Cold Case Review of Sophie Tuscan du Plantier murder to proceed. **Threadbans in OP**

I am aware, and to me that indicates a recent death but I have no forensic training. I may be wrong but as far as I have seen neither the DPP, or the pathologist pulled in the time of death based on any of the evidence discovered. The guards of course pulled it in, but that is just a reflection of what they believed based on the other evidence they looked at, not based on the facts of the forensics as far as I can tell.

I do think that some of the evidence could provide further clarity on time of death though if revisited thoroughly.

Scene preservation essentially means having only minimal necessary people attending the scene doing necessary activities, everyone else should stay out, and nothing should leave the scene if possible without forensic examination.

I believe determining that somebody is certainly dead by one authorised person walking from beyond the cordon, reaching from a distance to check a pulse for e.g. is a necessary task, but tbh I don't think it would have mattered either way, and perhaps the guards on the scene felt that way too. They should be transparent about that though, we shouldn't have to guess.

What's the point of having a time of death if you have no hard evidence to link the crime to someone? In this case the boot print (alleged or otherwise) was one of the few actual hard evidence clues! In fact it may have been the only actual clue! Unless someone can think of another one?

Everyone makes typo errors, including myself on a regular basis!

You have it your way. I know my job and I know how it should be done. I was taught that preservation of life is paramount, which doesn't mean that you don't do everything humanly possible to preserve the scene. But I would certainly not want to face the family of a victim who had died because I had made an assumption that life was extinct from a distance.

And that will be my final word.

@bjsc thanks for reply good few posts back regarding files the guards have and not releasing to DPP. some great posts here also. I'm still at loss though about various angles we keep trying to eek out when we won't have any reasonable change in for example time of death etc.

What I think we need to know is following

-has guards much other detail not out in public on other evidence , avenues for to review other suspects from the original time to now

-do we have exact concise list of physical items which remain in Garda procession for enhanced DNA analysis and what is timeline for completeness of such techniques on these items.

-will these techniques delay the cold case review file with DPP etc or when expected to conclude

-will Jim Sheridan's french angle be considered a possibility

I feel without any new credible evidence which can be truly verified in way back up original circumstantial evidence along with DNA , it's almost unthinkable the DPP can perform the U-turn that people think to steer towards IB.

The early morning time of death and food found in body is certainly a really important angle for me think it further opens lots of other suspects but I don't have anything as we don't have any true evidence. If number of people have passed away and others who are maybe in somewhat accessories to crime or protecting someone..they clearly feel it's not as bad to carry that guilt as it would be to someone who actually performed this horrific crime.

Like does anyone actually think we can get something new out of this case.. that original DNA checks hasn't..I know thats bleak.. but this case is so seriously compromised it maybe too late revive in way we want. We don't understand our legal system use multiple circumstantial evidence to string story together without some form of DNA go with it.

So I'm guessing it would surprise you to know that the exhibit list makes no mention of a boot mark recovered from the scene nor of a single item recovered from the fire at The Studio.

Thanks for that critical information. It doesn’t surprise me. To clarify , the picture of the boot print does exist though, and it would be possible to carry out further analysis of that image to uncover additional information about the boot worn by the assailant. There are certainly images of Bailey from the timeframe, and I presume many other suspects as well, which could be cross-referenced.

At for the boot lace eyelets from the fire, is there any description within the exhibit list which contains anything left from the fire. If not, that would indicate to me that the Gardai did not consider it pertinent evidence, or it led them away from the line of enquiry they were following and so they didn’t bother to capture it at all. It is forensic evidence of the suspect after all, way more valuable than hearsay and he said she said. If they didn’t see value in retaining it, we should give much weight to it either.

The boots have gone down in importance since yesterday anyhow

Nothing new around here

I agree with you @tobefrank321 it is one of the critical pieces of hard evidence, and is still something that could be pinned to a suspect, whether one believes that it's Bailey, or someone else, it would be extremely helpful to identify the boot size, and brand etc. I personally still believe the evidence is there to do this identification based off the pictures available. They are clearly not Nike Air Max for example....

Time of death is very important though as if you can identify it really helps to eliminate candidates early on and enables the investigation to proceed much more quickly. In addition if the time of death is confirmed then it enables further scrutiny of tenuous alibis. Without weighing in on his guilt, if the time of death could be conclusively given as prior to 1.00 a.m., it would completely exclude Bailey as an example, if it could be identified as at say 3.30 a.m. it would very much put him way up the list of candidates.

FWIW, although Harbison didn't reduce the timeframe of death, I believe given that Sophie's last meal was 2-3 hours before her death, we can reasonably exclude the timeframe of around 4.30 to perhaps 8 a.m., I think it's highly unlikely that she got out of bed to eat nuts and cut up a loaf in the middle of the night (i.e. between 1.30 a.m. and 6 a.m.). The possibility can't be totally excluded, but statistically is unlikely. This timeframe however doesn't really exclude anyone that I can tell unfortunately, so is again probably moot, unless we had access to the plethora of alibis gathered to look for discrepancies.

There is a handful of other forensic evidence still available however, unless or until it has been excluded I personally think it is still extremely valuable.

@bjsc had just told you this;

So I'm guessing it would surprise you to know that the exhibit list makes no mention of a boot mark recovered from the scene nor of a single item recovered from the fire at The Studio.

That's fair, I misinterpreted, or passed too quickly through the comment. Having said that, I would have thought there should be photos of the remnants and location of fire.

The bigger question I would have though is why are there no items from the fire in the exhibit list, in particular the boot eyelets, has anyone got a reasonable explanation for that?

Even more curious is that there's retired Guards involved in the case, interviewed about the case years later, and they mention the contents of the fire trying to link it to Bailey in an incriminating way, yet they actually didn't log what they found as exhibits for evidence when they were working on the case!

Perhaps, I would still consider that under the subset of nothing of evidentiary value. Nothing to add to the case in finding justice for Sophie.