Original subtitles

The following programme contains distressing scenes.

It's her mother...

I'm looking at some photographs of Sophie in her mother's arms.

And then she becomes a mother herself.

I'm aware that I'm gonna have to show more images and photographs

that...

..show how brutal her murder was.

And I know...

..that her mother and father and brothers and son

will be looking away.

But I think it's necessary

to give you an understanding of how deep the pain was and is.

They still live in grief and despair.

It's hard to explain grief...

I know that, when my mother died,

you want to have some connection with the person who's left you.

Abandoned you...or been taken.

And...

For me,

for everybody who has a loved one gone,

they have to believe that they're still in touch with them,

there's some agency,

that the dead still live somewhere,

in heaven or in our head.

And I think a murder annihilates that for a family.

It kills the living and the dead person,

in some kind of profound way.

I think a murder leaves such a huge, mind-blowing sense of injustice...

..that until justice is done...

..you can't fully grieve.

A post-mortem examination is to be carried out

on the body of the French woman who was murdered in West Cork.

Thirty-eight-year-old Sophie Toscan du Plantier from Ombreux near Paris

is believed to have arrived here a few days ago.

There were two stones.

One stone presumably had been used to give her the initial injury...

Yeah.

..and then the second larger stone or block

would have been used to give her traumatic injuries to the head.

Having beaten Sophie unconscious in a brutal assault,

her assailant walked 20 feet

and calmly picked up a concrete block

which he dropped directly on her skull to end her life.

The 14-foot-long gate had smudges

which would be consistent with a bloodied hand touching it,

so presumably she had blood on her hands

from presumably putting it to her head after the first assault.

That gate had to be seized, which it was,

as evidence.

The amount of briars at the scene where she was there...

There are two or three stands of barbed wire through the briars.

Yeah...

And it was our impression that she was fighting...

Mmm.

..because her clothing was pulled so tight on the wire

that I had difficulty trying to undo it off the barb.

Mm-hm. It was that tight.

From my viewing of the crime scene,

the culprit had to have injured himself with briars.

In 1996,

the advent of DNA really was only in the start in this country.

The UK had it a little further,

America had it a little further,

but mostly we dealt with the UK.

I cut the briars away and brought them to England.

Statement of evidence of Detective Garda John O'Neill,

Fingerprint Section, Garda Technical Bureau.

"On the external side of the back door,

in the vicinity of the door handle and on the door handle itself,

I saw what I considered to be a bloodstain.

The direction of the bloodstain on the door was consistent with a bloody hand or glove

having moved the handle in a downward direction

with a knuckle having made contact with the door."

Expecting the worst,

forensics pushed open the bloodstained door in trepidation.

There was no forensics in the house.

There was no fingerprints, there was no blood spatters.

There was no sign of a struggle,

there was no sign of anything untoward.

Had the killer gone back into the house...

..to arrange the scene after the murder...

..there would surely have been blood spatters,

because there was no other way that individual could have killed Sophie

without them being blood-soaked themselves.

There was a bloodstain just where my hand meets the door,

where my knuckles meet the door here,

so whoever it was had blood there on their hand.

Now there was also...

..a rubbish bin here that wasn't disturbed,

and it didn't look like anything was disturbed out here.

Now, it didn't look like anything was disturbed in there either.

So, seems to me that the killer came back to the house...

..after the murder.

But I don't know... Nobody knows.

The Irish police,

they believe that Sophie went down this field.

They found a stone with a drop of blood on it.

There are so many questions...

If she was fleeing her killer,

why did she run away from her neighbours?

Unless it was a deliberate idea to get her down to the gate,

away from the neighbours, Alfie and Shirley,

and the Richardsons up there...

So, maybe the killer deliberately wanted to get her to the gate.

The forensics team had their own theory.

Because we didn't find a lot of evidence,

or any evidence to suggest aggravation at the house...

Mm-hm.

..we came to the conclusion

that she may have walked from the house.

She's in night clothing,

and it's a cold, very, very cold night.

And we were trying to understand why she would have come out of the house

in simple night clothing.

She did have boots on,

but to me it seems like a very long walk...

Like, a couple of hundred yards...

Did she walk? Was she driven?

Was she opening the gate for somebody in a car?

What could lure Sophie down here in the middle of the night in her pyjamas?

..removed from the scene this morning

after the state pathologist Doctor John Harbison

carried out an examination of the area.

A post-mortem is being carried out now at Cork University Hospital,

and the results should be known later this afternoon.

Madame du Plantier had arrived in Cork last Saturday.

Did she scratch

so that under the fingernails of somebody who has been assaulted becomes very important?

Was there blood under the fingernails?

As there were some strands of hair taken from Sophie's gripped hand,

this was the biggest potential piece of evidence the police had.

Impossible...

Aussi...

♪ So, here it is, Merry Christmas

♪ Everybody's havin' fun

♪ Look to the future now... ♪

As joyful scenes like these were being repeated at airports all around the country this evening,

airline and ferry companies were bracing themselves

for one of their busiest ever Christmas homecomings.

I've been waiting for this for six months.

Just can't wait to get them home.

After they received the news,

all the family wanted was to get to Sophie.

But when they arrived at Cork Airport,

the police escorted them into the city,

where, over the next 48 hours,

her mother, her father, her brother and her aunt Marie Madeleine

were interrogated as to who would have wanted to harm her.

All they wanted on this sad Christmas was to protect her,

even in death.

The circumstances surrounding the murder of Madame du Plantier are quite mysterious

as to why she should decide to spend Christmas alone in West Cork

when she had a child and a husband in France.

This morning, the body was removed from the scene.

Sophie had booked a flight back to France on the 24th of December

to spend Christmas with her husband Daniel.

Strangely, he didn't accompany her parents

on their harrowing excursion to Cork.

I think a lot of people would have found it quite unusual

that Daniel Toscan du Plantier did not travel to Ireland

in the immediate aftermath of Sophie's murder.

Since then we've heard from friends that he just wasn't in any mental or emotional state

to be able to come over and do it.

But at the same time,

it was commented on that he hadn't come over.

It was as if all the tension from the murder

burst out at the Christmas swim that year.

In Schull Harbour,

adults, grandparents and children threw themselves with abandon

into the saltwater.

But one observer noticed something very telling for the police.

Statement taken by Inspector Patrick Finlay and Sergeant Denis Treacy.

"On Christmas Day, I went to the pier in Schull

where there was the annual Christmas swim.

I had my father's video camera and videoed the swim

and spoke to the people at random."

First casualty!

This is the Christmas Day Swim 1996!

"I also filmed Ian Bailey and he recited a poem."

What about a poem? A limerick?

Chin-chin. Chin-chin.

Go raibh mile maith agat. Happy Christmas.

"When he finished reciting his poem,

I stopped recording and wished him a happy Christmas

and extended my right hand out to shake hands with him.

He had his hands deep in his pockets

and he took out his right hand and shook hands with me.

The back of his hand was covered in visible scratches,

and I thought they were very unusual.

They were random squiggles."

The police already knew that Ian Bailey was the first journalist at the scene of the crime

just after two o'clock.

The question was,

did the scratches put him there before ten?

Statement of Marie Farrell taken on the 22nd of January 1997.

"I reside in a rented house with my husband Chris and five children.

Myself and my husband run a drapery shop at Main Street, Schull,

in the premises formerly known as Dan Griffin's Pub."

Your life changed... Yes.

..on the 21st of December 1996,

because you were in your shop...

I was in the shop that day, yeah.

You were standing outside with Dan Griffin, I think.

That's right, yeah, because it was so quiet.

Uh, he owned the premises,

and this woman came into the shop, browsing around...

She was probably mid-thirties.

And at the same time,

there was a man standing across the road.

At the time, I didn't think that he was following her.

But he was watching her.

And, uh, the woman, she didn't buy anything.

She browsed around, then she left.

And she turned up right and walked up Ardmanagh Road.

Mm-hm...

And as she did that,

the man who was across the road,

he also walked across the street

and he went up Ardmanagh Road.

And at that time,

Dan Griffin said to me, "He's a strange character."

That's odd... Yeah.

But you see, it was the winter...

If that was the summertime, he wouldn't have stood out,

because Schull would've been full of tourists.

The faces that pass in the dawn,

the faces of the outsider are lodged in the memory

until that person leaves town or is identified.

Soon,

the identity of the blonde woman would become tragically apparent to Marie Farrell.

The Guards were appealing for anybody, you know,

to ring with information...

And...

But then I thought, I wonder, is there any connection?

I still didn't know it was the same woman who had been in the shop.

I knew on Christmas Eve that it was,

because there was a photograph of her,

and I thought,

"Oh, that's the woman that was in the shop."

Sophie Toscan du Plantier had arrived in Ireland last Friday

and was last seen alive on Saturday doing some shopping.

On the line now...

So, then, Christmas morning...

I rang the Guards.

Statement of Marie Farrell.

"What drew my attention to this man was his clothing.

He was wearing a long, black coat which extended down to his ankles.

He was also wearing a black flat beret

with no peak on his head.

He was very tall. I could not say in measurements.

He had sallow skin,

he didn't have a beard but he appeared as if he was unshaven."

Tres belle.

So, on the day after Christmas,

Sophie's family were still waiting.

Waiting to be allowed to see her body in the morgue.

..sort of an indication that it was down at Toormore,

which is down the way we're gonna go.

On December the 31st,

uh, Detective Garda Culligan and myself

went to Jules Thomas' home in Lissacaha, The Prairie,

and interviewed Ian Bailey, who was in the house at the time.

Ian Kenneth Bailey.

Manchester.

27/01/1957.

We asked him to account for his movements

on the night of the murder of Sophie.

"Sunday 22nd of the 12th 1996...

About lunchtime, I killed three turkeys.

I was at home with Jules until 9pm.

Then we went to the courtyard in my Fiesta,

stayed there until 12 midnight.

Left together, drove home through Lowertown,

turned right, took the shortcut by the creamery and over Hunts Hill.

Stopped there on the brow as the full moon was out

and then home.

We went straight to bed.

Don't know if the girls had stayed up that night.

I was awake at 8am, 9am on Monday the 23rd.

Got up and made coffee..."

There were visual scratches in his arms,

which were, in my opinion, briar scratches.

I asked him how to account for them.

"I climbed up a 20-foot tree to cut the top off for Christmas,

Sunday morning."

And Ian at this time was sort of beginning to smell a bit of a rat,

that he might be on the suspect list

because of the way they were talking to him.

I certainly did not believe he got the scratches from this palm tree,

as I've never seen briars growing halfway up the side of a palm tree.

Ian went down the road,

this was before Christmas,

to take the top off a tree there.

And he had his shirt sleeves up,

and so he had these little, tiny pine needle scratches on his arm.

Nothing like a hand or nails would make.

It was on his hairline,

and he got it from a turkey kicking him.

You know, they kick around once they...

He said the claw had caught him there,

and I can well believe that.

I grew up on a farm.

Now, when the turkey's being killed, it flaps furiously.

And if you stand close to it, you'll get a slap of the wing

and it will hurt...

But you won't get scratches...

You know, it is the belief of many of the investigators

and myself as well

that it was briars where those marks were sustained.

Did it ever cross your mind that Ian could be the killer?

No, I didn't doubt him.

I think he would've been a mess if he'd been...

If he had done something like that.

He wouldn't have been able to keep it from me.

Emotionally, I could have seen that something strange had gone on.

No, we were very close.

I, I... You know...

I don't think that really...

..his manner was any different to normal.

If he'd known her, if he'd even met her,

he would have told me.

Yeah. He'd never met her.

And I would never have...

..allowed a murderer in the house with my three daughters.

Insane...

You know?

I love them so much.

The interesting thing is that Ian continued to write for the papers

despite being a suspect.

Bailey was unaware that every new article he wrote for the papers

implicated him more and more.

12th of January 1997.

"It's now three weeks

since a neighbour found the badly-beaten body of the French documentary maker

only yards from her rural retreat at Toormore.

Gardai have made no significant breakthrough in the hunt for her killer."

Little do you know, Ian,

12th of January...

They already think it's you.

"During the week,

Chief Superintendent Noel Smith said Gardai were acting on a hunch that the killer might be a local

and was being shielded."

That's you, Ian.

They came back here a couple of times, the Guards.

They wanted to take forensic tests.

I was quite happy to give samples, knowing I had nothing to do with it.

And Ian as well.

So, the police sent off

Ian Bailey and Jules Thomas' blood and hair samples,

which they gave voluntarily.

And I suppose the police were wondering,

would their prints be on the bloody rock?

And while they were waiting on the results,

they went looking for his long, black coat

or any bloodstained clothes.

The Guards couldn't pull Bailey in just on scratches alone.

They hoped and prayed for a break...

..and then they got one.

The police got a phone call...

..from Fiona.

Fiona was brief but devastating.

This was another sighting of the man in the long, black coat.

But this time it was at Kealfadda Bridge

on the night of Sophie's murder.

Fiona quit the call abruptly.

That phone call was like an earthquake in the police station in Bandon.

Kealfadda Bridge in West Cork is the only road from Schull or Goleen

that leads to Sophie's house.

In the aftermath of the murder,

the area was swarming with journalists.

And as we were scouring the countryside,

um, we quickly came across a rumour that a woman had seen a man

washing his boots at Kealfadda Bridge.

And nobody seemed to know who this person was.

And the Gardai were following up this angle as well.

It was a critical detail,

and so appealing that a man should be seen out in the middle of the night

on the night Sophie was killed.

And washing his boots?

Well, the implication there of course,

this person was getting rid of evidence,

possibly blood on the sole.

So, I'm standing at Kealfadda Bridge,

and that's the road to Sophie's house.

It's about two kilometres up there.

And it was here that the mysterious Fiona

saw a man walking along the road...

So, it was no wonder that the police wanted to know who the hell Fiona was.

Now, you particularly want to address yourself to somebody who attempted to contact you

and then didn't come back to you again.

Well, we did have a contact, Marian, last week

and that caller gave us certain information

which we think could be critical in solving this murder.

And I'm making a direct appeal to that person tonight to ring me here.

And obviously, a very, very brutal murder.

If you do know anybody,

if you are the person who did try and contact the Gardai,

do try and get in touch with us again.

The Gardai would have to hope and pray that Fiona would call back.

The crimeline appeal seemed to work on Fiona's conscience.

A day later, she called back...

..but couldn't give any more information.

She was putting up defensive walls.

For instance,

when asked how she saw this man in the early hours of the morning,

she said she didn't wish to discuss it.

We'll keep everything confidential.

Just...

If you can just hang on a little bit...

Hello? Hello, Fiona?

And with a click of her finger, all lines of inquiry went dead.

What effect did this murder have on Schull and Toormore and West Cork?

It completely banjaxed the whole place.

When I came here,

I'd say I think it was '93, the very beginning of '93...

..you would walk up Ballydehob Street

and you'd walk up Schull Street

and there'd be keys in the front door.

Nobody locked anything.

In my cottage in the middle of nowhere,

I never locked the door.

I didn't lock the door to go to bed,

didn't lock the door when I went out.

And that went, all gone overnight.

It was a terrifying, terrifying thing.

And then all of a sudden...

You know, shock...

Yeah...

No...

Everyone I met were just shocked...

Saddened beyond belief.

We felt this was so horrendous

that there would have to be evidence

that would bring the perpetrator to justice very quickly.

The killer is still at large.

As for the Gardai, they still await a break

and they're not hiding their anxiety about talking to the person who they believe can provide it.

There was a devil in the hills.

People were scared.

Would he strike again?

And the only person who could put the devil at the scene of the crime was Fiona.

And she was out there, moving around...

..to different payphones,

all untraceable.

We did receive a phone call here last week

from an individual who gave certain information

which was certainly very useful to us.

And I'm still making that appeal,

that that person would contact me here in Bandon

or indeed contact the incident room.

I will go...

If that person wants to contact me, I'm available here

and I will travel to any part of Ireland,

wherever they want to meet me,

so anxious am I to find this person.

This time the police were in luck.

It's Fiona...

I was driving back from Goleen...

The call was made from a landline.

Yeah...

Around Kealfadda Bridge, I saw the man on the road.

Um, he was wearing a long, dark coat...

And the trace led them to the home of the woman

who had seen the man outside her shop.

I couldn't see if he was trying to cover his face or anything...

You know, because it was just a fleeting glance.

Marie Farrell.

The Guards arrived at the house,

and they couldn't have been nicer,

and they said, "We know you're Fiona.

And there's a few boys in the station,

and they want to have a word with you."

Now it turned out that married Marie Farrell had been out that night,

but out with a man.

She had gone home to her husband,

told him that she was meeting the girls for Christmas drinks.

And had instead gone to this rendezvous with her former boyfriend,

who was himself married.

And this was the huge stumbling block, uh,

for Marie Farrell,

fearing of course that rumours would soon get out

and her husband would learn about it.

I had met a friend... Yeah.

I wasn't having an affair.

It has been said I was, I definitely wasn't.

But my husband didn't know who I had gone to meet that night for a drink.

And that was just the start of a nightmare.

Memo of interview with Marie Farrell

with Detective Garda Jim Fitzgerald

and Detective Garda Jim Slattery and Garda Kevin Kelleher.

"I saw a man with a long, black coat on my left,

a couple of yards on the Goleen side of the junction.

I now know this man to be Ian Bailey from Schull."

Ian was arrested at the studio house

for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

At 10:45am,

Detective Garda Culligan informed Ian Bailey

that he was arresting him for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

He protested his innocence, completely protested his innocence.

At the same time,

another squad car arrived at The Prairie.

Two Guards came to the back door.

They came and they sat down at the table and they said,

"You know why we're here, don't you?"

And I said no...

"We're going to arrest you for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier."

Very hard to describe the sinking feeling inside...

It was just disbelief and horror.

Absolutely horrified.

And I thought, this isn't real, you know?

You had to pinch yourself, it just felt so much like a...

They were acting.

Ian was brought to Bandon Garda Station.

A few hours later, so was Jules.

Before we got there,

I actually asked if there would be press there.

The banghardai phoned up the station and they said yes, there was.

I suppose that,

when we heard who was being arrested,

obviously word started to filter through

that suspicions were starting to focus on one of our own,

I suppose.

And then,

when he was arrested and taken to Bandon Garda Station,

there was a REAL flurry.

You know, I mean... It was really, really full-on.

It was absolutely horrific.

French television, radio and newspaper reporters were amongst the crowd

as the Garda decision was awaited on whether the two people would be released or charged.

We were very surprised when we were told by the police that Bailey had been taken in.

It wasn't not so much that we thought he was too nice a person

or anything,

we just didn't feel that someone we knew would be capable of that,

you know?

Well, he was in there as a reporter, you see.

I think he was with the English papers,

he was covering her as a newspaper reporter.

The neighbour had heard somebody howling outside the house.

Scratches and turkeys and stuff....

If anybody was gonna pick anybody around here that would suit it...

Did you ever believe he could be the murderer? Yeah.

Yeah...

Bailey was asked,

"The facts tell us you were involved in this killing.

Isn't that right?"

He replied...

"I was in The Galley with Jules that Sunday night.

We went home at closing time and went to bed.

I never left the house again that night."

How did you know how to get to the scene of the murder?

"I was aware that there was a French woman living in Toormore."

When was the last time you saw her?

"Sometime in spring of the year before last."

Did you meet here in Schull on Saturday the 21st?

"No, I did not."

Did you hit that woman with a fuckin' block, Bailey?!

"Yes, I remember now.

I did get up to go to my studio, rented house,

to do some work."

Jules Thomas was released without charge.

We were all gathered outside Bandon Garda Station

and also outside the office of his solicitor, Con Murphy.

We stood for hours,

waiting for some sort of word about what was going to happen.

Was there going to be charges?

The Guards really, really, really tried to get it into me

that he did it, he did it, he did it.

"Ian bashed her head in with a concrete block."

He did it, he did it, he did it...

Said it about a million times.

It just wasn't gonna wash with me,

because there's no blinkin' evidence.

Mm-hm...

No.

Come on... Get set... Go!

Here you go, girls!

Come on, chooks...

Hello, my beauties...

Aren't they gorgeous?

♪ They're gonna put me in the movies

♪ They say they're gonna make a big star out of me

♪ It's all about a man who's sad and lonely

♪ And all I gotta do is act naturally ♪

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