"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."
On these alleged photos (note, the first record of him offering photos to anyone (Padraig Beirne) was at 1410, this is not corroborated by any other statements), there are a few scenarios:
The story about the photographs is nonsense IMO - think about it, he murders Sophie at some point, goes home and gets cleaned up, heads back out with his camera to take photos (before the body is found but not knowing when it will be found) and then goes back home to wait for somebody to tell him about the murder before trying to sell the photos on for a few quid......
I thought the suggestion that Bailey had been walking around the crime scene and crossed the Garda cordon had been disproved?
I suppose one of the first things they check is whether a lock was forced or picked so it's likely they put it on the latch while continuing the search of the house.
The problem with Dwyer's theory is the front door is clearly on the latch in the crime scene photo. So either the Guards interfered with it, or the door wasn't locked.
Just an aside. Anyone posting in this thread will enjoy this immensely.
This thread kind of reminds me of it.
After how many hours of accusatory interrogation did Bailey change his account to say he did get up during the night, but just to go to the outbuilding? In the Sky documentary he openly struggles to discuss it, getting drunk, then saying he told too much truth. In the Netflix doc he's shown talking as if overall he bested unsophisticated interrogators, saying he refused a break and they had to take one for themselves (may actually have been part of their tactics; were the Garda trained to use Reid-style techniques or what?)
There are photographs, I think footage as well, of Bailey walking around the scene after crossing the garda cordon. He had also worked at Alfie Lyons place next door and visited at other times, you could argue there was plausible reasons for his fingerprints or hair being found around the scene. He also seems to have known details of the post mortem and forensics at least a month before he was arrested so may have known nothing of evidential value linked to anyone but Sophie was found by the time he was arrested.
The year before a rape and murder was solved because the perpetrator volunteered a DNA sample. There's a simple dilemma any potential offender faces, if you refuse to give a sample it makes you even more suspicious and worthy of further investigation, where you might be compelled to give a sample or seized personal items will provide it anyway. If you do take the risk of offering a sample and there are no forensics linking you anyway, you're feeling like you are on the home run.
There are few advantages in refusing to provide samples. They will get them anyway.
I don't know, if you saw someone from across the street through a shop window and twice on the road for a couple of seconds each time, would you store a figure for height or even store height information at all? Maybe if you stood next to them and were looking up at them, or if someone whose height you were familiar with was standing beside them, you might file away a reasonably accurate height? I can't see any reason for Marie Farrell to be expected to have an accurate reference for his height. From reading the accounts of her statements, she didn't give a figure for her own husband's height, she just mentioned he might be about the same height as the man she saw. A lot of people are not good at putting feet an inches to a person's height, me included.
The gardai needed to put down a figure, she repeatedly failed to give a measurement, they asked her to compare other people standing around and, from what I can remember, she just said he was probably the same height as her husband. She seems to have had no idea on height and no reference apart from her own husband.
They got nothing of evidential value from all this material. That’s my point.
Ironically, there was a highly significant piece of evidence linked to the forensics. As the DPP report stressed, IB repeatedly offered to provide blood and hair samples although it was well-known that blood had been found at the scene. This is compelling evidence of his innocence because he couldn’t have know that a complete cock-up had been made of the forensics I.e. his samples could neither incriminate nor exculpate him.
After these documentaries, someone might make a comedy series called CSI:Dublin.
The first episode could show the fake fingerprints “lifted” from the bomb that murdered the British Ambassador.
1) The heating is BS, I'd like to say with a high degree of certainty she went to meet someone. Maybe the family is right and it was IB, or maybe it's someone else entirely.
2) I'd really disagree with Dwyer, went out in a night gown and accidentally locked herself outside. That's borderline preposterous. Almost zero chance. The putting on the walking boots to me, says she thought she would be outside quickly. Like throw on whatever is beside the door. Could easily have been a car shining lights up her driveway, or indeed a person shining a torch up her driveway. For some reason I find the 2nd more sinister and might be less likely to check it out.
A book "death in December" has in quote marks the housekeeper saying the heating was already fixed when Sophie told her she was coming. Josephine had got someone from Bantry to fix it. So was Sophie just visiting to check it all worked now, is that what her parents meant in the sky documentary? I read she did ask others if they wanted to come with her but no one could.
Whatever about the exact accuracy one would expect her to have been able to differentiate between close to average height and noticeably tall. There's quite a difference between 5'8" and 6'4".
It doesn't sound good that you say the gardaí basically forced her to make a guess, particularly when 5'8" became 5'10" and then Ian Bailey who would have been about 6'4".
It would be very poor interview technique if an interviewee was directed or coerced in one way or another towards something. It would undermine the integrity of the statement.
I would have thought any Garda records would be confidential, can the statements be read somewhere or is that information from newspaper reports on Ian Bailey's civil actions?
I mean she will say that if he is innocent, or if she's implicated as well. Sadly counts for very little.
This is amazingly bizarre have to read into it a bit more. I keep an open mind that IB is guilty of murder or in the conspiracy to murder Sophie.
Mf corroborates AGS account that it was IB likely because herself or CF have either been caught as the ones breaking into Sophie's house before or they are guilty of some other completely unrelated crime. Regardless I don't see a person putting someone down unless they have major skin in the game.
Marie Farrell had no idea how tall the man was. The gardai basically forced her to make a guess. Her statement shows them repeatedly asking was he as tall or taller than some gardai around the place. She had no reference for men's height except her own husband. Holding her to the 5'8" she plucked from thin air is madness!
Not really what is recorded in the statement though:
'... he noted that the headlights were on...'
Dipped headlights are headlights too, unless the term, full headlights, is omitted from the statement.
In the podcast, when she recounts her interview with gardai and the odd statements that she made, which, in fairness, she later denied, she said she did have doubts about his innocence at that time. She then says something like 'it didn't last long, I can tell you that'.
Dipped lights should have been on when the car was close behind him
'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'
Isn't it odd that he would note that the headlights were on? 7:30 am around the winter solstice it would be fully dark, so of course headlights would be on.
Possibly indicates he was mistaking the time.
Reading this thread it is obvious some do but I think they are mistaken.
Jules Thomas, even though their relationship has finished, still says she ‘never had any doubt’ that Bailey was innocent of Du Plantier’s murder.
Ok. So do people think IB went over there at night, there was some sort of incident or disagreement which ends with the savage murder, he then went home and told JT and they both went over to check out the scene to see what was going on and may have also taken photos of her body?
Thats very true.
Also why go stay in a house in damp cold cork at the bleakest coldest time of year if there is no heating. You would wait at least until the spring if the heating wasnt working. She also only decided last minute that she would make it home to France for christmas - very odd behaviour for a mother of a young boy.
West Cork says "Saturday afternoon 21 December she saw the man outside the shop. long coat/ medium height/ tanned beret. The following morning Sundayshe passed the same man hitch hiking"
Bailey is not medium height, hardly tanned, hardly had a beret so don't know why she would say it was the same man.
@OwlsZat
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's reported although Sweeney passed this information to gardai several times, but he says it was ignored.
It's difficult to get a plumber at the best of times.
Good luck trying to fly into a foreign country on Friday, five days before Christmas, and trying to find one and have the heating fixed Saturday, Sunday or Monday before you were due to fly out again early Tuesday.
If Maurice Sweeney is correct, how come no B&B has ever come forward about the french guy who was in West Cork at the time of the murder and left without paying?
Deleted. Multiple post due to gateway timeout problems..
1) As far as I remember the woman who was a part time housekeeper for Sophie had already got the heating sorted the week before Sophie arrived, so the heating issue seems to be something of a red herring. It sounds like she was hoping to meet someone, yet all the sightings, apart from the garage owner, said she was alone.
2) Dwyer, the detective, seems to think she went out the front door and may have locked herself out by accident as the keys were still in the door. The bin directly outside the back door had not been disturbed so, despite the blood smear, there doesn't seem to have been a struggle here. It may be that the killer tried to get in to the house after the murder, or she had opened the door and the killer closed it again so the house would appear normal if someone in Alfie's house called down.
I also think the attack first began outside, she had walking boots on that take time to put on and lace up properly, she was prepared to walk in the rough ground around the house. It could be that she heard a disturbance at the gate, a car pulling up and people getting out to open the gate maybe? Or, she heard noises or voices outside her window and went to investigate. She may have known the person, or people, outside to see and assumed that a quick, angry word would deal with it?
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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