Sophie: A Murder in West Cork, is a three part mini-series on Netflix about the tragic
loss of a French woman, named Sophie. She was killed outside her holiday home in a small
town in West Cork, Ireland called Schull just two days before Christmas in 1996.
Sophie married and had a son, but was divorced a year after his birth. Sophie remarried a
famous French producer: Daniel Toscan du Plantier. Life with him was in the spotlight, and according
to Sophie s sister, Sophie like to be alone. So Daniel bought her a place in West Cork
where she would escape to. Where she wasn t Sophie Toscan du Plantier. She was just
Sophie. Usually, she would go there alone, but this
time, she had asked her family to join her. Unfortunately, they were unable to do, so
Sophie s final time in West Cork was alone. Detective Superintendent, Noel Smith, the
Garda Chief Superintendent, led the investigation. There were no signs of a scuffle inside the
home, but oddly enough, her door keys were found on the inside of the door. Yet her body
and blood was found down ways from her home, leading investigators to assume that someone
came to the door, and one way or another, she went outside, where she was killed.
Sophie was scraped, seemingly by briars or thorns, and her skull was crushed, seemingly
from a slate and a cinderblock. But there was no witness and no DNA to link a killer.
So everything there was circumstantial evidence. The Garda went to every house within 10 miles
and asked them where they were that night. Their initial list was 54 suspects, that narrowed
down to 10, and pretty quickly they went through all those to no avail.
A freelance journalist named Ian Bailey eventually became the focus of the investigation. But
in the beginning, Ian began putting out articles suggesting that Sophie had parties and lovers.
But according to her family, there was just one. Bruno Carbonnet. Sophie had separated
from Daniel and spent some time with Bruno, but eventually, broke up with him. Bruno was
a weirdo, who had sent Sophie a screw in the mail one time after they breakup. Whatever
that means. So Bruno was a suspect. But Bruno claimed
that he hadn t been to Ireland in three years, and then produced a receipt showing that he
was in Paris at the time of the murder. So Bruno was not the killer.
Another of Ian Bailey s theories was that Sophie s husband, Daniel Toscan du Plantier,
sent a hitman. His logic was that if Sophie died, Daniel would not lose half of his estate
from a divorce. Daniel would also receive a significant amount of insurance money upon
her death. And oddly enough, when she died, Sophie s
family went to Ireland to identify her body, but her husband, Daniel, did not. So some
people thought that was shady. But Sophie s friend went to her house in France,
and determined that Daniel was devastated. He was experiencing true grief, and the way
he handled the shock of her death was avoidance. However, the Garda had received a called from
a woman going by the name Fiona, saying that she saw a man in a long coat, in a drunken
state, waving his arms around during the middle of the night at Kealfadda Bridge. Detective
Noel Smith then went on the news and asked the woman to call again, so she did a second
time anonymously. She then called a third time from her home, which the Garda was able
to track. The anonymous caller, Fiona, was actually Marie Farrel.
Marie was out on a drive with a former lover, and she didn t want to get in trouble with
her own husband or to get the guy in trouble. But she did feel obligated to report what
she had seen. Which was a man in a long coat near the Kealfadda Bridge.
Later, Marie claimed to have seen the man again in a shop, ran outside, told the Garda,
and they told her, that the man s name was Ian Bailey, a freelance journalist in the
area. Just like Sophie, Ian was a blow-in, meaning,
he was not from West Cork. Ian was from England. After a divorce there, he moved to Ireland
and eventually found his way to West Cork. Ian was a weird dude. He wore a long coat
that many described as more of a cloak. And he carried a walking stick which some described
as more of a druid s staff. There were stories of Ian walking around at
night in just his underwear, arms up, howling at the moon.
And Ian often wrote poetry. He would call bars to a halt and read his poetry out loud,
and do the same other places, such as at the butcher s shop. Basically, some people found
Ian to be quite annoying. Jules Thomas had a home in West cork as well
as a smaller studio about a 100 yards away that she rented out to Ian. But eventually,
Ian and Jules became partners, so he moved in with her, into her main house.
Ian was the first journalist to the crime scene. Some claimed that he knew too much
too soon, and he got there faster than some believed that he should have been able to
get there. Then, surprisingly, Ian left pretty quickly, which was a strange thing to do considering
the gravity of the breaking news event. In short, Detective Noel Smith and the Garda
focused their investigation on Ian Bailey. Ian had a history of domestic violence with
Jules. And they lived only a few miles from Sophie.
On the night of the murder, Jules originally said that Ian was there all night with her.
And so did he. But then their stories changed, saying that he woke up in the middle of the
night, went downstairs to write an article by hand, and then went over to the studio
in the morning to type it up on the typewriter. According to the Garda, Jules told them that
she noticed a fresh cut on his forehead that morning. Ian told police that a Christmas
turkey kicked him when he was killing it. Ian also had scratches on his hands, which
he claimed that he got from cutting off the top of a pine tree for a Christmas tree.
The Garda also found a fire pit behind the studio, with a burnt mattress and buttons.
But no usable evidence could be found in the ashes. However, it s worth noting that a woman
claimed to have seen the fire burning a few days after Sophie s death, yet Ian claimed
the fire happened several weeks before her death. So there s that.
Ian claimed that he never met Sophie. But Sophie s neighbor, and the neighbor s gardener
both claimed that Ian was introduced to Sophie. Sophie s friend said that Sophie told her
about him, and one of Sophie s colleagues, Guy Gerard, said that Sophie had called him
and mentioned the writer, Ian Bailey. And last but not least, the Garda put together
a reconstruction video with a Sophie look-a-like, and that look-a-like has a vague memory of
Ian running up to her while shooting the reconstruction video, and telling her that he had been on
a walk with Sophie on that very road recently, almost as if he was bragging about killing
her. So all in all, it seemed like Ian was the
killer. And supposedly, the entire town came to believe so.
The Garda arrested Ian under Section 4, which allows them to question people for 12 hours
just two times. The first time was the second month after Sophie s death. They questioned
him, then let him go, and the DPP did not charge him with anything.
As time would pass, Ian would admit to killing Sophie several times to different people.
One time, he said that he killed her as a way to revive his career, but he later claimed
that to be sarcasm. Another time, Ian accused a man named Billy
of killing Sophie in great detail. Billy felt as if it was an admission of guilt. An admission
as to what he himself, Ian, had done. During New Years, two years after Sophie s
death, Ian invited Richard and Rosie Shelley over. He pulled out a folder of press clippings
from over the years and grabbed Rosie saying: I did it, I did it, I did it. Granted, Rosie
did not tell the Garda that story for six months, so take that with a grain of salt.
But there s one more example of a type of confession. Ian drove home Malichi Reed one
day. And on that ride, Ian told Malichi that he had killed Sophie.
So a year her death, the Garda brought Ian in for questioning a second time. But once
again, the DPP did not charge Ian with anything since the evidence that they did have was
circumstantial. In 2003, seven years after Sophie s death,
Ian Bailey sued nearly ten papers for libel. Since there was never a criminal case, this
was the first time that the public got to learn the details that the Garda had against
Ian Bailey, which was very circumstantial, but also very detailed. So even though Ian
Bailey took the papers to court, it basically turned into a murder trial of public opinion.
Marie Farrel was brought to stand to say that she had seen Ian Bailey on the bridge at 3am.
And she added to her story, saying that Ian Bailey has harassed and intimidated her since
then, telling her to retract her statements. During the libel case, Ian s past domestic
violence also resurfaced as well as very dark journal entries and poems about that violence.
In the end, Ian lost the libel case. But to the public s dismay, the DPP once again did
not charge Ian with murder. Then Marie Farrel came out and retracted her
statement about the bridge. Because apparently, Ian is a tall man. But Marie never thought
that the man she saw was tall. The Garda had pressured her to her falsely identify their
prime suspect. And she had went along with it.
In 2014, Ian began a second civil case, this time against the Garda. His star witness was
Marie Farrel. The Garda pressed Marie to say who was in the car with her the night she
saw someone on that bridge at 3am, and this pushed her over the edge. She had had enough.
She got up and walked out of court. They brought her back in and asked her again, and she named
a man. But it was a lie. So that ruined her credibility. And it ruined Ian s case vs the
Garda. Once again, Ian owed a massive amount of court fees for having brought this to trial.
So, there are reasons to believe that Ian Bailey may have been the killer. He arrived
to the scene faster than some expected to be possible. He knew things at the time that
some believed he should not. His alibi as to where he was the night of the murder changed
over time. And his claims to have never met Sophie were countered by several people. Ian
confessed to killing Sophie to people, and on top of that, years later, Arianna Boarina
gave more evidence. Arianna was a friend of Jules daughter and
she had flown there to spend Christmas with them the year of Sophie s death. Arianna remembers
seeing the scratches on Ian s arms. And she remembers that she saw a coat being soaked
in a bucket in the shower. A coat that was never found. A coat that was possibly burned
in the fire pit. But at the end of the day, the Garda botched
the crime scene and the investigation by losing evidence such as the bloodstained gate. And
by pressuring witnesses to give false testimony, such as Marie Farrel.
So yes, there was a lot of evidence to make one believe that Ian Bailey killed Sophie,
but ultimately, it was all circumstantial, so the Director of Public Prosecutions in
Ireland never charged Ian Bailey with the killing of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.
The Irish system is one of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. But in France, it is different.
In France, people are charged with an intimate conviction - a bouquet of evidence, which
there was. So in 2019, 23 years after Sophie s death, French courts found Ian Bailey guilty
in absentia since he wasn t there. The French courts sentenced Ian to 25 years in prison,
but Ireland refused to extradite him. So Ian Bailey has never spent time behind
bars for the killing of Sophie, but he has been a prisoner of sorts. A prisoner to Ireland.
Sophie s family believes that Ian committed the crime. But some in Ireland now wonder
if Ian was convicted in the court of public opinion for who he was as opposed to what
he did. Let us know in the comment section. What do
you think?