negative or inconclusive you can understand them being destroyed.

lintdrummer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907639#Comment_117907639

The gate was apparently offered to Sophie's family some time after they had concluded forensics on it. They didn't want it (the gate may have been replaced at that stage) so it stayed in storage. It then was apparently missing for years. When the hilarity of the Gardaí losing a huge gate took social media by storm after the documentaries aired it transpired that the Garda forensics lab had decided to destroy the gate and get rid of it because it was taking up space and was of no further value to the investigation. Nobody had bothered to make that info public before but it was necessary now to go some way to repairing the damaged image of the Gardaí.

I wouldn't be surprised if "destroyed" meant it found a new home at the entrance to a civil servant's field somewhere.

MoonUnit75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907606#Comment_117907606

Well, hypothetically, if Jules was indeed in Goleen at around 11am that morning as claimed by James Camier she may have heard others talking about it who heard about the priest and gardai being called and so it didn’t seem like telling others would turn out to have been considered suspicious by the gardai.

champchamp

I would have thought that exhibits removed from a murder scene would be stored until the murder had been solved?

Is there a link to the claim that Bailey bought bleach in the days following the murder?

mamboozle

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907754#Comment_117907754

It's good to see you back moonunit. This is a nice move where you come to the aid of Jules. I'd like to say for the benefit of anybody that's been reading this for the last few days that you and I have something in common. That is that you know and I know that Ian Bailey had nothing to do with this murder. The reason we disagree is that we both regard the "State" from different viewpoints. While a person might be Irish, the state is neither us nor them, it all depends on the circumstance. And no different for foreigners. The frontline officers of the state, the Gardai, are ALWAYS right. When they get into trouble and are challenged in Law, the full resources of the state will be deployed to say they are innocent of all charges.

Most people are well aware of controversy over the years ; McCabe, McBrearty, Fr. Molloy it goes on and on. The state has found itself having to defend the actions of its officers many times. There are various reasons for this. Due to the nature of its inception and the Troubles we almost always lived with some kind of emergency powers and state surveillance. Obviously there was always going to be the possibility of rogue actors, infiltration by 'wrong' people and just things going wrong on an operational level. You don't have to be John Le Carre to understand. Things get messy and people get hurt but the state has to come out supreme no matter who's to blame.

For all the noise about the STDP case, where people like yourself, Netflix etc try to create debate around circumstantial evidence, which would have been laughed out of court anyway, there is so very little fact. Where there was any dangerous fact (like evidence destroyed in the case of a Jobs Book) that could have proven very difficult to defend with a straight face, the state called on the statute of limitations. I perfectly understand, I'm happy I don't live in China.

I can understand giving a Garda Commissioner the power to say someone is part of an illegal organisation, but I don't accept that people can be convicted of murder on the hunch of any old investigating Guard. That is what we are being asked to accept for Ian Bailey. Within days of STDP's murder her husband was being assured that "we know who it is". Since proving it proved impossible, reason would tell you that this hunch thing was being used to cover for something. Some operational thing or some criminal thing that could not be made public.

The End.

MoonUnit75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907917#Comment_117907917

If they were of no evidential value, they wouldn’t be exhibits though, would they?

lintdrummer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907917#Comment_117907917

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/teenage-son-did-not-tell-gardai-everything-about-lift-with-ian-bailey-witness-30986642.html

Billy O'Regan said he was working in the shop in Lowertown creamery near Schull on the morning of Christmas Eve 1996 when Ian Bailey came in with a bow saw in his hand and went straight to the newspaper stand where he picked up and looked at The Examiner newspaper before putting it back on the stand.

Mr O'Regan said Mr Bailey asked to have the blade on his saw changed because it was cutting crooked and said he would return to collect it later. He noticed Mr Bailey had scratches on his hands which he considered might be got from cutting or clearing briars.

After Mr Bailey left, Mr O'Regan said he examined the saw blade and it seemed good and could do more cutting but he replaced it. Mr Bailey returned later and got briquettes, a bottle of bleach and feed for fowl, he said.

Under cross-examination, he said the blade was good but "the customer is always right". The blade was so good he put it back on the shelf and resold it, he added.

With regards to keeping evidence, I suppose samples taken from the gate were kept and it was likely inspected and photographed from all angles early on in the investigation. After so long there was probably nothing to be gained by keeping it. I'm just guessing though. Smaller pieces of evidence are probably kept in boxes indefinitely but a large gate is a cumbersome thing to keep if it's not thought it will be of any further use. Bare in mind it was supposedly offered to Sophie's family years ago so it was never planned that they would keep it.

champchamp

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907945#Comment_117907945

A gate with numerous blood stains on it is of "no evidential value"?

DNA testing is always improving and evolving, doesn't make sense that the gate was disposed of even if if was the victim's blood on it.

Any links to the bleach buying claims (I didn't see it mentioned in either documentaries or the podcasts)?

Edit: I see the bleach claims above. I wonder why he would have wanted a good blade replaced?

I believe the case will eventually be solved. Not through a deathbed confession or some new DNA breakthrough but by a very long overdue thorough exploration and investigation of the French side.

Jim Sheridan couldn't do this because of Covid travel restrictions and then the family commissioning their own Netflix documentary but he has hinted he hopes to do so in a second series.

There are certain to be people in Sophie's family and social circle who have a different theory about what happened to her than the accepted one. These people need to be interviewed and their theories followed up on.

Also worth remembering, the Tuscon du Plantier line has no link at all to Sophie's family, her son was from an earlier marriage. Even in the Netflix doc there is a hint that the family do not have good words to say about Daniel.

There is a lot to be investigated there, most productively I would say by a French documentary maker or a good writer. The police really have no reason to investigate because there is a man already convicted and sentenced for the crime so 'case closed, merci boucoup'.

Edit: also worth pointing out that Daniels influence has not yet left France's media circles. His widow, Melita Nikolic is still quite powerful there as I'm sure are several of his former friends and protoges, so to get a documentary financed and made in France that hints anything sinister about him (or her) may be next to impossible.

champchamp

Who's Billy O'Regan?

He probably had an affair with MF and was a brother in law of Bill Fuller's sister 😂

Joking aside, it's an interesting statement.

MoonUnit75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907939#Comment_117907939

I can say this, I don’t know or think with certainty whether IB had anything to do with the murder or not, my position on it is that should be decided by a jury after hearing all the evidence and witnesses cross-examined. The reason we have a court system is so you don’t have a single party or person, like the gardai or the DPP deciding guilt or innocence. To say the DPP ‘tore apart’ the case against IB and therefore there is no case is clearly a dangerous position. What if it’s the other way around and the DPP thinks there is clear case of guilt, we would not be having a discussion on whether anyone should go straight to jail based on that one opinion. The jury system protects us against the prejudice of the gardai or an official in the DPP’s office, it cuts both ways.

Of course the gardai think they are right, the alternative is that they prosecute people thinking ‘ah, they will do’. We can cite as many cases of abuse of process or corrupt investigations as we want but the obvious result of that is that no murderer sentenced in this state can be assumed to be guilty. Is that what we want? This case was forensically examined several times and there was no fraudulent evidence ever presented to the DPP on IB’s guilt that was identified in any of the subsequent reports and actions. As GSOC pointed out, the file did go to the DPP warts and all despite the insinuations in the Bandon Tapes.

MoonUnit75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907961#Comment_117907961

The blood was tested and was Sophie's. Even if they found previously undetectable trace DNA at a later stage, there's plenty of innocent reasons why many people would have handled a large, heavy gate over the months and years before the murder, what would it prove? No matter who they dragged in over it, they could easily say 'I drove up there once by mistake and had to open the gate so I could turn the car around'.

DivilsAdvocate

What date was given for the destruction of the gate? And when did French police analyse and request to analyse the forensics from the case?

In regards to the family turning down the gate when offered back to them, I could be mistaken but I think either Sophie's son or cousin in one of the documentaries say they never heard about the gate being offered.

CowgirlBoots

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907639#Comment_117907639

It was offered to the family but they declined.

MoonUnit75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117908043#Comment_117908043

I don't think any of Daniel's family even involved themselves with the French association for justice for Sophie, ASSOPH? Seems a bit of a strange assumption that Daniel's family would be behind a push to influence a prosecution if they had no part in the actual campaign for it? I could be wrong but it seems to be all on Sophie's side of the family and they don't have the power and influence people here seem to think they do.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117907968#Comment_117907968

I don't think this is going to happen. The Gards in Ireland completely messed up the investigation, and the French are too focused only on Bailey with even less to no evidence than the Irish. There is also too little focus on motive and opportunity in this case, also too many lose ends where the speculation will always continue. The financial motive for Daniel du Plantier was undoubtable the highest in terms of financial stakes in this case, however I don't think the French will ever investigate in this direction, especially in light of what kind of questionable trial this was.

With evidence no longer available, I would think that those still alive today might volunteer information or come forward with something? I often think that Shirley knew a lot more. It's hard to believe that she didn't hear anything when the brutal murder was committed, and now her husband being dead, she might reveal more? Or what about other property owners in the neighbourhood Sophie may have had a better contact with? Maybe they can offer hints?

flanna01

Context .. Context.. Context..

My God! Bailey bought some bleach shortly after the murder.. Obviously to blitz his car, coat, boots, self, socks, jocks.....

The real event was... Bailey went down the hardware shop, bought bleach, a saw, blades, mesh among other stuff.

I didn't see the headline - 'Bailey bought some chicken wire' anywhere...??

But then again, that don't sell papers!

lintdrummer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117908043#Comment_117908043

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/blood-stained-gate-in-sophie-murder-inquiry-wasnot-lost-gardai-reveal-40647261.html

According to this article the gate was possibly offered to Sophie's parents. Pierre Louis says that the Gardaí never spoke to him about retrieving the gate.

The article also says the gate was tested over the course of 6 months and it was destroyed after 6 years, so sometime around the end of 2002 or early 2003.

MoonUnit75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117908082#Comment_117908082

Well that goes both ways too. If you needed bleach to clean up something incriminating you wouldn't want the person at the till remembering asking 'anything else today, sir?' and you replying, 'just the bleach, I just need bleach thanks' 😉

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117908082#Comment_117908082

Ian and Jules only had one car which belonged to Jules. Ian could hardly have asked Jules, if he could borrow the car for the night, especially if Jules had driven him home from the night out in the pub.

The thing what points the most towards Ian is that he did have a fire later on behind the studio. What was he burning and why? to get rid of which evidence on clothes? And wasn't the fire a couple of days later? Why not on the same morning after the murder? And cleaning the car which is full of blood and hiding this from Jules is something I find highly unlikely.

So Bailey must have had quite a physical exercise that night getting on foot over to Sophie's house and back and that after a night out.

champchamp

I don't consider the fire itself to be that important. I grew up in a house where an outside fire would be a regular occurance to burn what is recycled now (as well as bushes and other rubbish that would be around a yard), even at Christmas (in fact more likely to happen at Christmas as people were off work and there was more rubbish to get rid of)...

Why would he go to all the bother of burning clothes and bleaching god knows what and then willingly offer DNA and blood without needing to?

chooseusername

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117908082#Comment_117908082

Bailey went to the hardware shop with a saw which he said was cutting crooked, and asked for the blade to be changed.

He came back later to pick up up the saw and bought some bleach.

The blade was unlikely to ever have been used, as it was put back on sale and resold,

so probably an excuse to visit the shop, the real reason was to buy bleach.

This was 3 days after the murder and 2 days after the fire at the studio.

champchamp

Also thinking about the bleach, if he had just killed Turkeys or Geese then he might have been disinfecting the shed that they were in.