Sophie: A Murder in West Cork - Netflix.

From the guard's perspective they are trying to build up a narrative of the events of that night. The sighting at Kealfadda Bridge is key to the prosecution's case and so they can't really float the idea of him driving there without losing a key component of their case. The story has to be that he walked over there or the case against him starts to fall apart.

I’d go so far as to say Marie was home in her bed all that night.

Maybe their van was out and about, up to no good, and an excuse was needed in case it was seen?

Maybe there was a dogging area around there, you’d never know .

That always struck me as odd...

Maria Farrell was ringing up under an assumed name, and wouldn't leave her details (always ringing from a phone box before she lost the run of herself).

Why did she do that?

She was either an attention seeker, ambulance chaser, utter nut case.... Or, she was fearful that either herself or her car had been seen in the area? Which begs the question - What was she actually doing so near the murder scene at such a time in the morning??

If she was indeed having her knee's tickled by a married man from Longford (or wherever), what's the big deal about it? The Guards will have dealt with many similar shenanigans before... Might as well just name him, the Guards meet him in private somewhere, get his side of the story and move on...

The fact that she never named him is bizarre in itself.. The only other apparent witness to verify Maria's story.... And nothing??

Do they have a case? No one believes Marie Farrell anymore due to the changing stories and fact she’d never name the man she was supposedly with. If they do they are deluded.

I think it was Bailey, but probably morning, it doesn’t make sense it happened at night as several posters have pointed out on this thread. Wasn’t a car seen speeding away from the scene, I’m sure I read that somewhere. Could that have been his or Jules?

im not sure it will ever be solved either but I have heard from a family member down there that they have new leads and it looks promising, who knows though…

just hope Sophie’s parents have some peace about it all before they die.

Like I said previously, fair enuff, Sekiro! I'm not at all disagreeing with you! Apologies if it sounded like I was.

My point is that the guards' case in relation to Bailey's walking tour and frenetic waiving of hands for passing cars to see really makes no sense - even before Farrell went rogue on them.

Presumably, no one here disagrees with this? We are all just debating the case but I'd be really interested to hear from someone who thinks that this narrative from the guards' is plausible. In explaining their views, ideally the questions posed previously should be addressed.

Just to add, before Farrell went rogue on the guards, their case made no sense to me at all. Given what Farrell now "claims", the guards narrative makes no sense at all at all. Does anyone know for sure whether this is the narrative that was presented at the trial in Paris?

I think that the guard's narrative is not the truth. I'm not sure that anyone really does believe it.

Not 100% clear on the French prosecution's narrative but they have basically taken the "we can only accept your first answer" approach with Farrell.

It's basically a complete mess.

The walking tour makes sense. He was a well known night time walker. Sometimes with his big coat and rhythm stick, he was even once seen out and about in nothing but jocks and a cowboy hat which sort of gets to the kernel of his madness. West Cork Podcast make a vague reference to the stick going missing around the time of the murder.

But I agree with you on the frenetic hands. It is a bit of a red flag on the Farrell sighting. I live in a rural location. You could walk for miles and not encounter a car at 3 AM. On a still night you would have plenty of notice that a car was coming. If you had just killed someone, you would surely be anxious to get off the road, to the point where you would go through briars or bushes to hide yourself. You would have time, but in a worst case scenario you would turn your back to any approaching car.

If you take Marie`s story literally, what do you have? She saw a man walking near Kealfada Bridge in direction of Goleen. She now says this man was not Ian Bailey. She has never said that Gardaí influenced her to invent this story. If they had and they wanted to implicate Bailey, they wouldn`t have had the man walking towards Goleen. She saw no blood on him. In fact there is nothing really to connect him to the murder other than this man who was not Bailey, was walking along a road nearly two miles away from the scene of the murder. If you turn around and go back up the road a couple of miles past Sophie`s laneway, at approximately the same time, there was another man out and about. By his own admission that man was Ian Bailey.

Hi tibruit,

Fair play, you feel the walking tour makes sense. I don't so let's debate this.

The walking tour suggests that:

1. Bailey walked to Sophie's house in the middle of, admittedly a moonlit, night - a distance of 4.1km
2. When he got back to the Kealfadda Road from Sophie's house, instead of walking home directly (3.1km), he went to Kealfadda Bridge, a distance of 1.8km
3. He then walked home - presumably by not retracing his steps but via R591, a distance of 4.6km

I find the Kealfadda detour non-plausible. I think Bailey is weird but I don't think he's stupid - if he wanted to wash/clean himself up, there was a far better option at Dunmanus Pier. In essence, 1.8 + 4.6 = 6.4km or twice the distance that he needed to take. Possible yes; probable I just don't think so.

That’s what I read or something like it, didn’t Jules drive a fiesta too?

All of the above, plus a kick from a donkey are as likely as Bailey.

Fair enough. Let`s just say no blood on his hands then. He was waving them about.

Maybe you can tell us where exactly the car, that was not confirmed to be a Fiesta, was actually seen.

So, in summary - no one here believes the central guarda line that he was seen at Kealfadda Bridge on his way home. That's pretty damming on the cops.

As a by the by, many here will have heard the report during the week about the gardai's failure to act on all 999 calls. Prior to the publication of this report, instead of apologising for any shortcomings in their service delivery, the guards maintained that nobody had come to harm as a result of their inaction. The report found that the guards couldn't possibly know whether all the neglected callers had come to harm or not. After all the scandals with the guards, it seems to me that the cops here have learned very little and can continue to behave incompetently and then follow on with stupidity.

The relevance of this is that Bailey could well be the murderer but the guards incompetence and stupidity in purporting the Kealfadda Bridge line means that their credibility is hugely damaged.

Hi Xander,

My understanding is that the call centres are operated by both guards and civilians.

My understanding also is that the report did not distinguish between the relative professionalism of the two cohorts. Admittedly, I haven't read the report itself.

My simple points are that the 999 garda service is a key cog in the garda response and it is the responsibility of the gardai to ensure its effective operation. In simple terms, some (but not all) of the work here may have been performed by civilians but the responsibility rests with the guards. When shortcomings in this service are observed, the gardai should really not compound these failures by making stupid claims - the veracity of which they simply couldn't possibly know.