1) Was this car after tracked down? It's all quite specific. If it was the man from 3,4 and possibly 6. We known he rented a blue car possibly ford fiesta, would have had to sign papers etc.,
3) Her travelling and expecting company makes the most sense. Maybe her family are right and that she travelled to meet a writer. What they don't know is that they were French. She certainly had a type and I don't anyone travelling to fix heating. Unless there was something toxic in France going on but we would surely have heard about that.
6) What type car had Sophie? MF is honest when she said she didn't really know the height. Sometimes height is hard to judge too, hence the height strips in convince stores in America on the exit door.
Did AGS every do a request to West Cork BnB owners for any French man that might have stayed in the area at the time or anyone that left without paying. You'd imagine if his business was to visit Sophie he wouldn't have stayed too far away.
From what I have read, the Garda suspicion seems to have been that either one or both of them visited the scene before the murder was 'discovered'. There was the details Bailey knew, like there had been no sexual assault and that she had been first struck from behind and then bludgeoned to death. There was JT's daughter's statement that they both left the house, corroborated by Bill Fuller, James Camier and JT herself after her first arrest (JT claims the statement was fabricated but IB actually corroborated what she said about him leaving the bed and changed his story accordingly).
Then there was the Ungerer statement which claimed JT told her in a pub one night that Sophie's body 'was an awful sight' or words to that effect. On top of that there was the McSweeney statement that IB approached him to have photographs developed discreetly and he claimed to have seen a woman's body on the ground in the pictures and could even say that he saw her clothes had been caught on barbed wire. The Gardai brought him to the scene and he said it resembled the scene he saw in the photographs, before IB grabbed them and left.
IB himself told several news organisations, supposedly just after hearing a french woman had been killed, that he had photographs of her and photographs of the scene taken around 11am, before he was supposed to have even known there was a murder. This was apparently all before he left the house and confirmed who the victim was and exactly where she lived.
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Not sure if it's been asked / answered already but since the reason Sophie came to Ireland was supposedly to get the heating fixed, had she engaged someone to do the job? If not, would this mean that that wasn't the reason for coming or that she just hadn't gotten around to it
Garda think she walked from the house - JS doc
There was mention of her going to Schull to get her heating fixed.
Did she actually get it fixed?
Who was she going to get it fixed?
I think it a bit strange to trek all the way from France right at Christmas time for the soul purpose of fixing the heating.
Would you go on spec a couple of days before Christmas and hope to get someone to fix it?
The heating could have waited.
In saying all that though she might have just wanted to get away from France for a break and using the heating as a legitimate excuse.
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1 Martin O'Sullivan who was travelling from Goleen towards Bantry on the morning of the 23rd.
It was just after 7.30am as he made his way to work along the quiet road to Durrus passing a winding boreen that leads to the white-washed home of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. As he drove north towards Bantry, leaving the French filmmaker’s secluded farmhouse behind, a blue Ford shot up behind him at high speed. O’Sullivan was forced to slam on the brakes as the car overtook him on a dangerous bend and nearly ran him off the road. He noticed its headlights were on and the rear number plate was red. He believed it was a Fiesta
3 Maurice Sweeney, a Loughrea travel agent described a man, similar to the description given by Marie Farrell as the man watching Sophie on 21st and seen at Keelfadda Bridge, who came into his travel agent business at 2.30pm on December 23, 1996 -- four-and-a-half hours after Sophie's bludgeoned body was discovered outside her holiday home, near Schull, Co Cork.The man booked a flight to Paris for 24th and was looking for a hotel near Dublin Airport and also for the numbers of bed and breakfasts in west Cork, as he had left one without paying.
6 Seán Murray gave a statement to gardai on January 3, 1997, that he had sold petrol to a woman fitting Toscan du Plantier’s description on the afternoon of Friday, December 20 at Hurley’s garage in Skibbereen. The sighting occurred just hours after she flew in to Ireland.
There was someone in the car with her, a man. He was very tall, his head was touching the roof of the car. He was wearing an anorak that was turned up high so you couldn’t really see his face.
The garage owner filled the car with petrol for her. It only took £10 (Irish pounds) at the time. The man in the passenger seat paid for it through the window.
“The guards who I gave the statement to said that it couldn’t have been her as she was spotted in Ballydehob buying firewood close to the time I gave that day. We didn’t sell firewood at the time and that’s why I think she stopped there later on.
“Apparently, the man in question was no longer in the car with her.”
The garage owner added: “I’m 110% sure it was Sophie I saw that day. I have no doubt about it. I think that it’s very important that the gardai look into this sighting again.”
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It also has to be asked if either 3 or 6 could be the same person GARDAI believed they may, have identified as a man known to the murdered French woman, Ms Sophie Toscan du Plantier, on video footage recorded at Cork Airport.
The bar owner in both of the documentaries was the last known person to talk to Sophie and she seems not to have mentioned being afraid or having a bad experience, he suggests everything seemed normal. They used to speak to each other in the little bit of French he had so they were on quite familiar terms.
Two questions this brings to my mind.
1) Why does Sophie go literally the days before Christmas all the way to Ireland before planning to come home and be with her family. Makes no sense unless she had arranged to meat someone.
2) How does her own blood end up on her own front door??
So if the answer is she is attacked initially outside, she came outside willingly, in her night gown. So to me, she knew her killer. It was known she had no curtains. So to me she, saw them outside and came out. If they called to the door, she would have let them in and not have ended up in the ditch.
No it isn't the Kilfeada bridge sighting. It's discussed in the West Cork documentary when MFs evidence is being discussed. She gave a couple of sightings of Bailey, and one was thumbing from his friends house, which turned out later to be correct.
"The blood-stained gate, the bloodmarks on the door, the blood-stained cement block. Should I go on? Well, of course, and worst of all, the body"
You are the one needing to read the thread .They got samples from all of them. I didn't know about the bootprint near the body,. You have no way of knowing there was anything lost from any of them. They know it was sophies blood on the door and on the gate. The blood on her shoe is unknown did not match Sophie or IB
The weather that night was almost freezing. DNA lasted 16 days in the case of Marylinn Rynn due to cold frosty weather.
Just read this thread. The blood-stained gate, the bloodmarks on the door, the bootprint near the body, the blood-stained cement block. Should I go on? Well, of course, and worst of all, the body.
"Even 25 years ago, there was ample material if the scene had been preserved and the Pathologist had arrived in reasonable time" How do you know?
Thanks Caquas, Jim Sheridan mentioned the murderer was lucky. I taught he might have been hitting at a cleanup job. It was making me think of a French connection to the murder.
So how did Ian Bailey have close up photos that were taken to be developed? Surely he/Jules were not allowed near enough? I thought she could only get long distance shots? Or did he keep the camera and take more when she left?
No, there is no suggestion of a clean up. The murder seems to have been an act of sudden, terrible violence and it is likely that the murderer fled the scene immediately.
The failure to gather any forensic evidence at the scene is the scandal at the heart of this disastrous investigation. Even 25 years ago, there was ample material if the scene had been preserved and the Pathologist had arrived in reasonable time. We don’t even know the time of death. The dopey Gardai who arrived at the scene made no observations about rigor mortis which had set in fully by the time the Pathologist arrived. She may even have been murdered before midnight which would give IB (and many others) a watertight alibi.
Does anyone think the lack of Forensic evidence around the murder scene means there was a clean up job done by murderer ?
"2) The man thumbing on the road was IB. This was since corroborated by IB, he was leaving Murphy's after being on a bender and staying in his after a night at the pub. Initially, IB denied this happened, but then later admitted MF was correct"
When was this, I haven't seen this before? Have you a link to where IB admitted it? Its not Kilfeada Bridge is it?
The wine bottle stacks with the 5"8 Paris man currently being investigated. There is an outside chance they can close this cold case. Be amazing if so.
Also interesting that the idea that Sophie and Bailey knew each other has it's strongest evidence coming from France.
Two people giving statements that she had told them she was planning to meet a poet with one of them even saying the remembered Sophie giving them IBs name.
While I don't think IB can be ruled out entirely I think it's pretty obvious that he did not know Sophie.
It's more like the Gardai and the French prosecutors needed this to be factual so that they would have motive.
If you can't prove that IB and Sophie knew each other then there's no real motive or reason for him to be out there.
Hence the vaguely remembered references to "a poet" or the possibility that they were seen shaking hands one time.
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