Original subtitles

'The following programme contains distressing scenes.'

My name is Jim Sheridan.

I'm a storyteller.

20 years ago,

this story caught hold of me

and it won't let me go.

I'm looking for a grave.

Sophie's grave.

She was born Sophie Bouniol.

She died Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

This is not the first grave she was buried in.

She is buried here...

..but her spirit lives on in Ireland.

Statement of Shirley Foster at Toormore.

"I hereby declare that this statement is true

to the best of my knowledge and belief

and that I make it knowing that if it is tendered in evidence

I will be liable to prosecution if I state in it

anything which I know to be false or do not believe to be true."

♪ Jingle Bell Rock

"On Monday morning, I got up about 8:20am.

I put on the fires and put on the breakfast.

At 10:00am, I decided to do shopping and take the rubbish to the dump.

I passed down by the back of Sophie's house

and down towards the gate.

Her car was parked beside the house.

The gate was open, which I thought was very unusual.

At first, I saw something on the left-hand side of the roadway

with something like a piece of white material

caught on the wire of the gate.

As I drove by, I could see it was a body."

"I was leaning on the horn to try and draw out Alfie's attention

and I was screaming."

"I then came into the side gate and back up home.

I told Alfie and he rang the guards."

Here in these briars, a young mother died.

In mid-winter, over that hill,

the sun rose at 8:35 to reveal her lifeless body.

A century ago, not far from here, another event occurred.

Michael Collins, some would say the violent creator of the State,

was murdered or assassinated in the Mouth of Flower,

Beal na Blath.

But West Cork is now associated

with one murder, that of Sophie Toscan du Plantier,

a guest of the nation,

who was brought back home in a coffin.

It is a murder that carries implications

for the meaning of justice in Ireland and in France.

It's a story that pits one legal system against another.

It is a story that shines a light on domestic violence.

It is a story about primal fear, about a devil in the hills,

about the existence of evil among us.

She died here

in the brambles, in the briars,

and now those hills call out for justice.

This place is very dear to us.

Everybody thinks they kind of know everybody

and you know, you're on a peninsula. It's like being on an island.

This is a place you'd go because you loved quiet and peace.

I came to West Cork in the early '70s.

When I came, it was the first time

people had started coming back into Ireland.

You know, everyone was emigrating and stuff

and when we came here, it was like, you know, "God!"

Old cottages, ruins and stuff. Nobody had ever wanted them before.

Suddenly, somebody saw a value in this,

you know, wanted to live in these places.

This is West Cork.

This is where the sun sets in the Atlantic Ocean,

on the southwest tip of Ireland,

350 kilometres from the capital city of Dublin.

The road from Cork City goes through Bandon,

then on out to Ballydehob, Schull,

and then it meanders past Toormore and ends in Crookhaven.

West Cork is home to bohemians,

to artists, to musicians...

to people who want to escape city life...

..the rat race...

..escape themselves, look for another life.

In the summer, the rich people arrive -

from Dublin and from Cork.

And when winter comes, the people who are left behind

are known as the blow-ins.

Because you've got the bad knee.

Billy, was this always a village here?

Are these holiday homes?

How many of these people would be blow-ins?

If you didn't reside in West Cork before the famine of 1848,

the locals lovingly refer to you as a blow-in,

like Sophie.

She used to come in the winter-time every year for a good few years,

usually around Christmas.

Then I got to know her each time she came.

What was Sophie like? She was a lovely girl. Quietly spoken.

Would you have spoke a few words in French to her?

I would but I was trying to learn a bit of French

and she preferred to speak English.

But she never spoke to anyone else, I don't think.

And did she always come on her own? Yeah, she came with a son,

I think.

The husband never came, I don't think.

And she was there.

And she was sitting -

Sitting there where the camera is now.

Every time, the same spot. Yeah.

She stopped there with her scone and tea and...

Yeah. Yeah.

Lovely lady.

Statement of William J Byrne, An Garda Siochana,

Ballydehob, County Cork.

"On Monday morning, 23rd of December, 1996,

I was on duty in an official car E63.

At approximately 10:15am, we received a radio message

stating that a body had been found at Dunmanus West, Goleen.

We went to the scene immediately, arriving there at 10:38am.

I saw the body of a female lying in the side of the laneway

inside the gateway which leads to three houses.

The body was badly mutilated around the head area."

I had never met Sophie before.

Being a priest, the guards informed me...

..and asked for me to go to the scene and to say the prayers.

Yeah.

So...

And I had attended a couple of murder scenes in London

but I just never saw anything as brutal...

..and as shocking...and as...

horrific.

I was shocked.

There was a brick, a concrete block, at her head

and obviously it had crushed her skull...

..and her beautiful face, to me, still was very, very clear.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

So, I simply prayed.

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by Thy name.

Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven...

The guards joined in on the prayers as they were being said.

It was only the three of us and there was nobody else around...

at that time.

Soon, there were a lot of large policemen

milling around the place.

And not knowing what to do because they were inexperienced

with anything of this magnitude, you know?

As was not unusual, shortly after one o'clock,

Eddie Cassidy of the Cork Examiner

telephoned Bandon Garda Station to check in.

He was told that Superintendent Twomey

had gone west past Schull

to investigate a suspicious death.

Afraid he might not make the late editions,

Eddie immediately telephoned

the only reporter he knew who lived close by.

The phone rang and Ian answered it and it was Eddie Cassidy

and he said, "There's been a body found.

It's in this area."

And Ian said, "God, this is a story.

He wants me to go and investigate it."

So, we wait for the one o'clock -

or the two o'clock news, I think it was, it had gone one -

to hear if there was anything on it.

'Gardai, as you heard in the headlines,

in County Cork are treating as suspicious the death of a woman

whose body has been found near Schull on the southern coast.

The woman, believed to have been in her early 30s, had head injuries.'

"Tourist", it said, "found dead near Schull."

At that stage, we didn't know who it was.

Somebody came up to me and said, "Somebody's been killed."

A woman's body had been found on the road.

I don't think people were saying that it was a murder.

People were saying it was a hit and run.

But it was certainly suspicious.

But we had heard it was a French person

and Ian...the only French person he could think of

was actually next door to someone who lived up in a very remote lane.

We didn't know if it was right or wrong.

-Statement 72 -A with Ian Bailey at The Prairie.

"It was a French national, it was a lady,

I had knowledge that there was a house there that was owned

and sometimes occupied by a French lady.

I knew it was near Alf Lyons and I'd seen the French lady there.

Jules took photographs at my behest of the scene.

I went to get nearer to the scene but I was prohibited by Gardai."

They said no, they couldn't give him any information,

that something would be released from their press-office later.

The Irish police, known as the Gardai,

tried to contact the family...

..but the French press beat them to it.

As the first report spread to France,

of the death of an unidentified woman in West Cork...

..Sophie's mother, Marguerite Bouniol,

in her Paris apartment,

got an overwhelming feeling of dread.

Sophie was a documentary film-maker

and mother to Pierre-Louis.

She worked for Unifrance,

the company that promoted French cinema to the outside world.

It was here she met her second husband,

Daniel Toscan du Plantier.

He produced the movies of Bergman, Peter Greenaway,

Marcello Mastroianni and Federico Fellini among others.

Difficile.

'The Gardai investigating her murder

have pieced together most of Sophie's movements

over the three days she spent in Ireland from Friday the 20th

to Monday the 23rd of December.'

'The next day, Sunday the 22nd of December,

Sophie drove out to Three Castle Head, Barleycove,

a local scenic area, arriving there at around one o'clock.'

So, we're walking...

I'm walking the last path...

..Sophie took.

At that time of the year, which is this time of the year now,

midwinter, this land was private.

Says "No Entry, Three Castle Head".

Agh!

I don't think there's a human being within a mile in any direction.

I don't ever think I've been in as lonely a place.

God, that's some landscape, isn't it?

This is Three Castle Head.

A stronghold since Norman times, it's been here

for more than a thousand years...

..with a bloody history.

Mostly the lake is still...

..silent...

..and bottomless.

But on wintery days,

the force of the wind coming in off the Atlantic Ocean

raises a froth on the lake that can appear like The White Lady,

who is said to walk the lake.

And it's best not to see her...

cos if you do, you won't see another day.

Seems just so odd to walk all this distance on your own.

I'm here with the camera person but I'd say on your own,

it's very isolated. You could feel anything here. Look!

On the Sunday, Sophie ran back to the Ungerers,

the nearest residents,

whom she knew from France,

and told them, in distress, she'd seen The White Lady.

Statement of Yvonne Ungerer.

"While we were chatting, Sophie told me

that while she was up at the castles,

she felt this great anxiety, almost fear.

This is not an uncommon feeling for people who visit the castles.

She wasn't in a cheerful mood but she wasn't really glum either.

She said she liked it here but her husband didn't.

She said she would be back at Easter."

And we might ask why in the hell

did she come to such an isolated spot?

The last time I saw her was the day before she died.

Did she seem disturbed to you or - Not at all.

No, I saw no difference. Now, I mean...

What would she be disturbed about? I wouldn't know but...

There was nothing locally wrong that she could be disturbed about.

It's just that Yvonne Ungerer said, you know, up at Three Castle Head,

she said that she had some dread and she saw The White Lady and...

I heard that too but she never mentioned anything to me.

Nothing at all out of the ordinary with her.

She drove down with her rented car, parked up, came in,

had tea and scones.

I remember asking would she come to our little party.

A soiree we have at Christmas for the locals.

And she said, "Yeah, I'd love to come," or something like that.

Or she'd come if she was here or something.

And that was the last cup of tea she ever had, poor divil.

That's the worst part of it.

To think the way she died, like.

Not that. Jesus, not that.

Sophie travelled home to Toormore.

She didn't return to Billy's Christmas party.

And in Schull,

the celebrations that year carried on without her.

The gate was closed, the door was locked...

..and Sophie was in bed when she said a sleepy goodnight

to her husband Daniel...

before the light went out.

In the collective mind, she died a brutal, violent death.

No cries were heard, no calls for help.

Two men said they heard strange cries that night.

Probably foxes.

In the '90s, we were regarded as the experts.

Local guards would not have had any experience, most times,

of homicides.

We got the call early afternoon

on the day before Christmas Eve, on the 23rd.

'She had bought the house some years ago

and while she intended to spend holidays there...'

We left, I think it was roughly about 3:30

and we got down to Schull at 10:00...10:00pm.

Took us seven hours cos we had to drive through all Christmas traffic.

We went to the station in Schull because we had no idea where it was.

Station was closed and we didn't know what to do.

So, I went down to a local phone box, I could see it.

Walked down the street to make a 999 call

because we had no mobile phones then.

And the phone box had been vandalised.

I had to rewire the phone to make a 3-9 call out.

I had to rewire the whole lot and make a 3-9 call

to get somebody back from the scene.

That was normal at the time.

So, one came back in and then brought us out.

We were amazed at how far off the main road the scene was.

And there she was on the ground, you know?

In the middle of countryside.

Dreadful.

It was as if all forces conspired

to protect the murderer of Sophie.

On the day Sophie died,

John Harbison was celebrating his 63rd birthday.

Did I leave the file

on the brain case that I did last night?

He was the Chief State Pathologist for Ireland

and he called himself "the dead man's doctor".

Now, rigor mortis is a chemical phenomenon.

It's variable in its rate...

Professor Harbison was a reluctant one-man band

who didn't have a deputy, and that day of all days,

he couldn't be contacted until after lunch.

At which point, it seemed to him,

there was little to be gained

by travelling the seven hours to West Cork.

There's no doubt that the longer a body's around,

the more difficult it becomes to assess actual time of death.

You can be reasonably accurate if the body is found quickly

in an ongoing temperature but once a day passes,

you'll have variation in the ambient temperature.

It was just above freezing point.

The body would have been frozen solid, practically.

We decided that there was no point in leaving the body in situ.

And I rang the local officer.

And I was more or less told by the police officer

that he wanted Dr Harbison down there

and that's what was happening.

It's a regulated force so I said, "Yes, sir. Thank you. Goodnight."

The forensic team left for the night.

A lone reporter from Dublin hung around for some night-time shots.

And, watched over by two policemen, Sophie was left in the lane.

That was one of the things that angered every one of us.

To think that this poor girl was left lying there...

..for so long.

It's not what we'd like to see for any one of our own.

It's inexplicable and it's unacceptable

that it could take 24 hours for a state pathologist

to visit a murder scene.

If you cannot take a body temperature,

then you cannot measure when exactly the murder took place.

And obviously, that information is vital

in terms of interviewing suspects

as to where they were at particular times.

See, nobody has any experience of a murder here.

We had no flying squad, we had no special murder team.

So on Christmas Eve 1996,

24 hours after Shirley Foster discovered the body,

Dr Harbison arrived

to perform the autopsy on Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

How could such a thing happen?

And it's particularly somebody that had trusted us

to come to us and find a special place among us.

You know, evil is a strange thing.

It can't...co-exist with beauty.

It must destroy it.

'But, it's not yet clear whether the killer

was foreign or local or was known to the dead woman.

What is clear is the particularly violent manner of the killing...'

The only topic of conversation that Christmas in Schull was the murder.

Hello, Santy!

And the only thing that took people's mind off it

for a few minutes was the cold Atlantic sea.

There they go, 1996.

Ho-ho, Pat! There's a fine West Cork man for you now!

Eoin O Balaigh! Eoin O Balaigh, have you any words for the camera?

You're a man of many words.

I haven't.

What about a poem?

There he is, drinking brandy.

In the early hours, grief is compounded by suspicion.

There were over 50 suspects, including Sophie's family.

But they were quickly discounted.

After her next-door neighbour, Shirley Foster, found the body,

her partner, Alfie,

went to check on it.

They had to be among the early suspects as the police wondered

how they'd heard nothing through the night.

Not a peep!

We heard no human voices at all.

And the windows would be closed at night because it was December.

And, of course, in the case of murder,

the first suspect is always the husband.

So Daniel Toscan de Plantier became an immediate person of interest.

Among the many people in France that the Irish police

wished to speak to was an artist by the name of Bruno Carbonnet.

He visited Toormore with Sophie

in 1993, the year Daniel bought the house for her.

Statement of Bruno Carbonnet, Jean Michel.

"Madam Toscan du Plantier was for me an intimate friend

during the year 1992 and 1993.

In fact, I have known her since the spring of 1992

when she was introduced to me at a workshop

of the art centre of the Ephemeral Hospital in Paris.

We afterwards became lovers. We went to Goleen

in Ireland together,

to the small house where I stayed, helped her to set up herself.

Our affair was secret and discreet

and I think that Monsieur Toscan du Plantier knew of it.

My affair with Sophie finished in Christmas 1993,

a date on which she finished it without any warning.

This end was very difficult for me.

What always happens then is people speculate.

Rumours.

Rumours...by the dozens.

One of the conspiracy theories out there, of course,

is that it was a guard.

I did feel as though it had something to do with France.

We always thought maybe, you know, Mr du Plantier

didn't want to pay a third alimony and he was having...

It's full of bloody rumours.

This afternoon, detectives from the National Bureau

of Criminal Investigation arrived at the station in Bandon.

They're assisting local Gardai

led by Chief Superintendent Dermot Dwyer.

'Sophie Toscan du Plantier

was a glamorous and beautiful French woman.'

'..her death turned international media focus on West Cork.'

There were a lot of rumours

and some of them would've been borne out by some of the media coverage.

The consensus seemed to be

that there had to be some kind of an overseas link to this.

Bruno Carbonnet was a person of interest

on the basis that he had been having an affair with Sophie

in the early stages of her marriage with Daniel Toscan du Plantier.

And what was unusual, from a Garda point of view,

was that Bruno Carbonnet had accompanied Sophie

to the house at Toormore. So, at their behest,

Mr Carbonnet made a statement to the gendarmes

which was then passed to the Gardai.

And on the basis of that, he had a watertight alibi.

He was attending an arts event

in the south of France, I think it was,

on December the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd.

And the Gardai eliminated him from their enquiries.

Daniel had a watertight alibi as he was just outside Toulouse

in rural France, a thousand miles away,

at the time of the murder.

'While Gardai would not say officially

whether they believe the killer to be local or non-national,

it appears that privately they are thinking increasingly

that the killer may be a local.

Oh, we had a dreadful job finding it.

I mean, we were driving through narrow country roads,

we were going astray...

This place was so remote, I was sure

the murdered woman must have known her killer.

I mean, this didn't appear to be a random killing.

It certainly wasn't a gang of thieves or an individual burglar.

So Christmas happened then. All the people in the area

were being visited by the guards.

Being questioned, given the questionnaire to fill out.

It was really strange because

you felt really guilty with them.

This attitude they had was as if we had something to do with it.

They just wanted to know, as locals, did we know Sophie?

Did we have any contact with her?

And we knew nothing about her.

Um, nothing at all.

Well, I was the crime correspondent for the Irish Daily Star

at that time,

and the first instruction I got from the news desk

was to please go down to West Cork and look further into this murder.

So myself and a photographer, Julie, set out on this very long drive

and we'd been told to meet the local stringer,

the local correspondent, at a crossroads just outside of Schull.

We got out to the junction and I saw this huge, hulking figure

dressed in a dark Crombie.

I got in the back to allow this huge frame into the passenger seat.

I asked for a "fill", which is journalistic language

for "please fill me in on everything you know".

And I was expecting to get only maybe half a page of details

but instead I got the best fill of my professional career

before or since. This man was extraordinary.

He was giving me purple passages of prose

that I was feverishly writing down, turning over pages of my notebook.

And I filled page after page with his detail.

It was about lights being seen going on and off at particular times,

two wine glasses turned up on the draining board.

The body had been dressed in a nightie,

one boot half off, that boot only being partially laced.

And naturally, you know, I assumed that he had the most spectacular Garda contacts and sources

who provided up-to-the-minute information

on the progress they were making.

We eventually arrived there at the murder scene in Goleen

and it was still surrounded

with some officers who were preserving the scene and no doubt could see us.

And I turned to him as if to say,

"Right, Ian, let's go down and you can do the introductions."

I said, "Come on."

But instead, Ian Bailey riled back and said, "Oh, no, no, no.

You're on your own now. I've given you everything I can."

I had to go down on my own.

Course I met bristling resistance straightaway.

"Oh, no. You'll have to talk to Garda Press Office.

We're not allowed to say anything. Could you stand back there, sir."

All my efforts were futile and I felt as if I was,

you know, was like a small child

compared to Ian Bailey with his masterful command of this crime.

Sin sin. Sin sin.

Go raibh mile maith agat, Eoin. Happy Christmas.

Just going through Bailey's press clippings,

the ones he actually wrote

as Eoin Bailey mostly.

Liked being Irish.

And they're within, like, days of the murder.

"Tangled love. New mystery."

December the 28th.

"Sophie was in her night clothes

when she ran from her luxury holiday home Sunday night.

As she ran from him in the dark, she appears to have tripped."

Dunno where he got that.

"Glasses clue to the killer.

A bed hadn't been slept in

and two empty wine glasses were in the kitchen."

Evening Echo, Eoin Bailey. Sunday Tribune, The Star.

He was all over this case.

Sophie died on Monday 23rd of December.

Tuesday was Christmas Eve.

Christmas Day was Wednesday...

..and on Thursday, the 26th of December,

an article in The Star newspaper aroused suspicion.

"A post-mortem examination

showed she died from multiple head injuries

but was not sexually assaulted."

He should not have known that.

It wasn't available to the public.

Certainly not on Thursday the 26th of December.

And the police wondered,

"How do you know that, Mr Bailey?"

The guards were interested

in what Ian Bailey knew and when he knew it

and why he had gone to the scene at Toormore.

You'd need some balls to kill somebody

and go back a few hours later

and be a reporter on it and then start writing articles.

Well, that was a known trait... of...people that commit crimes.

People who kill come back

to re-live the experience and the excitement

or to monitor what the Gardai are doing.

That's what you do. You get close,

you watch, and you see.

Advice to any Gardai at a scene of a crime...

is there somebody with a considerable interest in what's going on?

When a reporter seems to know too much,

when the man covering the story becomes the story...

..you know things are gonna get complicated.

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