Murder at the Cottage | Sky

U don't seem to understand what facts are

"I know someone who has lived in Lowertown all her life. She says Sophie's house is relatively easy to find once you knew where it was "

So, a local then ,

as Wizard said at the beginning of this little discussion .

Or someone with clear directions on how to find it.

They wouldn't find the house with your directions at 1 above

I think it's safe to say, whoever battered Sophie to death knew where she lived.

The manner in how she met her demise is interesting. She suffered a frenzied prolonged attack, this was emotionally charged and personal (in my opinion).

Too me, it stinks of a scorned rejected lover.

The rumours doing the rounds at the time of her death, was that she was returning to her first Husband, that the romance had been reignited.. Were these stories ever follow up?

How did Husband number 2 feel about that? Was it enough to tip him over the edge? I don't think he felt to much about her, she was soon replaced with a new piece of fluff.

Did she reject another man to concentrate on hubby No.1? Did the rejection send him over the edge?? Who was the man wearing a beret hat seen around the place before the murder?

So many lines of investigation have not been thoroughly explored.. The French connection is relevant in this murder, weather that be to eliminate people of interest or to focus more on their alibi's.

The motivation being pinned on Bailey, is that he stumbled his way over to Sophie's house in the middle of a winters night (drunk), tried to throw his leg over, was rejected (amazingl!), and then lost the plot altogether, and proceeded to smash her face in... It's such a surreal allegation, that it's darkly humorous..

I'm not defending Bailey in any way, shape or form. He should never have been central to the investigation. Whilst the Gards were chasing him, the leads were growing colder by the day.

Bailey probably loved seeing himself on the news everyday, and probably kept the fires of suspicion burning towards him on purpose to bask in the media glare for longer.. He is an intelligent man, I'm sure that he saw no other outcome other than a total vindication from all aspects of this horrific crime.. That backfired on him spectacularly.

As much as Bailey is to blame for his own downfall, the book stops with the Garda investigation. The Gards should have dismissed Bailey and chased up all other leads still open to them.. They picked their man, they got it wrong. Tried to fit him up, they made a mess of it.

So here we are 20yrs later - Still at square one.

Her ex-lover had a receipt for a French telecoms company, he had work done on the 23rd and the technician confirmed he had been there when the work was carried out.

He would also have had to hire a car to get there, there was no record of him doing so and no car hire place reported a car being returned with blood traces inside it.

The murder appeared to escalate out of control, it’s not like someone creeped into her room and smashed her face in while she slept. It seems she was first attacked with a sharp object, possibly the missing axe. She may have been carrying that herself since there was no evidence the killer entered the house. The attacker then moved on to bashing her or throwing a rock at her from behind, likely while chasing her down the hill. When she stumbled on the barbed wire she was pulled back onto the ground and hit with a rock or slate. The killer then seems to have had time to go to the unfinished shed 20 yards away to get the concrete block to ensure she was dead.

If it was a crime of passion or a ‘contract killing’ you might expect it to begin with deadly force with a weapon brought for that purpose. This seems to have been an exchange of words or insults that escalated to an assault then to a murder once the seriousness of the injuries went over the edge.

Any ideas about the discarded bottle of French wine?

It was, I believe, about 70 quid's worth and was not on sale anywhere in Ireland at the time.

Incidentally, there are a number of inaccuracies in this IT report.

Yes, true. What I am getting at is that it seems far, far less likely that the perpetrator went there with the intention to kill.

I think the most intriguing part is that she was wearing her laced up walking boots and also a dressing gown. She wasn’t wearing socks though and walking boots would not be comfortable laced up without them. This all suggests to me she intended to leave the house but the person was not so familiar that she took her time to shout out ‘I’ll be out in a minute’ so she could put socks on.

You would also expect her to be inviting them in, rather than putting a bathrobe over her night clothes to go out to them. Probably someone she knew to see but wasn’t comfortable inviting in? There was some urgency if she didn’t have time to dress herself and possible signs of danger if she did in fact bring the axe.

I understand that she wasn't actually attacked in her home.

Her body was discovered by Shirley Foster, not a German neighbour.

Bouniol was not her surname from her first marriage. It was her maiden name.

She had not, at this time, returned to her first husband.

They also state that skin was found under her fingernails......this is the first time I've seen this claim. If so, then that is a definite source of DNA ID. But, perhaps its another inaccuracy?

It doesn't look like they had socks sewn in, there was fabric rather than leather around the ankle to make them more comfortable but they don't look any different from typical walking boots. You can see them very clearly at 29:14 in the first episode of the Jim Sheridan documentary.

Re. Bailey being rejected on previous occasions, that may be so, but in this circumstance it was very different for whoever was outside her house. She was on her own, the killer was trespassing in the middle of the night and it seems as though she may have confronted him while having a weapon to hand. The DPP's thinking on the case is just bizarre in several instances.

Wow,

Thanks for that. I think its the first time that such significant DNA evidence has been mentioned in this thread.

So we have bloodstains on her shoe and skin under her fingernails. It would be interesting to know more about what tests were performed on these samples. One would think that this would be enough to rule Bailey in or out.

They simply state that the samples could not be linked to any of the existing suspects. Was there a DNA database in existence at the time?

Have the samples been preserved?

There was a case in Nottingham where a young girl was murdered. Nobody was arrested but many, many years later, a man was arrested for Drink driving, he DNA taken and run through the database, subsequently bringing up a close match. However, he would have been far too young at the time of the offence so they began to investigate further. Turned out to be his father, who was jailed something like 25 years later.....I think its called familial matching....

As far as I know, all the French re-testing came to nothing. Anything the gardai couldn't test a the time was sent to the UK, samples were re-sent two or three times to the UK and some went to the US. The West Cork podcast says no DNA evidence was found by the French team except a possible unidentifiable sample from one of the boots that could have come from the autopsy team removing them.