No justice for Sophie, but some closure at last in most bizarre of murder cases
OVER the past 24 years the investigation into the brutal murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier has had more twists and turns than the narrow roads that weave around remotest west Cork.
The decision of the State yesterday not to appeal a High Court refusal to surrender the self-confessed main suspect, Ian Bailey, to serve a 25-year sentence for her murder in France, brings closure to what has been the most sensational and bizarre murder case in modern Irish history.
We had a body and a prime suspect, but the only trial in almost a quarter of a century of investigation is in the court of public opinion.
Along the legal road less travelled her family in France launched a civil suit against Bailey, he took a libel action against eight newspapers (and lost against six), he sued and lost a case for conspiracy against the Irish State in the High Court and has seen a European Extradition Warrant against him bouncing around the High Court and the Supreme Court for years.
Claims that telephone calls to Bandon garda station were illegally recorded, including one’s relating to the du Plantier case, became part of a state inquiry conducted by Judge Nial Fennelly.
This long series of unprecedented legal manoeuvres took place against a backdrop of Ian Bailey trying to continue to earn a living from his market stall in Schull.
Bludgeoned to death with a rock yards from her remote home at Toormore, on a frosty night, December 23, 1996, the life and death of the French television producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier has become inextricably linked to that of Bailey, a slightly eccentric English journalist who came to Ireland in 1991, seemingly for a quiet life, and has now spent almost a quarter of a century in the glare of international publicity.
The murder of the beautiful French television producer was unlike any other.
It involved terrifying brutality in the beautiful rugged landscape of west Cork.
An air of mystery and glamour has hung about the main protagonists – and it produced a cast of characters and shifting stories that has inspired journalists, writers and film-makers over nearly a quarter of a century.
Yet the case remains unsolved, and now seemingly unsolvable.
The murder investigation was also bedevilled from the start by a series of unfortunate events.
By the time the coroner Dr John Harbison got from Dublin to the scene of the crime, vital evidence had been degraded by the harsh December weather.
The local ‘stringer’ for a Dublin newspaper, Ian Bailey, suddenly became the prime suspect when gardaí claimed some of the information contained in his stories could only have come from someone who was at the scene of the crime.
The most important witness implicating Bailey was Schull shopkeeper Marie Farrell.
A judge accepted in 2003 that “on the balance of probability” she had seen Bailey at Kealfadda Bridge on the night of the murder.
But two years later she changed her story saying her statements to gardaí were given under duress.
She had become what another judge called “the central plank” in Bailey’s defence, during his legal action against the state.
When it became clear that the Irish authorities were not going to bring Ian Bailey to trial the French authorities exhumed the body of Sophie du Plantier and later issued a European Arrest Warrant for his arrest.
In a landmark legal action in Paris, Bailey was tried, found guilty and sentenced in his absence on May 31, 2019.
It was always unlikely that the Irish courts were going to hand over Ian Bailey to the French authorities.
After all he has spent the last 24 years in what is almost a surreal struggle through the Irish legal system.
Although he was arrested twice, in February 1997 and January, 1998, he has never been tried for the murder which he has become associated so closely associated with.
He is, in fact and in reality, an innocent man and has long claimed to anyone who will listen that he is a victim of a conspiracy since he first began reporting on the vicious murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in remote west Cork all those Christmases ago.
Yesterday, by not appealing the refusal of the High Court to surrender Ian Bailey to the French authorities, the Irish State has finally washed its hands of a case that has long been an embarrassment to our criminal justice system.
Whatever people believe about guilt or innocence, it should never be forgotten that Sophie du Plantier suffered a horrific death and what happened to her afterwards was a miscarriage of justice.
Her memory deserves better.