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

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Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,199 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    Wouldn’t in any way try to justify a visit at either 2.30am or indeed 7.30am - who knows what was in the mind of whoever did visit her that late night/early morning- I was just more thinking out loud- IF Bailey had never met Sophie, he’d have no justification , no matter how tenuous , for visiting her home, regardless of the hour.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,199 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    There’s “some” evidence or testimony somewhere that the car didn’t move once home that night - whether it’s debatable evidence or reliable I just can’t recall - maybe someone can provide a definitive one way or the other.

    I know it’s not beyond the realm of possibility but “planning” this as an attack is for me, a very hard theory to take on board - drunk, after a night out - and anyway I’ve no doubt the car would have been covered in blood - impossible to clean up without chemicals which would have stank the car out - fabric on drivers seat destroyed - blood on wheel interior etc not a chance did Bailey drive that car that night after coming back from the pub



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,934 ✭✭✭chooseusername


    To place Bailey "at the scene" all they had was Marie Farrell's sighting of a man at Kealfada Bridge. The man was on foot, so once that man morphed into Bailey that was their story, and they stuck to it.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,934 ✭✭✭chooseusername


    " not a chance did Bailey drive that car that night after coming back from the pub"

    And drive the same car back to the scene some 12 hours later?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,184 ✭✭✭chicorytip


    We have testimony from Agnes Thomas, Sophie's friend, about Sophie's account of her meeting or interaction with this strange man who wrote poetry. They may also have met on Cape Clear island the previous summer at the arts festival there. Alfie Lyons was "ninety percent" certain he had introduced Sophie to Bailey at some point so given all that I assume Ian, at least, knew about her, what she did, where she lived and her habits / movements whenever she visited Ireland . It's a very small community down there.

    Ian, armed with his reams of doggerel verse, fancied his chances of getting off with Sophie both at a physical and intellectual level but was firmly rebuffed and reacted to this in a violent manner.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 337 ✭✭jesuisjuste


    Outside of the gate and the immediate surroundings of the body there is no blood anywhere except a couple of spots in the garden and at the door. So if being covered in blood was an issue then there would have been evidence outside the gate, going up the road, down at Kealfadda and at the studio at a minimum. There was none anywhere, so then it stands to reason that the perpetrator had no evidence on their person, and therefore Bailey could have used a car, perhaps even cleaned himself up a bit. Makes no sense to say he walked with this in mind. How would they know the car didn't move, makes no sense.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,199 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    I’ve helped clean blood from the inside of a car many many years ago (a friend of mine got attacked)- it wasn’t a huge amount of blood by any means - but there was no disputing the smell - anyone in that car for a few days after would either have smelt blood or strong cleaning fluids



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 337 ✭✭jesuisjuste


    He could have parked the car and gone for a walk before or after the murder. no evidence, all supposition it seems. Coming from the same people who on the one hand say he burned a coat and on the other they took it into evidence. It's Schrödinger's coat!

    Schrödinger's coat, fires without smoke, scratches with gloves on, it's like a Grimm fairy tale.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,221 ✭✭✭tibruit


    What nobody seems to have considered at all is that he planned it all, basically to commit the perfect murder. It`s not that far fetched either based on what he was writing in his diary, expressing a desire to kill and contemplating making a list of people he might kill. It also had a payoff for him as a journalist. He was a violent monumental narcissist and it takes very little to set them off. It could have been as insignificant as rejection on the street on the Saturday.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,199 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    Shirley if you’re the attacker in this instance you would have blood on your clothing, your hands/gloves.

    And put into the mix a rake full of pints, there’s no way the person left the scene without some visual evidence on them that they would have transferred to the car .



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 32,812 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    Armed with doggerel verse, at 3am? If you believe the plausibility of that, we could invent hundreds of similarly plausible scenarios for anyone half connected to the case.

    The Cape Clear stuff is well bogus. When pushed on the claimant Mark McCarthy was backtracking with all sorts of weasel words. Plus it does not correspond with Sophie's diary.

    "When I gave it I was confused about the woman in Cape Clear. I can’t say for sure it was her. I remember seeing the documentary on the news. There was an actor playing Sophie maybe I became confused by the two. What I mean to say is that I can’t say by one hundred percent that it was her."

    Was discussed earlier on the thread.

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 337 ✭✭jesuisjuste


    There's no way Sophie would have given Ian Bailey any of her time beyond a courtesy, he would have been a complete loser goofball to someone like her. She would have avoided him like the plague on first sight. It was chock full of people like him down there and she avoided them all. No way, poetry musings, as if.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,199 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    where have you read his desire to kill in his diaries? A link would be good at this point.

    The content of his diaries are covered quite in detail in this article- no mention of a desire to kill - sex yes- lots of sex- and mention of assault on Jules yes- but no “killing desire”
    https://www.corkbeo.ie/news/local-news/ian-bailey-wrote-wild-fantasies-28528719



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 337 ✭✭jesuisjuste


    He was a lazy loser who couldn't plan his way out of a paper bag. He cut his Christmas tree down a couple of days before Christmas, was always late writing the few scrappy stories and swanned around the place doing nothing of note for years.

    Suddenly this drunken buffoon in a matter of hours, planned out a perfect murder, executed it, left no evidence and set in motion launching a whole newfound second coming journalist career, and then immediately went back to being a complete buffoon turning up at the scene acting like a fool, and becoming the only reason that he was ever put in the frame at all. 4D chess I think they call it these days.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,221 ✭✭✭tibruit


    Photo 197 on the Koude Kaas page about the murder. Notice how he speaks to himself in the third person.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,199 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,221 ✭✭✭tibruit


    He was a lazy loser who schemed his way into Jules Thomas`s life and leached off her for over twenty years. He was also well versed in crime as a court reporter in Britain and would have been very aware of the power of DNA and blood evidence. It would explain how no trace of the killer was left behind at the scene, something that has many of ye on these threads a bit perplexed. Personally I think it was dumb luck, but still you couldn`t rule it out.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,221 ✭✭✭tibruit


    Yeah. It`s there. If you can`t be arsed so be it.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 344 ✭✭bjsc


    Pecout allegedly committed suicide because he had terminal cancer. His twin brother had apparently also committed suicide som years previously.

    Wolny died in Germany. It has always been stated that he committed suicide however I have been told, by someone who spoke to his brother, that he had a brain tumour.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 337 ✭✭jesuisjuste


    There is a difference between no DNA left behind, and no DNA found at the scene. One look at the state of the investigation and it's not surprising they found no DNA. Even a French investigator who had minimal access to the evidence and no access to the scene was able to pick up more DNA than the Gardai could in nearly 30 years.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 344 ✭✭bjsc


    I've always wondered whether this was, in fact, Tomi Ungerer.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 337 ✭✭jesuisjuste




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,199 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    so no proof Bailey wrote about his desire to kill people



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,221 ✭✭✭tibruit


    The only DNA Bailey left behind was probably on a few thorns amongst the millions present. This wasn`t a hand to hand struggle. Nothing under her fingernails, only her own hair in her hands. The DNA on the boot is irrelevant unless it can be shown to belong to someone who claimed they never met her and even then it can never be established that it was deposited on the night of the murder.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,221 ✭✭✭tibruit


    Thank you.

    He says to himself…"Who would YOU place on this list"

    He tells Fuller…"YOU saw her in Spar".



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,221 ✭✭✭tibruit




  • Registered Users Posts: 117 ✭✭Baz Richardson


    Indeed, I read that Daniel stated that Sophie was quite taken with Tomi and was planning to work on a project with him. Perhaps that is why Sophie went on her visit to the Ungerers on that occasion? But then I read that it was their first meeting, so was there prior contact by phone? I had always wondered if it is Tomi that Sophie was referring to, Agnes Thomas simply infers it was Bailey due to confirmation bias.

    The media report of the cold case investigation mentioned a jealous wife of a male acquaintance of Sophie.



  • Registered Users Posts: 117 ✭✭Baz Richardson


    So knowing that he had scratched himself he then voluntarily gave blood and hair samples?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 5,243 ✭✭✭Xander10


    This thread has been going around in circles for ages with nothing new of any worth



  • Registered Users Posts: 117 ✭✭Baz Richardson


    I find others take on this fascinating, whichever side they are on, or not.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,199 ✭✭✭Oscar_Madison


    It would appear logic doesn’t come into play when people believe Bailey is the killer



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 131 ✭✭Evergreen_7


    Tomi ungerer wasn’t a random strange man, they had mutual acquaintances iirc and they had been in contact before Sophie’s visit on 22/12/96



  • Registered Users Posts: 117 ✭✭Baz Richardson


    Yes, he was an experience reporter. He would know the score regarding evidence, crime scenes and the like. Then for him to volunteer blood and hair knowing that scene and knowing there would be a good chance of forensics finding something, is just far fetched for him to be the murderer.

    My belief is that it was his experience of such crimes that led him to offer blood and hair knowing that it would remove him as a person of interest. Of course he could not know that the guards were incompetent…



  • Registered Users Posts: 117 ✭✭Baz Richardson


    Have you seen any of Tomi Ungerer's work? I am not sure that others would agree with you that he couldn't be described as "strange" by other people.



  • Moderators, Politics Moderators Posts: 40,652 Mod ✭✭✭✭Seth Brundle


    So yet again, your "evidence" pointing towards Bailey is nothing but wishy washy nonsense which suits whatever biased opinion of him you have imagined up.
    There is absolutely nothing in that writing that points to him having been involved. In fact, he even states (and you quote him): "If I could kill anybody now" which to most people, means he wouldn't be able to kill!

    Stop assuming he is guilty and then finding the evidence to confirm it. That approach did not work for AGS so why do you think it would work for you?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 344 ✭✭bjsc


    It was not the first time they had met. She'd been there, with Tomi and Yvonne, in April 1996 and had also corresponded by fax with him about the death of a mutual friend.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 344 ✭✭bjsc




  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 337 ✭✭jesuisjuste


    The fact that they were able to pick up the DNA at all is what's relevant, regardless of whether it was from the murderer or not. The French picked up unknown DNA from a thousand miles away, testing a couple of exhibits from the scene. The gardai didn't pick up any, and have never bothered to check any further, why is that?


    I guarantee that there was DNA left at the scene, whether from Bailey or anybody else.

    They should test again, and continue to test as testing improves, and identify the unknown DNA and rule them in or out.

    Anybody on here who doesn't support the gardai being hounded to hell to track down every damn shred of forensic evidence, briars, gates, stones, clothes, blocks, roofs doors, boots, and test it, and test it again, and cross-reference it against anybody and everybody who was in the slightest way suspect, or present at the scene for any reason at all, cannot claim to be for justice for Sophie in my book.

    And Bailey in some drunken stupor told some local idiot that he saw Sophie kicking a cat down a back lane in Schull and the place goes wild.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 131 ✭✭Evergreen_7


    yes I have. It’s art. That doesn’t make him a killer, is there history of violence to women? Was there domestic violence? Is there anything except his work to suggest he was a killer?
    ridiculous.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 188 ✭✭PolicemanFox


    Ian Bailey as criminal mastermind simply doesn't pass the laugh test. I would believe the horse theory before that one. And you can't draw random crap out of his writings as evidence. He wrote dozens and dozens of books, it's verbal (or written) diarrhoea. If he did it he had to have been spectacularly lucky. It's an extraordinary allegation and you need equally compelling evidence to make it credible.

    But if we are talking speculative scenarios, one of those which does not seem to have been considered is a failed kidnap attempt. Sophie was a tempting target, a woman on her own in an isolated area, at a isolated time, with a wealthy husband.

    Quite a lot of French people knew she was in Ireland, she called almost a dozen people, by my count. Many in her husband's circle would have known as well as, possibly his mistress(es). There would not have been much time for planning. The killer took a ferry on Friday.

    Someone arrives and wakes her at an ungodly hour, forces her out of the house using a real or replica weapon. The killer or killers try to usher her into a car, their intention being to take her elsewhere, or even dispatch her elsewhere, perhaps off the isolated cliffs at Dunmanus, she is known to walk alone there. It would be the perfect contrived accident, foreigners are always falling off cliffs in Ireland. Perhaps this person had been following her all weekend, and intended the same tactic at Three Castle Head, but Sophie sensed something was up. Now the killer learns she is cutting short her trip and must accelerate his plans, so, having failed Sunday afternoon, he calls on Sunday night. Of course it goes wrong, because Sophie, being the person she was, would not go quietly. She laces her boots as a delaying tactic and then runs. After a chase and a struggle, there is now blood on the ground, so no chance of feigning an accident. The would be kidnapper/assassin must then kill her in situ to avoid being reported. He doesn't take her in his car, because it would contaminate it. He cleans himself first, or removes/replaces his clothes to avoid contaminating the car. He returns to the house to retrieve/clean any item he touched, perhaps the bottle of wine, which he fires out the window on his way down Kealfadda.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 337 ✭✭jesuisjuste


    I believe he shot himself in the head, is that correct? I wonder did Harbison do an autopsy, he was probably sick of the area at this point.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,675 ✭✭✭tinytobe


    I am aware of this. Tomi Ungerer was also known for his statements on sexuality as well as his interest in BDSM practices. In 1985 he was known to have visited a "lady" named Domenica Niehoff who ran a brothel in Hamburg's red light district. She often played the role of a dominatrix.

    It is not known if Tomi used her services this way, but there were certainly certain influences in a certain book of his in 1986.

    https://www.diogenes.ch/leser/titel/tomi-ungerer/schutzengel-der-hoelle-9783257020168.html?srsltid=AfmBOopacXsiV-lcUw2ExPy3l5fwFit3mVRDekDWf6iNNP49frUzJlO5



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 337 ✭✭jesuisjuste


    Other than Sophie sitting down with him on the day before she died, she had not really met him aside from the odd greeting as she went past. She had been eager to meet with him, he was fairly renowned at the time. She was more friendly with his wife. He discusses the meeting in his statement. It is possible she would have discussed him with others close to her I would think.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 188 ✭✭PolicemanFox


    I don't know how you can say a male DNA profile found on the body of the victim is irrelevant. That's some mental gymnastics.

    By your logic, DNA on the scene is irrelevant unless it belonged to Ian Bailey. In fact I believe the Gardai have the same narrow minded approach. I bet if Ian Bailey's DNA is not found on the block, we will hear no more about this fancy M-VAC machine. I wonder if a FOI request would be possible.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 188 ✭✭PolicemanFox


    I am embarrassed to even ask this question, but why would you assume interest in BDSM is evidence of murder? You might as well accuse Bill Hogan, because he was a cheesemaker - maybe she insulted his cheese? She had conversations with him too, I think she knew him better than Tomi too.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 32,812 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    I think the general point is that it is not evidence of murder, but people have tried to link Bailey to the murder for less… and this shows there were many characters in the area who such dubious links could be drawn.

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,682 ✭✭✭thecretinhop


    One thing that still gets me is the rage with the block. There were other items to kill her. It's called overkill I think.

    Ian Bailey I think he was too much of a dufus to do it

    Helen male violent past Helen female would explain rage but prob not physically able lift breeze block

    Ungier into weird sht

    Two lads suicide seems like a no

    Randy guard Gemma o Doherty had an inkling it was this

    On that point why was case so screwed up to hide what or was it to not stop freight train wreakage of chasing Bailey for it.

    I doubt the guards wud wreck so bad for any one other than a high up politician doctor or guard.

    The mind blowing part in this case is unraveling the corruption from the incompetence..



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 188 ✭✭PolicemanFox


    What's "dubious" about BDSM?

    EDIT,, Ok you're saying the link is dubious, fair enough. Apologies.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,221 ✭✭✭tibruit


    You need to take yourself out of current day forensic science and back to the forensic stone age that was 1996. Eugene Gilligan said in the Netflix doc that he required nearly a teaspoon of blood and hair samples. Now if you are Bailey, you know you are a suspect, you know you will almost certainly be asked for a sample, you know that refusing to give a sample will look suspicious.

    Sophie didn`t grab her killer by the hair, she didn`t scratch him. There was no sexual assault, something that Bailey knew and wrote about before it was confirmed by Harbison. Bailey`s injuries were a scratch on his forehead and possibly scratches on his hands. Not enough to leave behind the quantity of blood required by Gilligan. Not even close.

    Worst case scenario, if they did happen to find a trace of him in the vicinity, no doubt he would argue that of course he was in the vicinity, sure he was a regular visitor to his pal Alfie`s house. There are plenty of contributors to this thread who would happily accept that excuse and let him off the hook.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 32,812 ✭✭✭✭odyssey06


    How did he know where the scratch came from in a so called frenzied attack?

    Hair and blood could easily have been left behind on the body, under nails.

    Bailey had some knowledge of forensics from court cases.

    Does that mean he would be aware of such exact limitations of Garda tech in 1996? Nope.

    But even a basic knowledge of forensics of the period you would be aware the tech was advancing all the time.

    And we have seen samples were retested elsewhere with more advanced tech.

    As for no evidence of sexual assault, that was reported by other media outlets too at the same time. Where is your proof Bailey was the one to release that info?

    "To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." (Tennyson's Ulysses)



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