Eccentric pizza-selling poet facing trial in France for murder in Ireland that has been unsolved for 22 years
A British journalist who reported on the horrific killing of a French TV producer in Ireland, will now be tried for the crime by a French court
IN Schull, West Cork, the killing of a glamorous Frenchwoman 22 years ago is known simply as “The Murder” – for there has been only one.
This remote corner of Ireland was for centuries the sort of place where you never needed to lock your back door, and locals rubbed along happily with more recently arrived “blow-ins”, drawn to the area’s wild beauty.
That all changed in 1996, when glamorous French TV producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier was bludgeoned to death near to her isolated farmhouse.
No one has ever been charged with the murder in Ireland — but now the case is set to be reopened in France.
Journalist Ian Bailey will be tried in his absence in Paris over the killing, following several failed attempts by the French authorities to extradite him.
Relatives of 39-year-old Sophie have long pushed for a trial, and said it was a “relief” one would finally go ahead. The court was told “although no material proof can be brought forward, the cluster of clues concerning Ian Bailey are sufficient”.
Meanwhile, Manchester-born Bailey stated his plans to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.
Bailey, 61, has always protested his innocence. He was arrested twice in relation to the killing but not charged after Ireland’s director of public prosecutions threw out the case.
Yet somehow he cannot shake his public connection to the crime — and does not seem to want to either.
In a new podcast about the killing, called West Cork, Bailey frequently refers to himself in the third person, suggests the hosts interview people connected to him for his “backstory” and even uses the opportunity to read out some of his dire poetry.
There are many in West Cork who still suspect Bailey killed Sophie, but that has not driven him out. He has a pizza stall in the local market and hawks copies of his poems, which he reads out unprompted to customers.
A judge in failed libel actions brought by Bailey in 2003 noted his “unusual” behaviour, saying he still “likes to be in the limelight” while most freed murder suspects would choose to “withdraw very much into the background”.
For his part, Bailey claims he is a victim of “sinister attempts” by the Irish police, or Garda, to frame him.
While the story plays out Sophie’s death remains the most notorious unsolved murder in Ireland.
The wife of French film producer Daniel Toscan du Plantier, Sophie lived a life of red carpets and society dinners in Paris but loved to escape to West Cork for peace and solitude.
She owned a farmhouse outside Schull, and usually visited with friends or family. However, shortly before Christmas in 1996 she travelled alone, planning to return to France to spend Christmas with her son from her first marriage, Pierre, now 36.
Instead, her life was cut short in the early hours of December 23.
Her petite body, broken by up to 50 injuries, was found by her neighbours on the lane by her house.
Dressed in white nightclothes and laced boots, she had been bludgeoned to death so violently with weapons including a concrete block and a hatchet that her brother later found it impossible to identify her.
Retired Garda Ch Supt Dermot Dwyer, who worked on the case, said: “If you saw the damage done to that poor lady, the way her face was destroyed, you’d have concluded even if you were never a policeman that this murder was carried out by someone who lost it completely.”
It was the sort of crime that simply does not happen in West Cork, home to dyed-in-the-wool natives, artistic eccentrics and a scattering of wealthy celebrities with holiday homes.
No wonder it immediately generated press attention — and apparently for one man, an opportunity.
Before moving to Ireland in 1991 and reinventing himself as a poet and gardener, Bailey was a journalist in England. With reporters clamouring for details of Sophie’s death, he seized his chance to resurrect his former career.
He was the first reporter at the crime scene, and quickly established himself as the leading authority on the case.
Almost as quickly, Bailey became of interest to the Garda, who were disturbed by his seemingly intimate knowledge of the case.
His first reports for the Sunday Tribune, days after the killing, were rich in details, including Sophie’s injuries. Bailey claimed he was simply reporting what was already being widely talked about around West Cork. Detectives wondered if he knew too much.
It resulted in the odd situation of Bailey reporting on a crime in which he was a chief suspect.
He told the West Cork podcast: “From the tone of the interviews from the Guards, I was becoming increasingly suspicious they were trying to put me in the frame.
The podcast features interviews with locals, police, Sophie’s family and Bailey’s partner and alibi for the night of the murder, Jules Thomas, who says he was in bed with her at the time.
The most interesting testimony is from Bailey, who claims he did not know Sophie, although he did know where she lived, having done gardening work for her neighbour.
He added: “The whole thing is crazy when you look at it.”
When the editor at the now defunct Tribune found out Bailey was a suspect, she phoned to confront him. By his own admission, he cracked a “dark-humoured joke”, saying he had killed Sophie “because I needed a story”. The editor was flabbergasted.
Bailey made a similar comment to his 14-year-old neighbour, Malachi Reid, who asked him how he was. He replied that everything was fine “before I went up there with a rock and bashed her f***ing brains out”.
Bailey says he did not use this phrase, and that he was being sarcastic. The Garda took it seriously.
The investigation became focused on sightings of Bailey leading up to the murder, reported by shopkeeper Marie Farrell. Scratches to his hands and face were also subject to inquiry but Bailey said they were caused by a turkey he slaughtered for Christmas dinner and while cutting down a Christmas tree.
He had long been considered an eccentric in Schull, and stood out even among a community of alternative bohemian types.
Whether it was wandering around with his cloak and staff, which he called his “thinking stick”, or reciting poetry in the butcher’s, he did not endear himself to the locals.
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One neighbour recalled: “He didn’t actually seek to blend in, it always struck me from day one that he wanted attention on him.”
But after the Guards implicated him in Sophie’s death, Bailey claims his life became “hell”. Newspapers reported violent attacks he had allegedly made against partner Jules, a Welsh landscape artist.
Ultimately, there was no solid evidence linking Bailey to Sophie’s murder. The investigation, which has been heavily criticised, produced no usable forensic evidence. Their case against Bailey relied almost solely on the evidence of star witness Marie, who in 1997 told police she had seen Bailey on the night of Sophie’s murder, only to retract her statement in 2005, saying the Garda coerced her into wrongly identifying him.
In his 2014 civil action against the Garda, Bailey claimed officers had conspired to implicate him. He lost the case and was hit with a three million euro (£2.6million) legal bill.
— a prediction which could come true, with a trial expected next year.
But he added: “On a positive note, my creative mojo has returned and I am planning to write a second book of poetry.”
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