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

Skid marks on the lane by the gate into Sophie's lawn.

Gardaí attributed them to Shirley Foster when she first saw the body, but Shirley never mentions stopping at this point, She said she drove past the body and through the gate before she stopped. It's unlikely she would skid to a halt there and then continue on another 10-20 yards before stopping again to investigate. Those skid marks could as easily be accounted for by a car taking off at speed up the lane to turn, as skidding to a halt going down the lane.

Did someone, a regular visitor perhaps, open the gate in the lane, drive through and park where the tyre marks are and enter Sophie's lawn through the gate just visible on the right?

Edited to add 2 photos by @bjsc back in March.

The red circle in photo 2 below is roughly where Sophie's body was, edited out

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There wasn't really any "someone" TO drive down the lane, though; there was only one permanently occupied house up there.

I mean, obviously, there was a person there that night or early morning who committed a horrible crime; it might have been more than one, I suppose - a pair of criminals…even would-be burglars, perhaps. For the moment I'm going with the supposition that the criminal was NOT Alfie Lyons or Shirley Foster.

After all, two of the three houses were holiday homes, only occasionally used. Breaking into holiday homes was, and is, unfortunately quite common. (As I know to my cost - our own little holiday cottage, also down a remote lane but much nearer to Dublin, was repeatedly broken into until we put a solid steel door on it.)