Cold Case Review of Sophie Tuscan du Plantier murder to proceed

There's no way Sophie would have given Ian Bailey any of her time beyond a courtesy, he would have been a complete loser goofball to someone like her. She would have avoided him like the plague on first sight. It was chock full of people like him down there and she avoided them all. No way, poetry musings, as if.

He was a lazy loser who couldn't plan his way out of a paper bag. He cut his Christmas tree down a couple of days before Christmas, was always late writing the few scrappy stories and swanned around the place doing nothing of note for years.

Suddenly this drunken buffoon in a matter of hours, planned out a perfect murder, executed it, left no evidence and set in motion launching a whole newfound second coming journalist career, and then immediately went back to being a complete buffoon turning up at the scene acting like a fool, and becoming the only reason that he was ever put in the frame at all. 4D chess I think they call it these days.

nope don’t see it - link would be good

Yeah. It`s there. If you can`t be arsed so be it.

There is a difference between no DNA left behind, and no DNA found at the scene. One look at the state of the investigation and it's not surprising they found no DNA. Even a French investigator who had minimal access to the evidence and no access to the scene was able to pick up more DNA than the Gardai could in nearly 30 years.

Not sure if the year is 1992 or 1997

The only DNA Bailey left behind was probably on a few thorns amongst the millions present. This wasn`t a hand to hand struggle. Nothing under her fingernails, only her own hair in her hands. The DNA on the boot is irrelevant unless it can be shown to belong to someone who claimed they never met her and even then it can never be established that it was deposited on the night of the murder.

"If I could kill anybody now, I would."

So knowing that he had scratched himself he then voluntarily gave blood and hair samples?

I find others take on this fascinating, whichever side they are on, or not.

Tomi ungerer wasn’t a random strange man, they had mutual acquaintances iirc and they had been in contact before Sophie’s visit on 22/12/96

Have you seen any of Tomi Ungerer's work? I am not sure that others would agree with you that he couldn't be described as "strange" by other people.

It was not the first time they had met. She'd been there, with Tomi and Yvonne, in April 1996 and had also corresponded by fax with him about the death of a mutual friend.

The fact that they were able to pick up the DNA at all is what's relevant, regardless of whether it was from the murderer or not. The French picked up unknown DNA from a thousand miles away, testing a couple of exhibits from the scene. The gardai didn't pick up any, and have never bothered to check any further, why is that?

I guarantee that there was DNA left at the scene, whether from Bailey or anybody else.

They should test again, and continue to test as testing improves, and identify the unknown DNA and rule them in or out.

Anybody on here who doesn't support the gardai being hounded to hell to track down every damn shred of forensic evidence, briars, gates, stones, clothes, blocks, roofs doors, boots, and test it, and test it again, and cross-reference it against anybody and everybody who was in the slightest way suspect, or present at the scene for any reason at all, cannot claim to be for justice for Sophie in my book.

And Bailey in some drunken stupor told some local idiot that he saw Sophie kicking a cat down a back lane in Schull and the place goes wild.

Ian Bailey as criminal mastermind simply doesn't pass the laugh test. I would believe the horse theory before that one. And you can't draw random crap out of his writings as evidence. He wrote dozens and dozens of books, it's verbal (or written) diarrhoea. If he did it he had to have been spectacularly lucky. It's an extraordinary allegation and you need equally compelling evidence to make it credible.

But if we are talking speculative scenarios, one of those which does not seem to have been considered is a failed kidnap attempt. Sophie was a tempting target, a woman on her own in an isolated area, at a isolated time, with a wealthy husband.

Quite a lot of French people knew she was in Ireland, she called almost a dozen people, by my count. Many in her husband's circle would have known as well as, possibly his mistress(es). There would not have been much time for planning. The killer took a ferry on Friday.

Someone arrives and wakes her at an ungodly hour, forces her out of the house using a real or replica weapon. The killer or killers try to usher her into a car, their intention being to take her elsewhere, or even dispatch her elsewhere, perhaps off the isolated cliffs at Dunmanus, she is known to walk alone there. It would be the perfect contrived accident, foreigners are always falling off cliffs in Ireland. Perhaps this person had been following her all weekend, and intended the same tactic at Three Castle Head, but Sophie sensed something was up. Now the killer learns she is cutting short her trip and must accelerate his plans, so, having failed Sunday afternoon, he calls on Sunday night. Of course it goes wrong, because Sophie, being the person she was, would not go quietly. She laces her boots as a delaying tactic and then runs. After a chase and a struggle, there is now blood on the ground, so no chance of feigning an accident. The would be kidnapper/assassin must then kill her in situ to avoid being reported. He doesn't take her in his car, because it would contaminate it. He cleans himself first, or removes/replaces his clothes to avoid contaminating the car. He returns to the house to retrieve/clean any item he touched, perhaps the bottle of wine, which he fires out the window on his way down Kealfadda.