Sophie: A Murder in West Cork - Netflix.

The horses on the land. Did they belong to Sophie?

I've written a similar scenario like this often.

Based on this, and given the amount of alcohol he had in him after a night out in the pub and the hiking through the rural charms of nocturnal Ireland he would have had to have done to get to Sophie's, it's highly unlikely but not impossible that Bailey did it.

I think it would also all boil down to what options of cleaning himself up Bailey had at the studio, how thorough he could have been, etc... Also, he wasn't exactly sober, so doing all this and leaving no trace on him at all doesn't sound plausible at all.

Since you mention Jules, suppose just for speculation's sake, she was in it as well. Suppose, Jules drove him to Sophie's, Bailey murdered her then and there, and Jules then drove him back, helped him clean up, dispose of the clothes and cleaned the car behind the studio?

Of course we don't know what Jules motive could have been at all if she was in it as well, but also we don't know Bailey's motive.

If you're talking about these horses in the photo earlier in the thread;

The horses are on Alfie's land, the red line marks Sophie's western boundary. As far as I know Alfie did not own horses, so I would presume they are either Leo Bulgers or Finbarr Hellen's horses. Alfie and Finbarr Hellen had a Boundary dispute around that time.

The shed between the two houses was owned by Alfie, the only access he had to that land and the shed was along the rear wall of Sophie's house.

A few years later that shed and some of the land around it changed hands from Alfie to Sophie's son Phillipe.

I've always suspected there was some encroachment on Sophie's and Alfie's land, which came to light when the properties changed hands in the early 90's.

Sophie might have been trying to re-claim her property. She also shared commonage with Finbarr Hellen, and may not have understood what that entailed.

Sophie had been trying to cultivate a garden by the western gable and the lawn to the front of her house and it looks like she had a new gate erected down by the pumphouse into her front lawn from the lane which may have caused friction.

This gate is shown as wide open in the crime scene photos.

Your explanation sounds very plausible to me and I'd say you're correct in your thoughts.

That is unless Jules is an excellent actress, really able to do some acting, something not uncommon in the artistic field. However I don't think that's the case here.

I listened back to the West Cork podcast.

Partly because I was in the area last weekend and could now put a face on the places I had heard about before, the village of Schull, Kilfadda Bridge etc.

I didn't bother going near the house even though I had plenty of opportunity to, that would have been just weird I thought.

Anyway I'm as convinced as I was the first time that Bailey is just such a good suspect for the crime.

The history of violence, the questions over whether he knew her or not, his arrival time at the scene and behavior at the scene, the admissions that he did it.

No one else gets remotely close to being such a good suspect.

I believe Jules too. I accept that she thinks Bailey didn`t do it. I wouldn`t see her as an accomplice. She lied for Bailey initially but she may have just done that because she genuinely thought he was innocent. But it is all belief mechanism not based on any fact. The only fact is that Jules has no idea where Bailey was for several hours on the night of the murder. She didn`t come downstairs and have a chat with him in the kitchen at 4 AM. She didn`t watch him stroll up from the studio at 5-30. She slept through the night.

You might bump into a man in sackcloth carrying a placard that the declares the end of the world is nigh. He may convince you that he really believes it. You may even believe it. But the sun will still rise tomorrow.

Pre-planning or not depends on when the rejection came. If the rejection happened on the Saturday afternoon, then he would have been stewing things over for a day and a half. The detour on the way home from the pub becomes quite sinister then and he clearly hadn`t Alfie in mind at all. It is hard to get away from the fact that shortly after midnight, a local violent headcase was mulling over going up that lane way and that during the following several hours when that individual was missing from his bed, a violent headcase did indeed go up that laneway.

Jules burned no clothes

I`d say the only person that might have got a look at what was burned on that fire was that other night owl Santa, although he was probably heading home tired at that stage and didn`t pay much attention. You don`t really think he put up smoke signals in the daylight do you?

To complete the picture on scenarios:

* They (one or both) didn't do it but knew who did it (and were threatened into keeping quiet) or

* They (one or both) are somehow implicated as an accessory themselves after the fact

Also ; They (one or both) didn't do it and didn't know who did it.

They ( one or both) are not implicated other than discovering the body

There were two instances of violent assaults committed by Bailey on Jules - that we know of. It's likely there were more that we don't know about.

Who says he was in a "drunken" state that night? Are there any witness statements regarding this? Did his state of inebriation render him legless? Did he lapse into a coma when he arrived home from the pub whatever time that was, prior to or after a possible detour to Sophie's?

But who would have heard him?

A sleeping Alfie and Shirley over 100m away?

Remember Shirley had to beep the car multiple times to get Alfie's attention when she discovered the body and he still didn't hear it.