SON’S PAIN AS NETFLIX A court said my mum’s ‘killer’was guilty.. but he is still free
AFTER 25 years of pain, a haunted son is still desperately searching for answers over the slaughter of his beloved mum.
Beautiful Parisian TV producer Sophie Toscan Du Plantier, 39, was bludgeoned to death on a windswept outcrop in Ireland.
The prime suspect – an English reporter covering the story – was convicted by a court in his absence, though there was no DNA evidence linking him to the scene.
The mystery is the focus of a new Netflix documentary which asks a string of questions about journalist Ian Bailey – including “joke” confessions he made.
And Sophie’s son Pierre-Louis BaudeyVignaud, just 15 when she died, today talks of his ongoing pain and vows to get justice.
In an exclusive interview Pierre-Louis, 40, says: “We have a saying about justice in France: Even if a train is late, it always arrives at the station in the end.
“I was her only child and we were very close. You have two arms and then, suddenly, you only have one.
“It is a deep cut that never really heals.”
REMOTE
The mystery of his mother’s death goes back to the night of December 23, 1996.
Sophie, married to celebrated French film maker Daniel Toscan Du Plantier, was staying alone at her remote holiday cottage near Schull, in County Cork.
A neighbour discovered her bloodied body 100 yards from the front door.
Sophie was wearing just her white nightclothes and what seemed to be hastily laced-up boots.
Her blood was splattered on a rock believed to have been used to batter her head, neck and body more than 50 times.
Pierre-Louis says: “It breaks my heart to think of my mother’s blood seeping into the soil of a place that she adored.
“She didn’t deserve it and Ireland, and its people, didn’t deserve it either.
“Sophie was much more than a person who took a stone to the head. She was also my mother, she was an intellectual, she was talented, funny, great company and, up until her murder, she had a beautiful life. This is a little bit forgotten in the tragedy.”
Journalist Bailey, from Manchester, was one of the first on the scene, covering the case for various Irish papers.
But Bailey, 64, who still lives in Cork, came under suspicion after police noticed fresh and severe scratch marks on his arms.
He later admitted to leaving his cottage on the night of the killing – but said it was to go to his studio to finish writing an article.
In 2019, despite no forensic evidence linking him to the scene, Bailey was convicted of the murder in absentia by the Paris Cour d’Assises court in France.
Irish authorities have twice refused to extradite him, and last October Ireland’s High Court ruled that he would not be forcibly sent to France.
Bailey, who has a record of domestic violence, has always protested his innocence.
Two months after the murder he was arrested, questioned for hours, then released
Justice? We say even if a train is late it always arrives in the end...
SON PIERRE-LOUIS
HIS QUEST FOR THE
without charge. A year later, he faced more questioning but was not charged.
A local woman, Marie Farrell, said she saw a man – who she later identified as Bailey – near a bridge two miles from the murder scene at 3am. But she later retracted her statement, saying she had been coerced by Irish police into framing Bailey.
EXHUMED
Three years after Sophie’s death the Irish Director of Public Prosecutions ruled there was insufficient evidence to pursue a case against him.
But in France, where Sophie’s body was exhumed in 2008, judge Frederique Aline said there was “significant evidence” of Bailey’s guilt – and sentenced him to 25 years.
The trial was told how Bailey, who lived less than two miles from Sophie, had deep scratches to his hands and forehead the day her body was found.
He has always maintained he received the scratches plucking three turkeys and cutting down a Christmas tree the previous day. But in a statement read to the court, witnesses said they did not see scratches when they watched Bailey play a traditional Irish drum the night before the killing.
The court also heard evidence of a strange story Bailey told about the murder.
He is said to have recounted a scenario of the killing to witness Bill Fuller the day after Sophie was found.
Mr Fuller claimed Bailey told him: “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.”
Bailey, now a poet, originally told police he had spent the night at home in bed next to his partner Jules Thomas. But he later revealed he had left in the early hours to finish an article.
Now the three-part Netflix documentary revisits the murder in a show billed as an unbiased investigation – and puts Sophie’s family at the centre. The show asks why Bailey’s hands were scratchmarked, whether a bonfire at his home was to burn evidence, why he “confessed” to several people and why his overcoat was soaking in a bucket the morning after the murder. Bailey has explanations – the hands were scratched by a Christmas tree, the bonfire preceded the death and the confessions had all been a joke. The pain, meanwhile, continues for father-of-two Pierre-Louis, who is a director of a real estate company in Paris. He says his memory of his mum is patchy – and that her death became a “kind of taboo” in the family.
He adds: “She was a lovely mother and would have been a lovely grandmother too, I’m sure. But that was taken away from us.
“We never talked about her. It is maybe why I need to talk about her so much now. It’s how you process the tragedy. I can’t hear her voice in my head any more.
“It is sad, but I suppose it’s the way the mind protects itself.”
Pierre-Louise visited the Irish cottage, which the family still own, between the ages of eight and 15. He has vowed to keep the property, despite the fact Bailey still lives close by.
Pierre-Louis says he worried about watching the Netflix documentary, knowing there would be footage and pictures that he had never seen.
But ultimately, he felt drawn to revisiting the cottage.
He says: “I had to take it slowly because I didn’t know how I’d react. It was very emotional to see film of her, especially at the house in Ireland.
“But it was okay and when I closed the lid of my computer, I said, ‘You must go back there now’. That’s where I feel closest to my mother.
“And I would never sell that house.”
emma.pryer@mirror.co.uk ■■Sophie: A Murder in West Cork, airs on Netflix from June 30.
Mum didn’t deserve it... her blood is on the soil of a place she adored PIERRE-LOUIS ON THE PAIN OF LOSING SOPHIE