The day I learned reporter was murder suspect

IN late 1996, when I was the recently appointed editor of The Sunday Tribune, a freelance contributor began submitting articles for our business section from his home in West Cork. His name was Eoin Bailey. He was introduced to us by the brother of a staff member but contributed on a freelance basis, paid for each article we published.

When Sophie Toscan du Plantier was murdered on December 23 of that year, Bailey offered his services as a reporter covering the case. My news editor/deputy editor Helen Callanan accepted the offer in good faith and we printed his copy in the early weeks of the investigation, as the circumstances of the murder captured the public imagination. (He also filed copy for the Irish Daily Star.)

I still remember vividly the January day she came running across the newsroom floor to my office, shut the door behind me and told me: ‘He did it, he did it.’ ‘Who did what?’ I asked her. ‘He killed her, he killed her, Eoin Bailey killed her.’ It was one of those rare moments when my jaw dropped and I was near speechless. He was not a staff member but the idea that one of our contributors could be a murderer was shocking, made worse by the fact that he was our reporter on this very story.

Helen, who was from West Cork, had received a phone call from the gardaí who informed her that our correspondent was the chief suspect for the murder – and that there was nobody else in the frame.

This was before his first arrest – which followed very quickly – but, of course, this and other interrogations did not bring about a confession from the Englishman. The gardaí also failed to assemble enough evidence to persuade the Director of Public Prosecutions to start a prosecution; Eamonn Barnes, in the role at the time, believed the chances of a conviction were not good enough.

Bailey, pictured below, now calling himself by his original name of Ian, became a serial litigant, suing newspapers for defamation and the State for wrongful arrest. (He was a serial loser in that regard, so he didn’t profit from Sophie’s death.) I moved to a radio career where I ended up interviewing him on occasions as he railed against various investigations.

My last lengthy face-to-face interview was with him in Cork in 2018. He also did a phone interview in 2021 to coincide with the broadcast of documentaries dealing with the case.

He continuously denied any connection to the murder but as time went on it became clear that his greater sympathy was for himself as a victim of speculation than it was for the dead woman. There is one question I’ve been asked many times over the years: What did I think of him? He was very dislikeable and unpleasant. He was boorish and arrogant and the way he spoke to the women in my production team in Cork in 2018 was sinister and very unsettling for them. The knowledge that he had brutally assaulted his partner Jules Thomas – leaving her with serious injuries – was very instructive as to his character or lack thereof. There another question is

I’ve often been asked: Did he kill Sophie?

To which I’ve always answered: How would I know? That was only something that could be determined by a guilty plea or by a jury that had heard all the evidence at a trial.

There was not sufficient evidence to prove that he did. There is little doubt but that the investigation was botched and that some gardaí may have taken entirely wrong short-cuts in their desire to get their man. But that is not sufficient proof that he was a murderer.

Motive

And to one more question: Do I believe he did it? I believe that he could very easily have done it, because he was a bad-tempered man with a very bad approach to women. He had opportunity and as for motive, well any rebuff to his advances could easily have led to the frenzied assault that caused the Frenchwoman’s death. His stories as to how he had obtained injuries to his hands defied credibility.

While he claimed to have been upset that his name was always linked to the murder and that the French authorities had convicted him in his absence, part of him seemed to revel in the notoriety.

It made him a star of sorts, rather perversely.

There are suggestions now that a file may go to the DPP from the Garda, which could lead to some sort of declaration that fresh charges would have been preferred had he stayed alive. That would seem like an Irish solution to an Irish problem, and a very unsatisfactory one.