All language subtitles for Murder.At.The.Cottage 02EnglishEnglish

The following programme contains
distressing scenes.

It's her mother...

I'm looking at
some photographs of Sophie
in her mother's arms.

And then
she becomes a mother herself.

I'm aware that I'm gonna have to
show more images and photographs

that...

..show how brutal her murder was.

And I know...

..that her mother and father
and brothers and son

will be looking away.

But I think it's necessary

to give you an understanding
of how deep the pain was and is.

They still live
in grief and despair.

It's hard to explain grief...

I know that,
when my mother died,

you want to have some connection
with the person who's left you.

Abandoned you...or been taken.

And...

For me,

for everybody
who has a loved one gone,

they have to believe that
they're still in touch with them,

there's some agency,

that the dead still live somewhere,

in heaven or in our head.

And I think a murder
annihilates that for a family.

It kills the living
and the dead person,

in some kind of profound way.

I think a murder
leaves such a huge,
mind-blowing sense of injustice...

..that until justice is done...

..you can't fully grieve.

A post-mortem examination
is to be carried out

on the body of the French woman
who was murdered in West Cork.

Thirty-eight-year-old
Sophie Toscan du Plantier
from Ombreux near Paris

is believed to have arrived here
a few days ago.

There were two stones.

One stone presumably had been used
to give her the initial injury...

Yeah.

..and then the second
larger stone or block

would have been used to give her
traumatic injuries to the head.

Having beaten Sophie unconscious
in a brutal assault,

her assailant walked 20 feet

and calmly picked up
a concrete block

which he dropped
directly on her skull
to end her life.

The 14-foot-long gate had smudges

which would be consistent with
a bloodied hand touching it,

so presumably
she had blood on her hands

from presumably
putting it to her head
after the first assault.

That gate had to be seized,
which it was,

as evidence.

The amount of briars at the scene
where she was there...

There are two or three stands
of barbed wire through the briars.

Yeah...

And it was our impression
that she was fighting...

Mmm.

..because her clothing
was pulled so tight on the wire

that I had difficulty
trying to undo it off the barb.

Mm-hm.
It was that tight.

From my viewing of the crime scene,

the culprit had to have
injured himself with briars.

In 1996,

the advent of DNA really was
only in the start in this country.

The UK had it a little further,

America had it a little further,

but mostly we dealt with the UK.

I cut the briars away
and brought them to England.

Statement of evidence
of Detective Garda John O'Neill,

Fingerprint Section,
Garda Technical Bureau.

"On the external side
of the back door,

in the vicinity of the door handle
and on the door handle itself,

I saw what I considered
to be a bloodstain.

The direction of the bloodstain
on the door was consistent with
a bloody hand or glove

having moved the handle
in a downward direction

with a knuckle
having made contact with the door."

Expecting the worst,

forensics pushed open
the bloodstained door
in trepidation.

There was no forensics in the house.

There was no fingerprints,
there was no blood spatters.

There was no sign of a struggle,

there was no sign of
anything untoward.

Had the killer
gone back into the house...

..to arrange the scene
after the murder...

..there would surely
have been blood spatters,

because there was no other way
that individual
could have killed Sophie

without them being
blood-soaked themselves.

There was a bloodstain
just where my hand
meets the door,

where my knuckles
meet the door here,

so whoever it was
had blood there on their hand.

Now there was also...

..a rubbish bin here
that wasn't disturbed,

and it didn't look like
anything was disturbed out here.

Now, it didn't look like
anything was disturbed
in there either.

So, seems to me that the killer
came back to the house...

..after the murder.

But I don't know... Nobody knows.

The Irish police,

they believe that Sophie
went down this field.

They found a stone
with a drop of blood on it.

There are so many questions...

If she was fleeing her killer,

why did she run away
from her neighbours?

Unless it was a deliberate idea
to get her down to the gate,

away from the neighbours,
Alfie and Shirley,

and the Richardsons up there...

So, maybe the killer deliberately
wanted to get her to the gate.

The forensics team
had their own theory.

Because we didn't find
a lot of evidence,

or any evidence to suggest
aggravation at the house...

Mm-hm.

..we came to the conclusion

that she may have
walked from the house.

She's in night clothing,

and it's a cold,
very, very cold night.

And we were trying to understand
why she would have
come out of the house

in simple night clothing.

She did have boots on,

but to me it seems like
a very long walk...

Like, a couple of hundred yards...

Did she walk? Was she driven?

Was she opening the gate
for somebody in a car?

What could lure Sophie down here
in the middle of the night
in her pyjamas?

..removed from the scene
this morning

after the state pathologist
Doctor John Harbison

carried out
an examination of the area.

A post-mortem
is being carried out now
at Cork University Hospital,

and the results should be known
later this afternoon.

Madame du Plantier
had arrived in Cork last Saturday.

Did she scratch

so that under the fingernails
of somebody who has been assaulted
becomes very important?

Was there blood
under the fingernails?

As there were some strands of hair
taken from Sophie's gripped hand,

this was the biggest potential
piece of evidence the police had.

Impossible...

Aussi...

♪ So, here it is, Merry Christmas

♪ Everybody's havin' fun

♪ Look to the future now... ♪

As joyful scenes like these
were being repeated at airports
all around the country this evening,

airline and ferry companies
were bracing themselves

for one of their busiest ever
Christmas homecomings.

I've been waiting for this
for six months.

Just can't wait to get them home.

After they received the news,

all the family wanted
was to get to Sophie.

But when they arrived
at Cork Airport,

the police
escorted them into the city,

where, over the next 48 hours,

her mother, her father, her brother
and her aunt Marie Madeleine

were interrogated as to
who would have wanted to harm her.

All they wanted
on this sad Christmas
was to protect her,

even in death.

The circumstances surrounding
the murder of Madame du Plantier
are quite mysterious

as to why she should decide
to spend Christmas alone
in West Cork

when she had a child
and a husband in France.

This morning,
the body was removed from the scene.

Sophie had booked
a flight back to France
on the 24th of December

to spend Christmas
with her husband Daniel.

Strangely,
he didn't accompany her parents

on their harrowing
excursion to Cork.

I think a lot of people
would have found it quite unusual

that Daniel Toscan du Plantier
did not travel to Ireland

in the immediate aftermath
of Sophie's murder.

Since then we've heard from friends
that he just wasn't in
any mental or emotional state

to be able to come over and do it.

But at the same time,

it was commented on
that he hadn't come over.

It was as if
all the tension from the murder

burst out
at the Christmas swim that year.

In Schull Harbour,

adults, grandparents and children
threw themselves with abandon

into the saltwater.

But one observer noticed something
very telling for the police.

Statement taken by
Inspector Patrick Finlay
and Sergeant Denis Treacy.

"On Christmas Day,
I went to the pier in Schull

where there was
the annual Christmas swim.

I had my father's video camera
and videoed the swim

and spoke to the people at random."

First casualty!

This is the Christmas Day Swim 1996!

"I also filmed Ian Bailey
and he recited a poem."

What about a poem?
A limerick?

Chin-chin.
Chin-chin.

Go raibh mile maith agat.
Happy Christmas.

"When he finished reciting his poem,

I stopped recording
and wished him a happy Christmas

and extended my right hand out
to shake hands with him.

He had his hands deep in his pockets

and he took out his right hand
and shook hands with me.

The back of his hand
was covered in visible scratches,

and I thought
they were very unusual.

They were random squiggles."

The police already knew that
Ian Bailey was the first journalist
at the scene of the crime

just after two o'clock.

The question was,

did the scratches
put him there before ten?

Statement of Marie Farrell
taken on the 22nd of January 1997.

"I reside in a rented house
with my husband Chris
and five children.

Myself and my husband
run a drapery shop
at Main Street, Schull,

in the premises formerly known
as Dan Griffin's Pub."

Your life changed...
Yes.

..on the 21st of December 1996,

because you were in your shop...

I was in the shop that day, yeah.

You were standing outside
with Dan Griffin, I think.

That's right, yeah,
because it was so quiet.

Uh, he owned the premises,

and this woman came into the shop,
browsing around...

She was probably mid-thirties.

And at the same time,

there was a man
standing across the road.

At the time, I didn't think
that he was following her.

But he was watching her.

And, uh, the woman,
she didn't buy anything.

She browsed around, then she left.

And she turned up right
and walked up Ardmanagh Road.

Mm-hm...

And as she did that,

the man who was across the road,

he also walked across the street

and he went up Ardmanagh Road.

And at that time,

Dan Griffin said to me,
"He's a strange character."

That's odd...
Yeah.

But you see, it was the winter...

If that was the summertime,
he wouldn't have stood out,

because Schull
would've been full of tourists.

The faces that pass in the dawn,

the faces of the outsider
are lodged in the memory

until that person
leaves town or is identified.

Soon,

the identity of the blonde woman
would become tragically apparent
to Marie Farrell.

The Guards
were appealing for anybody,
you know,

to ring with information...

And...

But then I thought, I wonder,
is there any connection?

I still didn't know
it was the same woman
who had been in the shop.

I knew on Christmas Eve
that it was,

because there was
a photograph of her,

and I thought,

"Oh, that's the woman
that was in the shop."

Sophie Toscan du Plantier
had arrived in Ireland last Friday

and was last seen alive
on Saturday doing some shopping.

On the line now...

So, then, Christmas morning...

I rang the Guards.

Statement of Marie Farrell.

"What drew my attention to this man
was his clothing.

He was wearing a long, black coat
which extended down to his ankles.

He was also wearing
a black flat beret

with no peak on his head.

He was very tall.
I could not say in measurements.

He had sallow skin,

he didn't have a beard
but he appeared
as if he was unshaven."

Tres belle.

So, on the day after Christmas,

Sophie's family were still waiting.

Waiting to be allowed
to see her body in the morgue.

..sort of an indication
that it was down at Toormore,

which is down the way
we're gonna go.

On December the 31st,

uh, Detective Garda Culligan
and myself

went to Jules Thomas' home
in Lissacaha, The Prairie,

and interviewed Ian Bailey,
who was in the house at the time.

Ian Kenneth Bailey.

Manchester.

27/01/1957.

We asked him to account for
his movements

on the night
of the murder of Sophie.

"Sunday 22nd of the 12th 1996...

About lunchtime,
I killed three turkeys.

I was at home with Jules until 9pm.

Then we went to the courtyard
in my Fiesta,

stayed there until 12 midnight.

Left together,
drove home through Lowertown,

turned right, took the shortcut
by the creamery and over Hunts Hill.

Stopped there on the brow
as the full moon was out

and then home.

We went straight to bed.

Don't know if the girls
had stayed up that night.

I was awake at 8am, 9am
on Monday the 23rd.

Got up and made coffee..."

There were visual scratches
in his arms,

which were, in my opinion,
briar scratches.

I asked him how to account for them.

"I climbed up a 20-foot tree
to cut the top off for Christmas,

Sunday morning."

And Ian at this time was sort of
beginning to smell a bit of a rat,

that he might be
on the suspect list

because of the way
they were talking to him.

I certainly did not believe
he got the scratches
from this palm tree,

as I've never seen briars
growing halfway up
the side of a palm tree.

Ian went down the road,

this was before Christmas,

to take the top off a tree there.

And he had his shirt sleeves up,

and so he had these little,
tiny pine needle scratches
on his arm.

Nothing like
a hand or nails would make.

It was on his hairline,

and he got it
from a turkey kicking him.

You know,
they kick around once they...

He said the claw
had caught him there,

and I can well believe that.

I grew up on a farm.

Now, when the turkey's being killed,
it flaps furiously.

And if you stand close to it,
you'll get a slap of the wing

and it will hurt...

But you won't get scratches...

You know, it is the belief of
many of the investigators

and myself as well

that it was briars
where those marks were sustained.

Did it ever cross your mind
that Ian could be the killer?

No, I didn't doubt him.

I think he would've been a mess
if he'd been...

If he had done something like that.

He wouldn't have been
able to keep it from me.

Emotionally, I could have seen
that something strange had gone on.

No, we were very close.

I, I... You know...

I don't think that really...

..his manner
was any different to normal.

If he'd known her,
if he'd even met her,

he would have told me.

Yeah.
He'd never met her.

And I would never have...

..allowed a murderer in the house
with my three daughters.

Insane...

You know?

I love them so much.

The interesting thing is that
Ian continued to write
for the papers

despite being a suspect.

Bailey was unaware that
every new article he wrote
for the papers

implicated him more and more.

12th of January 1997.

"It's now three weeks

since a neighbour
found the badly-beaten body
of the French documentary maker

only yards
from her rural retreat at Toormore.

Gardai have made
no significant breakthrough
in the hunt for her killer."

Little do you know, Ian,

12th of January...

They already think it's you.

"During the week,

Chief Superintendent Noel Smith
said Gardai were acting on a hunch
that the killer might be a local

and was being shielded."

That's you, Ian.

They came back here
a couple of times,
the Guards.

They wanted to take forensic tests.

I was quite happy to give samples,
knowing I had nothing to do with it.

And Ian as well.

So, the police sent off

Ian Bailey and Jules Thomas'
blood and hair samples,

which they gave voluntarily.

And I suppose
the police were wondering,

would their prints
be on the bloody rock?

And while
they were waiting on the results,

they went looking
for his long, black coat

or any bloodstained clothes.

The Guards couldn't pull Bailey in
just on scratches alone.

They hoped and prayed for a break...

..and then they got one.

The police got a phone call...

..from Fiona.

Fiona was brief but devastating.

This was another sighting
of the man in the long, black coat.

But this time
it was at Kealfadda Bridge

on the night of Sophie's murder.

Fiona quit the call abruptly.

That phone call
was like an earthquake
in the police station in Bandon.

Kealfadda Bridge in West Cork
is the only road
from Schull or Goleen

that leads to Sophie's house.

In the aftermath of the murder,

the area
was swarming with journalists.

And as we were
scouring the countryside,

um, we quickly came across a rumour
that a woman had seen a man

washing his boots
at Kealfadda Bridge.

And nobody seemed to know
who this person was.

And the Gardai were following up
this angle as well.

It was a critical detail,

and so appealing
that a man should be seen out
in the middle of the night

on the night Sophie was killed.

And washing his boots?

Well, the implication there
of course,

this person
was getting rid of evidence,

possibly blood on the sole.

So,
I'm standing at Kealfadda Bridge,

and that's the road
to Sophie's house.

It's about two kilometres up there.

And it was here
that the mysterious Fiona

saw a man walking along the road...

So, it was no wonder
that the police wanted to know
who the hell Fiona was.

Now, you particularly want to
address yourself to somebody
who attempted to contact you

and then didn't
come back to you again.

Well, we did have a contact, Marian,
last week

and that caller
gave us certain information

which we think could be critical
in solving this murder.

And I'm making a direct appeal
to that person tonight
to ring me here.

And obviously,
a very, very brutal murder.

If you do know anybody,

if you are the person who did try
and contact the Gardai,

do try
and get in touch with us again.

The Gardai
would have to hope and pray
that Fiona would call back.

The crimeline appeal
seemed to work
on Fiona's conscience.

A day later,
she called back...

..but couldn't give
any more information.

She was putting up defensive walls.

For instance,

when asked how she saw this man
in the early hours of the morning,

she said
she didn't wish to discuss it.

We'll keep everything confidential.

Just...

If you can just hang on
a little bit...

Hello? Hello, Fiona?

And with a click of her finger,
all lines of inquiry went dead.

What effect did this murder have on
Schull and Toormore and West Cork?

It completely banjaxed
the whole place.

When I came here,

I'd say I think it was '93,
the very beginning of '93...

..you would walk
up Ballydehob Street

and you'd walk up Schull Street

and there'd be keys
in the front door.

Nobody locked anything.

In my cottage
in the middle of nowhere,

I never locked the door.

I didn't lock the door to go to bed,

didn't lock the door
when I went out.

And that went, all gone overnight.

It was a terrifying,
terrifying thing.

And then all of a sudden...

You know, shock...

Yeah...

No...

Everyone I met were just shocked...

Saddened beyond belief.

We felt this was so horrendous

that there would have to be evidence

that would bring the perpetrator
to justice very quickly.

The killer is still at large.

As for the Gardai,
they still await a break

and they're not hiding their anxiety
about talking to the person
who they believe can provide it.

There was a devil in the hills.

People were scared.

Would he strike again?

And the only person
who could put the devil
at the scene of the crime was Fiona.

And she was out there,
moving around...

..to different payphones,

all untraceable.

We did receive
a phone call here last week

from an individual
who gave certain information

which was certainly
very useful to us.

And I'm still making that appeal,

that that person
would contact me here in Bandon

or indeed contact the incident room.

I will go...

If that person wants to contact me,
I'm available here

and I will travel to
any part of Ireland,

wherever they want to meet me,

so anxious am I to find this person.

This time the police were in luck.

It's Fiona...

I was driving back
from Goleen...

The call was made from a landline.

Yeah...

Around Kealfadda Bridge,
I saw the man on the road.

Um, he was wearing
a long, dark coat...

And the trace led them
to the home of the woman

who had seen the man
outside her shop.

I couldn't see if he was trying to
cover his face or anything...

You know, because it was
just a fleeting glance.

Marie Farrell.

The Guards arrived at the house,

and they couldn't have been nicer,

and they said,
"We know you're Fiona.

And there's a few boys
in the station,

and they want to
have a word with you."

Now it turned out that
married Marie Farrell
had been out that night,

but out with a man.

She had gone home to her husband,

told him
that she was meeting the girls
for Christmas drinks.

And had instead
gone to this rendezvous
with her former boyfriend,

who was himself married.

And this was
the huge stumbling block, uh,

for Marie Farrell,

fearing of course
that rumours would soon get out

and her husband
would learn about it.

I had met a friend...
Yeah.

I wasn't having an affair.

It has been said I was,
I definitely wasn't.

But my husband didn't know
who I had gone to meet that night
for a drink.

And that was just
the start of a nightmare.

Memo of interview with Marie Farrell

with Detective Garda Jim Fitzgerald

and Detective Garda Jim Slattery
and Garda Kevin Kelleher.

"I saw a man
with a long, black coat on my left,

a couple of yards
on the Goleen side of the junction.

I now know this man
to be Ian Bailey from Schull."

Ian was arrested at the studio house

for the murder
of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

At 10:45am,

Detective Garda Culligan
informed Ian Bailey

that he was arresting him
for the murder
of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

He protested his innocence,
completely protested his innocence.

At the same time,

another squad car
arrived at The Prairie.

Two Guards came to the back door.

They came
and they sat down at the table
and they said,

"You know why we're here,
don't you?"

And I said no...

"We're going to arrest you
for the murder of
Sophie Toscan du Plantier."

Very hard to describe
the sinking feeling inside...

It was just disbelief and horror.

Absolutely horrified.

And I thought,
this isn't real, you know?

You had to pinch yourself,
it just felt so much like a...

They were acting.

Ian was brought
to Bandon Garda Station.

A few hours later, so was Jules.

Before we got there,

I actually asked
if there would be press there.

The banghardai phoned up the station
and they said yes, there was.

I suppose that,

when we heard
who was being arrested,

obviously word started
to filter through

that suspicions
were starting to focus
on one of our own,

I suppose.

And then,

when he was arrested
and taken to Bandon Garda Station,

there was a REAL flurry.

You know, I mean...
It was really, really full-on.

It was absolutely horrific.

French television,
radio and newspaper reporters
were amongst the crowd

as the Garda decision was awaited
on whether the two people
would be released or charged.

We were very surprised
when we were told by the police
that Bailey had been taken in.

It wasn't not so much
that we thought
he was too nice a person

or anything,

we just didn't feel
that someone we knew
would be capable of that,

you know?

Well,
he was in there as a reporter,
you see.

I think he was
with the English papers,

he was covering her
as a newspaper reporter.

The neighbour had heard
somebody howling outside the house.

Scratches and turkeys and stuff....

If anybody
was gonna pick anybody around here
that would suit it...

Did you ever believe
he could be the murderer?
Yeah.

Yeah...

Bailey was asked,

"The facts tell us
you were involved in this killing.

Isn't that right?"

He replied...

"I was in The Galley
with Jules that Sunday night.

We went home at closing time
and went to bed.

I never left the house again
that night."

How did you know how to get to
the scene of the murder?

"I was aware that
there was a French woman
living in Toormore."

When was the last time you saw her?

"Sometime in spring
of the year before last."

Did you meet here in Schull
on Saturday the 21st?

"No, I did not."

Did you hit that woman
with a fuckin' block, Bailey?!

"Yes, I remember now.

I did get up to go to my studio,
rented house,

to do some work."

Jules Thomas
was released without charge.

We were all gathered
outside Bandon Garda Station

and also outside the office
of his solicitor, Con Murphy.

We stood for hours,

waiting for some sort of word
about what was going to happen.

Was there going to be charges?

The Guards really, really, really
tried to get it into me

that he did it,
he did it, he did it.

"Ian bashed her head in
with a concrete block."

He did it, he did it, he did it...

Said it about a million times.

It just wasn't gonna wash with me,

because there's no blinkin' evidence.

Mm-hm...

No.

Come on... Get set... Go!

Here you go, girls!

Come on, chooks...

Hello, my beauties...

Aren't they gorgeous?

♪ They're gonna
put me in the movies

♪ They say they're gonna make
a big star out of me

♪ It's all about a man
who's sad and lonely

♪ And all I gotta do
is act naturally ♪

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