A Dream of Death Read online

  Lawyer Marie Dose pointedly challenged the issue of the flow of information to Mr Bailey in west Cork. There were, she complained, journalists present who were texting regular updates to Mr Bailey at his west Cork home, where his reaction to the trial was being recorded by a film crew.

  ‘[Some] Irish journalists are here to send text messages to Ian Bailey who is being filmed live so his reactions to every minute of the trial are recorded. We have no problem with the publicity for the process. Of course, journalists must be able to do their job. But filming Ian Bailey live at home to record his reactions is not acceptable,’ she warned.

  The complaint caused consternation amongst the Irish journalists present, which prompted a caustic remark from Magistrate Aline. Later, it was clarified that, in fact, the Irish journalists were not offering Mr Bailey live updates from the Paris proceedings. These were being provided by a legal official who was attending the trial with a watching brief.

  The judge delivered the opening statement, in which the background to the proceedings was outlined in detail. Having explained the legal circumstances under which the prosecution was taking place, the court then heard an overview of the case against Ian Bailey. In a submission that lasted just under two hours, the judge explained why the British journalist was the focus of the Paris prosecution.

  There were essentially five major grounds on which the French had focused attention on Mr Bailey. Interestingly, not a single one of them involved any type of physical or forensic evidence. They were that Mr Bailey had cuts and scratches on his arms and hands in the days after 23 December; that he had varied his story of his precise movements at the Liscaha house on 22 and 23 December; that he had confessed to the crime to several people in west Cork; that he had stopped his car on a hillside near Sophie’s home on the evening of 22 December to view the Toormore holiday home; and, finally, that he had lit a bonfire in the back garden of the Liscaha property a few days later over Christmas, essentially a suggestion that he had tried to dispose of material.

  Mr Bailey’s arrival at the crime scene on 23 December in his role as a journalist was also outlined. The French case was that he had specific details about the killing at such an early stage that gardaí eventually became suspicious. Photos taken at the crime scene and what later happened to them were also raised. This was a reference to photos Mr Bailey claimed were never taken at the scene – but which were referred to by another witness in the garda file who said they were mentioned but never actually viewed.

  All three magistrates were then shown photographs of the crime scene and the injuries suffered by the deceased. So graphic was the photographic and post-mortem evidence that most members of the Bouniol family quietly left the courtroom, only to return when the pathology evidence was concluded. Only Sophie’s brother, Bertrand, remained behind.

  The initial post-mortem was conducted in Cork on 24 December 1996 by State Pathologist Professor John Harbison. A second French post-mortem was conducted 12 years later when, as part of the French investigation, Ms du Plantier’s body was exhumed in France. Dr Marc Taccoen conducted the 2008 post-mortem examination following the exhumation.

  His report verified the findings of Professor Harbison’s initial study, which ruled that Sophie had died from head injuries sustained in a violent assault. She had apparently fought desperately to protect herself and had numerous defensive injuries to her arms. To facilitate his study, Dr Taccoen had painstakingly reconstructed the skull, which allowed for an interpretation of precisely how the blows had been sustained.

  He found that the deceased had suffered repeated blows to the right side of her head. The injuries inflicted were consistent with having been sustained by blows from a large, flat rock. A rock of this type was found a short distance from the body. He said the indications were that the blows were aimed in a sideways direction. However, the fatal blow was sustained when a heavy object – likely a concrete breeze block – was dropped directly onto Sophie’s skull from a height. Most likely, the block would have been held above the attacker’s head and then dropped with force onto the head of the woman lying stunned and bloodied on the ground.

  Dr Taccoen added that Sophie’s body had lain undiscovered at the scene for several hours. He noted that the body remained at the scene for more than 24 hours after it was discovered, covered by nothing more than a sheet of plastic, until the state pathologist could attend the isolated scene at Toormore.

  The garda crime scene photographs were projected onto a large screen in the courtroom. Even for those familiar with trials of violent crimes, they were particularly gruesome. Sophie’s entire head and upper torso were soaked in dried blood. Such was the damage inflicted to her head and face it was almost as if her killer had tried to entirely erase her beauty and render her unrecognisable.

  Statements from two investigating gardaí – Bart O’Leary and Kevin Kelleher – were read into evidence. These statements underlined that detectives immediately noted the cuts and scratches on Mr Bailey and detailed how Mr Bailey appeared pale, with unkempt hair. Garda O’Leary also noted in his statement that a deep cut to Mr Bailey’s head was visible.

  Prosecutors were also scathing about Mr Bailey’s work as a journalist in the days after the killing – claiming that he had championed a theory that the French mother of one had been murdered by a lover, something that was not supported by any evidence. This theory revolved around the premise that Sophie had been killed by an assassin who targeted her in west Cork knowing she would be alone and helpless. The theory also painted Mr Bailey as the ‘fall guy’ or local eccentric on whom the crime would be blamed.

  For the first time it emerged publicly that gardaí had initially focused on a French culprit. The journalist had, in the days after the murder, passed a tip to gardaí that there was somehow a French connection to the brutal killing. It was suggested that the killer was French and that Ms du Plantier had been deliberately targeted, followed from France and then murdered while in Ireland.

  Years later, one of the conspiracy theories about the case was that somehow her husband was involved – despite the fact the couple were in the happiest stage of their marriage and were planning their first child together. Friends of both Sophie Daniel Toscan du Plantier have rubbished the theory as patently false.

  The two Irish witnesses who attended the hearing repeated evidence first heard at the 2003 libel hearing before Cork Circuit Court.

  Amanda Reid, also known as Irune Reid, confirmed that her son, Malachi, who was then 14 years old, was left very frightened by a conversation he had with Mr Bailey when being given a lift home just a few weeks after Sophie’s death. Mr Reid claimed that Mr Bailey turned to him in the car and said, ‘I went to her house with a stone one night and smashed her brains out.’ The teen was deeply shaken by the conversation and later told his mother what had been said. He confirmed that he believed Mr Bailey had been drinking, but Mr Reid was still convinced he was serious. Ms Reid confirmed to the trial that her son had been left deeply shaken by the exchange. ‘Yes, he was very scared. I believed my son and I never questioned his word,’ she insisted.

  The evidence of Bill Fuller, a former friend and drinking companion of Mr Bailey, was equally stark. Mr Fuller ended their friendship in January 1997, after an exchange with the journalist in Schull. ‘He said to me, “It was you who killed her – you saw her at the Spar with her nice little ass. You went to her house around 2 a.m. to see what you could get out of her. This scared her so, to calm her down, you gave her a little punch – but it went too far. It’s what happened with Jules. I saw her little ass but she let me in.” Bailey used to talk about himself in the second or third person,’ Mr Fuller added.

  The French prosecutors were critical of the Irish investigation. It was claimed that west Cork gardaí were not used to dealing with such high-profile, violent crimes and the suggestion was raised that the crime scene had not even been properly preserved. The Irish, it was later added, were also very fond of the pub, a reference that offended
not just the Irish journalists present but many of those following the proceedings back in Ireland. Additionally, it was claimed that the Irish and UK journalists who had covered the case in the weeks after 23 December 1996 were not objective and had penned articles that were speculative and, in some cases, entirely without foundation.

  The claims about Sophie’s relationship with her husband, Daniel, were clearly a matter of concern to her family. A special profile of the deceased was prepared for Magistrate Gachon and this dismissed suggestions that she was targeted by a scorned lover. Investigator and psychologist Michel Larousse acknowledged in his report that Sophie had, at times, been unhappy in love. She had been involved in a relationship with another person in France but there was absolutely no evidence that she had had any relationships in Ireland.

  He also noted that in 1996 her relationship with her late husband was amicable and that they were essentially reconciled. The court was told that Mr Toscan du Plantier adored his wife and that he had bought the Toormore property for her so she could use it as a retreat from the pressures of their professional lives in France. In the weeks before her death the couple had also been discussing having a child together.

  The court was also told that Sophie had called her husband a number of times during her brief stay in Ireland that December. The family were planning on spending the new year together in Dakar, after she had flown back to France from Cork. She also regularly brought family and friends with her to Ireland.

  He described Sophie as a highly intelligent woman who prized her independence. Mr Larousse said that friends described her as very sociable, good company and intensely loyal, but also reserved on occasions – she valued her time alone to read and write poetry. He said Sophie was a very warm person who, because of her independence, sometimes took what might be described as risks. For instance, she never worried about travelling alone to Ireland in the depths of winter or staying on her own in the isolated Toormore property.

  With reference to what might be perceived as risk-taking behaviour, he noted that Sophie had once decided to help a homeless person. In a kind-hearted gesture, she had allowed the person to sleep overnight in her car for shelter. However, he said that while this might be interpreted as taking ‘a risk’, the deceased was a trusting person rather than someone who might be described as gullible.

  ‘She was not afraid of much,’ he testified. Mr Larousse said that, in his opinion, the evidence pointed to a culprit that Sophie was not afraid of and someone who she likely believed did not pose a threat to her before the sudden and unprovoked attack.

  After her murder, her husband chose not to travel to west Cork and did not formally identify the body to gardaí. The trial was told by Gilbert Jacob, a close friend of the late film executive, that the decision was perfectly understandable given how devastated Mr du Plantier was by the circumstances of the death of his beloved wife. The French film executive first learned of his wife’s death via a news report on television and initially refused to believe it was true. ‘He said, “I cannot go to Ireland to identify her.” Psychologically, he was not able to go,’ Mr Jacob said. He also described Sophie as a natural beauty who was deeply loved by Mr du Plantier. He said she was elegant, intelligent and very sociable. But she was also reserved and a deep thinker, and, as a result, needed time alone, away from the demands of the French film industry and public life.

  Mr du Plantier – who died while attending a film industry function in Germany in March 2003 – made just a single visit to west Cork after the murder, when he travelled to Ireland with his solicitor, Paul Haennig, on 7 July 2000 to be briefed at Bandon Garda Station on the ongoing Irish murder investigation. During that visit he was also accompanied by Pierre-Louis Baudey-Vignaud and his own son, Davide.

  Regarding Mr Bailey, the French investigation claimed he had effectively ‘confessed’ to the crime on a number of occasions to people in west Cork. Magistrate Aline was told that the witness statements of five people – Malachi Reed, Helen Callanan, Ritchie and Rosie Shelly as well as Bill Fuller – had never varied in their account of what Mr Bailey had allegedly said. It was never raised in court that these could have been accounts of him merely repeating hurtful stories of what others were saying about him.

  Those five witnesses had been re-interviewed by French detectives as part of Magistrate Gachon’s investigation between 2008 and 2011. One senior French policeman, Damian Roehrig, was part of the Irish element of the investigation in 2011. He travelled to west Cork and had interviewed more than 20 people from the original garda murder file. He confirmed that none of the five witnesses mentioned had ever changed their accounts of what they claimed Mr Bailey had said to them. In the case of Mr Reed, he said the teenager had been left terrified of Mr Bailey following the conversation. In all cases, he said, the witnesses had nothing to gain from their statements about Mr Bailey.

  The French policeman said that, before December 1996, Mr Bailey had been viewed as the ‘local eccentric’ who was essentially harmless. But he also said that a number of witnesses in the case told him they were now afraid of the Englishman. Mr Bailey was reportedly viewed as a violent man, who would consume large amounts of alcohol to the point of blacking out. Mr Roehrig mentioned that they had focused their investigation on Mr Bailey after learning of his history of violence towards his partner.

  Additionally, he said, the journalist was known in west Cork for his strange and bizarre behaviour. One neighbour recounted to him how the journalist would howl at the full moon like a wolf. Mr Bailey was also known to walk the roads in the dark and would wear distinctive clothing – all adding to the image of the journalist as a strange, bohemian character.

  He added that a number of witnesses told French police how Mr Bailey had a penchant for trying to frighten people living on their own. One woman, who saw Mr Bailey howling at the full moon, said she subsequently slept with an iron bar by her bed.

  Mr Roehrig laid particular emphasis on the scratches and cuts Mr Bailey had on his hands and arms after 22 and 23 December 1996. He said French police were satisfied the cuts were not on his hands before 22 December and that they were more consistent with having been inflicted by briars and thorns rather than the talons of a turkey, as had been repeatedly claimed by the journalist. The detective pointed out that the murder scene at Toormore was surrounded by briar-filled ditches.

  Arguably the core element of Mr Roehrig’s testimony dealt with the evidence given by Schull shopkeeper Marie Farrell, which had later been retracted. Mrs Farrell was the one witness, as heard in the 2003 libel trial, whose evidence contradicted Mr Bailey’s claim that he had not left the Liscaha property on the evening of 22 December. Mr Roehrig outlined how Mrs Farrell had told gardaí about seeing a tall man at Kealfadda Bridge outside Schull. This man was later identified by her as Mr Bailey. Crucially, there was no mention at the trial of the fact that Mrs Farrell had retracted this statement or that she had steadfastly maintained since 2005 that her original statement to gardaí had been made under duress.

  There was also no mention of the concerns highlighted by Ireland’s DPP that Mrs Farrell’s physical description of the person she saw that night had also dramatically varied. She initially described the person at Kealfadda Bridge as being around five foot eight or five foot ten inches in height. However, just one month later, on 22 January 1997, she revised that description to say that the man was very tall.

  The shopkeeper was one of the witnesses requested to attend the Paris trial but prosecutors never received a reply to their letter requesting her presence. Despite this, the magistrates were asked to accept her January 1997 statement and regard her as credible despite her later retraction of sworn evidence. For Sophie’s family, Mrs Farrell’s evidence about what she saw at Kealfadda Bridge that night was ‘credible’.

  While significant elements of the Paris trial were little more than detailed elaborations of evidence already heard in Ireland either as part of the 2003 libel hearing or the 2015 High Court claim for wrongf
ul arrest, there were some dramatic new revelations. Many of these came from Sophie’s friends, who had never been asked to participate in the Irish legal proceedings.

  A close friend of Sophie, Agnes Thomas, told of a telephone conversation she had with her just days before she was due to fly to Ireland in December 1996. Ms Thomas told the trial that during the conversation Sophie revealed she was due to meet a man in west Cork who was a poet. Ms Thomas said her friend described the man as a ‘weird guy’.

  ‘She told me that she was going to meet this guy, a poet, to talk to him about his work. She said he was a “weird guy”, and I advised her that she should not meet him if he was weird. She thought he was strange. She was wary of him. If she ever met him, it would have been professional,’ she said. The conversation was only recalled by Agnes Thomas in 2015 and it had played no part in the original garda murder file. Ms Thomas said her friend had never mentioned the name of the poet to her during their brief conversation.

  Agnes Thomas said her friend was kind-hearted and would never refuse to help another person – something that possibly explained why she opened her door on the evening of 22 December or morning of 23 December 1996. ‘Sophie took care of other people. If someone needed help and knocked on her door during the night, she would open the door,’ she said.

  Other revelations involved Irish witnesses who had never played a role in the libel action or High Court cases. One such witness was Patrick Lowney, who had died in 2016. His statements, made to gardaí in October and November 2000, provoked an intense reaction in the court. Mr Lowney operated a garage at Strand Road outside Clonakilty, but he was also a keen amateur photographer. His interest in photography was so great that he even operated his own private photo-developing lab. He explained to west Cork detectives that he had been contacted by a man in May 2000. This man said he needed help from Mr Lowney with ‘discreet’ photographic work. He asked him to develop film negatives at his Clonakilty lab. Mr Lowney said he thought the man who called to him may even have been wearing a wig.