A Dream of Death Read online

  Despite the criticism of aspects of the garda murder investigation, GSOC’s rejection of Mr Bailey’s central allegation of corruption and collusion was a watershed moment. If Mrs Farrell’s dramatic revelations that she had been coerced by gardaí had been a boon to his insistence that he was being deliberately targeted by west Cork gardaí, the comprehensive GSOC report would serve to demolish any public perception of a wide-ranging police conspiracy.

  The GSOC report also underlined the fact that the future of the case would now rest in France. While the DPP had for years maintained that there was not sufficient evidence for a charge on the basis of the garda case file, the revelation of missing evidence from garda storage effectively guaranteed that there would be no future prosecutorial action in Ireland – any case would be fatally flawed. Nevertheless, there was nothing to delay the next phase in the story, which would be a Paris trial.

  Mr Bailey declined to comment on the GSOC report, politely referring all media enquiries to his solicitor. He stressed that he agreed with his solicitor’s view of GSOC – and said he was concerned that retired gardaí had no obligation or legal compulsion to work with GSOC officers. The journalist argued that, in effect, this offered retired police officers a form of ‘immunity’.

  Frank Buttimer said they were not surprised by the outcome of the investigation and launched a condemnatory assessment of GSOC and its powers. He said the report supported their contention that the police watchdog was little more than a ‘toothless body’. He said it was extraordinary that there appeared to be absolutely no accountability for the glaring failures of the du Plantier investigation and, in particular, the manner in which key evidence exhibits had mysteriously vanished from garda storage.

  Mr Buttimer noted that Mr Bailey’s time and cooperation with GSOC over several years appeared to have been a ‘totally wasted exercise’. ‘[Mr Bailey] is very disappointed,’ he acknowledged.

  The contrast to the reception of the GSOC report in France could not have been more stark. Sophie’s family were delighted that the lengthy watchdog investigation had found no evidence of garda corruption or a long-standing conspiracy against Mr Bailey.

  French legal officials also insisted that the GSOC report had implications for the impending Paris prosecution. The Bouniols’ Paris-based solicitor, Alain Spilliaert, said the GSOC findings were particularly important in relation to allegations about garda corruption and claims that Marie Farrell had been put under duress by gardaí. ‘Mr Bailey has claimed from the beginning that the Irish police investigation was flawed. [But] this report is important because it confirms a previous judgment from the High Court of Dublin ruling that the garda criminal investigation was not corrupted.’

  He also insisted that the GSOC revelations about evidence having gone missing from garda storage in west Cork would not impact on the planned French prosecution. ‘In any case, a French judge thought the evidence was solid enough to send the case to trial. Just because there is no DNA does not mean that the criminal file is over. The case is based on the file built up by the Irish police plus the work of French investigating magistrates who worked with the gardaí over the past decade.

  ‘The French justice system considered that Mrs Farrell’s statements and her subsequent retraction were suspicious and helped to justify a trial. This is one more element. The GSOC report goes in our favour,’ Mr Spilliaert insisted.

  Sophie’s son, Pierre-Louis Baudey-Vignaud, told Lara Marlowe of the Irish Times that his faith in the Irish and French systems had been well placed.

  The report strengthens my opinion, and I continue to have great confidence in the French and Irish justice systems which are going forward, slowly but surely. I never believed in any kind of plot [against Mr Bailey]. I know there were [garda] failings. Those failings were harmful to my interests. But they do not mean we won’t get to the truth. The report goes in the direction of the truth.

  For the French, the GSOC report was of paramount importance. While it had highlighted garda failings – not least the embarrassing loss of key exhibits in the case – it had found no evidence of a garda conspiracy against Mr Bailey. Had GSOC found in favour of Mr Bailey’s allegations against the gardaí, it would be hard to see how any Paris prosecution could have been untainted, based as it was on the original garda murder file.

  The implications of the GSOC findings for Mr Bailey can be judged from his legal team’s reaction to its report summary – they dismissed their cooperation with the long-running review as essentially a waste of time and effort.

  13

  PARIS TRIAL

  If the GSOC report had highlighted failings in the Irish police and judicial systems, it soon became apparent that the French system was not flawless either. Even though Irish witnesses had known since the previous January that the Paris murder trial would start around the end of May, French prosecutors only informed them three weeks before the event that their presence was actually needed. French law allows for witness statements to be read into evidence, even if the individual involved is not present. When they hadn’t heard from the Paris authorities by the end of April, many thought the Paris prosecutors didn’t require them to attend.

  This included gardaí and key witnesses in the original investigation, who only learned in early May that the French authorities did in fact want them to travel to Paris for the opening of the trial, on 27 May. Dozens had holiday or business plans by this stage – and were now unable or unwilling to change them. Furthermore, the French authorities had not appointed a special police or judicial liaison officer to keep the potential Irish witnesses regularly briefed on developments in the prosecution’s case in the months leading up to the trial. This was despite the fact that, over the previous years, nearly all the original garda murder case witnesses had fully cooperated with the French investigation under Magistrate Gachon. The overwhelming majority had indicated that they were willing to cooperate with the French trial but would need plenty of time to prepare. Those who were not willing to cooperate largely cried off for reasons of health or age.

  The French authorities had offered to cover all travel and subsistence expenses incurred by Irish witnesses who agreed to travel to Paris for the trial. This, however, would be on a reimbursement basis. Many in west Cork – all too familiar with the delays in State payment schemes at home – were concerned that they might face being out of pocket for months before they were finally reimbursed. In some cases, witnesses were simply not in a financial position to pay such travel expenses up front.

  On Sunday, 19 May 2019, Pierre-Louis, by now 38 years old, issued an emotional personal appeal in west Cork for everyone in Ireland to support the forthcoming Paris trial. As he made the journey to Goleen parish church that Sunday morning, accompanied by his uncle Bertrand, Mr Baudey-Vignaud was briefly filmed at Sophie’s old cottage by RTÉ’s southern editor Paschal Sheehy.

  When he arrived at the church for a scheduled press briefing, he spoke with RTÉ before indicating he would speak with all other journalists, both Irish and French, after the service, once he had delivered his carefully written appeal. This plea urged everyone in west Cork to repay the faith that Sophie and her family had put in the local community:

  Sophie fought like a lioness against the most atrocious violence there is; the violence used by a monster that nothing stops – the one that struck her for no reason, for nothing. I still come back here every year because it is the only way for me to defy this violence and destroy it.

  For twenty years I have trusted you. Do not betray me. Do not betray yourselves. This trial isn’t just about my mother – it is the trial of the truth. I want to make an appeal to all the people here – anyone who has received requests from the magistrates in France, come and tell [your story]. We must be all together against violence.

  If God is love and if this church is his, let us pray for my mother to find peace and that God’s righteousness may join that of men. This case is first and foremost about an innocent woman. This is a trial of
a crime that you and I did not deserve, whether it takes place here or in France.

  It is the trial of a crime that bears the mark of a country in which a woman, my mother, had such confidence that she opened her door to the person who murdered her. She would not have done this in Paris. She opened her door here in Ireland because she was so confident that nothing bad would happen to her. And that confidence was the reason why she chose to come to this country.

  It was my last day of being a child. I was eight years old the first time I came here and I was fifteen years old when my mother was brutally killed. It is time today to turn one of the saddest pages of your history – the darkest page of mine. These are just a few words to tell you that in France, in a week’s time, our history is at stake.

  It is the story of my mother’s death and the story of a woman who needed you so much to recharge her batteries. And the reason I stayed with you here is because she was always right to trust you. That is how I have always felt it. We must turn this sad page together because my mother, you and I, must refuse to see these hills sink into one of the worst tragedies and injustices. This land must find peace again. This land must end this crime which is neither a mystery nor a legend. My mother, Sophie, is not a ghost. She is the victim of human cruelty and violence which has no place here. But humans are sometimes capable of the worst. My mother defended herself from the worst up to her last breath to escape the savage and brutal violence.

  Mr Baudey-Vignaud pointed out he had kept his mother’s beloved holiday cottage at Toormore despite suggestions by some relatives that it should be sold. He now holidays in west Cork three or four times a year with his wife, Aurelia, and their two children. His eldest daughter was named Sophie in honour of her late grandmother. He said he still kept his mother’s old duffle coat hanging on a hook by the back door. ‘We chose to leave it here. But it is not a museum.’

  In the days after Mr Baudey-Vignaud’s emotional appeal, Mr Bailey repeatedly warned that the forthcoming Paris prosecution would be a ‘tragedy for the truth’. I had spoken to him in the week before the Goleen appeal and he had agreed to take a phone call afterwards to set out his position. He was livid that Goleen church was used as the venue for the French appeal – and was clearly deeply upset at the imminent Paris prosecution. ‘It is a most dreadful and frightening position to be in. It is a nightmare – but it has been a nightmare for the past twenty-two years. It is a nightmare I cannot escape from. As far as I can tell, it is a nightmare that will only end with my death,’ he said.

  He claimed that there were people in authority in Ireland who knew he was entirely innocent but were prepared to stay silent while he was convicted in France based on evidence already rejected in Ireland. ‘These people are prepared to see me convicted and sacrificed to public opinion in France. It is like some kind of code of omertà,’ he claimed.

  ***

  Sixteen years after it was first mooted, the French prosecution over the death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier opened in Paris on Monday, 27 May 2019. The trial was held in the Palais de Justice, an eighteenth-century court building located on the Île de la Cité, in the ancient heart of the beautiful French capital. The structure traces its history all the way back through five French Republics to the Bourbon monarchy of Louis XVI.

  Just a couple of hundred metres down the street stood the imposing Notre-Dame Cathedral. The structure had made headlines across the world just two weeks earlier when it had been substantially damaged in a massive fire that had gutted the roof and part of its interior. For days the world watched and mourned as one of the most famous religious structures on the planet smouldered. The people of Paris were struggling to come to terms with the extent of the damage to the cathedral. The smell of smoke still hung in the air around the courts complex.

  Such was the media interest in the trial that the Paris courts service couldn’t accommodate all the journalists who wanted to cover the court proceedings. A limited number of journalists would be allowed in the cramped main courtroom – the rest would be required to report on the proceedings via live video-link in an adjacent room.

  Irish, French and British TV crews mingled together outside the courts complex while journalists tried to confirm pre-trial indications that the hearing would only last four days, with a verdict expected on Friday. Due to a French public holiday, the court would not sit on one day during the week. Irish journalists, more used to murder trials that took anywhere between two and eight weeks to hear, found the expectation of a four-day hearing hard to believe.

  A large Irish media contingent were present, including Lara Marlowe and Barry Roche for the Irish Times, Michael Clifford for the Irish Examiner, Sarah Collins for the Irish Independent, Sharon Gaffney for RTÉ, as well as a number of freelance reporters. Also present was Michael Sheridan, who had penned Death in December, the first major book written about the 1996 killing.

  The Cour d’assises hearing was allocated to Courtroom K – a small, wood-panelled room – before three magistrates. The presiding judge was Magistrate Frédérique Aline, who would hear the case with her two colleagues, Magistrate Didier Forton and Magistrate Geraldine Detienne. Because Ian Bailey was not cooperating with the prosecution, a jury hearing was not required. Under French law, Mr Bailey’s stance was viewed as a ‘criminal default’. The three judges alone would decide on the verdict – and a ruling was expected within hours of the trial finishing its evidence.

  French prosecutors, led by Jean-Pierre Bonthoux, went to great lengths to stress that the current prosecution was not, as claimed by Mr Bailey, rooted in judicial codes dating back more than 200 years. The prosecutor insisted that the trial was, in fact, based on a legal code from 2004. That, however, did not stop supporters of Mr Bailey in Ireland from slating the Paris trial as tantamount to a ‘prosecution under colonial law’ given that the old Napoleonic Code remained the underlying basis for French law.

  However, even though the French mother of one died in Ireland and large parts of the evidence at hand involved statements from English-speaking witnesses, there would be no live translation – all evidence would be dealt with in French. A translator was sworn in but ultimately would only be required for a small portion of the trial.

  Under France’s Napoleonic Code, the prosecution was integrally linked to a complaint made against Mr Bailey over Sophie’s death by her family, the Bouniols and du Plantiers. This criminal complaint over her death had been lodged with the French authorities by Sophie’s family back in January 1997, but it took the revelations of the 2003 libel trial in Ireland to kick-start events in France. Even then, the investigation proper under Magistrate Gachon did not commence until 2008.

  In respect of the prosecution, eight named members of Sophie’s family were linked to the case, including her son and her elderly parents. Also present to support the prosecution were the deceased’s brother, Bertrand, her aunt, Marie-Madeleine Opalka, as well as her uncle and ASSOPH founder, Jean-Pierre Gazeau. Family members and their supporters took up several rows in the main gallery of the courtroom as the opening statements were delivered.

  Core evidence would be offered to the trial by individual family members. Sophie’s family were represented by a team of three solicitors: Alain Spilliaert, Laurent Pettiti and Marie Dose.

  The trial would hear from a total of 28 witnesses, the majority dealt with via sworn statements made either to the French police team operating under Magistrates Gachon and Dutartre or to gardaí as part of the original murder investigation.

  Mr Baudey-Vignaud’s concerns voiced a couple of weeks earlier about the number of Irish witnesses set to travel to Paris for the trial proved well founded. Ultimately, just two people made the trip from Ireland to Paris for the hearing – Mr Bailey’s neighbour Amanda Reed, whose son, Malachi, was one of the key witnesses in the 2003 libel hearing, as well as Bill Fuller, a former friend of Mr Bailey. Mr Fuller’s evidence would challenge Mr Bailey’s insistence that he had never met the French mother of one.

  The
absence of Irish witnesses was undoubtedly a disappointment for the French family, particularly after the lengths they had gone to over the years to make personal appeals for help in west Cork. Each of the witnesses requested to attend the trial had their name read out by the French prosecutor. Again and again, in an embarrassing cycle, the court clerk confirmed there was no answer to the witness call.

  There were extenuating circumstances in many cases. A number of the witnesses were only contactable via old and unverified addresses – there were fears many never even received the court summons. Another witness was medically incapacitated and unable to attend. In one clearly embarrassing moment for the prosecution, it was confirmed that two of the witnesses listed – Patrick Lowney and Martin Graham – were now deceased. Mr Lowney had died almost three years earlier.

  Other witnesses were annoyed at the lack of notice given by the French. Helen Callanan, a former news editor of the Sunday Tribune, took the trouble to write directly to the court to express concern at the lack of suitable notice she was given about the 27 May hearing. Pointedly, Ms Callanan said she had a serious concern that the lack of proper notice offered to potential Irish witnesses and their understandable inability to attend could undermine the entire credibility of the Paris proceedings. Ms Callanan bluntly remarked on the ‘fragility of the process’.

  The small number of Irish witnesses to answer the French summonses was undoubtedly an underlying source of tension between the prosecutors and Irish authorities. The case opened with criticisms of Ireland’s handling of the original murder investigation, how journalists had reported on the crime between 1996 and 1998, and even how information about the current trial process was allegedly being fed back to Mr Bailey at his west Cork home. There was even criticism of the DPP and the decision not to sanction any charge in Ireland over Sophie’s death.