Ian Bailey RIP - threadbans in OP

local stories of them breaking new ground, Bailey screwed up and admitted he had met Sophie at the arts festival.

What arts festival?

Where are you getting this information?

A source said

With the tabloids that source is usually "John" sitting at the next office cubicle who may of heard something down the pub.

If Sheridan is making another documentary I imagine it won't be released until after the Cold Case concludes.

It sounds very much like to me giving his interviews since his first one, his focus will be more on France.

He will definitely get his foot in the door of people who know Sophie and her Husband back then given who he is and the connections he has.

His brother wrote a book?

Two, actually.

Google; Michael Sheridan

Yes you're right,

I always thought they were brothers. Every day a schoolday!

According to the Irish Mirror and a unknown source.

We will file that under wait and see.

Or are we adding this producer to the long list of people involved in the conspiracy against poor woman beating Bailey?

There was certainly a conspiracy against him.

Excellent post over on Reddit today;

Murder at the cottage, "The Harrying of Jules"

Long read, but certainly worth a look.

Here’s the article Irish Times - behind paywall - here’s an excerpt

“Gardaí investigating the murder of Sophie Toscan du Planter have started examining hours of video footage from cultural events held in west Cork in the mid-1990s to see if they show the French film producer with the chief suspect in the case, Ian Bailey.

Photojournalist Stephen Bean confirmed he had handed over 16 90-minute long Hi8 video tapes recorded at events held in the area to officers from the Serious Crime Review team who are re-examining the original investigation into the 1996 murder.

He said these included footage from a storytelling festival on Cape Clear and art exhibition openings in Skibereen and Schull from between 1993 and 1995.”

Proof?

It’s a wait and see - IF Bailey and Sophie are videoed together talking, it’s essentially a game changer for me given his absolute denial of having never met her- whilst some of the accusations can certainly be rebuffed, Bailey strongly denied this aspect of having met Sophie ever -a video of them conversing would completely swing me towards beyond reasonable doubt

This seems to be it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MurderAtTheCottage/comments/1aresxm/the_harrying_of_jules_the_full_story_how_the/

i guess Individual “perceptions” of Bailey is nearly the only thing people have to hang their hat on.

The total lack of concrete evidence - DNA, reliable eye witnesses on the night- it leaves a void that people feel they have to fill themselves.

And they fill that with any piece of “evidence” they can. I think it’s a natural thing to do- I guess people want closure so they try and rationalise what information they have and draw their own conclusions.

I don’t think it’s necessarily right or wrong- it’s probably just the human condition -none of us have the full list of evidence in front of us so all this discussion is a mere guessing game anyway

What you say from a court of law or legal perspective is certainly true in my view.its definitely no smoking gun.

But if a video emerges with Bailey in conversation with Sophie, from a public opinion perspective, I think that will sway many people who may be currently expressing a lot of doubt around Baileys involvement - at the very least they may be less vocal in expressing any type of support for him .

It’s still just an opinion nothing more- but what’s left to have ? It’s not like Gardaí will uncover anything of significance that will move this case toward beyond reasonable doubt.

Bailey was adamant on never meeting Sophie - not even a brief introduction by a neighbour was admitted to.

In fairness if you did converse with a foreign woman for any degree of time at a festival beyond a short exchange of pleasantries , just a few years ago at a festival, you may not instantly recall it, but if the resultant circumstances such as these emerged, I think you would remember eventually -

The human brain and memory doesn’t work like that. It’s not some hard drive that you can just go into an old file and pull up something from years ago. If you were at a festival and chatting to multiple people, locals, tourists, vendors etc and something happened to one of them, would you be able to recall a brief chat with them??

Would you understand and be ok with being harassed and called a murderer because of your lack of recollection? Especially if you’d had a good few drinks taken at the festival? And were a heavy drinker in the meantime?

It’s desperate straw clutching by an organisation that’s spent the past few years conditioning people to believe that it was Bailey, because if it wasn’t there’ll be hell to pay. Like a gambler putting his rent money on the last race because he KNOWS this horse will win. And when it doesn’t it’s not his fault for not checking the form etc.

In fairness if you did converse with a foreign woman for any degree of time at a festival beyond a short exchange of pleasantries , just a few years ago at a festival, you may not instantly recall it, but if the resultant circumstances such as these emerged, I think you would remember eventually -

I don't think her been foreign would be an outlier given the make up of the area.

The circumstances could also create a false memory especially for a 3rd party.

And especially if the Muldoon guards got to that third party.

Fair enough in terms of the nationality- west cork was famous for its variety of nationalities- I still think though that if he had nothing to do with the murder, Bailey would have gone over in his mind whom he had met in the locality through the years.

In the early days before arrest, he may well have said that he knew her vaguely or met her once but he didn’t. He was adamant he never knew her- that’s a risky thing to say if you were seeing publicly with her- on the balance of probability I’d say he was telling the truth.

Leaving aside the disputed 90% certain supposed introduction, I honestly don’t believe he did meet her- be it a diary entry by Sophie, or a mention in a phone call to a friend (and I don’t mean that story that materialised nearly 20 years after the murder) there’s nothing really of note to say he knew her- it’s a small locality overall - some credible witness would have come forward at the time had they met publicly I believe.

You’re then faced with the prospect that Bailey went to a house he hadn’t been to before to meet a woman he never met before at an unearthly hour of the night, with the sole purpose of killing her ir at least forcing himself on her and killing her when she rebuked him, just like that serial murderer I posted about a few pages back.

It’s a big ask here, no less in a court of law, to believe that story.