Murder at the Cottage | Sky

As soon as you turn off the 'main road' you would soon realise you were on a road to nowhere .

You would hardly drive a kilometre into the unknown.

There are places to turn around as can be seen in the 1995 aerial view.

Edit;

Sorry that came out a bit small .

You can go to GeoHive maps and zoom in for a better view.

So, a respected Irish newspaper is reporting a new lead this morning.

Jim Sheridan has asked the French Police to look into the person positively identified by Maria Farrell as being the person she seen acting suspiciously before the murder..

Ok... This going too be a hard sell considering Maria Farrell's reputation is thrashed.

But consider this....

Maria Farrell contacted the Garda confidential line several times stating that she had seen a male in a long black coat down by the bridge on the night of the murder. I believe her... She had no reason to lie, and as far as she was aware, her true identity would never be known.

Poor Maria, not being able to retain the common sense she was born with, decides to respond to a Crime watch plea to contact the Gards again, and decides to use her own house phone... So with her anonymity busted, her troubles began...

*Note: By this point, the Gards had Bailey down as their man, still couldn't charge him, with the national and international press scrutinizing their every move (every mistake). They were already aware of his scratch hands, his conflicting statements of his movements on the night of the murder, if they could only get a witness to put him in the vicinity..

The anonymous caller describing a male in a long black coat down by the bridge must have been orgasmic for the Gards. They just had to get her to identify him as Ian Bailey.

Ok.. So we all know the sordid details of Maria Farrell's ever changing statements. From being the star witness against Bailey, to fully retracting her statement(s) saying she was threatened by the Gards etc...

Without doubt, the woman cannot be trusted to string two words of the truth together. Her reputation shot to pieces, totally discredited.

But..... This is what grates me..

I believe she seen somebody down by the bridge that night. Why would she bother phoning the Garda confidential line otherwise? She wasn't looking for a reward, as she was an anonymous caller. Remember, she was a respected business woman within the community up to that point... (probably having an affair too, but that's her business).

As previous reports show. Maria Farrell described the person loitering outside her shop watching Sophie as short, medium build with a sallow complexion.. (This was before the Gards jogged her memory to fit Bailey's 6'3 height of strong build & white caucasian).

When the case imploded as Farrell withdrew her statement, she cited being bullied by the Gards to change her written statements to finger Bailey as the man she seen by the bridge that night, as well as possibly the same man that was outside her shop the same day Sophie was being followed and later murdered.

She has now stated that she can identify the man she seen following Sophie that day. He is a Frenchman she pointed out from photographs shown to her..

Regardless of the absolute mayhem she and the Gards have made of this mess. Sophies Family deserve every lead to be followed up, even it that lead runs too near home.

The French judicial system will not follow up on this lead.. Shur they have a man already convicted for the murder.

This is Irelands Maddie McCann's case... So much is covered up, so much smoke and mirrors.

The thing that keeps coming back to me about Marie Farrells' miraculous conversion to IB's cause is the details of the intimidation she gave the gardai, 17 official complaints and a solicitors letter. Also the fact that the young woman who worked for MF said she did seem frightened of Bailey and asked her to ring the gardai when he came in.

The most telling thing in my mind is that she told the gardai that he had said to her that he had investigated her past and found she had defrauded the UK social welfare system when she had lived in London. She was investigated for claiming something like 23K that she wasn't entitled to. Why would she tip off the gardai about her running away from prosecution in the UK? She told them Bailey said people have been extradited for less. This does not sound like something she would drag up about herself just to make the intimidation more believable. I think she was intimidated and harassed by him. She said he told her 'I know you saw me at the bridge' and then shouted 'I had no blood on me!' or words to that effect. He allegedly told Yvonne Ungerer the same thing, that he had been seen at the bridge that night but he had no blood on him.

So, if the intimidation did happen and he was specifically telling her to withdraw her statement about him being at the bridge, I think he knew she saw him. None of the other witnesses, even a teenage boy, who made highly incriminating statements about him were intimidated, that we know of. It was this particular statement he wanted to kill off very, very badly. According to Michael Sheridan, it was also when Jules was told that IB was seen at the bridge that she asked for a break in her questioning and consulted her solicitor. When she resumed her statement she had changed the story entirely, saying he had gotten out of bed and had a cut on his forehead that wasn't there the night before.

From the GSOC report:

Marie Farrell also accused a detective of attempted sexual assault when she was supposed to be cleaning toilets at work, only cleaning toilets was not part of her job and she got the layout of the toilets wrong. She also claimed another detective greeted her naked in a holiday rental she was cleaning. She couldn't remember the date or even the year this happened. A witness told IB's case against the state that MF told her she would benefit financially if IB proved his case against the state.

I don’t think you are thinking logically about this. MF could not benefit in any way from her first two anonymous calls, nor her other statements about an unknown man following Sophie and hitchhiking around 100m from where IB was actually staying after an unplanned party. Neither she nor the gardai knew he had slept on the couch at that address on that morning and had no car to get home. That came out later when Gardai made house to house enquiries and was told by the other people in the house. Yvonne Ungerer’s statement corroborated MF’s account of him saying he knew he was seen at the bridge.

On the other hand, MF allegedly told a woman who used to work for her and who gave sworn testimony in court, that IB could get millions if he won his case alleging police corruption and she (MF) would get some of it. MF also admitted she first contacted IB’s solicitor the same day she was arrested for driving with no insurance.

She didn't even identify/describe Bailey at the start, so if you think she was being truthful there by your logic it could not implicate Bailey.

https://magill.ie/archive/falsely-fingering-sophies-killer

If it was so anonymous a call how did the Gardai know she was the person who made it?

And what sort of problems would Gardai help a murder witness out with? And if Bailey was intimidating and interfering with a witness, why isn't he in jail?

Apparently she'll lie to setup a case against Gardai for corruption, but not plant a lie in a murder investigation that she thinks she might use to her advantage later. Of course she could benefit from it, some people get a kick from such attention and who knows what other 'problems' it might lead to the Gardai helping you out with. Maybe she was telling the truth originally and then something mysterious happened and her short sallow skinned man became Bailey which is pure nonsense.

Was she lying then, lying now, or just lying all the time - Who knows?

This is your believable untainted evidence implicating Bailey?

Ms Farrell said she had seen a man across the road at the time Ms Toscan Du Plantier was in the shop. On the day she answered the questionnaire she saw the same man in the street in Schull and pointed him out to gardaí. Mr Looney said this was Mr Bailey.

He said Ms Farrell kept talking and talking and he was writing as fast as he could. He noted on the questionnaire that Ms Farrell was very helpful and had said detectives should call to her to her. Mr Looney said the questionnaire, which contained two different coloured pens, was filled out on the one day.

He said while answering questions about the first two sightings of the man she then left the shop and went onto the street and said he was out there. He said she then pointed out a man he knew to be Ian Bailey but Ms Farrell did not mention a name.

However he said he could not explain why there was a reference to Ian Bailey on a second page of the questionnaire when at the time Ms Farrell would not have known Ian Bailey.

He was asked by counsel for Mr Bailey "How did that get in there?" Mr Looney said he could not explain it.

He agreed it would tend to suggest that she knew Ian Bailey.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0212/679704-ian-bailey/

She didn't even identify/describe Bailey at the start, so if you think she was being truthful there by your logic it could not implicate Bailey.

I don’t understand you, she said she did not know the man which means it could not implicate Bailey? That’s exactly the point I am making, if she was being induced to implicate Bailey why did she make these statements on the 25th and 26th of December about a man she could not positively identify?

If it was so anonymous a call how did the Gardai know she was the person who made it?

There's so much written about this case, it's worth getting stuck into it. She made an anonymous call from a phone box to say she saw a man in a long black coat at the bridge at 3am. She said she would not make an official statement about this but she would call back. She didn't call back. The gardai then appealed for her to contact them on crimecall in January 1997. She rang again, anonymously and giving the false name Fiona from a phone box. She said she would discuss what she had seen with gardai but could not make an official statement. She then rang again to cancel this meeting, but this time she made the mistake of ringing from her house. Gardai were able to trace this call to her and contacted her to say they had identified her as 'Fiona'.

Re. the article excerpt you posted, I'd say it is quite likely she knew who Ian Bailey was by the 17th of January, he was the local reporter who was all over the biggest story in the country. The events described are confusing, she identified IB in the street on the same day the questionnaire was being filled out so I am not sure why it is so inexplicable that his name came to be on the form they filled out on that occasion.

MoonUnit75 "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."

Hang on. He has two alibis. One that he was conveniently getting a telephone installed at his Paris apartment and a second that he was attending an art auction in the South of France. Now to me there is something fishy about having two alibis where the same person is hundreds of kilometres apart at the same time.

Where is the account of him being in the south of France? The phone installation was on Monday the 23rd so it is more likely that he was at the art auction over the weekend and was home on the 23rd to sign for the phone in person. The telecoms guy confirmed he was present in his apartment in Paris when the phone was installed on the day the body was discovered.

She testified at the libel trial, in his judgement, after hearing all the evidence and Marie's testimony, he said he thought MF did see Ian Bailey at the bridge that night. In the case against the state, the gardai denied they showed her the video of the Christmas swim in late December as she claimed.

The Gardai who cant account for how Baileys name appeared in the log of their chat with MF re witness questionnaire.

The Gardai who cant find the pages from the evidence book covering some of the MF interviews.

You are strangely credulous of the Gardai here.

MF did not see Ian Bailey outside her shop. Some amount of hoops to be jumped through to explain away her description being so far off the actual man.

It's not possible the gardai knew IB slept on the couch after a random party on the 21st/22nd 100m from where MF said she saw a man hitching, when she made that statement on the 25/26 December or that Bailey hadn't driven there himself. At that point there were many potential suspects, I think it was Leo Bolger who said the Gardai seemed so suspicious of him and questioned him so much that he contacted a solicitor in case they charged him. MF made that statement two or three days after the murder. The gardai didn't find out that Bailey hadn't been at home like he said he was until sometime around mid-January.

So, my questions are, why would Bailey completely omit that he had been at that party on the night before the murder and spent the night? Why did he lie about being in bed all night on the night the murder took place? He only corrected the statement about being at home all night on the Saturday night after bizarrely questioning the people in the house after the gardai had been there, to find out what they told them. I think the most likely answer is that he recognised seeing MF or her van on both occasions. We know from his own admissions that he placed himself elsewhere for each of these sightings and both accounts were false.