I don't see why the boots are an issue. Apparently, no shoes/footwear were allowed upstairs so they were removed and left at the bottom of the stairs. It's logical that she came down the stairs after hearing a knock at the door or a noise outside and slipped her feet into the boots at the bottom of the stairs. She wasn't wearing socks - just the boots. If it's December and you have slate floors you probably want to avoid the cold on your feet. I have a pair of slippers/shoes/boots right beside my bed so I can slip my feet into them if I need to get up during the night. I just don't like the feel of the cold on my feet. It's not a lengthy process. You just slip your feet into them and go on your way.
Yes - the answer is surely in figuring out that thought process isn't it ... though if she died in the morning, which is eminently possible, then her attire is easier to understand
Seems odd there was no blood in the car if he did it.
They are cited as witnesses in the DPP report along with for example a dermatologist who did not notice anything amiss on Baileys hands 5 days after the murder.
Absolutely nothing to suggest their testimony is false or coerced on this point. The testimony points to these being scratches which healed quickly.
Scratches which Bailey could have easily concealed for a few days until healed with long sleeve shirt and fingerless gloves which would not have been remarkable given the time of year.
He had no reason to as they were scratches not cuts from briars. They cannot be used to place Bailey at the scene and not a single shred of evidence was found at the scene to put Bailey there if he picked up cuts there as the DPP notes.
Logically therefore we must conclude as per the DPP the scratches were not picked up from briars from the scene.
The neighbour said she first noticed the gate was open and thought it was strange before seeing the body. In the first episode of Jim Sheridans doc.
The DPP incorrectly call the thorns 'razor like' and offer Jules and her daughters as witnesses to the scratches being there before the murder. Jules had already backed up Ian's false alibi as had one of her daughters who told gardai she heard Ian snoring during the night, when it was known he wasn't there. None of these witnesses should have been considered reliable by the DPP.
You need to revisit the GSOC report. They interviewed at least four people from the DPP's office. They said, categorically, they are aware of no information that would lead them to suspect either arrest was unlawful. The DPP was wrong. They said the questioning of Jules led them (the DPP) to believe she wasn't really arrested for the murder. The DPP doesn't mention, however, that the Gardai also took hair samples from Jules which shows the DPP's argument to be fallacious. The fact that Ian's alibi was in doubt also meant Jules' alibi was also in doubt, they corroborated each other so if one alibi fails, both of them do.
Thoroughly dealt with in the DPP report in sectiom 10 below. Xmas trees dont have thorns, exactly - and Bailey had scratches not thorn cuts. Garda statements describe scratches not cuts. The scratches were noted before the murder by witnesses. People notice things after a murder they didnt notice before like light scratches.
Bailey made no attempt to hide the scratches and they healed quickly like scratches as noted by witnesses.
https://syndicatedanarchy.wordpress.com/2014/09/30/30/
I dont see why not. She left her house that night for some reason and had time to put her boots on. She didnt leave in a hurry unless she was in the habit of wearing her boots with her nightwear!
That sounds like the cops all right a sneaky photo of someone not under arrest, be laughed at so loud they would hear it 100 yards from the court house. The issue in previous post was that Jules arrest was never determined legal by a criminal court. You said it was deemed legal but only by GSOC which is just a joke. When i challenged that you changed to talking about Bailey's arrest. you keep changing your arguments and changing the goal posts to suit your one way narrative
That is nonsense. no one would walk 200 yards on a freezing night in bed wear to meet visitor at the gate. If a visitor was to call mentioned by husband they would go to the door
they could not take photos he was not arrested
sorry, my phrasing there is poor: I don't think it rules him out at all; I think it means you have to figure out how the crime happens while leaving no forensics - Bailey or AN Other; so, for me, gloves are likely - and IB's scratches are a distraction; no blood leaving the scene - perhaps supportive that a car was used? etc
I think the DPP is wrong about this. Garda testimony said that the scratches left "scabs". There are no thorns on Xmas trees. Six witnesses gave testimony about the night before the murder when Bailey played the Bodhran and scratches should have been evident. Five of them saw no scratches, one noticed some marks on one hand. This is what one might expect after cutting down an Xmas tree. After the murder, the Italian visitor saw scratches on his hands that she thought could have been made by thorns, and Gardaí noted scratches with scabs.
Where exactly should we find fingerprints? The initial murder weapon is missing. The only place I can think of is the door handle where blood was evident but the killer might not be responsible for that.
If the lack of forensic evidence rules out Bailey, then surely it rules out everybody else as well?
She could have went down to open the gate for somebody. Hence why she had time to put on her boots. I wonder what was said in that final phone call from her husband that night. He could have told her to expect a surprise visitor at x time and to open the gate for them. Only it wasnt the surprise visitor she expected when she got to the gate. The fact she had time to put on boots always puzzled me.
Very little seemed to happen at the house. It all seemed to have happened at the gate. There is no way she was running from the house to flee an attacker if she had time to put on her boots.
I think people underestimate the difficulty in getting photos of someone who is not under arrest or been cautioned.
Maybe they could take a 'sneaky' photo, would that be admissible? How could they prove the photo was taken when they said it was? They could ask 'can you just stand there and hold your hands up to your face so we can get photos of those scratches' and would probably be told to take a long run off a short pier. A photograph of a pair of hands taken covertly would not be evidence unless you could clearly identify the person, so it would have to be a half-length photograph so his face could be seen. That would mean the scratches would be tiny in the photo.
As far as I can see, gardai can take your photograph without your consent after you have been arrested. To be arrested, the gardai must have a reasonable suspicion you were responsible for a crime. IB would have had an extremely strong case for wrongful arrest if he was only arrested to take photos of the scratches on his hands. Remember, at the time he had a 'rock solid' alibi of being at home in bed with Jules.
They did seize videos of the Christmas swim to see if there was anything evidential in them.
As the DPP report concludes they were scratches not cuts from briar thorns. If he had gotten briar cuts they would not have healed so quickly and Bailey would have left trace evidence of blood hair fibres at the briars at the scene.
The scratches are a red herring. The Guards didnt even take a photo of them or ask for an expert opinion of them when visible. Bailey made no attempt to conceal the scratches in the days following the murder and voluntarily provided forensic samples.
It is reasonable to conclude as the DPP has done that the scratches on Bailey have no connectiom to the murder.
We don't. I read somewhere they determined or thought the gate was most likely open at the time of the murder. One of the docs mentions Shirley Foster thought it unusual for the gate to be open before she noticed the body laying on the ground. The blood was only on one side - the side facing the lane.
the Gards were on the look out for scratches at the swim? Then took not one single picture of Bailey's hands. Mmmmmkay.
Gemma O Doherty was a decent reporter when she wrote those articles posing pertinent questions which have never been answered, her reports on the Niall molloy murder and the penalty points craic were also on the money, so much so that she lost her job and went a bit off the rails due her work on one of those subjects
I don't think the scratches can be discounted though. Everything else about the killing seems completely unplanned and messy, a 'contract killer' wouldn't let her get all the way from the house down to the gate, screaming her head off. So either the killer just happened to be wearing heavy duty garden gloves in the middle of the night or they would have had scratches on their hands.
No one else in the small community was noted for having any kind of scratches on their hands. There's no accounts of anyone being mysteriously missing for several days either. The gardai were at the Christmas swim looking for people who might have similar cuts or scratches so even at the earliest stages they were aware the killer must have gotten similar scratches and cuts to Sophie. It's just unfortunate that there was one aggressive christmas tree and spiteful turkey that very same year.
The smudges of blood might be easier to explain if the gate was closed and Sophie was trying to get past it. The gate was beyond where the body was found so either Sophie still tried to get over the gate and into the field beyond (rather than being outrun on the track) but then tried to get over the brambles and barbed wire instead, or the killer, for some unknown reason, brushed off or handled the open gate in several places after the killing.
Maybe Sophie was just so dazed and disorientated after the initial attack outside the house that she had no idea where she was going.
How do we know the gate was open and not closed when the killer arrived at the gate
no idea - important question ...
Gate was not usually kept closed.
Sophie liked to have it closed for security, but neighbours preferred to leave it open.
Neighbours may have been last through the gate.
This had caused some friction between them in the past.
the killer didn't have to be wearing gloves - but it helps explain the total lack of fingerprints anywhere (not a recent scientific advance) and the lack of blood/skin etc around the briars - no external DNA on her body etc. etc.
like, if you think IB did it, then you have to have some explanations for the total lack of any forensic evidence pointing to him - and gloves helps that a small bit but it makes the "scratches" thing look a bit contrary - and, without any pictures of these scratches (thanks - you lazy fcukers), I think you probably need to ignore them
If there had been any blood found in Jules car the Guards would have (rightly) made a huge deal of it. So, no there was not. I don't think though that they would have looked at the car until when they arrested him 6 weeks later. But i don't believe that Jules, her daughters and the Italian student would have stayed quiet about blood in the car.
![Photo of [Deleted User]](https://wb.vanillicon.com/v2/b1891d95e9e926c005ad3f5c153aacc5.svg)
