Cold Case Review of Sophie Tuscan du Plantier murder to proceed (Threadbans in OP)

Didn't one of the detectives put forward the suggestion that Bailey stripped naked to murder Sophie?

*Edit: Garda Liam Hogan

Well if that were the case, his Willy would have scratches, along with his bum and his back and his chest- just shows what dumb and stupid Gardai were on the case back in the day - no wonder they never found the murderer

It’s a stupid theory to begin with -if he had scratches all over his body then Jules at the very least would have seen that at some stage in the days following the murder- so in case you’re asking, I’ve no interest in following a theory that because he wasn’t strip searched, we can’t prove that he didn’t have scratches all over his body. It’s just yet another pathetic attempt to should Bailey in guilt in the absence of any concrete and clear evidence.

@tibruit wrote:

"I am giving one example among many of false memories"

You picked the least credible. There`s a big difference between recovered or false memory and an incident you always remembered happening but you were never asked about. The many false memories you refer to are not false at all. They are the latter.

I think the least credible one is Agnes Thomas suddenly remembering in 2015 that Sophie got called by a weird poet, shortly before the Paris trial. Pity she didn't mention this 18 years earlier when it would have been useful. "C'est une curiosité de la mémoire", she remarked, wistfully on Netflix. Point is, all of these things are just wish fulfillment. We can't trust them - like I said it's more fluff, nothing solid.

"the earlier statements and documentary evidence agree with Bailey`s account, not Alfie`s or Leo`s."

I`ve read the statements you linked. Bolger`s version of events is by far the most reliable.

How can you judge it is "far the most reliable"? Bolger gave multiple versions. Maybe the later ones one seems convincing to you. Objectively though, Bolger's first statement is by default more reliable than later ones. In it he describes meeting Bruno Carbonnet while he was working on the roof and other things. We know from Bruno's statements and multiple other sources that this could only have been in 1993. He then mentioned working on a chair and window in 1994, and this is backed by other evidence in Sophie's papers. We know Bailey was working for Alfie in 1995, so there is a year hole in Leo's account of seeing an introduction and two years, if you believe his later account that he was working on Sophie's roof. You can't argue this away, it undermines his whole account. Leo didn't mention this story until years later and his later accounts in the documentaries and podcasts add detail after detail, which is a classic sign of a fake memory. The later statements, especially to the French show he hated Bailey, so he is clearly not objective. Alfie never mentioned Leo being there either. I am sure you will argue that maybe Leo was mistaken in his first statement, but I can't see how, the evidence fits his first account. Maybe you could argue that Bailey was there another day in 1994, or perhaps Sophie also hired Leo in 1995, but he forgot about that. However, once you start that, it's an admission the account is unreliable, you're trying to pick the details you want and ignoring the ones that do not fit. There's no point. In the end it is yet another example of fluff - not solid.

"I never said he (Fitzgerald) was solely responsible"

Wha? You mean you think it was a conspiracy?

You're misconstruing what I wrote: What I wrote was:

"I never said he (Fitzgerald) was solely responsible solely responsible for the content".

I meant Fitz didn't write the entire thing from scratch. Jules obviously made some account, but Fitzgerald added language and detail that suited his narrative. He likely got her to nod or assent as he read it out afterwards, but after 11 hours of interrogation she was desperate to get out.

"Malachy Reed only made a statement the following day when the big scary Gardaí visited him.."

He also repeated Bailey`s confession to him on at least two occasions to Leo Bolger.

The notoriously reliable Leo Bolger. Also Malachy Reed refused to talk to the French or go to the French trial. That greatly undermines his testimony. He testified at the Libel trial but a few months before the Libel trial he was caught with cannabis by Garda William Byrne. Byrne told him he was going to prosecute him. He said in he wasn't really going to prosecute, "but I did not want to tell him that and let him stew over it." So Malachy had some powerful reasons to play ball at the trial. So Malachy's tale is not a piece of solid evidence either.

"Bailey accused him (Fuller) in a joking fashion "You did it. Didn`t you.""

You have failed to grasp that Bailey was referring to himself in the second person, just as he did a number of times in his diary. Go read the page where he planned to murder multiple people for examples.

That is a clever piece of sophistry dreamt up by Paul Gallagher at the libel trial and it doesn't even work because Bailey was talking directly to Fuller at the time, according to Fuller's own account. Fuller wasn't even able to supply a date for this supposed second person confession. We know Fuller hallucinated seeing Bailey chasing him down at Ballyrisode strand, so he is fundamentally unreliable. We also know Fuller hated Bailey, so he has motive to lie. Fuller's account is total fluff. It's meaningless on its face.

"Without Marie Farrell, without Jules Thomas statement that he was going to Alfies - there is nothing solid to build a case on."

Unfortunately for you and Marie, her identification of Ian Bailey as the man outside her shop and on the Airhill Road next morning is corroborated by other evidence.

What corroboration? Are you referring to the fact that Bailey stayed overnight in Mark Murphy's house in Schull? Michael Sheridan sensationally claimed was "less than 100 metres from the road" where the Airhill sighting took place. In fact Marie Farrell specified exactly where she saw the man and we know the address where Bailey was staying. It is over 500 meters from Mark Murphy's house. In fact for this sighting the DPP pointed out that going by the statements of the occupants of that house, Mark Murphy, Patricia Murphy, Tony Doran, Bailey has an alibi for this sighting. "the evidence on file proves that Bailey was elsewhere at 7.15 a.m. on that date." I guess you could try to argue that Bailey left the house in the morning and returned after walking to Airhill and back, but when you start doing that you are admitting the evidence is unreliable - so this is another piece of fluff.

She also couldn`t have known that the man she identified at Kealfada would be later revealed to have been out of his bed and MIA at the same time as she said she saw him.

But he wasn't. Bailey never admitted being out of bed at that time and there is no evidence he was. He said he got up much later. The Gardai worked very hard to place Bailey out at Kealfadda to match this sighting, but they best they got was Bailey walking to the Studio cottage in the later morning, which is nowhere near the sighting. At the sighting too is useless, because Marie Farrell didn't know where the crime scene was so she told the Gardai he was walking towards Goleen. It's not on the way to or from Bailey's house, and the man was reported walking in the wrong direction, on the Goleen side of the junction. She couldn't possibly identify a face from a moving car at night and to top it all she retracted her identification of Bailey in the first place. It's more fluff. There's nothing solid here.

The idea that Fitzgerald somehow changed Jules Thomas statement and then somehow slipped it into the file unbeknowst to all the other interviewers, and that those interviewers have kept stum for thirty years is absurd.

"Absurd", really? This is a Garda who is on tape suggesting altering and fabricating evidence, a Garda who suggested to the Farrells that they make false accusation of child abuse, a Garda that gave clothes, money and drugs to a homeless man to try to entrap Bailey. You're telling us that it is "absurd" that such a man would be entirely above a small bit of verballing of Jules Thomas. Anyway what other interviewers? They didn't all stay in the room all the time. For this statement it was only himself and his side kick, Leahy who witnessed the statement, that's all. And it wouldn't have been as blatant as you're suggesting - verballing is an art, the statements are signed, not changed afterwards. The witness is duped or pressured into writing things against their interest. You think I am accusing Fitzgerald of making things up wholesale and that all the Gardai would have to be in a cabal, bound by silence. No, it's not like that, it's far more subtle. In its crudest form, the policeman doesn't read the parts out load, and nobody is going to pick through his handwriting to check. But usually it is that the policeman suggests details that seem plausible and these get inserted into the narrative, agreed to under pressure.

A good example was revealed in Fitzgerald's cross-examination during the High Court case, it really shows how he worked. (unfortunately this is not available online, but the details are easy to verify). On the stand in 2015 he was caught out in two lies. In Bandon Tape 99 he was recording saying that Marie Farrell had seen Bailey "washing his boots", when in fact Farrell had only just seen him "stumbling about". Fitzgerald admitted on the stand he was wrong to say that and about another false detail. His excuse was "It's was just words on a phone", but 'it's not just "words on a phone". A man at Kealfadda bridge is one thing, but a man "washing his boots" is much better from Fitzgerald's perspective, because washing boots suggests washing off blood. He added a detail of his own that suited his narrative and somehow this particular lie leaked to the papers back in 1997. If you have ever been to Kealfadda, you can see it's impossible to wash your boots, it's a muddy swamp and moreover the stream is below the road, where she couldn't have seen him.

It seems to have been a pattern with Fitzgerald, he would add little details that suited his purposes. This is likely how he treated Jules statement. Little details got added in like a seeing Alfies house (from 4km away, at 1am) and "I got the impression that he was going over to Alfie’s but I wasn’t sure". He likely got Jules to nod or verbally assent to these details as he wrote them but after 11 hours of interrogation, after being told a lie that Ian himself had confessed, Jules was ready to agree to whatever he put to her.

It was also a pattern for Jim Fitzgerald to write out statements for witnesses. Read Marie Farrell's statement 36B of 7th February 1997, it isn't even signed by her. Fitzgerald wrote it all out in the first person having met Marie a week earlier. He said it was a memo not a statement, but if so why did it write it in the first person? Suddenly Marie Farrell's account of signing blank statements doesn't sound all that unreasonable.

Knowing what we know about Fitz's character and knowing Jules repudiated her statement as soon as she got out, we simply can't trust its contents.

You said yourself the DPP's report is out of date - it is. However everything that has happened since, Farrell's retraction, Bandon Tapes, foreign DNA found etc, have supported the DPP's conclusions. There is nothing solid left to build a case on.

Even in 1997 the Gardai could see there was no real case. In Bandon Tape 91 Liam Hogan writing the file for the DPP remarked all he had was "threads and he was trying to make a **** jumper", to which Fitzgerald agreed "'Tis flimsy like". In Bandon Tape 48 Hogan told his superior that "You see all we have is very weak circumstantial evidence". And these tapes were recorded before Marie Farrell recanted. This was why they tried again to "break Jules Thomas". This also was presumably why Fitzgerald and Leahy decided to get creative by recruiting Martin Graham. Then there was that time Leahy tried recruiting a prison snitch, Patrick O'Riordain. It goes on and on. It's not just one dodgy statement, the whole case built by the Gardai is corrupted and it can't be fixed.

I don't think it's all that important Leo rememebered the time wrong after 19 years. It begs the question who fed the horses that morning if Leo and Sally weren't coming until the evening. I guess there must have been an arrangement with Alfie to give fodder. Leo and Sally had just moved and they couldn't have been shuttling to and fro more than once a day.

But it was a totally wasted opportunity to interview the witnesses on other matters. Take a look at Shirley Foster's interview with the French Detectives. She actually says she heard that Jerry Scully's fingerprints were found at all three houses. I don't put much weight to this, without other sources, it's just another rumour, but the French detectives had an opportunity to investigate this. They could have interviewed Jerry Scully (he may have refused, but they didn't ask). All they were interested in was Ian Bailey and they found out nothing new. (Except of course the DNA sample that didn't match him).

Shirley says in her statement

"I think I woke up at about 8.30a.m. to 9a.m. on Monday the 23rd December, 1996.  I would have got up straight away.  Usually I get up out of bed first. I normally clean out the grates, feed the cats and prepare breakfast.  I can’t remember what time Alfie got up."

Alfie says

"On Monday morning I would have got up between 6 and 7a.m. 

In their formal statements they jump around between the specifics of the event, and then general. Why include something that is misleading, it just doesn't sit right with me.

"I normally do this", implies you did it that day, when in fact the opposite occurred.

The fact of the matter is from the above statements, Alfie has probably up to 3 hours up and about alone within 100 yards or so of a murder occurring, with no alibi.

It's interesting that Alfie is consistently answering for Shirley, and saying we this, we that, even though he was alone for hours during the murder window. It could still be truthful.

We heard nothing…. but I heard something.

I'm not saying I think either did it, but they were (or at least Leo was for sure) considered suspects by the gardai, and he was one of the last to be ruled out for reasons unknown, so I think there was reason to consider them. In a regular investigation they would be fairly high up the list being one of the few people regularly in the area, using her land, and also one of the few known to Sophie. Having said that there is no hard evidence against them either, so not dissimilar to Bailey.

Bailey and Alfie agree on 95% of the story, the only dispute is whether he shook her hand, and neither of them refer to Bolger at all, and Bolger's version is from years earlier. He obviously didn't get introduced to her by the same person twice, that would be ridiculous, so I tend to believe the Alfie/Bailey timeline. It also wouldn't surprise me that Sophie wouldn't be shaking Bailey's hand, I would imagine she wasn't much of a handshaker imo. Alfie says he couldn't swear to it too, wouldn't rest my case on it though.

What you said there is all as woolly as Bo Peep`s sheep. Bailey claims he never met her, handshake or not. He said he saw her one time in her house through the window from Alfie`s garden. Alfie only "thinks" the year was 95.

One person said they met.

One person said she was pointed out.

One of them is mistaken.

It was at least 18 months before the murder and there is ZERO evidence of Bailey actually knowing Sophie other than by this pointing out or introduction by Alfie.

So what?

This is exactly how Richard Satchwell answered questions in the media for five or six years.

It all comes down to the DNA. There is no good case for there being any DNA other than Sophies on her nightwear. Washed, I presume before her visit and that was only a short time until her death.