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Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s wife and family mourned her for a long time and sought answers, especially from Briton Iano Bailey, who lived in the same area. Many viewed Mr. Bailey as the prime suspect in the case, but he always insisted on contributing to the murder of Mr. Toscan du Plantier.
Irish police refused to prosecute Bailey for lack of evidence, but French police were more determined. Disappointed by the Irish police decision not to extradite Bailey, a French court convicted him in 2019 of murder in his own absence.
Mr. Bailey is still a fugitive and lives in the same province in Ireland.
The last day of S. Toscan du Plantier
Mr. Toscan du Plantier had acquired a house in the southwest of Ireland in which he escaped from the intense life of France. She was a well-known Parisian public figure married to the famous film producer Daniel Toscano du Plantier.
It is likely this pressure that forced her to flee to the Irish province, where she hoped to spend Christmas without her family and friends. Sometimes he would go out to the city to buy groceries, but he spent most of his time at his house, which overlooked the sea.
However, on the morning of December 23, 1996, at 10 am, a neighbor on the side of the road near his house noticed a woman lying on his body. At night someone met Sophie and killed her. Signs of violence on the body revealed that the attack was brutal. The facial injuries were so severe that the neighbor could not even officially recognize her.
The local community was shocked: no killings had been committed in the area for decades. Perhaps this was due to the fact that fatal mistakes were made in the early stages of the investigation immediately after the crime.
The pathologist arrived at the crime scene only 24 hours later, and all this time, only Sophie’s body, wearing an elastic and a T-shirt, lay outside, where it was found. As a result of this delay, much forensic data was lost and experts were no longer able to determine the exact time of death.
Autopsy report
More than 50 injuries were counted in Sophie’s body during the autopsy. His face was severely broken and his head was studded with stone and a concrete block. He had broken his fingers, probably because he was trying to defend himself from the blows.
His clothes were torn and his body was shattered. It is believed that he crashed into nearby coniferous bushes and the barbed wire fence through which he tried to escape. This was confirmed by traces of blood found on the fence’s spikes and gates.
No signs of sexual assault were detected, but blood was found on her body whose DNA did not match Sophie’s. But what worried the local police the most was that there were no suspects. Sophie spent time alone and the murders in a quiet local community were unheard of.
For this reason, and because of the nature of the murder, this case received a lot of attention. The public and French officials pressured the Irish police to investigate the crime as soon as possible and arrest the alleged killer.
Sophie Toscan du Plantier nužudymas
Police investigation
The police initially tried to find out the movements of S. Toscan du Plantier in the last days of his life. Security camera records showed that he flew to Cork on December 20, 1996. The police questioned several witnesses and approached the public for help, requesting any information they knew. Officials received many anonymous complaints by phone, but most were rejected.
Among the journalists who wrote about this crime, there was an Englishman who lived behind a valley in Sophie and was able to see her house. His name was Ian Bailey. She had previously worked as a journalist in England, but moved to Cork in 1991. She decided to quit journalism and pursue gardening and poetry.
Police knew that most of the victims were familiar with their attackers and initially turned their gaze to Sophie’s husband. However, when flight data confirmed that he could not be in Ireland at the time, officials removed him from the list of suspects.
The police then began examining the physical evidence and began looking for people with injuries and scratches that could have been caused by barbed wire and bushes or by Sophie herself as she tried to defend herself. Officials noticed scratches and cuts on Bailey’s hands.
Growing suspicions
When the police asked I. Bailey where these injuries came from, he replied that he had cut off his hands in preparation for a turkey for Christmas. He also claimed that the scratches came from climbing a fir tree growing in his garden when he wanted to cut its glass for Christmas.
Weren’t there too many overlaps? A ranger discovered that the tree I. Baley climbed could not have caused the injuries seen on his hands. Also, on the eve of the murder, people who interacted with Bailey said they had not seen the wounds on his hands.
Dissatisfied with Mr. Bailey’s responses, the police turned to the articles he had written about the murder. Officials were impressed by the abundance of detail in these articles, leading Bailey to meet both Sophie and the crime scene. Furthermore, these publications were released very shortly after the crime. This meant that Mr. Bailey was able to carry out a great investigation in a very short time or he guessed everything with incredible success.
Or it could have meant he was a murderer. Numerous facts testified against him and on February 10, 1997, he was arrested. However, he was later released without charge. He was arrested again in January 1998, but was released again.
Mr. Bailey offered his lock of hair for DNA testing to show that no blood had been found on Sophie’s body, and consistently claimed that he was not involved in the murder. But it was surprising that he enjoyed the attention. Several members of the local community reported to the police that Bailey confessed to killing Sophie, but Bailey himself dismissed those statements as black humor or drunken sapaloons.
There was even a witness who saw I. Bailey near Sophie’s home on the night of the murder and claimed that he seemed nervous. Bailey was also in the spotlight of the police for the violence against her partner, artist Jules Thomas. She, by the way, did not confirm that the night of the crime, I. Bailey slept with her and said that he had not been at her home most of the night.
French conviction
However, all of this evidence was circumstantial and the police had no direct evidence linking him to the murder. The 24-hour delay in finding the body left no forensic evidence to prove his guilt. In 2001, the Irish Public Prosecutor’s Office declared that due to lack of evidence, the police would no longer prosecute Bailey for the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.
Not only that, a witness who claimed to have seen Bailey at the crime scene the night of the murder in 2005 withdrew his testimony, saying they were forcibly removed by police. Could it be that the police, under a lot of pressure, tried to blame the local eccentric of the fault, even though he was not the most suitable candidate?
A French magistrate, with no progress in the case, issued an arrest warrant for Bailey in 2010. However, in 2012, the Supreme Court of Ireland rejected his extradition request. The same decision was made again in 2017.
Despite Bailey not being extradited, a French court in 2019 convicted Bailey in his absence. Bailey was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison. After the conviction, Bailey told The Guardian: “All they did was convict an innocent person who had nothing to do with the crime.”
The endless secret
So is the Sophie Toscan du Plantier case still unsolved? A blood sample from a stranger found on Sophie’s body is yet to be identified. The doors with traces of blood were taken from the scene of the crime by the Irish police, but then they were lost somewhere. I. Bailey’s story seems unconvincing, but no one can prove it not to be true.
Perhaps one day the true murderer of a woman will come to light. But 25 years after the murder, the chances of proving something are very slim.
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