THE DEBATE OVER BAILEY’S ROLE IN MURDER WON’T END WITH HIS DEATH

THE debate over whether Ian Bailey murdered the French filmmaker in cold blood 27 years ago will rage long after his own death on Sunday.

The 66-year-old was arrested twice in connection to Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s killing, but was never charged by gardai.

And despite being sentenced in absentia to 25 years in prison for murder in a French court, the Irish Government refused to extradite him.

After a 27-year-long investigation, there is still no concrete evidence that the former journalist had any role in Sophie’s murder, yet plenty of circumstantial evidence that he had.

SIGNS HE WAS INNOCENT?

No forensic evidence has ever linked Bailey to the crime and he was never charged with the murder by gardaí. Former DPP Eamonn Barnes even declared the case was ‘thoroughly flawed and prejudiced’ against him.

Bailey had provided samples of his blood and hair for DNA testing following Ms du Plantier’s death and even when her body was exhumed in 2008 for re-examination, authorities found nothing to link him with the murder.

However, errors by gardaí are said to have hampered the investigation. More than 24 hours had passed before the state pathologist conducted his examination, making the exact time of death difficult to determine. A bloodstained gate taken from the murder scene has also been lost by gardaí.

Schull resident Marie Farrell had also placed Bailey at the scene at 3am on the night of Sophie’s murder, making him the prime suspect.

However, in 2020, Ms Farrell retracted her comments in a documentary, saying the man she saw at the scene was too short to be Bailey.

The former shopkeeper claims she can identify a man in a black coat seen outside her store a few days before the December 1996 murder, saying he was a man known to Sophie’s husband.

Bailey has also supported the garda investigation into Sophie’s murder. Less than one month before his death, he told the Irish Daily Mail that he wrote to Garda Commissioner Drew Harris to call for a cold case review.

‘I can only hope and pray that this will ultimately prove I had nothing to do with what happened,’ he said on December 19 last.

LINGERING SUSPICIOUS OF GUILT?

Bailey was first on the scene following reports that a woman’s body had been found outside her remote holiday home overlooking Toormore Bay.

In his coverage for the Cork Examiner, he claimed Ms du Plantier kept a string of lovers, and revealed details of her injuries, such as that she had lost a finger as she fought for her life.

It was these scoops that first drew him to the attention of gardaí.

After the murder, he was seen to have fresh cuts on his hands, arms and face. It was alleged they were inflicted by his victim, but he insisted they were incurred when he cut down a Christmas tree and by talons of three turkeys he had killed.

A neighbour also reported seeing a fire in his back garden, the inference being that he might have been destroying clothes.

His movements on the night of December 22 aroused yet more suspicion. At around 4am, it emerged, he had got up, leaving his partner in bed. His explanation was that he couldn’t sleep and went to his desk, in the garden shed, to finish a complicated article he was working on.

Bailey had also a history of assaulting his former partner Jules Thomas. During an argument months before the murder, Bailey bit her, tore out tufts of her hair, and left her with a grapefruit-sized swelling over her eye.

She reported this to gardaí, and temporarily had him barred from the house, but she declined to give evidence against him. In 2001, he attacked her again, with a crutch. For this, he received a suspended sentence.

People had claimed to have heard Bailey confess, including one who said he told a 14-year-old he ‘bashed Sophie’s head in’ and another who said he told an elaborate story about ‘seeing her tight a*** and wanting to f*** her’.

A local man, Ritchie Shelly, also claimed that Bailey had confessed to the murder on New Year’s Eve 1998, saying: ‘I did it ... I went too far.’

Former Sunday Tribune news editor, Helen Callanan – to whom Bailey had reported on the killing – said she asked Bailey in early February 1997 about rumours he was a suspect and he replied: ‘It was me, I did it. I killed her. I did it to resurrect my career.’

At the time, local Bill Fuller said Bailey had recounted to him a scenario of the killing the day after Sophie’s body was found. Mr Fuller said Bailey turned to him and claimed Bailey had said: ‘You did it ... you saw her in Spar and she got you excited as she walked through the aisles with her tight a***.

‘You went to her place to see what you could get, but she wasn’t interested so you attacked her.

‘She tried to escape and you ran after her. You threw something at the back of her head and you went further than you planned to.’

Despite often being in a state of tears or fit of anger when making these confessions, Bailey later dismissed this as ‘black humour’.

After one assault for which his partner had to be hospitalised, he wrote in his diary: ‘I feel sick reading my own report of the events that night – I really wanted to kill her.’

A psychiatrist’s report concluded he had a ‘personality constructed on narcissism, psycho-rigidity, violence, impulsiveness, egocentricity, with an intolerance to frustration and a great need for recognition. Under the liberating effects of alcohol, he had the tendency to become violent’.