Murder at the Cottage | Sky

Hello again Bannasidhe,

Do you have a view on the claim that Shirley "let slip" that IB had been at their door on the night of the murder?

Nah..... It's preposterous!

Too many holes in the story, it's practically some moron on reddit looking for his 15 minutes of fame, probably the Babe Farrell's nephew.

1) Bailey commits the murder, runs to Alfie's front door....Why?? He's now linked himself to the murder scene, and made Alfie pervert the course of justice by withholding critical witness information in a murder enquiry.

2) What did Bailey expect from Alfie? A shower, nail brush, bar of soap, change of clothes perhaps?

3) So, after Alfie has calmed Bailey down and sends him on his way... He says nothing to Shirley (who is obviously as deaf as a post), and decides to let her walk straight into the gruesome sight without any warning....? Nice Guy.

4) No idea how Bailey makes it home to serve the morning tea to Jules, but he does, and is apparently unfluttered, and makes arrangements to collect some garlic from a buddy somewhere.. Alfie did a great job in steadying his nerves.

5) Meanwhile, After Alfie lets his Mrs discover the bloodbath at the bottom of the lane, they call the cops, and state they heard nor seen anything out of the ordinary during the night, early morning... Obviously, before the Gards arrive, Alfie and the traumatised Shirley make a pact to to say nothing about their distressed visitor, after all, the brutal slaying at the bottom of the lane would keep them busy enough..

6) If the Gards had known about this visit (if it occurred), it would have been on the national news the same night. They would even have coerced the Babe Farrell to say she had seen Bailey knocking on Alfie's door crying.. (and soaked in blood, carrying a block, with a hatchet stuffed in his back pocket). There is no way they would have kept this under the radar.

7) Watching one of the documentaries, Alfie seemed to hint at himself introducing Bailey to Sophie on at least one occasion, the following scene see's Bailey refuting the statement.. There seemed to be genuine animosity between them. Would Bailey really try to belittle Alfie if he had such incriminating evidence on him..?? Evidence that could put him away for life?

8) All things considered, the blogger on reddit is just a shock & awe jockey... As bizarre as this case is, we have to draw the line somewhere and stick with reality. This critical piece of information comes out 25yrs after the event? And even that was a second hand piece of gossip, from none other than the first person at the murder scene... So not only did Shirley pervert the course of justice all them years ago, but she then goes on to implicate herself six years later.

** I call BS on this one **

Possibly...

Yes, hard to argue with any of this Flanna.

In particular, two of the points you have raised seem to me to be inexplicable:

Why would Alfie and Shirley keep schtum for 6 years?

If such a report was made to the Gardai why was it not used against him. Even in heir most strenuous efforts to spin, contort, manipulate and manufacture evidence to implicate him, they were unable to put him at the crime scene. This would have been too good an opportunity for them to pass up. May even have been enough to persuade the DPP to reconsider.

Add to that the almost two decades since the report to the Gardai is said to have been made, during which not a whisper of such was heard.........

I Have to agree with your bullshit call....but I would be interested to hear Bannasidhe's take on it.

I think there is a reasonable chance that it was brought to Sophie as a gift.

It was French wine, don't know the vintage and it was not on sale in any Irish outlets but could be bought at airport duty free shops.

It may, of course, have no connection to Sophie or the crime, but its another intriguing detail.

Agreed, sounds like made up nonsense. If the statement was made the French would have had it too. There may be an outside chance they said something like that but that it was some other night, maybe even some other year. There’s no way this would only come out in some random post on a discussion board.

If it's not connected then it's amazing that someone would throw away an unopened 60-70 pound bottle of uncommon French wine in a remote area back in 1996!

First I heard of it. She certainly made no such claim to my knowledge in the days after the events. In fact like everyone else in that small circle she was surprised Bailey was a suspect when it became obvious he was.

I read that no useful forensic evidence was found on the bottle at the time but could it be now?

Thanks Bannasidhe.

That nails it for me.

Great post Flanna,

I think 2 and 4 above are the least likely.

But the discarded wine is indeed a fascinating detail.

It may be totally unconnected, but if it is connected, it may, as you say, speak volumes.

Due to the fact that it was not available for purchase locally, its not unreasonable to draw the conclusion that this wine was purchased by an international traveller. If it was subsequently brought to Sophie as a gift, token of love or similar, that opens up all sorts of other possibilities. If we develop the theory further, we may ask which international traveller and why.

However, Sophie may have bought the wine en route from Paris, although, to the best of my knowledge, Mrs Hellen did not say that it was missing from the house.

Here's the Reddit post, the relevant bit is the second to last paragraph :

melonysnicketts-The whole investigation was an absolute shambles, and the only reason that poor family will have no solid answer is because of an Garda Siochana. 

Could you imagine anyone signing off on the decision for the STATE PATHOLOGIST to leave a victim on the ground in winter conditions for 24hrs whilst he finished off a birthday party?

How do you lose an eight foot gate? That is another question I have for anyone that might care to answer it. 

It’s well known the man MF was with was a DSupt in the local area, so I could well see that they pressured her to change her story. The ID parade they put her through only had IB in it, and she’d been told it was him, so what else was she likely to say? A french man has recently been identified as the man she saw outside her shop and she’s spent time with Gardaí to confirm [this]: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/crime/gardai-given-name-frenchman-seen-24409179.amp

No DNA of IB was found anywhere on Sophie or her house/surroundings, and no photos were taken of IB’s scratches or head wounds. 

There seems to be a pretty hard division between the people that think he did it, and the people that think he didn’t, in the immediate local area. IB/JT are neighbours of ours, and there is no getting away from the fact he’s an odd man with a violent streak who loves the spotlight. He can regularly be found wandering the local area taking selfies and pulling the face that says ‘ask me a question’. JT for the most part keeps herself to herself and paints well. There’s a school of thought that now they’ve split up, she might tell some tales but who knows. 

The division seems to be across the age groups - anyone that remembers it happening is convinced it was him, and the next generations are less convinced. As Jim Sheridan rightly said, you can’t convict a man on personality alone. As it goes, I don’t think he did. 

Other evidence that wasn’t mentioned in either documentary are that Sophie’s Housekeeper, Mrs Hellen, reported that a small axe at the back door was missing (which fits with IB’s head wound) and Alfie Lyons, Sophie’s neighbour, answered the door to IB in a dishevelled state on the night of the murder. 

The French idea of a ‘bouquet of indications’ is enough to convict IB from the huge amount of circumstantial evidence that has been discovered, regardless of how it was obtained. Under Irish law, this isn’t enough, which is why they’ve repeatedly refused extradition orders.