A Dream of Death Read online

  But Sophie’s mother, Marguerite Bouniol, instinctively feared the worst. It proved to be a tragic example of accurate maternal intuition. Although she hadn’t received any official confirmation that her daughter was indeed the victim, Marguerite was absolutely convinced that something terrible had happened to her beloved Sophie. Her husband, Georges, tried to console her, but Marguerite was adamant that something awful was about to engulf their family.

  Incredibly, the French liaison officers had not yet managed to contact the Bouniols or du Plantiers. The family were forced to resort to getting relatives and friends who spoke English to contact every person they knew in west Cork by telephone to try to confirm Sophie’s safety and whereabouts. But the family’s fears were mounting by the minute. Sophie had not arrived in France on her scheduled flight, no one in the family had heard anything from her since 10 p.m. on the evening of 22 December and all attempts to contact Sophie in west Cork had proved fruitless.

  By this time, the family were desperate for news, and everyone had been enlisted to ring every number they could possibly locate in west Cork for any piece of information. Finally, late on Monday evening, the family learned from one heartbreaking call to west Cork that the body found on the Toormore laneway was indeed that of their beloved Sophie.

  The heartbreak for Marguerite and Georges was compounded by the realisation that someone would have to tell Sophie’s son, Pierre-Louis Baudey, who was only 15 years old, that his mother had been found dead in the most violent of circumstances. The tight-knit French family were devastated by their grief, made all the worse by the inability of officials to answer their question of what exactly had happened to Sophie.

  In west Cork, gardaí were about to launch a murder probe that would utterly transform lives, make Irish judicial history, test Franco-Irish political and policing links – and would remain unsolved over two decades later.

  2

  INVESTIGATION

  From the very beginning, the investigation into the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier was critically hampered. A combination of unforeseen circumstances, unfortunate human error and simple bad luck for investigators meant that what initially appeared to be a case likely to see an early breakthrough proved anything but straightforward or easily resolved.

  Despite initial indications that the investigation might prove fast-moving and forensics-led, gardaí found themselves coping with an increasingly complex and frustrating case marked by an almost unbelievable lack of hard evidence. During the first month, detectives would be frustrated to see every single strand of potential forensic evidence vanish into thin air or prove to be nothing more than a red herring.

  There were no witnesses to the crime itself. No one locally had seen or heard anything suspicious along the laneway to the holiday home on either 22 or 23 December, or even on the days leading up to the murder. There was no security camera footage for any of the houses in the Toormore area or the key approach routes to the townland and therefore no vehicular or human movements to track. In 1996, the use of CCTV was rare in businesses in the surrounding villages of Schull, Ballydehob, Goleen and Crookhaven.

  Gardaí were, almost from the very beginning, deprived of their single greatest asset – an eyewitness who could furnish information about the crime, the movements of a suspicious individual or even an unknown vehicle spotted around the area. In Toormore, no one had seen or heard anything untoward.

  While detectives were initially confident that DNA or fingerprint evidence might hold the key to identifying the killer, gardaí would ultimately be left disappointed – and baffled – by the total lack of forensic evidence yielded from the crime scene. This was extraordinary given the level of violence Sophie had been subjected to.

  There were nearly 50 injuries detected on Sophie’s body. Most gruesome were the injuries to her head and face, which, one garda later told me, could only have been inflicted by a frenzied, prolonged attack. But gardaí would later catalogue numerous scratches and cuts consistent with having been inflicted by the thorns of briars and brambles. It suggested that the French woman had tried to flee from her attacker and, in the darkness, had stumbled through a patch of briars while being chased.

  Garda Denis Harrington, who attended the scene, said it was clear Sophie had tried to flee from her attacker. ‘It would appear she had tried to get away from her assailant as best she could. [Her] dressing gown was [caught] in briars. She had actually tried to climb in through the briars – [they] were the kind that would cut you, with spikes as thick as your finger.’

  Strips of clothing snagged on a barbed-wire fence nearby indicated that the wire, in combination with the briars, may have slowed Sophie sufficiently to allow her assailant to catch up with her by the gate and then kill her in a brutal, unrelenting assault. Whoever killed Sophie had done so in an attack that lasted well beyond two or three blows.

  Garda technical officers examined everything at the scene, from the concrete block found near the body to the apparent blood spatters on the nearby gate. Particular care was paid to Sophie’s body and clothing. Given how the French woman had apparently fought desperately for her life, detectives hoped a key piece of DNA or forensic evidence might have been left behind to identify the killer or killers.

  The painstaking examination of the scene yielded one development that detectives initially believed would offer their sought-after breakthrough – Sophie had strands of hair clasped in her clenched hand. The initial belief was that these must have come from her killer, perhaps ripped from their head as the young woman fought desperately for her life. The hairs were carefully removed and placed in sealed plastic sample bags for forensic analysis at the state laboratory in Dublin.

  In what would, however, prove to be another major setback for the investigation, the hair strands were analysed and found to be from Sophie herself. Detectives leading the investigation were stunned at the result. The logical reasoning had been that the hairs were most likely to have come from the killer. The only explanation that could be offered now was that the strands had somehow got caught in Sophie’s fist during her fight to defend herself or, more heartbreakingly, during her final dying moments as she sought to shield her head – the focus of the savage blows by her attacker.

  Forensics officers also took scrapings from under Sophie’s fingernails. In a significant number of such assaults, a victim fighting desperately for their life can often scratch their attacker, leaving a critical clue to the identity of the assailant. But, just like the hair strands in Sophie’s clenched fist, the nail scrapings failed to deliver any significant DNA leads despite three separate sets of tests conducted over a decade.

  The crime scene itself proved equally frustrating for forensic officers. So violent was the attack on the young mother that there were blood spatters almost everywhere in the laneway beside where the body was found. There was an urgency to examine and sample the area because the winter weather would destroy any such forensic evidence within a matter of hours.

  But when forensic laboratory tests returned, they revealed that all bar one of the blood samples were from the deceased woman. One sample yielded unknown or ‘alien’ DNA. To this day that sample, which was recovered from the back door of the Toormore property, has never been identified, despite a painstaking cross-examination with all samples submitted locally as part of the investigation.

  The location of the scene was also problematic for investigators. The body was found on a laneway at the foot of the hill leading to Sophie’s holiday home. But the lane was also the only possible access point for those living in the homes above the holiday cottage. It was just 24 hours before Christmas Eve and locals had travel and shopping plans, resulting in a logistical nightmare for local gardaí, who had to cope with the movements of vehicles and people along a narrow laneway while trying to preserve the crime scene.

  The interior of Sophie’s house also proved baffling. Everything seemed to be in order, so detectives came to the belief that the French woman was confronted w
hen outside, before being chased and fatally attacked. One theory that came to the forefront was that Sophie had heard a noise outside or had perhaps gone to answer a knock on the door just as she was preparing to go to bed. This would explain why she was dressed for bed but wearing a pair of walking boots.

  Detectives wondered whether, having gone outside, Sophie had been confronted, realised her predicament and then attempted to flee downhill. But gardaí wondered why Sophie would run downhill and not towards the house at the top of the hill, which was occupied by her neighbours Alfie Lyons and Shirley Foster. Had she been cut off by her attacker? Or, in the split-second panic of realising she was in mortal danger, had she made a fatal wrong choice in her direction of flight?

  There was no sign of a break-in or forced entry at any of the doors or windows. Similarly, there was no damage to furnishings inside the house and no indication that any type of disturbance had occurred inside the property. The house was in pristine condition, down to the Christmas decorations. No fingerprint or DNA evidence of any significance was ever found inside the property. Importance was initially attached to a washed pair of wine glasses on the countertop but, like all the other leads gardaí obtained, ultimately led nowhere. There was nothing to indicate that anyone had been in the house with Sophie when the fatal attack began.

  As if that wasn’t enough to complicate matters for investigators, there was an unexpected delay in having the body examined at the scene due to the inability of Professor Harbison to get there before Tuesday morning. To the horror of her already devastated French family, Sophie’s body remained in the laneway where she had been killed for two successive nights. The body could not be moved until the preliminary examination was conducted at the scene by the pathologist the following day.

  A plastic sheet had been placed over the body in a bid to protect it and the immediate scene from the inclement December weather. The site would be protected by a uniformed garda on duty throughout the night. It had already turned exceptionally cold and hoar frost was on most areas of higher ground across west Cork. The delay had another consequence: an accurate body-temperature reading could not now be taken. A body-temperature reading can narrow time of death down to a specific period, perhaps to within two or three hours, by analysing the rate at which the remains have cooled. However, body-temperature readings are controversial in the world of forensic pathology. Some experts, such as Dr Craig Nelson of the North Carolina Chief Medical Examiner’s Office, believe the multiple variable factors involved mean it is impossible to use body temperature to accurately indicate a precise time of death. All that such readings can indicate is a broader timeframe – and this was something that gardaí desperately needed. But they would now be deprived of even that.

  In the case of the French mother, it would be impossible to narrow down the time of death from when she received her last phone call, shortly after 10 p.m. on 22 December, to when her body was discovered by Ms Foster at 10.10 a.m. – a timeframe of almost 12 hours. This would be yet another problem for detectives: finding anyone with a 12-hour hole in their alibi would be highly unlikely.

  ***

  Professor Harbison arrived at the crime scene shortly before 2 p.m. on 24 December, Christmas Eve.

  Professor Harbison found that Sophie had died from horrific head injuries sustained from blunt force trauma, including ‘laceration and swelling of the brain, fracture of the skull, and multiple blunt head injuries’. His 13-page report – which did not enter the public domain in full detail via the media for almost a decade – made for gruesome reading:

  It was obvious that she had severe head injuries, because there were gaping wounds on the right side of the forehead and the right ear was severely lacerated at its lower edge. Beside the deceased’s left shoulder and head was a flat slate, like a stone, which was heavily bloodstained. Between the deceased’s body and the wire fence and within nine inches of her left hand was a nine-inch cavity block. The dead woman had long hair which had become entangled in vegetation.

  He also noted a series of lacerations or marks on Sophie’s neck.These could, it was suggested, have been inflicted by the heel of a boot – raising the chilling prospect that, having battered the mother with a flat stone and a concrete block, the killer then stamped on Sophie’s neck, face and shoulders. The level of violence involved shocked even veteran gardaí. Professor Harbison noted an impression or indentation on the ground where Sophie’s head had lain – indicating that the fatal blow, most likely from the concrete block being dropped on her head, was inflicted when the young mother was lying prone on the ground, probably unconscious: ‘I was able to look at the ground when the body had been moved to note that there was a slight depression with blood on it where the head had lain. This indicated to me that the body had been in that position when the blows were struck.’

  An analysis of the crime scene and the likely sequence of events led gardaí to believe that, from when Sophie was first confronted outside her Toormore home to the final blow she suffered at the bottom of the laneway, the attack had lasted a matter of minutes. It was entirely possible that her killer had been at the scene for as little as 15 minutes. The inability to narrow that timeframe down from a period of around 12 hours was a huge setback for detectives, and although they believed the killing occurred sometime between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., they couldn’t prove it.

  Over the following days, gardaí would consult with the people who knew Sophie best to determine her movements, her habits while in Toormore and, above all, if anyone might have any motive to harm her. Detectives would piece together Sophie’s every movement from when she first arrived at Cork Airport through to when she finished a social call on Sunday evening and returned to the Toormore property to prepare for her flight back to France the following day. It was also known that she had made a number of telephone calls to friends and family around 10 p.m. on 22 December. This would be the last time they would hear her voice.

  ***

  The person in west Cork who arguably knew Sophie best was her housekeeper and friend, Josephine Hellen, who was also a French national. She had met Sophie shortly after she had purchased the Toormore property in 1993. Later, she had agreed to help Sophie with the property, checking on it when she was back in Paris and, when Sophie was due to arrive in west Cork, making sure the house was always ready for her arrival. Mrs Hellen was a trusted friend to Sophie – and went to exceptional lengths to look after her whenever Sophie arrived in Toormore.

  On 20 December, Mrs Hellen had checked the Toormore property and lit fires so it would be warm and cosy for when Sophie arrived for her short Christmas visit. In a festive gesture, she had even gone to the trouble of decorating the house with sprigs of holly with red berries to give it a Yuletide feel for her French friend on her arrival. Sophie loved the traditional style of the festive decorations – with the holly, a roaring fire and candles making the Toormore cottage all the more welcoming.

  In her subsequent statement to gardaí, Mrs Hellen said she had noticed nothing unusual at the property either before Sophie arrived or when she was there that December weekend. There simply wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. The details of the gardaí statements first entered the public domain in a story by Maeve Sheehan for the Sunday Independent almost 15 years later.

  Mrs Hellen outlined her routine for when Sophie would ring her and indicate she was travelling to west Cork. ‘I would do the usual: put on the heat, do the beds and get food for the house and she would always pay me. As regards friends in this area, apart from ourselves and her two neighbours living near her and the odd workman coming to the house, she was not friendly with [anybody] else.’

  Mrs Hellen explained that although Sophie would often travel to the property on her own, she also occasionally brought friends and family members, including her son, from France to stay. ‘When I first became acquainted with Sophie, she used to bring a friend by the name of Bruno [Carbonnet],’ Mrs Hellen explained. On occasions, she even allowed friends to use the pr
operty when she was not there.

  Mrs Hellen did indicate to gardaí that, some years earlier, Sophie had suspected someone was breaking into the house to use the bathroom facilities while she was away in France and the property was empty. This became apparent when she arrived with her friend, Bruno Carbonnet, and he complained that the bath had not been properly cleaned.

  I went upstairs to check it and straight away I saw it was used. I cleaned it on the Thursday [before their arrival] and this was the Friday when they came, so it was used on Thursday night. We checked the house to see where he came in, and the window of the porch was open, so this was the only place [the intruder] could have got in and used the bath.

  Sophie decided to have all the locks at the Toormore house changed. Mrs Hellen and Sophie discussed setting up a trap to determine who was breaking into the property, but there was never another incident.

  Mrs Hellen told gardaí that, on 22 December, the evening before Sophie’s killing, she had telephoned the property to check on her friend’s planned departure the following day back to France. Sophie had still been up when the phone call was made at 10 p.m. According to Mrs Hellen, Sophie had displayed no signs of concern.

  I knew Sophie, in all probability, was up on the Sunday night because, number one, Sophie never went upstairs with her boots on. To me, her boots would never have been tied in bed. And her dressing gown was on, as far as I know. I think Sophie was sitting where the wine glass was, by the open fire, as she loved the open fire, when someone could have walked in, so she came out. Maybe she thought it was me, but we had an agreement for Monday morning.

  One of the last things Sophie had done on 22 December, before she returned to her Toormore home for her last night in Ireland, was to call in to O’Sullivan’s pub in Crookhaven. It was one of her favourite places in west Cork and she visited on almost every occasion she was in Ireland. Owner Dermot O’Sullivan greeted her, but little did he realise he would be one of the last people to see her alive. The French woman ordered a pot of tea and chatted happily to locals in the pub, who were eagerly anticipating the Christmas festivities. ‘She seemed happy and relaxed,’ Mr O’Sullivan recalled years later. ‘She stayed for an hour and went away. She was a very quiet lady, and I think she loved the area because she found her own peace here.’