Cold Case Review of Sophie Tuscan du Plantier murder to proceed

I believe he shot himself in the head, is that correct? I wonder did Harbison do an autopsy, he was probably sick of the area at this point.

Other than Sophie sitting down with him on the day before she died, she had not really met him aside from the odd greeting as she went past. She had been eager to meet with him, he was fairly renowned at the time. She was more friendly with his wife. He discusses the meeting in his statement. It is possible she would have discussed him with others close to her I would think.

I am embarrassed to even ask this question, but why would you assume interest in BDSM is evidence of murder? You might as well accuse Bill Hogan, because he was a cheesemaker - maybe she insulted his cheese? She had conversations with him too, I think she knew him better than Tomi too.

You need to take yourself out of current day forensic science and back to the forensic stone age that was 1996. Eugene Gilligan said in the Netflix doc that he required nearly a teaspoon of blood and hair samples. Now if you are Bailey, you know you are a suspect, you know you will almost certainly be asked for a sample, you know that refusing to give a sample will look suspicious.

Sophie didn`t grab her killer by the hair, she didn`t scratch him. There was no sexual assault, something that Bailey knew and wrote about before it was confirmed by Harbison. Bailey`s injuries were a scratch on his forehead and possibly scratches on his hands. Not enough to leave behind the quantity of blood required by Gilligan. Not even close.

Worst case scenario, if they did happen to find a trace of him in the vicinity, no doubt he would argue that of course he was in the vicinity, sure he was a regular visitor to his pal Alfie`s house. There are plenty of contributors to this thread who would happily accept that excuse and let him off the hook.

I am not aware of a DNA profile found on the body of the victim. Only one found on her shoe. If there was a profile found on her body specifically, then that would be relevant and I am interested to hear about it. If there wasn`t, then it is yourself who is bopping about in the gymnasium. Either way, I`m not.

The DNA on her shoe is by and large irrelevant unless you can conclusively show when it was deposited there. They are old and worn shoes and the sample could have been present for some considerable time before the murder. It could also have been deposited afterwards.

Thanks for your valuable judicial prowess @tibruit , if there was hundred of unknown samples of dna showing up you might have a point but go ahead and ignore the only forensic lead that showed up in the last 25 years of the case.

1. Find evidence,

2. prove that it got there through nefarious purposes,

3. only then should you investigate further

It is obviously a million times more efficient to cross-reference the dna against the people associated with the case, and ask them how it got there.

If you continue to pursue this ludicrous line of thinking I can only assume that you have no interest in finding true justice for Sophie, which includes by the way identify why this case is such a shitshow when it comes to those same investigative practices carried out by the Garda.

He told Jules that he got the scratch from a stick. It`s in her statement. She disowned that under oath in Bailey`s case against the state. Then she contradicted that by saying he did say that he got the scratch from a stick when she was interviewed by RTE in 2017.

I never said he was the first to release that there was no sexual assault. I said he knew before Harbison made it public. I`m pretty sure that article was published on the 26th, so if he got that information from another outlet it would have to have been an article published on the 24th. No papers on Christmas day.

"3. only then should you investigate further."

Investigate by all means. But it is only of value if it belongs to someone who claims they never met Sophie and I`ve said this already.

By all means, wow, well thanks for that I’ll go and tell the gardai who’ve sat on their arse for 12 years on this evidence, and instead have been spending their time trawling the archives for a videotape of a supposed red herring meeting on a island, or talked to some random nobodies in France.

That makes no logical sense. Imagine you had a magic DNA wand and you could find out who that profile was, would you not race up to that person and ask "where were you on the night of the 22nd of December 1996"?

Instead you would ask that person "Did you know Sophie?" and if that person said yes, you would walk away? There are lots of people who openly knew Sophie. They are not all ruled out as suspects.

The male DNA profile found on the body is the only forensic evidence linking anyone else to the scene.

It does not match Ian Bailey (reddit link).

The investigators were actually quite careful with the body (and the shoes/clothes!). Nobody touched it before the 24th - even to check if she was still alive, which I still cannot fathom. The body was wrapped in plastic before it was moved. The undertakers wore gloves, John Harbison wore gloves. It's the rest of the crime scene they were stupidly careless with. You quoted that eejit Eugene Gilligan, I can't take him seriously. This is the guy who said that because Sophie didn't have curtains upstairs "She was a French woman, she was comfortable with nudity" - WHAT?? - surely you must have had a double-take when you heard him say that - what does that tell you about the mindset of the Gardai?? I am surprised Netflix didn't edit that out. He is also wrong about the "teaspoon of blood", yes even in 1996, the DNA tests performed by the lab in Northern Ireland in 1997 got lots of valid profiles from the bloodstains on small pieces of Ian Bailey's old clothes. The Gardai told Bailey they had found these during his interrogation and he still volunteered a blood sample. Yes, they didn't have touch DNA at that time, but they didn't need a teaspoon. Also the Gardai were aware advances in DNA were coming, that's why they held onto the exhibits, that's why you always hold onto exhibits. The fact that they disposed of the gate before properly identifying the blood on it is inexcusable. (It's a lie that it was proven to be Sophie's)

Whatever way you cut it, this DNA profile is strong evidence of Bailey's innocence. It can't be ignored and if the Gardai are serious about finding the killer, they need to attempt to repeat this sample, and try to find who it belongs to. If they take your view - that it's irrelevant - then forget the cold case review, it's still a corrupt & prejudiced investigation.

I notice that you are now saying "lack of convincing evidence" but previously you were saying "lack of evidence." Small steps and we`ll get you there.

I didn`t dismiss the DNA evidence completely. I said it was by and large irrelevant and I also set out a scenario where it might be relevant but that would be undermined by it being impossible to establish the time of it`s deposition.

Except the longer it stewed the thinner it got! All the evidence which looked so good in February 1997 all fell away to nothing. From the Garda point of view I can kind of see how they were 100% convinced when they arrested him. They had bloody clothes!

The phone-times from Eddie Cassidy showed Bailey didn't know anything he shouldn't have.

The statements showed it was known to be a murder at 1pm, they showed it was known she was French at 2pm.

Editors of the Sunday Tribune backed up his story about cyberpubs article.

The DNA tests on Bailey's bloody clothes came back negative.

The "Murder he wrote" allegation was comprehensively disproven. He didn't reveal anything in his writings that he shouldn't have known, not in the papers and not in his diaries.

Four witnesses said he had scratches on the 22nd, before the murder. The Christmas Swim video showed no visible scratches on Bailey. None of the journalists or Gardai who saw Bailey and spent a lot of time with him on the 23rd saw scratches.

Jules Thomas retracted. Marie Farrell retracted. Patrick Lowney retracted. The Bandon tapes dropped proved the Gardai playing games with the evidence and playing psychological games. Tapes proved they were bribing Martin Graham.

I am sure it must have been frustrating for the Gardai, but they have only themselves to blame. If they focused on proper investigation instead of silly psychological games to "break Jules Thomas", they might have had more success.

"the DNA tests performed by the lab in Northern Ireland in 1997 got lots of valid profiles from the bloodstains on small pieces of Ian Bailey`s old clothes."

Good for them. Unfortunately they didn`t get the clothes he wore on the night of the murder because they went into the bonfire.

"The Gardaí told Bailey that they found these during his interrogation and he still volunteered a blood sample."

Of course he did because he knew that they would find nothing because the clothes he wore on the night of the murder had all been burned in the bonfire.

"Whatever way you cut it, this DNA profile is strong evidence of Bailey`s innocence."

Don`t be ridiculous. Unidentified DNA, deposited on an old shoe at an unknown time. Come back when you can conclusively show that DNA got on that shoe on the night Sophie was murdered.

Bailey is no Graham Dwyer.

Well, that would be motivation for a violent narcissist to impose himself into the existence of his fantasy figure by virtue of a late night visit or stalking behaviour.

Remember, there was nothing logical or planned about this killing.