Apologies if this has been covered already but it strikes me as strange that Alfies wife is the one who finds the body at 10am or later (hope i'm correct with the time) on that Monday morning. It's a Monday two days before Christmas so you'd expect the postman to have been up that way before then, especially considering at least one of the houses was occupied permenently. What about a milk delivery or newspaper delivery even?
Pretty much all the accounts I read say the staff were due to finish for the Christmas holidays either the 23rd or the 24th so it doesn't seem surprising that they would want a relatively unimportant feature about internet cafés, or something like that, ready to go as early as possible.
I know very little about Alfie Lyons or his property dealings, sorry.
MoonUnit. You are the world's leading expert on the case. When did Alfie Lyons move to Dreenane?
This is the Land Registry certificate. He bought two years after Sophie.
"He was supposed to have the story in on the morning of the 23rd, between 10 and 10.30 am."
10:30 Mon. deadline for a Sunday paper?
You sound like an organised and efficient type of person. How many times have you come home from the pub and went to bed knowing you had a deadline first thing in the morning but had not even started writing it? Let's say this did happen to you, you've arrived home with a few drinks on you, you've gone to bed but then you remember the story the paper is expecting at 10am. Are you going to go down a dark public road to a cold, unheated house to then type it up under the cover of darkness?
IB kept a regular journal, there's lots of pictures of them available, he seems quite fluent in his words and knows what he wants to say, there's relatively few corrections or notes in his poetry and prose drafts.
Do you not think it's you who has completely ignored all of this context to give an anecdotal account of what any normal, efficient and hardworking person would do?
The Irish Times article I linked says the story was faxed.
Sorry posted in wrong place, cannot delete
Any journalist or writer would type up an article for onwards dictation. It allows for it to be checked over again. Handwritten stories usually have many notes written in sidelines.
I do a lot of speaking. All speeches are handwritten, then checked, things added, things deleted, rewritten and then put in a document on the PC. I know other speakers who do it the exact same way. And I know news contributors that do it that way too. It's how it has always been done, And I would suspect 1996 was no different.
Reading your posts, you try every possible slant to try and convince yourself it was IB. You ignore context in almost everything. It like you are blind to the obvious, or just don't want to see what is in front of you.
He was supposed to have the story in on the morning of the 23rd, between 10 and 10.30 am. He claims the first he heard of the murder was around 1.40pm. Unless he had a premonition that the biggest story he would ever cover in Ireland was about to break a few hours later then his explanations for the delay in getting the story in make no sense.
The story was dictated around 4pm on the 24th because the business editor at the time, Richard Curran, agreed to extend the deadline when he failed to return the story on the morning of the 23rd. IB claimed in one interview I heard that it was because there was no copytaker available on the Monday to type up the story during the phone call.
That story was not dictated. It was faxed . https://www.irishtimes.com/news/journalist-says-he-was-at-home-on-night-of-murder-1.1195209
I think it was because it was about computers and there were terms he was unfamilair with, I may be wrong.
Surely he would still also have to write up the story to be able to dictate it down the phone so its not implausible.
In fairness the fact that he didnt send in the story on monday morning is understandable. When the murder occured he was focused on that story - the other story became unimportant.
The story was due on the Monday morning, if it was being written on the Sunday night it was completely impossible for it to be sent by post in hardcopy. It was to be dictated. He said he wrote it down by hand on the kitchen table.
Do you think it's plausible that he then left the warmth of the house to go to an unheated studio down the road in the middle of the night in the middle of winter to type up a story that was meant to be dictated down the phone a few hours later? Then, having gone to these extreme lengths to get the story finished, did not return it for another 24 hours or more?
Seems like a good candidate for a single-question IQ test.
He couldn’t remember where he was the previous night, either. A downside to being an alcoholic.
She'd fruit and nuts in her stomach. She also laced up her boots before heading out. I'd suspect another morning time move.
I don't get your massive issue with the alibi adjustment.
If he hadn't changed alibi and had said -from the start- that he got up and went to the studio - I don't think it would change one iota your view of his guilt.
As I already said, I reckon, in his boots, I might have lied a little to the gards too... people say stupid things in that sort of pressure situation.
Her blood being wet as quoted above is not something I'd heard before - that would certainly indicate a much later time of death than that most presume.
Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive
Over 20 years later and he still tells roughly the same story, despite denying other parts of his statements were ever said by him. Jules said in the West Cork podcast that she knows he's innocent because 'I know what he was doing that night' and that there was no story on the table before they went to bed but when she got up he was excited to show her what he had written during the night. She was adamant the story was not there the night before but was there on the table the next morning. Despite this, it wasn't dictated until over 24 hours later.
His uninfluenced alibi was that he was asleep with his partner. Interpreting the change in alibi depends on the interrogation techniques and responses by Jules and him.
We know for a fact the DPP got the location of the 'studio' wrong, that they incorrectly wrote off both Jules and IB's statements in their entirety due to incorrectly assuming the arrests were unlawful. The report accepted IB's alibi of spending the night awake writing a story when he seems to have missed the deadline after apparently finishing it and typing it (why the heck would he need to type an article he was supposed to dictate in a couple of hours anyway). It's been established the story was not submitted until at least 24 hours after the discovery of the body. The report wrote off MF's statements but Judge Moran found her credible, as well as all the other witnesses the DPP discounted out of hand. It was a shambles. It doesn't even mention the reports of witness intimidation.
In fairness to her, she may not have known IB was known for reciting poetry until the French group started organising. As far as I know her statement was that Sophie mentioned she was to meet a man who wrote poetry, not that he was an English man nor did she mention the name. Will have to look up exactly what she said.
A Quentin Tarantino version of it would be cool.
You've summarised it great here flanna01. It sounds like the makings of a great fictional movie - only these events happened for real.
You couldn't make it up...
You have old Alfie Lyons probably stoned out of his brains, living next door, didn't hear a thing.. Presents himself the following day with a bandaged hand.
You have the randy Gard trying to hit on every foreign doll in the neighbourhood.
Enter Mother of five - 'The Babe Farrell' romancing around the coast at 3am in the morning... Her lucky conquest that evening being the Invisible Man.
Then of course, we have the alcoholic poet going for a trot in the middle of the night... Be it to compose a newspaper article or a quick shag, who knows...??
Lads it's all happening in West Cork... Mighty Craic down there....
That she remembered 20 years after the murder.
11 years - 2007
Can you clear up when Alfie Lyons first lived in Dreenane?
In the French documentary he told an elaborate story how he assisted Sophie when she moved in. But she bought in 1993 and he bought in 1995.
If he did in fact move to Dreenane after she did it makes it easier to believe a feisty Sophie could wind him up to extreme violence over a gate.
That she remembered 20 years after the murder. Hmmm. And that fits Bailey like a tailored suit. Hmmm. Bailey never mentions Sophie once in his terrible journals or poetry; if he was trying it on with her I don’t think he would be shy about it. If he killed her then it was spur of the moment; headed down to the house on off chance of a shag (probably drove IIMO); got rejected by Sophie - threw a few digs and then has to finish the job. Cleaned himself up in the Studio in time for Jules’s coffee. Nothing more complicated nor premeditated than that; no Mad Marie Farrell sightings, no scratches, no going back to the scene to get the weapon etc.
The Netflix documentary has a French witness stating that Sophie told her “a poet” wanted to work with her- she was uncomfortable around his company and the friend warned her not to meet him alone.
Wonder if they recalled it independently or had discussed it before first interviewed. Social conformity of memory is a problem. Did the police check that.
Alfie has the detail about Bailey facing away then coming to shake hands with her. But details don't necessarily distinguish true from false memories. Neither does felt/claimed certainty, as Bailey has.
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