Murder at the Cottage | Sky

I've yet to see any poster here who is utterly convinced of Bailey's innocence.

I've seen quite a few in this thread just recently.

The posters who come on here convinced of Baileys guilt have yet to make any reasonable points as to why he should have been charged apart from claiming the DPP's report was a joke.

I agree. There was definitely not enough to charge and the DPP made the right decision. However, I would say that the DPP makes a number of stupid statements and assumptions in this report that indicate to me he is not very familiar with murder cases and especially criminal behaviour.

they'd be happy for an innocent man to go to prison just because he isn't likeable in their minds. This is how miscarriages of justice happen.

I agree. If you look at forums dedicated to the Jonbenet Ramsey case (as a good example) there are so many people who were angry that the DA in that case didn't charge them. It was submitted to a grand jury, the grand jury indicted them, but the DA decided not to indict them and was heavily criticised. I think the DA in that case was the only level headed person involved. Authorities should only charge someone if they are sure the person is guilty.

Simple fact of the matter is Bailey had no motive

You will find many cases that have no apparent motive. On TV everyone has a motive, but in real life it is much more complex. This crime is not an unusual one. It's just that you never see crimes like this on TV because they are so mundane. Sometimes they barely get reported on. For example, there was a prostitute (Belinda Pereira) savagely beaten to death in an apartment in Dublin a few days after Sophie's murder, but nobody paid much attention and her killer was never found.

Regarding motive, when a man kills a woman that is not his wife/girlfriend/relative, it is usually a sexual motive. When a rapist attacks a woman and she fights back and he ends up killing her, he usually will not rape her. Does that mean there is no motive? Of course not. The motive is still sexual assault even though there is no sexual assault. Some crimes can not involve sex at all but still be sexually motivated. Another example, the UK killer Levi Bellfield. He attacked some women as they walked home at night and bludgeoned them with a hammer. No rape. No sexual interference. But those were sexually motivated crimes. (The Yorkshire Ripper was another with a similar MO)

his behavior in the aftermath (reporting on the crime for weeks, taking two court cases against the state & media)

I would give, as a good example, the behaviour of Ted Bundy - he had a public rivalry with the DA, courted the media, claimed he was being framed by overzealous and corrupt cops, acted as his own defence attorney at trial etc. In Ted Bundy's case it is the behaviour we would expect from a narcissist who wants to maintain and exert control.

its highly unlikely he even knew her.

We have Alfie and Leo Bolger and other witnesses. But even if we didn't believe them, whether Bailey knew her or not is immaterial. By his own admission, he knew of her. You can murder someone you don't know personally. Plenty of murders are stranger murders, especially crimes against women in which the motive is sexual.

no DNA evidence of his was found at the scene

Due to TV and movies we have come to expect DNA in every case. In actual fact, most cases don't have DNA evidence. Circumstantial cases are regularly brought in court. Some people have indicated that it was unusual that in Sophie's case, no DNA was found. The fact is, in similar murders, usually DNA is not found.

there's no credible witness statements,

Because people choose not to believe certain witnesses. For example, we have 4 witnesses who say Bailey had a fire around the back of the Prairie over the 25th-26th period.

To top it off he was happy for the investigators to take his DNA & was willing to conduct a lie detector test.

The DPP, in one of his stupid statements said his willingness to give DNA was indicative of innocence. A huge percentage of cases in which DNA convicts are cases in which the killer voluntarily gave his DNA to the police. Guilty people regularly do this.

Guilty people also regularly agree to be polygraphed and regularly fail. It's very common for murderers to say they will take a polygraph initially, but when push comes to shove, they end up not taking it. In Bailey's case, his polygraph comments are clearly empty words.

its certainly highly unlikely behavior from someone who would have carried out this crime.

Well, I would disagree. Among other things, I would expect the killer in this crime to 1. Be obsessed with the crime and in the aftermath of the crime be trying to find out what the police are doing and how much they know. 2. I would expect him to comply with requests for DNA/hair because he would believe refusing those requests would bring undue attention to him. 3. I would expect him to claim he is willing to take a lie detector.

I've been doing some research on his newspaper articles and he always used Eoin Bailey, even before the murder. In one article I found, he was credited as Eoin O'Baille. He has barely any articles published before the murder - just a tiny review of a hothouse flowers gig and another of a ronnie drew gig. These were in the Southern Star, hidden away in the back pages on someone else's Entertainments page. He says in an interview that he specialized in reporting on musicians and makes it seem as if he did many articles like this, but there are only two - hothouse flowers and Ronnie Drew.

In fairness to him, he also had a large article about the Michael Collins movie (it was released in 1996 and premiered in Cork) in The Southern Star.

The Cyberpub article was the only one he was ever asked to do for the Tribune before the murder, probably because no other reporter could be arsed in 1996 to write about the Internet.

Prior to the night of the murder, he was doing the sort of thing you would do when you're in school and working on the school magazine/school newspaper. (At least that's what I did when I was in secondary school :D)

IMO, prior to the murder, Eoin Bailey was not a working journalist. He is trying to make it seem as if he was a journalist who just turned his attention to the crime that happened nearby, In actual fact, he wasn't a proper journalist since the 1980s in England and even then, he was mostly just writing local filler articles for sale to other newspapers.

You may have seen that someone else posted a link where Shirley is talking to a French documentary maker. However much she dislikes being thrust into the limelight and is shy and reserved, it didn't stop her casting aspersions on Bailey when she would have been well aware that there was no real evidence of his having done anything.She did accompany Alfie to the libel trial, where he gave his 90% certain evidence. Just as much as, according to Dwyer, Bailey was trying to distract people suggesting a French angle to the killing, Shirley and Alfie were trying to distract people from themselves suggesting Bailey had something to do with it.

But why just Bailey "could certainly have flown into a murderous rage rendering him capable of obliterating her face with a concrete block"? Why not any one or two of a number of people who we know did know her well. Alfie, Leo, Shirley, Finbarr etc.

Just because of some ridiculous theories and lies by people like Detective "Colombo" Dwyer( his arms were destroyed with scratches) were a list of 50 suspects reduced to one after two weeks. TWO WEEKS?

If you genuinely feel that this was a normal investigation and you don't have an ulterior motive, you can't be helped.

.... Back that up... If, you are so smart.

Lol

So you won't clarify what Garda was having relations with whose wife despite claiming that was instrumental to this case not being solved.

Joker

What exactly is contradicted by video evidence? The scratches?

How long after the fact can a statement be taken before it loses credibility? What is the time frame?

If you meet someone at a party and then a year later, the police ask you if you met that person at that party, is your statement completely incredible?

I would not trust Jim Sheridan's judgement on anything much. He has no knowledge of criminal cases and one statement from him in particular shows him to be quite clueless. He made a big deal about a "crime of passion" and asked the French prosecutors if they would charge Bailey with a crime of passion. The whole discussion is idiotic and indicates he doesn't know the first thing about murder cases. Jim is a dope when it comes to crime. A truly great director though.

I agree about Ralph Riegel. I rely on his book above anyone else. Of course, I rely for facts on the documents, DPP, GSOC etc.

I'm doing some detailed timelines on reddit so I just came across this piece of info a few days ago when I was researching for that:

"Asked had she told gardaí Mr Bailey could have pushed out her car without her knowing and freewheeled it down the road, as he had done in the past, she said she did not think she said that and also denied saying Mr Bailey sometimes went “walkabout” at night."

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-20300124.html

It's not a well-known piece of info. It apparently is what she said in her statement (during her 10th Feb arrest) but in 2014 she says she doesn't remember saying it, but does not deny saying it. It's from the part of the 2014 trial where she claims the gardai doctored her statements, even though she signed them all at the time.