Unsolved Irish Mysteries.

The Fiona Pender case may well be an outlier alright. There are a lot of contradictions there. The boyfriend is a very strange character but there must have been issues with the sighting of the two men and the 4WD. Otherwise it is hard to understand why he wasn`t charged. I haven`t read Bailey but Barry Cummins in his book says that there is no evidence that Fiona was placed in anything and removed from the apartment. That`s a strange thing to say if the sighting of the men putting the rolled up carpet in the 4WD is true.

A prepper and a fantasist. Quite the couple.

I don`t think there is enough information out there yet to accuse the Gardaí of gross incompetence in the McCarrick disappearance. As for Sophie, I think they did ok in the circumstances up the time of the first arrests, but they were let down by an under zealous DPP who was clearly agitated by the pressure being put upon him to bring charges by the boys in blue down in Cork and struggled to believe the testimony of multiple witnesses who bar one have all stood by their stories to this day. Many have since gone before judges and repeated their statements under oath and directly contradicted sworn testimony given by Ian Bailey. Their testimony proved convincing and none of the cases ended favorably for Bailey.

There were a few different threads about the Sophie case on here. There was one poster who operated multiple user names to make all sorts of ridiculous accusations about multiple individuals to deflect from Bailey. They later admitted that they were basically running a social media campaign in support of him here and on Twitter but then had a falling out with him. Then it appears that he may have turned up himself for a while. It`s hard to keep a narcissist away from where people are talking about him. Now all that remains is a thread that reads like a bad episode of Murder She Wrote where the basic plot is usually that someone gets murdered and for half an hour or so we see some convincing evidence about a particular suspect. But then Jessica Fletcher comes along and uncovers the truth to show the original suspect is really a misunderstood sweetie and the killer is actually the guy who you initially thought butter wouldn`t melt in his mouth etc..

The Jessica Fletcher types on the remaining active thread spend their time discussing garda corruption, imaginary boundary disputes, supposed murderous local drug barons, suicidal German musicians, some fella in Cahirsiveen who had a scratch on his face and mysterious French assassins. They therefore ignore the reality that there is an abundance of evidence that implicates the main suspect and so they must believe that the various witnesses are all part of a wider garda organized conspiracy to pin it on him. For some reason I keep thinking about that scene where Ted explains to Dougal that the toy cows on the table are small but the ones out in the field are far away.

You mean apart from the fact that he told a number of people that he went over there and murdered her. Or how about Jules`s statement that she signed in the presence of her legal representative where she admitted that when they came home from the pub, Bailey asked her to go over to Alf Lyons house with him, a journey that would have taken them past the scene of the crime. She further admitted that he soon afterwards got out of bed and she didn`t see him again for several hours. He also admitted that he got up and left the house.

Well we know that Bailey had the propensity to assault Jules Thomas at least three times. We know that he expressed a desire to kill somebody in his diary. Jules Thomas stated that on the night of the murder he expressed a desire to go up that laneway and past the victims house. We know he got out of his bed and left his house and also that his movements for several hours cannot be accounted for by anyone else. We know that in the morning he had a scratch on his forehead that was not apparent to anybody the night before. But on that very same night a different headcase went up there and murdered Sophie? How unfortunate can one be?

I'm not sure, I thought the area where the cross was placed was before she returned from Canada. I'm sure that was investigated into at the time. Or you'd imagine it was anyway.

I posted a bit of common sense in one of those threads once and was attacked for it, never went back. The thread was just full of fantasists. Now, from your post, I realise it was probably just one person.

There will never be new evidence or anyone caught for that murder.

If Bailey hadn’t lived nearby and kept the focus on himself for the last 30 years, this would be like the 100’s of other unsolved murders and disappearances here.

That doesn't mean she was the one who put the cross there 🤨

An article that will generate interest & clicks - That's the nature of online "journalism" these days.