To see if it has obliterated whatever you wanted to hide. maybe?
Could it have been pushed from a height and rolled off? As I type this seems a long way to travel..
Interesting.
If you are going to crush someone's head with a concrete block, why bother lifting it off again and throwing it aside?
The block was about 6 ins from Sophie's leg, it was actually on top of her blue housecoat.
It does look like the most plausible explanation for Leo's miraculous remembering but is it not a bit too easy to allow us believe he's lying to stay out of jail? What if Leo really did have something to say that the Guards didn't want out in the open and he threatens to say it if he goes down? So they come up with this one that doesn't matter anyway and no-one of any importance believes. Curious.
Interesting re: the knife. Although that might suggest a degree of skill \ awareness which not all hitmen in 1996 may have posssesed.
The block does suggest either a very personal attack fueled by rage at the specific victim OR a very impersonal attack, that of a serial killer who depersonalizes the victim.
But then, if you were a hitman with a view to staging a scene* of a crime of passion, and you happen to spot that for use as the coup de grace and as you are wearing gloves... well why not?
*Staging the scene because a hit that looks too professional points back to the husband
From the swing of knife yes, but less chance if slow.
Ultimately, just trying to say that a hitman using a block...i just don't buy it.
I hope you know he's having a laugh. It's a wind-up.
Look ;
"Indeed, as legally wrong as the French themselves were, to rely on such tainted evidence, they made at least one valid point. They suggested the Irish were looking at every part of the case in isolation and eliminating each piece one by one - then concluding that it all added up to nothing."
if your team has 4 attempts at scoring during a game and 2 go wide and 2 are saved and the other team doesn't score an own goal, you will have zero goals, but in France douze points it seems
Can't you get blood splatter from stabbing someone?
And if wearing gloves, you wouldn't leave DNA on a brick?
Blood splatter on perpetrator and solid dna on brick from scratching perpetrator.
In the interest of keeping an open mind to all theories, I'll just leave this here. The sound quality is a bit poor at the beginning but improves later.
Doesn't really explain the block but sure you can't have everything.
Actually reading some of the more recent comments, it says the block was found some meters from the body. Is that correct does anyone know?
I had the idea that the block was found on her head but maybe that comes from reading too much casual misinformation on this thread.
What was forensically risky \ unsafe about the method?
I know, i was saying that, if it was a planned hit, they would be a forensically safer method.
Hence my discounting hitman theories.
Great post and certainly adds some balance to the thread - but yet I still sit on the fence in the hope that hard facts come to light and the family get justice!
Course he would have told someone!!!! And probably have written about her in his diaries.
You are right, there's absolutely nothing. Just a lame statement from her neighbour who was stoned most of the time and a miraculous remembering from Leo bolger around the time he got a suspended sentence for running the most sophisticated drug operation gardai had seen in the area.
Are people really that stupid, or I'm the case of the French, desperate?
Imagination is fine and good - but there is nothing to support this notion and the previous diatribe about "fanboys" begins with this very fabrication.
If Bailey actually knew Sophie then he was taking a massive gamble in denying he knew her because she might have written about knowing him, she might have told any number of people about him, he might have said it to somebody, he might have been seen with her ... but instead there is nothing to substantiate the idea that he knew her. Does this mean he's innocent - of course not. But assuming he did not know her is very far from conspiratorial and certainly not fanboyish - and it changes the narrative in a very important way.
I don't know where the story of the "3 large suitcases" originated .
The stills from the airport shows a trolley with one large suitcase and a couple of hand and carrier type bags..
Another interesting unanswered question.
Also, would the killer have gone through Sophie's suitcases in order to eliminate something incriminating?
It's not likely that Sophie kept the often mentioned 3 diaries gone missing in the suitcases, but it can't be ruled out as well.
Maybe he rang her up from a phone box and said hello my name is Fiona, I was thinking about making a futuristic comedy about myself and I will not find it very funny.
Even if IB had known Sophie what difference would that make? He would have been incredibly foolish denying he had been introduced to her when he knew that Alfie could have said "no I remember it well he told her he was a poet" and Leo would recall saying "oh la la you're the charmer Bailey". But of course he didn't know her, as the DPP's file says;
"The Garda contention that Bailey is being untruthful and evasive regarding his knowledge of Sophie Toscan du Plantier is not supported by convincing evidence."
Same as the 3 suitcases? Was she used to bringing 3 suitcases for such a short trip?
Has anyone seen if the garda checked the contents of the suitcases? I assume they would have
f it was designed to look like a crime of passion, then stabbing slowly or strangulation would suffice?
the pathologist would know of strangulation anyway and probably of stabbing
@chooseusername I believe that the land was being farmed/used by the housekeepers husband finbarr...
Fosters book refers to this. I know very little about this man..or if he is now dead or alive.
I'd say that it's entirely possible that Bailey knew that Sophie owned a house there, and Bailey knew what the Toscan du Plantier family was all about how known they were in France, and what kind of line of business they were in.
I would also be inclined to speculate that if Bailey had any contact with Sophie or Sophie's office in Paris, the nature of the call wasn't personal or potentially at some point sexual in nature, but quite possible regarding the commissioning of journalistic or some other artistic work.
Sophie wouldn't have made contact with Bailey, she would not have needed him, but Bailey would have made contact with her, in order to get some free-lance job and a commission in a financial spectrum Bailey could only dream about. Maybe Bailey persuaded Sophie into a meeting when she'd be in Ireland but Sophie then rejected him in regards to any possible fre-lance work?
Yes, it's very far stretched, very speculative, but not beyond imagination.
Exactly.
The idea that Bailey phoned Sophie's "office" is such a massive stretch - but it's people who doubt his guilt that are conspiratorial?
Where did he get her office number? Did he write the number down - or even her place of work? Did he talk to her there, if not, why not and who did he talk to and how did they know who he was and did anybody take any record of this call? What precipitated the call? Had Sophie and Ian met in Cork and she told him where she worked - but he then told nobody about this meeting and never mentioned it in his diary/writing? Why did she not mention her worries about him to anybody actually in Cork (like the Ungerers for example) - only to French people in France? Convenient.
Fanboy much.
The thing is, these are only all indications and our own deductions and not proof of anything.
One would have to have known her habits und ways of doing things.
Yes, the driveway on her land to the west of the house seems small, but it would fit 2 cars for parking easily. It's just more complicated backing out from there and then reversing the car, I would say.
Where the Fiesta was parked during the night of the murder it would fit 3 cars easily. It's also probably only convenience that she parked there, rather than anything else
However we're inclined to think that "there must have been a reason for parking there", or was she possibly expecting a guest or a visitor who's car could have been parked more hidden on her own property?
We all don't know.
Same as the 3 suitcases? Was she used to bringing 3 suitcases for such a short trip? It's not an impossible thought for somebody in the show business, I'd say? Or is this an indication of wanting to stay longer? Or just bringing personal stuff over for a longer stay later on in the next year?
Would she always park where the Fiesta was on the pictures or was this only a one time thing?
Nobody could answer these questions anymore. Possibly Shirley, as she's the only neighbour still alive, but moved away, and could easily answer with "I don't remember anymore" after 25 years.
This is it. She flew over to meet someone. Its amazing we don't know who for certain. The three big suitcases is interesting too hadn't heard that one before.
I'll put up a few images, and you can draw your own conclusions.
The first 2 are in the aftermath of the murder.
The first one shows fence posts strewn around the lawn, indicating work being done around the boundaries either by Sophie or her neighbours;
The 2nd one shows an unfinished fence along Sophie's eastern gable, ie. 4 posts bit no wire yet.
Did a workman turn up to complete this fencing early Mon. morning only to be confronted by an irate Sophie fearing her car parking space was about to be fenced off?
Was this the reason for her impromptu visit? maybe a call from her neighbour or housekeeper to tell her of the work going on?
The 3rd one is sometime later, and no sign of any fence?
Here is the only image I can find of the rear of the house, albeit 20 yrs later.
It would be a tight squeeze , but do-able and would mean having to reverse back out.
Agnes Thomas was Sophie's best friend who told a court in 2019 how she remembered Sophie talking about meeting a 'weird' guy, a poet but she was uneasy. Unfortunately Agnes' power of recollection is worse than Alfie Lyons' was even though she'd spoken twice to Sophie during her last days.
"It was pointed out to her that when French magistrates began investigating the murder in 2008, she had not related anything about this conversation.
“The brain is a complex thing,” Ms Thomas said. “I lost my best friend, it was so shocking. Something blocked in me and it took years before it came back to me when I saw the footage that mentioned something about poetry.”
It was the US DEA that detailed the transshipment of cargo from ocean-going boats to local fishing boats as a major link in a chain at that time, so it's not inconceivable that payment in kind could sometimes be used. After that we can only guess. Michaella McCollum comes to mind.
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