I would largely suspect that the killer went back to the house and had a look around, if there was anything incriminating, anything written down. Whether that was a diary or just a notebook, doesn't really matter, but it would have been something which would incriminate him. As the house was not lived in for a majority of the year, it would suggest that Sophie kept little of real value or personal value there, thus anything possibly incriminating would have been something small and something Sophie brought with her or had with her during her travels. And yes, as one of the users pointed out, the room looked "a bit staged" to me as well, but then we don't know Sophie well enough if it was or not. Her husband might have been able to shine some light on that one, however he decided not to go to Ireland on that occasion.
If the police were thorough ( which they obviously were not ) they would have gone through the calls Sophie received on her phone ? Incoming and outgoing? That is if she had a landline. The killer might have called ahead, or she might even have called him? However night clothes would suggest that it was unplanned for Sophie.
The pathologist also suggested that Sophie had eaten something more breakfast like, which would also lead to the time of death. The murder could easily have happened at 7 am or even later? Considering that it's dark for a long time in Ireland at this time of the year, the murderer would have operated under the guise of darkness in the morning as well.
Or she was already hit at the entrance of her house and then ran to the gates, where she was killed
That's what I think. There is no rule here about not asking stuff covered in the documentaries. No one can remember everything. We are all going in circles really, why wouldn't we when the people with all the files cannot figure it out
I don't believe the killer went back up and they surely would have said if it was strange blood DNA. Wasn't it the back door that was smeared and that was her blood. I think if the killer had Sophie's blood and touched the door there would be forensic of him mixed in the sample
Jim Sheridan speculates that Sophie's blood on the door was put there by the murderer returning to the house. Perhaps to retrieve the missing diaries? Others on the thread speculated that Alfie, who by his own statement went and knocked on Sophie's door after Shirley found the body, (maybe not that door), may have left the trace.
Another point of interest about the blood are the circular drops found on Sophie's clothes and mentioned as significant in the autopsy.
I miss Moonunit. Whatever his angle was, he always had the links to everything.
I've actually seen both documentaries, however not certain, if I missed anything or memorized everything.
It's just odd, if there is Sophie's blood on the door as well as Sophie's blood on the gate and she is lying in between. She could hardly have made it back to the house if she was really killed near the gates. Unless Sophie's murderer had blood on himself and went back to the house? Or she was already hit at the entrance of her house and then ran to the gates, where she was killed?
Can I just ask as a matter of interest, have you watched the Jim Sheridan doc, the Netflix doc, and listened to the West Cork podcast series? Because a lot of the known information is contained there.
I think that's Sophie's blood as far as it was reported, it was at least. I also don't think she was already injured when she left the house. Thus I can only speculate that the killer hat Sophie's blood on himself and accidentally left a stain on the door. The intention of returning to the house is to look for whatever he wanted to look for, possibly something incriminating?
Could that blood have been from the killer going back up ? At what point was the door smeared.
Very little can be taken as true evidence I'm afraid...😔
She fled down the lawn in front of the house??
There was blood found there
She fled down the lawn in front of the house?? There is hedging running the length of the driveway - the left hand side as you drive up. There is today, that is, and it was there in 1996. I am open to correction about that. Yet her body was discovered on the right hand side of the driveway (looking upward) just inside the gate. So did she scramble through the hedging in attempting to escape. This would have slowed her progress considerably. She may have had a better chance had she continued straight to the end of the lawn or however you would describe it rather than divert to the left as it would seem in this scenario. I think it obvious that she ran down and was chased down the driveway.
For a rural property there has now been a few issues surrounding sophie's property and rights..
All was harmonious in sleepy valley .....ya right pull the other one.
I believe fresh french francs put someones nose out of kilter with this property purchase....
Who in her close circle of acquaintances could in a shaken state could walk home covered in blood and be assisted thru this carnage..
And I'll stand corrected but Baily was not the first person to point (without good evidence) the Gardai towards France.
But but but....never mind all that ...look there's an essentric, blowin type living that may have been introduced to her onceover the hill lets focus out energy over there..
This is Sophie's car still parked after the murder,
there appears to be a fence ,3 or 4 posts, about 2 or 3 mtrs from her eastern gable.
The lane up to Alfie's passes close to Sophie's at this point and rises sharply up by the back of her house,
so sharp in fact it's about 5 or 6 ft higher by the time it reaches her western gable.
You can just see the posts on the laneway to the left of the western roof ridge.
This may be the reason she did not run towards Alfie's .
I'd say it would be a tight squeeze to get the car across the back of her house, and even more awkward to get it back out again.
Another easy one then, her then husband - dead.
What about the Alfies' wife, the richardsons, Her friends at 3 castlehead (french), Josephine and Finbarr Hellen, Bruno.
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Like bailey or not he was a journalist, and said to be talented when young in the UK.
What does he know that we don't? this has been rolling in his head for 25 years, If he cant figure this out how do we stand a chance..
I am of the belief that the media and gardai of 25 years ago will always be deemed inadequate but todays investigative/media will be deemed no better if the truth ever comes out. The answers are all to be found on the peninsula.
Go back to motive, opportunity and reason....... Passion & land when it comes to Ireland I'm afraid.
Who, close to sophie who she would meet 90% of the time in Ireland is now dead 25 years later?
I'll start off with an obvious one - Alfie
_
There is still a small space which seems to belong to Sophie's, maybe 30 cm to 1 meter along the Eastern gable. The place where the Ford Fiesta was parked, doesn't seem to belong to Sophie's anymore.
The shed is to the west of Sophie's. I don't know if it still belonged to her or not, regardless if Alfie was using it or not.
Sophie could also have parked the car on the other western side of the house. There seems to be a bit of space, driveway, and a gate.
Thanks, that clears it up. Maps, with boundary details, can be a bit confusing in Ireland. It would have been interesting to hear from the solicitor who carried out the conveyancing. It looks like there has been work done on the lawn at the western side since but at the time she wouldn't have been within her rights to question anyone if they decided to park up at her back door.
There's about 15/16 acres attached to the property in 9 parcels, 2 of which are shared commonage, I don't know with whom she shared the commonage.
Maybe the horses were grazing on the commonage.
The only land at the house was the lawn in front of the house, down which she was reported to have fled ;about 1\4 acre,
the rest was spread around in different locations.
The gate marked the end of the property at the cottage, and also the beginning of a right-of-way for Sophie, Alfie and the Richardsons.
In fact the land where Sophie parked her car belonged to the Richardsons, the boundary was quite close to her Eastern gable.
The dispute about the shed was with the auctioneer who sold her the cottage.
He told her it was part of her property, whereas Alfie had been using this shed as his own and continued to do so.
Sophie had no right-of-way on the lane beyond her Eastern gable, so the shed was outside her boundary.
Fence posts strewn around her front lawn indicated work was being done around the boundary,
I don't know by whom , I don't think it was Leo, I could be wrong.
The sometime housekeeper would have had keys.
I read something earlier in the thread about the locks being changed following concerns from Sophie that someone had been using the property in her absence such as having a bath.
https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/locks-were-changed-after-intruder-at-du-plantier-house-said-housekeeper-30242061.html
The thing is some people love the easy answers.
It's the same in the Sophie Toscan du Plantier case. Who did it ? Ian Bailey, Yeah, Ian Bailey murdered her..... And if you ask why, then there is absolutely no evidence. And the scary thing is that those who think that Bailey did it, don't care if there is no evidence.
But looking for evidence is never an easy job it's never about easy answers, even worse in this case where so much was messed up.
I had reason to spend time in Italy during the Amanda Knox circus. One similarity to this case was the loopy chief investigator who decided there had been a group sex/human sacrifice reason behind the murder of Meredith Kercher. Detective Dwyer had Frankenstein's monster at Kealfadda bridge howling at the moon. Other similarities were pressured questioning and disputed statements.
It became more and more apparent that the murderer was a single homeless male acting alone and the Italian authorities bent over backwards to let Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito out of prison.
What really amazed me at the time was how, what I consider to be, reasonable, intelligent people were convinced of Amanda Knox's guilt. No amount of pointing out the sheer absurdity of their viewpoint would get them to waiver. There are still a lot of people who believe that they got away with murder only because she's American and Raffaele is from a well off family.
I think there are two reasons for this, the first being a certain resentment towards America (in our case the English) that many Italians feel. The second is something we would understand and which appears contradictory. It is the automatic throwing of the eyes to heaven what-can-you-do resignation that the state and all its institutions are inherently corrupt combined with an insistence that individuals within it are going about their business with the highest of motives. No one ever loses their job as they say. It's called systemic failure.
An interesting question would also have been if anybody but herself would have had keys to the house? After all, it wasn't lived in for a long period of the year.
Even if it was just a cleaning lady looking after the place every now and then, she could have been as "solid" as Marie Farrell.
Page 16 post #454 The block would appear to narrow things down
Two or more people involved? Was all the land looking right and ahead from her front door belong to STDP. There was meant to have been some dispute about the outhouse/shed right in the middle of this. It would appear to have some way of getting to it off the lane between Alfie's and Sophie's houses. People were keeping horses on the land. Were they paying for this? Wouldn't that be a main focus of investigation?
We are being told that there is no forensic evidence. There is probably none that isn't from a small group of people that had other reasons to be in the area.
Nobody is lacing up shoes and heading out into the Dark with Doc Martins and night dress.
This is the morning and they knew the person. Maybe she took the hatchet and threatened them to f*** off or do x,y and z.
There was an intention to her trip out. She didn't laces up her boots at 3am and step out for a joint. In that cases she has more layers on imo.
The problem is, in reality we all know so little. Thus the speculation will go on and on......
I personally do not think that this was an unplanned crime of passion. For that there is too little evidence found, or no evidence at all found by police, possibly deliberately?
I believe it was planned to a certain degree, and the killer went through her house as well.
Arranging things or possibly looking for something possibly incriminating. Yes, the table could be staged, but it could also have been Sophie's way to do things? We don't know.
Ask yourself what you would do, if someone knocks on your door at 3am. Would you put on some shoes and go outside?
Does anyone else think the table looks a bit staged?
The rest of the kitchen and living areas look a bit disordered, but the kitchen table looks a bit out of place.
If you used a match to light a candle would you put the spent match down on a white linen/cotton tablecloth?
Would you push back the chair you sat on to read the book and either leave it pushed back or push it in fully?
Where did that blue jacket folded over the back of the chair come from, or go to ? it is not in other photos of that chair.
The empty cup and looks like a someone had just had a cup of tea/coffee ,but yet the the cup is spotless.
Was she left-handed?
If they were about to have a cup of coffee why is the coffee pot washed up on the draining table?
All this probably means nothing, just me thinking about stuff and writing it down.
But the jacket on the chair shows a certain casual attitude towards the crime scene to me.
That's very interesting, the first reference site I viewed puts the average onset time of rigor mortis at between 2 and 4 hours. Cold weather slows the process. 4 hours earlier than 11.30am is 7.30am and there would be a pressing need for a perpetrator to be leaving the scene at a time like that (getting lighter and some people starting to stir). Did someone stay over but sleep in a different room???
Again, the PRIMARY reason people were led to the “middle of the night” timeline was Marie Farrell and her imaginary friend and her completely made up sighting
Not for me. I was told that the doctor who examined her at the scene, probably around 11.30 am, noted the onset of rigor mortis. Which indicates a much earlier time of death. Also, cold weather slows down rigor mortis. Not sure if the doctors testimony was posted or not.
Agree.
No alcohol in blood and stomach contents (along with the bread and the blood) are more inline with morning death.
Again, the PRIMARY reason people were led to the “middle of the night” timeline was Marie Farrell and her imaginary friend and her completely made up sighting… Which has to be ignored to make any headway.
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