Look at the last picture
What covered window? Thought her whole thing was curtainless windows?
Are you angry with what actually happened or trying to be ironic?
...by arresting him and charging him with murder. Unless, of course, Ol'Alfie's and corrupt Bantry coppers drug importation partnership might be torpedoed by a murder conviction. Could be bad for business alright. In that case, let's get rid of any incriminating evidence before the forensics crowd arrive from Dublin. Oh, and don't forget about the jobs book in the station. There must be no written record of references to "certain individuals". Sure, we'll charge Bailey with it. No hassle.
Blocked/covered window is interesting..
I'm no expert but I'd imagine this driveway was to access the property by vehicle and plenty of space to park/turn you car. Even if she just parked before that gate there is plenty of space to reverse the car and turn the rear into the lane towards Alphie's. So she had plenty of space alright but it might not have been as convenient for her. Point being where her car was parked would be no different than your neighbour parking in your driveway. Like I've said, these neighbourly disputes can become very petty.
I think that's a later picture. Like the one below. You can see there are shrubs there in this pic.
Where was she supposed to park/ turn? looks like grass/lawn the further u go in...+ that supporting wall would be part of the house landscaping
But its not following that boundary line I believe. It's actually following the wall and then seems to cut in to close it off.
There must be clearer photos somewhere on the Web.
It makes sense if you look at the folio on landdirect.ie - the fence between the cottage and the car would be close to the boundary of the land belonging to the cottage. The area the car was parked on did not belong to the cottage.
As a number of people have pointed out here, the surrounds of Sophie's house appear to have been a hive of activity in the period she died. There are plenty of people prepared to go in front of the camera about Ian Bailey but none of those people who we know were doing things in the immediate vicinity are to be found. Alfie was on a french documentary to say nothing much. Shirley, Finbarr Hellen, Bill Fuller, Leo Bolger are either not interviewed or if they are, they aren't asked about the work going on. There is a lot of mystery around the heating/boiler problems.
I posted earlier how a Guard told Bailey he'd be shot by 'somebody other than the Gardai'. Who'd do that to an English basta**d I wonder. People might have good reason to be quiet. In any case Sophie found she wasn't living in a safe house.
Re the fence near her car, it looks to me like it's simply protecting newly planted hedging or roses outside the wall from grazing goats, sheep, horses, hens, etc.
Makes little sense otherwise
You must remember Sophie came to west cork for its wildness, remoteness ,rugged landscape & privacy.
And now what can only be described as a sheep mart ( 4-5 gates) in supposedly common 'nobody knows who owns what' ground + fences are being erected at the bottom of her garden & in view..
Could she not depend on anyone to ensure the plumbing was fixed... Was the heating/plumping a pump house water issue ... was the plastering for the pump house..
The fence at her car makes no sense and was provocative IMO......... The silence is deafening in west cork...
Sophie had hard times herself before she married Ddp so she would have valued what she had..
I'm not even saying it went as far as a solicitor (they usually don't) and this was always something that could have been simmering and could have been instigated by the neighbours. It's already known there was a dispute with the estate agent regarding the ownership of the shed beside her house - that would surely have irked her. She also parked her car on a portion of land she did not own. We know there was running dispute over whether the gate should be left open or remain closed. Visible from the photographs that fencing was being erected around some of the boundaries. She was known to the Guards for complaining about the local drug culture and reporting break-ins etc. As you have said, she was an infrequent visitor to the house so it's not beyond the realms of possibility that someone else started with the fence work in her absence and 'boxed' her without informing her (as someone else pointed out previously with the look of a fence erected at the boundary where she parked her car). All those 'small things' can add up overtime. Pic below as per chooseusername's post earlier in the thread - the placement of that fence seems petty to say the least and for sure Sophie didn;t put that there;
Humor is good, even in bad situations.
I've had also thoughts about this. However what I think is that Sophie was gone far too long in any calendar year to be having a dispute with a neighbour, whether that's an ownership dispute, a border dispute, or a dispute putting a fence up. In the event of Sophie having a dispute with a neighbour she would most likely have had somebody to take care of that on her behalf, a solicitor? or somebody whom she had trust in? There is not anybody known to have handled such a matter for her, as far as I have followed the case.
Any Guard reading what you just said would burst his hole laughing.
fence thing is very confusing.
my only tbought here though is opening a right of way from either side can cause rows.
A redneck neighbour sued de next door after wall was moved an inch in rebuild. case dismissed cost 30k each. both neihgbours despise each other.
This only begs the question, why this Guard was behaving that way? If he went about his job as he should have any kind of threats would be totally unprofessional. Also as far as we know, Bailey was neither armed, nor did he own a firearm, thus there was no need to "put a bullet in his back". Quite possible this Guard would have felt grave consequences if further facts would have been made known.
Maybe he has to be 'cautious'. The DPP's report makes it obvious that Bailey's testimony is seen as truthful;
"He asserts that Gda. J.P. Culligan was aggressive, particularly during the journey from his home to the Garda Station.
3. He states that the driver of the car was named “Liam” and this man told Bailey that even if the Gardaí did not pin it on him that he was finished in Ireland.
Liam told him that somebody other than the Gardaí would put a bullet in the back of his head."
The problem here is the police. Why would all this collusion, corruption, manipulation of witnesses and rewards of money and drugs be necessary to implicate Bailey? ( It's certainly not "normal police procedure") And even if so, this would never hold tight in a court of law. In the end all the little evidence we have would point more to the police than to Bailey.
I don't think that Bailey had any prof of figuring out a connection between the murder and a senior Gard, the one from Bantry we've heard so much about. Bailey may have had only a suspicion, same as us here. Otherwise he would have done more. What I also miss about Bailey though, is why didn't he publish a book about the case? After all he's a writer and he would have made money as well this way.
Maybe they should look in Dunmanus bay then , i.e. in the opposite direction for the murder weapon.
Fosters book..... J. Hellens disusses & plays down the land use. Advises the gardai to look towards france..., Predicts that the murder weapon will be found at kilfada bridge.
Sophie had bits and pieces of land all over the place, 8 I think besides the land at the house.
An acre or two here and there, including 2 shared commonages.
She probably didn't even know what and where it was.
Where better place for Bill to do a bit of his "gardening"?
I think I recall he and his wife Kerri grazed a bit of her land or shared commonage.
He was also her handyman doing bits around her house for her earlier, "we got on very well" he is recorded as saying.
But it looked like she was using others at the time of the murder.
That relationship must have soured for whatever reason.
He was selling Christmas trees around Schull on the morning of the murder at around 11 o'clock.
This is Ireland so it's very hard to ignore and rule out if the debate over land ownership played some part in a motive. It's far more likely than the other theories surrounding hitmen, hitchhikers, loners on trips. This is rural Ireland and they are all very remote possibilities and the chances of these occurrences going un-noticed in rural Ireland is even more remote. I agree with Dwyer on one thing in that the answers lie in the locality and I think it's pretty evident from all the moving parts that if the truth is ever exposed it will have devastating consequences on a wider group and not just one lone killer - the truth is being protected!
It’s interesting that Bill Fuller is the one who related the story of Bailey saying to him, ‘you saw her in spar, she turned you on, you went up there to see what you could get, threw a rock at her, went too far, etc.’
Is it possible that Fuller was relating what actually went down—but he was the perpetrator?
He also had that freak out at Kealfadda bridge looking for the murder weapon.
Is it possible that he was the one who discarded the murder weapon there? And went to look for it and try dispose of it elsewhere? Then when he was seen by a local farmer coming towards him, spun the story of thinking it was Bailey and being terrified out of his mind.
He wasn’t so shaking in his boots afraid of Bailey as to be not making lewd gestures at him in Schull market and mouthing ‘eff off’ as admitted in court.
Is it possible he was the man Marie Farrell saw by Kealfadda bridge that night, if she saw anyone at all?
Or might he have been the man in the car with her.
Also: it’s been a suspicion of mine that the man Sophie had in the car with her in Skibbereen was a hitchhiker.
Someone who spooked her a bit, the reason why she lurked inside and seemed a bit off during her few days’ holiday?
Or decided she needed to be silenced for some reason.
Anyone else notice.. The more deeper the analysis of this case, the further away from Bailey it goes.
In the beginning, it was Bailey 100%... No doubt about it.
After going through the cast of possible suspects, motives, scenario's etc.... Any realistic link to Bailey being the murderer is greeted with a wry smile...
How Bailey became prime suspect No.1 is truly jaw dropping. How the investigation became so corrupt so soon is significant.
The missing evidence, the manipulation of witnesses (stooges), the rewards of money & drugs for favourable statements is corruption of the highest order.
This was a face saving exercise / A Force saving exercise? - Who was being protected so vehemently? The raiding of Bailey's studio and ceasing of all his diaries is relevant.. He was hardly going to record murdering somebody was he...? What were the Gards looking for?
Had Bailey figured out a connection to the murder involving a senior Gard?
The key witness placing Bailey anywhere near the case, changed her description of the man she seen multiple times before withdrawing the whole statement(s) and flipping to the other side.. Not before acquiring a half a million property via the help of the Gards first.
Stinks too high heavens!
It may not have started out with the intention to murder but maybe what started as an argument got out of hand and escalated to the point of murder. Perhaps the attacker panicked after assaulting her and then in the heat of the moment decided she needed to be finished off, hence the final blows with the concrete block.
@tinytobe I don't think that a neighbour to neighbour squabble or a boundary argument was the motive or reason for the murder. If this would have been so, then something else must have happened after the murder, something Sophie has opposed, or might have objected to.
That's the thing though, if this was something that was disputed then I would expect the work not to be carried out as it would draw suspicion wouldn't it? Too obvious after the murder to go putting up boundaries on the land.
There's probably nothing to it, just seems strange that there was quite obviously work in progress that for some reason was abandoned completely.
Could well be, but nobody has ever said that was the case. The thing about her fixing the heating comes up a lot. She called her handyman the night of the murder, apparently to discuss getting some plastering done. But nobody has ever said that she was in Cork to put up a fence. Or that she had spoken to anyone about putting up a fence. And why would she put up a fence beside her house in a way that seems to do nothing but interfere with her parking spot? Those fence posts aren't on her land either. It's one thing to park on that bit of land the odd time you're there, can't see the neighbours having a problem with that tbh, but putting a fence up on it is a more permanent action on their land.
It seems more likely to me that the fencing was being erected by someone else. But we don't know who was putting it up, why they were putting it up or why they not only didn't finish the job, but actually removed the bit outside Sophie's house.
I'm not saying this all points to some motive by a neighbour but it's an interesting part of the puzzle. Just more unanswered questions about this case.
It wouldn't surprise me if Sophie was the one fencing up the place. She was not at all used to living in a place like that and she had a man hired to do work there.
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