BAILEY: HIS FIRST ‘Gardai want to stitch me up.. I know I didn’t do this killing’
Prime suspect claimed he was speechless at his arrest
This is the first interview given by Ian Bailey following his arrest in February 1997 for the murder of sophie Toscan du plantier.
Until this point, Bailey had been reporting on the case as a journalist using the name Eoin Bailey, but he now became the chief suspect.
THE first man arrested in the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder hunt claimed last night: “Gardai wanted to stitch me up.”
Eoin Bailey added: “It looks as if they are not looking for anybody else.
“But I know I didn’t do this killing I have no guilt and nothing to hide.”
He then told his version of what had happened when gardai called to his house in Toormore, Co Cork – two miles from where Sophie died just before Christmas.
He went on to make a series of claims about what was said while he was detained.
Mr Bailey said: “I was arrested on Monday morning by two gardai who arrived at 10am in an unmarked car,.
“They cuffed me and told me they were arrested me for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.
“I was a bit speechless – I won’t say gobsmacked, because I hate that word – but speechless.
“In the Garda car, they said that I had done this murder.
“They knew it was me. This was the recurrent theme I was to hear for the next 12 hours.
“They were trying to make out that
I had a violent reputation.
They were determined to let me know they knew it was me, that they had the evidence.
“When I was being arrested, I had asked if I could go down the road to Jules, my partner of five years and tell her.
“First they said I couldn’t, but then they let me when I didn’t confess to a crime I had no knowledge of and definitely hadn’t done.
“They arrested my partner and subjected her to 12 hours of questions.
“They told her I’d confessed – untrue – and that she was going to be charged with complicity to murder by making an alibi for me. I wanted to know about the DNA results. I gave a hair sample seven weeks ago and so did Jules, my partner.
“If the DNA had matched up, I’d be banged up by now.”
Mr Bailey said gardai had once been called to the scene of a domestic between him and Jules, a 38-year-old artist from Wales.
He admitted: “Jules and I had our ups and downs before and the gardai were once involved at the behest of a third party.
“The gardai said they had checked into me in Britain, where I had had a very acrimonious divorce from my wife.
“They were clutching at straws all the time. They kept suggesting different motives.
“I want to make it clear I never met Sophie and that I never spoke to her.
“I knew that she was French and I had seen her once, two years ago.
When I arrived at Bandon Garda station, there were photographers waiting.
“Someone had tipped them off and it had become very public.
“Gardai could have brought us in very quietly, not arrested us even but asked us to come in. We would have gone.
“I know that they were under pressure but they trampled – like they trampled all over the murder scene.
“There is a forensic saying: The victim dies once, but the murder scene can die a thousand times. It was not properly preserved.
“I saw all this. I was rung up by a press photographer on December 23 and told about the killing and I went up to the site to see for myself. When
I was questioned, they took away all my clothes.
“Someone then went out and bought me what I call the typical guards off-duty uniform: black shoes, jeans, a check shirt and a very fine jacket.
“I still have them but the guards have all my coats and quite a few bits and pieces.
“The publicity over what happened has put me in a very prejudiced position, not only in relation to my career as a journalist but also, should I be charged, in relation to a fair trial.”
Mr Bailey speculated why he might have come under suspicion locally and on some of the rumours.
He added: “One was my journalism career was down the tubes until this story came up and that I needed the murder as a way to make money.
“There was a claim that because it was a full moon that night I became some sort of werewolf monster.
“It was even suggested that even if I couldn’t remember killing Sophie, that I had killed her.
“There was also the implication locally that I had killed her and then written stories which pointed more and more to someone coming over from France to do it.
“And then it was said that I had forged a life insurance policy in my wife’s name for £200,000.
“They told my partner Jules that it was for £250,000. I have absolutely no knowledge of that whatsoever.”