Cold Case Review of Sophie Tuscan du Plantier murder to proceed. **Threadbans lifted - see OP**

Nothing is said about John at the time. He was there on Saturday and Sunday but is not mentioned in relation to the Monday. However in her statement to the French authorities, many years later, Josie says that he was there and was on the tractor with his father.

no idea.
im replying to your assertion that a contaminated crime scene yields more DNA that is useful. The opposite happens.

I don't know if anyone checked to see which way the gate swung if free. In the photo the sheep wire is keeping it open and it would have to be pushed into that position. But there is evidence that there was activity against the gate during the assault and that may have pushed it back against the wall. There was a poster way back on some thread who visited Alfie and said they had to push a part block with their foot to either open the gate or keep it open, I can't remember which. I'll see if I can find it. Dont hold your breath though.

is it not possible that the block found by Sophie’s body was used to prop the gate open?

I’ve always thought it strange that some people were surmising that whoever did this went to the shed and removed the block - like you I would be of the view that it was already laying around close by.
The only other reason I can think of for someone removing a block from the shed is that they were at the shed for a particular purpose in the first place - theft? hiding drugs? It doesn’t make sense to me deliberately going to the shed for the block- was t there a large stone close by to the body also?

I assume that this picture was taken demonstrating the state of both gates after Sophie was found, is this correct? In this case the common entry gate was wide open, and the gate to Sophie's field was wide open. Whatever about the common gate, there is almost no reason for Sophie to have her gate open. She was diligent about both gates being closed, but her gate in particular, only she would have the authority to open and close it, or if she allowed other people to use it, would definitely have demanded they keep it closed afterwards. Also note the large rock available to the right of the gate, I wonder if that was used as a prop sometimes too (even though it looks like it may not need it). It is possible that it swung open as she was exiting it of course, but it looks to me that it is pushed all the way back almost as far as it can go. Similar to @Thespoofer 's question above, where would the saddle point of this gate be?

According to Shirley Foster the common gate in the lane was wide open as we see it in the photos. She also said that to go back up to alert Alfie she came in through Sophie's gate into her lawn and along the back of Sophie's house by her back door. There was no shortcut from Sophie's lawn up by Alfie's shed to his house. She doesn't say if she found Sophie's gate open, but obviously if it was closed she would have had to open it, which I would think was unlikely. Sophie's gate closed onto the pumphouse and from what I can tell the slide bolt securing the gate to the pumphouse would have engaged with the "missing" block. Similar to the other gate the rock is too far from the gate for it to be used to keep it open as was the block supposedly used to keep the common gate open. If the block was used to keep the gate open and taken to batter Sophie, then the gate would have swung shut .

From looking at the photos available there does not appear to be a door to the pumphouse. So access would have to by lifting the roof. Once the pump is working there would seldom be a reason to access it. The last time I accessed my pumphouse was when the pipes froze a couple of years ago. The roof appeared quite flimsy and light, a frame of 4X2 ins boards covered with shed felt.

I'm struggling to see where the shortcut is even to get up past Sophie's house, I presume the wall that is across the whole frontage of Sophie's property was built later, and there was relatively easy access between her field and house? I don't really see it myself on any of the pics. The field was very rough as well, Shirley must have had a lot of familiarity to go that way, with a killer wandering around perhaps moments before, rather than back up around the road the way she came. In a panic you would presumably take the way you felt was the most safe? Why not even drive back up since she was in the car beeping the horn? Hard to understand why she wouldn't have at least banged on Sophie's door as she was going past too.

None of this 'contamination', if it was so widespread, affect the items that were tested.

The 'contamination' angle seems a red herring… if the search wasn't done.
What was the standard practice in 1996? They were not looking for touch transfer type DNA I'm guessing?

Why would the scene be any more "contaminated" than other Garda scenes in 1996?
How "uncontaminated" can any outdoor crime scene be?

So what potential "contamination" are you talking about that occurred here?

contaminated in this context means that any dna which might be found in a fingertip search, for example, would be disregarded because the scene wasn’t preserved. The killers dna probably was there somewhere but it would be useless in court anyway.

I've had a go at marking a map from about 2018/19 I think, before the wall in front of the house was extended over towards the shed. From the gate Shirley could see Alfie's house, and headed straight for it (blue line). She may not have been very familiar with the terrain or simply in a panic. There is no direct access, short cut, to Alfie's house through the red hatched area. The lane up to Alfie's from Sophie's rises sharply and his front yard looks to be level with Sophies roof, (so about 4 or 5mtrs higher than Sophie's yard). Shirley had to veer off right there and go along the back of Sophie's house and up the lane to Alfie's. In other words when Alfie wanted to visit his shed he had to go down his lane to where Sophie parked her car and double back along the back of Sophie's house.

Shirley said in a statement that she pointed out the blood stain on the back door to Alfie, so she must have seen it then.

Jumping back to this for a moment. Dr O'Connor was the third person to get there, is that correct? Who called him to go there, was it one of the other Garda at the station?

Seems like he was only there for a very short period of time too, I would have thought his presence to be of the highest importance. One of the gardai said that the blood was fresh on her face, what did the doctor say, is this captured anywhere, he saw her barely 15 minutes later.

Dr Harbison conducted the post-mortem a good 24 hours after the local GP had examined the body. Presumably the "freshness" of visible bloodstaining etc would have deteriorated by then, plus the body temperature must have significantly dropped.

This is not in his statement, which was made at the time. He makes no comment on a possible time of death.

Differences in blood colour can come from veins vs arteries (oxygenated vs not). If Harbison didn't mention a severed artery then I assume it is older blood (which perhaps started coagulating turning brown) vs newer.

If the lighter blood was coming from her nose, as she was lying on the ground, I would assume that that meant her heart was still pumping at least for a few minutes while she was in that position, because blood can't flow up and out her nose without pressure, but I'm not a trained specialist. We discussed back in the thread some ways that she probably could have survived for a brief period after the assault.

I still can't understand why the doctor didn't wait around for longer, and try to figure out more about when she died etc. 15 minutes, the first murder in a century. Seems wild to me but I suppose he had a long list of patients.

Harbisons report;

Time of Death

7. When I visited the scene, the body had lain, scantily clad in the open for 24 hours, since its discovery and probably several more before it was discovered. It still had the remains of a recently ingested meal in the stomach. If Ms. du Plantier had died after breakfast on the 23rd, her body would still have been warm to the touch; if it were her evening meal, she would have died within two or three hours of that meal, and if she lain all night in the open, would therefore have been cold and stiff, on discovery, the weather being cold and frosty. The circumstances would therefore favour death the previous evening or night.

 "The circumstances would therefore favour death the previous evening or night."

He wouldn't have known she was on the phone at midnight on Sunday. so sunday evening is ruled out.

Had he known what she eat and drank and when on Sunday afternoon and evening he could have determined the time of death more accurately.

The priest was specifically told not to touch her.

Do we know who told him not to touch her?

As far as I know the block was part of the pumphouse, that is if it's the cavity block we're talking about.

The killer removed the cavity block with force from the pumphouse having to cause some distruction to the roof of that little pumphouse.

That's the knowledge I have.