Murder at the Cottage | Sky

I find her visit to the Ungerers on her last day alive interesting. Mr Ungerer was a very successful and talented French illustrator of both mainstream and erotic material, interested in BDSM on which he gave many print interviews. Sophie was said, by her husband who spoke to her on the phone that night, to be very taken by him.

She had already had several affairs/relationships with high society men much older than her.

Not suggesting that Mr Ungerer himself had any link to her death. But maybe he had other guests that evening.

Polly701

I find it interesting that we know a huge amount about IB and JT but very little about other characters such as Mr Ungerer or Chris Farrell. Or the German man living a mile from the Cottage (who was alone in his house that night after playing music in Crookhaven, had a history of violence towards his partner and committed suicide in 1997).

tibruit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117675981#Comment_117675981

The problem here is that you seem to attribute the same level of attention to detail to the Camiers that you or I might have for the intricacies of the case. In reality, most people idle along through life without obsessing about the details of timelines etc to a crime, local or otherwise. They clearly didn`t realize the relevance of JT`s whereabouts that morning had for the wider Garda case. These people could potentially be mistaken, but they are not part of a wider Garda conspiracy to nail Bailey. Their evidence contradicts JT and is buttressed by other witnesses, one of whom is JT`s own daughter.

tibruit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117676187#Comment_117676187

Exactly...if he turned up too early at the murder scene he was attracting the attention of the Gardaí. There is a difference.

MacDanger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117677740#Comment_117677740

I guess it's possible that this is the case but it's stretching the bounds of credulity imo

JimmyVik

I think we can see from this thread that it would be impossible at this stage for Baily to get a fair trial at this point.

OwlsZat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117677778#Comment_117677778

Your statement makes no sense, listen to the West Cork podcast if you haven't already.

The only way a new trial is granted is if there's new forensic evidence. Given IBs DNA is on file, if there is new forensic evidence it's likely not going to be linking IB.

OwlsZat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117671009#Comment_117671009

Literally, the best post in about 10 pages.

1) The owner of the blue ford seen speeding, no idea who this is and first time heard mentioned. Any other details?

2) The man thumbing on the road was IB. This was since corroborated by IB, he was leaving Murphy's after being on a bender and staying in his after a night at the pub. Initially, IB denied this happened, but then later admitted MF was correct.

3) This is the mystery man currently being investigated, from MF initial description we know he is 5"8 and is European looking. More recently, we have learned he lives in Paris and was an associate of her late husband Daniel. Firstly, AGS will check his dates of travel through the airport. If they are suspicious it's on to point 4.

4) The Galway's travel agent will surely have to pick out the man MF has identified from a photo lineup to see if matches. If they do it would accelerate a request for a DNA sample to check against the mystery male DNA found on Sophie's boot. The drops that fell veristically onto her dress would also be worth a check against, provided there is still a sample to check against using up to date techniques.

5) The people using Sophie's home had stopped before the time of the murder. As a result I'm less inclined to follow this up. If AGS wanted to I'm sure they could interview previous owners and work out from there. MF and CF spring to mind given their house building but could be anyone.

6) A male passenger seen in Sophie's car in the garage, I haven't heard of this report either. Have you any link? Again if this was given by a witness would be using the same photo line up. Perhaps include some of the Ungerer's too just to probe the possible link.

So from your list.

1 & 6 I've not hear of before if you have any further info

2 was IB and don't think it changes much. Just another of many lies, but this is also partly explainable by him being 48 hours on beer.

3 & 4 I believe is the current focus of the current investigation.

5 I believe should have been an area of focus of the past investigation. There is unexplored subplot of MF and CF which I'd like to see investigated by Jim Sheridan et al. Remind me of a total lawless snake where I live. They cut a deal with AGS would be my guess. Something not right there.

sekiro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117676369#Comment_117676369

One aspect of that part is the way it really just gets dismissed in the podcast and in the documentaries.

They are among the very last people to see her and the story seems to be that she was acting unusual at the time.

People going on about "The White Lady" to try and make it seem like some kind of spooky and foreboding encounter.

The truth seems to be that when Mrs Ungerer arrived home Sophie was already in the house talking to Mr Ungerer and she seemed OK? So where has the story of her being anxious etc on that day come from?

Kelvinyook

Some suspects allegedly ruled out are mentioned here https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/the-complex-and-secret-private-life-of-fragile-sophie-26805384.html

"Other suspects were being rapidly crossed off the list too. Locals reported a man seen in Toormore around 5.30pm on December 22. Gardai tracked him down to Cork and he told them he got a bus from Schull to the city that evening. Detectives verified his story, according to sources.

A man known as something of a peeping Tom also came into the frame. Gardai arrested him for theft not long after Ms Du Plantier's death. He accounted for his movements on the night she died and his alibi checked out.

Another man living in the area at the time was the target of much suspicion initially. He had mental health issues and had been accused of stalking a woman previously.

Like Bailey, he was drinking in a pub on the night of December 22. He left at 1.30am when he took a lift home. The man who gave him a lift verified the construction worker's movements to gardai.

Gardai also looked at a man who died some time after Ms Du Plantier was murdered. He was French too, and he knew Ms Du Plantier as a compatriot. Detectives ruled him out after checking out his movements on the night of the murder.

By late January, Bailey was their prime suspect."

Btw also mentions an expensive bottle of wine found in bushes not far. "One source close to the investigation recalled that, at the time, alcohol was often stolen from the drinks cabinets of empty holiday homes." (to add to the point 5 housekeeper said someone seemed to have used the cottage bathroom, at least before the locks were changed.)

sekiro

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117669552#Comment_117669552

Also interesting that the idea that Sophie and Bailey knew each other has it's strongest evidence coming from France.

Two people giving statements that she had told them she was planning to meet a poet with one of them even saying the remembered Sophie giving them IBs name.

While I don't think IB can be ruled out entirely I think it's pretty obvious that he did not know Sophie.

It's more like the Gardai and the French prosecutors needed this to be factual so that they would have motive.

If you can't prove that IB and Sophie knew each other then there's no real motive or reason for him to be out there.

Hence the vaguely remembered references to "a poet" or the possibility that they were seen shaking hands one time.

OwlsZat

The wine bottle stacks with the 5"8 Paris man currently being investigated. There is an outside chance they can close this cold case. Be amazing if so.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117677931#Comment_117677931

"2) The man thumbing on the road was IB. This was since corroborated by IB, he was leaving Murphy's after being on a bender and staying in his after a night at the pub. Initially, IB denied this happened, but then later admitted MF was correct"

When was this, I haven't seen this before? Have you a link to where IB admitted it? Its not Kilfeada Bridge is it?

facebeard

Does anyone think the lack of Forensic evidence around the murder scene means there was a clean up job done by murderer ?

Caquas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117678694#Comment_117678694

No, there is no suggestion of a clean up. The murder seems to have been an act of sudden, terrible violence and it is likely that the murderer fled the scene immediately.

The failure to gather any forensic evidence at the scene is the scandal at the heart of this disastrous investigation. Even 25 years ago, there was ample material if the scene had been preserved and the Pathologist had arrived in reasonable time. We don’t even know the time of death. The dopey Gardai who arrived at the scene made no observations about rigor mortis which had set in fully by the time the Pathologist arrived. She may even have been murdered before midnight which would give IB (and many others) a watertight alibi.

Garlinge

So how did Ian Bailey have close up photos that were taken to be developed? Surely he/Jules were not allowed near enough? I thought she could only get long distance shots? Or did he keep the camera and take more when she left?

facebeard

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117678929#Comment_117678929

Thanks Caquas, Jim Sheridan mentioned the murderer was lucky. I taught he might have been hitting at a cleanup job. It was making me think of a French connection to the murder.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117678929#Comment_117678929

"Even 25 years ago, there was ample material if the scene had been preserved and the Pathologist had arrived in reasonable time" How do you know?

Caquas

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117679159#Comment_117679159

Just read this thread. The blood-stained gate, the bloodmarks on the door, the bootprint near the body, the blood-stained cement block. Should I go on? Well, of course, and worst of all, the body.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117679169#Comment_117679169

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117679169#Comment_117679169

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117678929#Comment_117678929

"The blood-stained gate, the bloodmarks on the door, the blood-stained cement block. Should I go on? Well, of course, and worst of all, the body"

You are the one needing to read the thread .They got samples from all of them. I didn't know about the bootprint near the body,. You have no way of knowing there was anything lost from any of them. They know it was sophies blood on the door and on the gate. The blood on her shoe is unknown did not match Sophie or IB

The weather that night was almost freezing. DNA lasted 16 days in the case of Marylinn Rynn due to cold frosty weather.

OwlsZat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117678579#Comment_117678579

No it isn't the Kilfeada bridge sighting. It's discussed in the West Cork documentary when MFs evidence is being discussed. She gave a couple of sightings of Bailey, and one was thumbing from his friends house, which turned out later to be correct.

OwlsZat

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117679209#Comment_117679209

Two questions this brings to my mind.

1) Why does Sophie go literally the days before Christmas all the way to Ireland before planning to come home and be with her family. Makes no sense unless she had arranged to meat someone.

2) How does her own blood end up on her own front door??

• Answers the door to a killer is maimed, but ends up running past them to try get away? Unlikely
• Is attacked outside, runs back to the door, finds it locked, and runs back away?

So if the answer is she is attacked initially outside, she came outside willingly, in her night gown. So to me, she knew her killer. It was known she had no curtains. So to me she, saw them outside and came out. If they called to the door, she would have let them in and not have ended up in the ditch.

MoonUnit75

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117678294#Comment_117678294

The bar owner in both of the documentaries was the last known person to talk to Sophie and she seems not to have mentioned being afraid or having a bad experience, he suggests everything seemed normal. They used to speak to each other in the little bit of French he had so they were on quite familiar terms.

FishOnABike

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117677931#Comment_117677931

1 Martin O'Sullivan who was travelling from Goleen towards Bantry on the morning of the 23rd.

It was just after 7.30am as he made his way to work along the quiet road to Durrus passing a winding boreen that leads to the white-washed home of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. As he drove north towards Bantry, leaving the French filmmaker’s secluded farmhouse behind, a blue Ford shot up behind him at high speed. O’Sullivan was forced to slam on the brakes as the car overtook him on a dangerous bend and nearly ran him off the road. He noticed its headlights were on and the rear number plate was red. He believed it was a Fiesta

3 Maurice Sweeney, a Loughrea travel agent described a man, similar to the description given by Marie Farrell as the man watching Sophie on 21st and seen at Keelfadda Bridge, who came into his travel agent business at 2.30pm on December 23, 1996 -- four-and-a-half hours after Sophie's bludgeoned body was discovered outside her holiday home, near Schull, Co Cork.The man booked a flight to Paris for 24th and was looking for a hotel near Dublin Airport and also for the numbers of bed and breakfasts in west Cork, as he had left one without paying.

6 Seán Murray gave a statement to gardai on January 3, 1997, that he had sold petrol to a woman fitting Toscan du Plantier’s description on the afternoon of Friday, December 20 at Hurley’s garage in Skibbereen. The sighting occurred just hours after she flew in to Ireland.

There was someone in the car with her, a man. He was very tall, his head was touching the roof of the car. He was wearing an anorak that was turned up high so you couldn’t really see his face.

The garage owner filled the car with petrol for her. It only took £10 (Irish pounds) at the time. The man in the passenger seat paid for it through the window.

“The guards who I gave the statement to said that it couldn’t have been her as she was spotted in Ballydehob buying firewood close to the time I gave that day. We didn’t sell firewood at the time and that’s why I think she stopped there later on.

“Apparently, the man in question was no longer in the car with her.”

The garage owner added: “I’m 110% sure it was Sophie I saw that day. I have no doubt about it. I think that it’s very important that the gardai look into this sighting again.”

-----

It also has to be asked if either 3 or 6 could be the same person GARDAI believed they may, have identified as a man known to the murdered French woman, Ms Sophie Toscan du Plantier, on video footage recorded at Cork Airport.

FishOnABike

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FishOnABike

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Treppen

There was mention of her going to Schull to get her heating fixed.

Did she actually get it fixed?

Who was she going to get it fixed?

I think it a bit strange to trek all the way from France right at Christmas time for the soul purpose of fixing the heating.

Would you go on spec a couple of days before Christmas and hope to get someone to fix it?

The heating could have waited.

In saying all that though she might have just wanted to get away from France for a break and using the heating as a legitimate excuse.

FishOnABike

Deleted. Multiple post due to gateway timeout problems..

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117679279#Comment_117679279

Garda think she walked from the house - JS doc

FishOnABike

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