Old thread seems to be permanently locked. It will be interesting if anything can come of this at last.
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The champagne is mentioned in a 26 December 1999 Sunday Indo article by Liz Allen. I don't see it in the publicly available crime scene photos. Maybe because it is of significance?
The reason for Sophie visiting her home in Cork was supposedly to get the heating fixed. I cant find any confirmation anywhere if she did in fact get the heating fixed during her visit - Does anyone know if a plumber did call to the house in the days prior to her death?
Surely the housekeeper could have arranged the repairs and there was no need for Sophie to be in the house - so was this reason an excuse made up by Sophie. Also coming to an old house with no heating in December would'nt really make sense as the house would have been freezing. The chances of Sophie ( a stranger to the area) getting a plumber out in those busy days before christmas would be slim.
Also she was supposed to have asked friends and family to go with her to cork because she didnt want to be alone but nobody was available - Why didnt she bring her son with her? It was a very odd time of year to travel on her own.
In the same doco it also says
"elle commande aussi un exemplaire du monde chez le marchand journaux elle compte passer plusiers jours ici"
Which I get as - she also ordered a copy of Le Monde from the newsagent as she plans to stay several days here.
Which makes it look like she wasn't planning to go back Monday or Tuesday. Would anyone order a newspaper for one day? She would have to leave in the early hours Tuesday to get the Cork to Paris plane.
Well the evidence used in Paris was the same Irish lack of evidence rejected by our DPP.
I was hoping someone might tell me the origin of the champagne clue.
It could be anyone's, it's all guesswork. No trace of where it came from, no fingermarks, other than the finder and his family members who handled it.
It was found a yard in off the road in a grassy ditch.
It may have nothing to do with Sophie at all, but you must admit, it's a strange find in such a place at such a time.
So it mightn't even be hers?
We don't.
It was found a km. away on the Kealfada road by John Hellen.
I hadn't realised it was several hundred metres. So, how do we know it is related to the murder?
I doubt very much that the discarded bottle of wine was planted as a diversion. It wasn't found for some months afterward and was covered in grasses somewhere witihn 700M of the house (not sure of that distance). If a diversion it would be made easier to find, as it was it may have never been found at all.
Since it only appears in the French telling of the story how much should we believe it?
I mean we can't believe the evidence that convicted Bailey in France, so why should we believe that there is any truth to the champagne story?
What is their source?
I am just surprised it doesn't seem to get much coverage (if any) in the English language media. I suppose the implication she was expecting a visitor spoils the narrative. Her paramour didn't show but in a million to one chance she opened the door to her killer thinking it was he. It makes the jettisoned bottle more of a mystery. If Sophie had to buy a gift in Schull what was the other bottle for? That could only come from France. Maybe the perpetrator got hold of the French bottle and left it as a red herring to back up the French connection canard to mix my metaphors.
I'd say that back then, the available selection in a small supermarket in Schull would be, for a French person, poor (or else at an extortionate price). If you were French and planning on celebrating with someone, you'd get something better at the duty free in France - unless it was some last minute plans.
Also, if she was buying bubbly then she had plans to celebrate something with someone. My recollection was that she wasn't going to be there for New Years and would ve back in France for Christmas. Who was she due to meet and did she meet them?
Or to gift someone in the New Year?
It is at 43:10 in this one. A reconstruction.
https://youtu.be/R2-n9bZ72g8
The champagne is mentioned in this French YT video. It is in another one too but I can't refind that one at the moment.
I hadn't realised that either. Where did you hear that?
Was it being chilled in her fridge or or just sitting on a wine rack (warm so not ready for use)?
I hadn't previously twigged that the wine Sophie bought in Schull was a bottle of champagne. This was found unopened in her house, I believe. I'm sure someone will correct me if not.
In my opinion you don't buy champagne to drink on your own. So she must have been expecting company.
"Her diary was never recovered from the cottage, nor among her personal belongings, nor was it recovered back in France.
it's missing."
I don't know where that story came from, her diary has been quoted widely in books and newspapers;
Her diary " thoughts, expectations and fears" as you put it, probably stayed in France where it came to light after her murder. Laura Marlow quoted extensively from it in this I.T. article. in 2019.
As I said earlier she took her journals ( filofax) with her which were never lost.
Neither of which by the way, made any mention of Ian Bailey, Eoin Balley or any other such person.
It probably is burned by now. I can't see any reason why the killer(s)would keep it.
The bottle is still there.
It it appears to be real..see below.
"“It was a French vintage not stocked by any pub or off-licence in the West Cork area.” He suggested that subsequent forensic tests were unable to throw any light on the matter for gardaí. The bottle of wine was worth around IR£70 at the time, and would fetch well over €100 today. Checks with French police showed it was stocked at airport duty free. It was claimed in the book the wine had vanished, but it is believed the bottle, with its distinctive label, may be retained. In a statement made in April 1997 — three and a half months after the murder — a then-teenage boy told gardaí: “As I was going in across the fence about 20 yards on the coast road side of the junction leading to Sophie Du Plantier’s house, I noticed a bottle partially covered by withered rough grass. It was about 3.30pm at the time.
“I found it at a place that I pointed out to Detective Sergeant Walsh at 3.50pm on Wednesday, April 9. I picked up the bottle and I saw that it was a full bottle of wine. I left it where I found it and told my parents about it when I got home.” The next day he went with his father to the spot. “I collected the bottle and showed it to my father. He examined it, and decided to take it home with us. My mother rang the gardaí at Bandon and told Garda Kevin Kelleher about it. “This is the same bottle of wine that I now hand over to Detective Sergeant Walsh. My fingerprints, and that of my father, may be on the bottle. My mother's fingerprints may also be on this bottle. “The point where it was found is about three feet in off the road.” Five years later the now young man made statements to gardaí, in April and June 2002, in Co Cork indicating the wine bottle had suddenly come back into the equation."
I think one of the French documentaries showed a photo. They are on YouTube if you want to trawl through.
And the vino?
I don’t know about her diary (as in dear diary), but her 3 years journals among other things, were taken from the house by forensics. They were examined and found to contain her appointments, contacts, travel arrangements etc. No reference to Ian Bailey was found in them. I believe they were not handed over to the French investigators, which may be where “lost diaries” came from. But they did surface and were examined.
It is widely accepted that Sophie kept a diary, she was known to update it religiously and always kept it upon her person.
She recorded all her thoughts and expectations, and one would presume her fears.....
Her diary was never recovered from the cottage, nor among her personal belongings, nor was it recovered back in France.
it's missing.
Obviously, this raises the question... Who would steal it? What revelations were enclosed within the pages of the journal? Was the contents of that diary related to Sophie's death??
One item that Sophie was never without... Just dropped off the face of the Earth.
Is it correct that her diary is missing ?
Except for the two! seperate French guys living in the region in fear of their lives from French criminal gangs, both of whom Sophie is supposed to have met at some point in Ireland (according to the newspaper article I linked earlier).
Maybe one of these guys was the source of the bottle.
The shambles of the garda investigation aside, there were also some very "unusual" characters living in the area - most of our discussions (and media) focus on Bailey and Sophie's neighbours, I would love to see the Garda file on this and see how many people were properly investigated (these two French guys, the German who took his own life, the "randy" garda, the Ungerers, Alphie & Sophie, the other neighbours, the housekeeper, the mystery French speaking non-French guy and any number of other strangers that we probably never heard of...
Procedure is for AGS to keep track of evidence. During the GSOC investigation, AGS didn't know what happened to the gate. It was "lost" track of in that sense to that particular entity
The wine bottle appears to have been completely lost by all authorities.
The GSOC report states that in 2013 its investigators received documentation from the gardaí which outlined an extensive list of significant documents — including witness statements and 22 exhibits — that can no longer be located. These include a blood-spattered gate taken from close to where Ms Du Plantier’s body was found; a French wine bottle discovered in a field next to the murder scene; and a black overcoat belonging to Ian Bailey.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30859712.html
Didn't AGS "lose" that as well as the gate?
My understanding is that they didn't lose the gate.
It was processed for evidence, and any evidence off it was gathered.
It was then offered back to Sophie's family as is the procedure as it was their property.
They didn't want it so it was destroyed, again as per procedure.
How did an unopened, expensive bottle of French wine (not available for sale in Ireland), end up in a field on the road to / from, Sophie's cottage??? This is totally unexplained, and appears to have been brushed under the carpet.
But does it even exist, did it ever even exist ?
Any online search will all end up with some crime writer who claims that one prison inmate revealed it's existence to another back in the early 2000s
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