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

What's odd though is that the evidence (pathologist) says that she ate 2-3 hours before she died. Therefore she was either planning to eat the bread 2-3 hours after the nuts, which would indicate that she was already awake for 2-3 hours (how early did she get up given she was awake the previous night at midnight, perhaps 6 a.m.?), or she was attacked and left for dead, but didn't die immediately.

There is also the possibility that she was cutting bread and just left the knife there, perhaps hearing the phone ring or something, and never went back to clean up, less likely imo, but certainly possible.

Can I return to the shoemark for a moment. Footwear was received from 6 members of AGS up to and including 27th January 1997. These were handed to Liam Fleury from the Garda laboratory chemistry section. After that I can find no further mention of the shoe/boot impression from the crime scene and whilst Liam Fleury did write a report it was never disclosed and is now "missing".

It's odd alright, it looks like she had just cut the loaf.

If she had eaten the bread before the cereal you'd think she would have tidied it away as all the crockery and utensils had been washed up.

If she had eaten it with the cereal (unlikely) , or after, it would have been detected in the stomach.

So to me it seems she cut the bread, but didn't eat it, there are crumbs on the wrapper, and it appears it was a half slice from the bottom of the loaf.

There was nothing else around you would expect to see eaten with bread, like butter, cheese etc. The cheese was in the back kitchen on top of the fridge. ( only Irish people put cheese in the fridge).

Edit;

sorry Mackinac, just saw your post, I can't see any slice of the loaf there.

On the contrary the knife would /should be tested for fingerprints along with many of the other crockery out of the press-the likely theory early in the investigation may well have been the killer was someone she knew and quite possibly entertained in her home- it would have been madness not go test such utensils at least to confirm that they only contained her prints or DNA

I presume you mean eating not killing, but if not, to clarify death was 2-3 hours after eating, according to the pathologist, which would allow consumption of food all the way up to perhaps around 8.30 a.m. or a little bit later even. if we allowed for bjsc's proposal that Sophie may have been still alive at discovery, or died very shortly beforehand.

Not saying this is when I think she ate, just that it would be possible, definitely a more reasonable time though, and the brightness would be much higher at that time, it was bang on sunrise actually. The brightest time of the whole duration of Sophie's window of death. No lights on in the house too, makes you wonder.

Oscar_Madison-I agree the knife should have been tested and maybe it was? But given how the initial crime scene was handled I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t.

Bread like that’s goes stale pretty quickly too, there would definitely have been a difference if it had been sitting out all night or just a couple of hours.

Also, I realise the French like bread but that’s a powerful amount of bread for one person, especially as she was leaving the next day. I suppose she may have expecting Josephine Hellen to stay for lunch or something in the Monday.

Shoes / boots were seized from Jeremiah Scully, Karl Heinz Wohlny, Ian Bailey, John Hellen, Garda Malone, Garda Byrne.

Hard to know. Potentially matched one of them who got too near the body thus contaminating the scene accidently. Sounds like that's what might have happened if it wasn't mentioned again. Another potential clue gone if so.

I take it you mean by this that a garda was not actually a suspect in the murder, but rather the shoe prints came from a garda on the crime scene that day?

Well we will see what she says. I've said a garda would be reluctant to contaminate a murder scene if a person is obviously dead, and there are certain albeit rare circumstances where its safe to assume someone is dead without feeling for a pulse.

I also said if same garda did contaminate the scene you'd bet some idiot years later would try to argue they were responsible!

You are right to assume the Garda was reluctant to contaminate the scene, it makes sense based the evidence.

"Safe assumptions" are based on experience, how else would someone know. I don't think the initial gardai had that experience, it was their first murder, I think they were afraid to both contaminate the scene, and therefore afraid to look for proof of life, this makes the most sense based on the evidence imo, however there are other reasons I'm sure someone could come up with. They may have legitimately been scared themselves of the perpetrator still being there, and hesitant to do anything, look at Ulvade for example. I'm pretty sure I would have been scared in that situation tbh. I have compassion for those Gardaí.

Jesus you're giving me the heebie jeebies there, I apologise for being so dismissive about it earlier. I still don't think it happened that way, but I guess it is not a totally unreasonable assumption.

If the Gardaí at the scene were scared that the killer might be still around they'd hardly call the local doctor and priest to the area.