Bull?
I never mentioned IB in my recent posts, in my past posts I outlined my reasons why I do not think he is guilty. Based on a conversation I was part of.
You can get outraged all you want - including aiming several personal digs at me - but the fact remains people here are implicating Alfie and Shirley when they know absolutely nothing about them or the circumstances. Not offering an 'opinion'. There are posts here that have gone well beyond that and have strayed into implicating them.
Alfie has also been referred to as a drug dealer several times. Utterly baseless, and if he was alive, libelous.
I am not an authority 'on the case'. I was a friend of Alfie and Shirley. I met IB in 1996 at their house. I am an expert on that.
If you don't like my calling into question baseless speculation by people whose knowledge of the area is based on google maps, and would be hard pressed to identify either Alfie or Shirley in a photo but are able to state with certainty what they were physically capable of - feel free to ignore me.
Bannasidhe's posting history before this thread was ever started supports the view that they know lots of people in the Cork culinary scheme. Their posts are matter of fact, have told broadly the same story, and are not rehashing salacious gossip or claiming to have any vast insight into this barring knowing Alfie and Shirley and how it affected them. There is no reason whatsoever to disbelieve their posts, let alone attack them the way you have.
Who made you an authority on the case? Just because you claim to have known Alfie and Shirley back around this period of time, does that give you a deep insight into what happened and to disregard other peoples posts as you do. Who do you think you are? Someone who has claimed to know Alfie Lyons even though we have no way of knowing.
Again, no one here is pointing the finger at Aflie Lyons or Shirley Foster, they are just offering their own opinions which they are entitled to.
You're giving out about Shirley Foster being implicated in the crime on an online forum but have no problem in letting Ian Bailey be accused of the crime for 25 years. What about the trauma he has lived with for 25 years, life destroyed, at least she has got to live her life. And Jules Thomas.
The waft of arrogance off your post, acting like you were the lead detective or something. You know about as much as the rest of us do so cut the bull.
Or maybe they went there to threaten her or trash the place / set fire to it. Things went south.
You have no evidence of squat yet here you are trying to construct a case.
I, unlike you, knew both Alfie and Shirley and was at their house in 1996.
I spoke to them in the aftermath. I am fully aware of the level of questioning, the searches of their home by AGS, the press, and ghouls who think they have the answers. In fact they know better than Alfie's doctors who certified he was physically incapable of lifting a block. Are you going to deny a block was used?
They were quickly eliminated from the enquiry as there was and is zero evidence they were involved beyond being unfortunate to live near the victim and find her body.
Shirley Foster is a lovely women in her 80s who recently lost her partner. You are here implicating her in a very serious crime 25 years after the AGS cleared of of any involvement and you are showing scant regard for the trauma she has lived with all these years. Shame on you.
Ok so I'm a disgruntled drug dealer (with/without gardai connections)..... follow on from , so I'm a Hitman saga.
This foreign lady is being a pain in my backside.... sticking her nose in , walking about, dobbing me in, Giving my customers grief... etc , etc
What do I do?..
I know... lets murder her and bring Harbison, detectives, the sunday world & interpol into Toormore... that will sort it out...
Or ...No just thinking about it....lets just burn the house down when no one is around..... Draw a bit of local attention, raise a few eyebrows, but it all blows over by the new year.. & no more sophie comming on holidays....sorted.
'Who have you got there, Sargeant?'
'His name is Bailey. We picked him up down the street.'
'What did you get him for?'
'Well, doesn't he look like a murderer?'
'By God you're right! Well done Sargeant. Let's gather up some evidence.'
Alfie Lyons, pictured in 2003.
Looking at this photograph you would get the impression of him not being a physically strong or intimidating individual capable of carrying out an extremely violent and fatal assault on a defenceless victim. Unlike the main suspect in the investigation, say?? Just my opinion.
Do we know whether it was possible to reach the other gateway unobstructed by hedging? The gate in question, I think, is situated at the very end of the (main) road at a right angle to the entrance gate to the DuPlantier. It leads onto farmland owned by, well, we don't know. It is unclear if there was a hedge straddling the divide between the front garden and this adjacent land. My guess is there was. So, if there was and Sophie knew this, why would she run toward this barrier? It makes more sense that either she was running down the driveway from the house with her killer in pursuit or she had walked down of her own volition and first encountered him there.
I would like Shirley and Alfie to have cleared up the bathing squatters storyline. Whatever about not hearing the murder now we've people using the house next door with no curtains and they somehow don't have a clue.
I didn't know how much the Gards questioned Alfie and Shirley and what kind of evidence they looked at to eliminate both of them. Nor did I know of Alfie's health situation. Things are only a speculation here, but I think I mentioned that in nearly every post to this subject.
One other reason why Alfie and Shirley didn't hear anything that night might also have been that if there was a lot of wind that night which is not uncommon for this part or any part of Ireland, and the wind would have carried sounds eastward, - away from their house.
It's just a bit odd that no one was closer to the murder scene and lived there all year round but them, and they heard nothing at all or seen nothing unusual at all.
We have no evidence of a search warrant for Alfie's house. Your assertion that there is no evidence to connect them with the murder is very naive in the context of what constituted evidence in the case of Ian Bailey. Just the possibility that he might have spoken to Sophie is somehow evidence, something that wouldn't have been given any creedence but for what looks like a lie from Alfie Lyons. Shirley Foster also had some very dubious testimony as regards Bailey.
You are simply wrong if you suggest that they were physically incapable of this murder, since we don't know how it happened. The first blow might have caught her by surprise for all anybody knows.
Anyone who believes there was justification for the kind of questioning Ian and Jules got, cannot disagree that Alfie and Shirley should have been exposed to similar investigation.
Did I say they did it? If you bothered to properly read my post, you'd see I said I personally dont think they were involved. And how do you know they were properly investigated & questioned, were you one of the investigating detectives on the scene?
Also its highly unlikely she was making no noise, she obviously ran from her house to the gate screaming for her life. To think otherwise is naive in the scream, so he hit her a blow & stunned her enough that she wouldn't make any noise but was able to run all the way down from her house to the gate. Cmon, and your the one saying people are really stretching the bounds of credibilty!!
Save you sarky post for someone else.
Both Alfie and Shirley were extensively questioned. Their house was searched. They gave fingerprints and DNA. What more do you think should have happended? Waterboarding?
Alfie was ill at the time of the murder, and had been for about a year. He had serious issues with his lungs. He was under the care of a consultant. Lifting a block would have been physically impossible for him. His failure to die for another 20 odd years is a testament to the lifestyle changes he made in 1995 and medical science.
Shirley was deeply traumatised by her gruesome discovery. Shirly was also recently retired from teaching in one the the most notorious schools in the East End of London, a part of London famous for it's high crime rate. Trying to carry on as normal in the face of violence is the default position of East Enders. It is a coping mechanism.
Their house was drafty. Very very drafty. They dealt with this by having very very thick curtains. The kind that damped sound. There is zero evidence that Sophie screamed or that her murder was noisy. She could have been killed/stunned by the first blow to her head. Given where he body was found and the distance/hedging between that and Shirley and Alfie's bedroom at the back of their house it is very possible they heard nothing.
Both Alfie and Shirley were quickly eliminated as suspects. Because there was zero evidence to link them in away way, shape, or form to the murder.
But it seems the experts here who never met either of them believe two physically unimposing pensioners in their 60s were not only able to pull off an unsolved murder, they were so cold blooded they continued to live near the scene of their crime.
Has anyone suggested yet that Alfie was part of Manson's gang? He had been in California in the 60s after all. Some people here have already tried to claim he was some drug dealer. Which is B.S. He was a hippy who grew his own cannabis for his own personal consumption (as is now legal in many parts of the world) and he stopped in 1995.
And perhaps Shirley was somehow connected to the Kray Twins - what wif vem bean in 'Ackney same time as she woz beginning to teach innit.
Honestly, people are really stretching the bounds of credibility.
Connecting the dots is one thing, the problem is, we're not getting any proof of what happened, and we most likely never will.
Apart from new and compelling evidence turning up or a deathbed confession there is also the possibility that somebody out there still alive knows something as well. One of these "somewhere-somebody-knows-people" could in my opinion be Shirley and the reasons she won't talk is that she was herself somehow involved. That doesn't mean Alfie and herself did the killing, but their sheer presence in the night of the murder was simply to close that they noticed nothing at all.
Naturally none of us can prove any of Shirley's involvement, so police also can't pull her in and grill her for hours. However it could be possible that if there ever is a deathbed confession in the Sophy Toscan du Plantier murder case, it would with a strong likelihood come from Shirley.
Other than that we have to stick with what we have, and it'll be most likely unsolved forever.
There was a poster here recently who said his wife and son have been going around claiming he confessed on his deathbed.
it’s also been a locally held belief for years. Many years before Gemma O’Doherty’s article came out. And again before people ridicule her they should consider that the Village, in which it was published, would be careful to have its facts and sources straight. She can’t just go to them and publish her own mental ravings.
The rumour is of a violent womanising guard and I’ve seen that ridiculed on this thread. As if the very notion is fantasyland. And yet just this week we have a violent policeman across the water using his power and position to abduct and murder a woman. And then there’s the revelations about Garda involvement in drug gangs here.
The fact is that in police forces across the world there is a scarily high percentage of men who are violent to women. And before anyone says that doesn’t mean they are all MURDERERS, take a look at what Wayne Couzens was getting up to in the weeks and years before he murdered Sarah Everard.
just because an act doesn’t necessarily escalate into murder doesn’t mean that it can’t or won’t. The risk is that it can or will.
And then there’s the obvious police corruption on show in this particular case.
Not to mention Sophie’s prior contact with the guards.
I would say at this stage it doesn’t take much to connect the dots.
what, like
Reading the recent posts could the confrontation at her gate involved a vehicle? Perhaps she attacked the vehicle?
The thing is that it's been 25 years and that's a long time.
Unless there is compelling new evidence or a deathbed confession we won't unfortunately learn nothing new.
I am also inclined to think that in the possibility of the "drug-gang-corrupt-guard" theory, Alfie and Shirley had a role to play, - probably not voluntarily, but quite possibly coerced. The thing is, that both of them were considerably older than Sophie? So Sophie would have outrun them, if she was chased that night? They were both way to close to the murder scene for not having heard or noticed absolutely anything, regardless how deep they slept, or what they did all day and evening, they must have noticed something.
There is not much one can find about the deceased detective from Bantry. Evidence has most likely been destroyed a while ago. In his lifestyle probably everything was abnormal, but I would have looked at anything sticking out? But what? Maybe old bank statements and unusual transactions, which most likely don't exist anymore. Is his wife still alive? or any of his kids?
He was 1959, she was 1957. He was actually younger than her.
Can’t delete comment
With all the news today about guards’ involvement in drug gangs, including a senior member, this really reinforces the theory that Sophie was killed over this, as opposed to a boundary dispute.
I truly don’t think Alfie or Shirley killed her themselves but I think they were caught up in it in some way. That’s why they never said anything. They’re implicated.
The deceased detective in Bantry needs to be looked at it in more detail.
I still think the bottle of wine is more likely to have been some form of Christmas gift between neighbours rather than a romantic gesture.
who knows, maybe Sophie even gifted it herself.
Yes there was a small/medium blood stain on the ground at the back door.
According to Josephine..... plastering.
The thing about the 'axe'.... Baileys (now deceased 2019 i think) neighbour Jacqueline found a large axe head weeks or days after x-mas in the ashes of her own rubbish/firepit... didn't know how it got there / unexplained..
She says it could have been there hiddin in the grass as it was a new (virgin grass site) Pit but she didn't think so.
Then 'hey presto' there's an axe missing from sophies , albeit a small one..
Statements
Does anybody have a link or know where to get the transcripts from the police interviews? Screenshots below are hard to make out but from Shirley's statement below is it indicating that Alfie and Shirley were still walking around the crimescene later in the day when he pointed out the blood?
And something about the perpetrator falling over a dustbin by the backdoor? Why on earth is that in a statement - was Shirley now part of the investigation team? I can't beleive for a second that Shirley would be talking about the dustbin. Impossible to seperate fact from fiction with all of these statements.
Tyre tracks
Does anybody know what side of the gate were the tyre tracks? You can only surmise that these tracks were from a stationary vehicle that put the pedal to the metal and thus spun the wheels as driving down this laneway and bend is hardly a place for quickly accelerating. The vehicle that left the tyre tracks had also obviously come down the laneway from Sophies or Alphies house as that's the only place you could turn around. Also interesting that initially the Guards thought it was a hit and run which would explain how she ended up in the ditch and then was she finished off?
This French reporter does not mention any poker or axe missing either;
But it does mention a "éteignoir pour les bougies" which translates as a candle snuffer,
Maybe Josephine's French and the reporter's English confused "poking the fire" with "snuffing the flame".
Was there blood found around the area near the back door? I know of the mark on the door itself.
I found it odd that Shirley noticed that Sophie's light by the backdoor was on when she was going to bed, yet in the morning it was off. When Sophie was disturbed, she surely turns the light on to see who is there regardless of how afraid she might have been. The back door was closed and the light off, did the killer return and do that?
Any idea what kinda of work she was asking Pat for?
Thanks for that. I was not aware of the birth dates. I guess in the pictures of Sophie used in the media she appeared to be rather young.
Sophie wasn't "by far younger" they were actually of a similar age, both born in 1957 I think.
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