IT remains one of Ireland’s most infamous murder cases for which the prime suspect has been found guilty in France but remains free and vehemently protests his innocence. Now the case is being revisited in two new documentaries.
Who was murdered?
TV producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier was found in her nightclothes, brutally beaten to death outside her holiday home in an isolated spot on the coast near Schull in County Cork on the night of December 23, 1996. She was 39.
She was French?
Sophie was born and based in Paris, where she lived with her film producer husband, Daniel, and her son from her first marriage, Pierre Louis Baudey, who was 15 when she died. Having holidayed in Ireland in her early years, she bought the cottage in Toormore to retreat to and at the time of her death was alone, with plans to return to Paris for Christmas.
The case is infamous?
In part due to the notoriety of the prime suspect, former journalist Ian Bailey. Now 64, he lived a few miles away and was the first reporter on the scene. He was first questioned over the murder in early 1997 and while under investigation, continued to report on the case. No forensic evidence has ever linked him to the scene and he has never been charged with the murder by Irish police.
However?
Two years ago, he was convicted of murder by the Cour d'Assises de Paris and sentenced to 25 years in jail, having been tried in absentia. Last year, Ireland's High Court ruled he could not be extradited.
Now?
The case, which has scarred and divided the local community where Bailey still lives, is the focus of two documentaries, the first airing on Sky Crime, “Murder at the Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie”, which is helmed and presented by Oscar-nominated Irish director of My Left Foot and In the Name of the Father, Jim Sheridan. Meanwhile, Netflix’s “Sophie: A Murder in West Cork”, streams from June 30.
They are vastly different films?
Netflix’s film has been made with cooperation from Sophie’s family, with one of her cousins a producer on the project, while her relatives also asked for their contributions to be removed from Sheridan’s offering, which they said did not align with their aim to get justice for Sophie.
What do they mean?
Sheridan’s film questions the Irish police’s approach and after Bailey is found guilty in France, the director says: “Without scientific proof, with retracted statements, with absent witnesses and no interrogation of the facts … the French have proved him guilty…Is he capable of murder? Aren’t we all? Is he guilty? I don’t know. I don’t think we can say for sure.”
A book?
Bailey - who has recently split from his partner of 30 years - described Sheridan’s film as ”very, very sad…The whole story is a tragedy”. His latest book, “A John Wayne State of Mind”, is a collection of poems he says were inspired by his experiences in 2019 when, in his own words, he was “bonfired on a pyre of lies in Paris".
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