A Dream of Death Page 4

  Gardaí conducted multiple interviews with Mrs Farrell about what precisely she had seen at Kealfadda Bridge in the early hours of 23 December. It emerged that Sophie had entered Mrs Farrell’s shop during that final weekend. The French woman had gone shopping in Schull on Saturday, 21 December and, sometime between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., had strolled into the Farrells’ shop. After browsing around, she left. Sophie did not make a purchase, and at the time Mrs Farrell did not know who the elegant foreign woman was. Only subsequently did she realise the woman must have been Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

  What made Sophie’s brief shopping trip of interest to gardaí was the fact that Mrs Farrell recalled a man hanging around outside her shop at roughly the same time. The man stood out because of his strange appearance. He was wearing a long, dark overcoat, had short, dark hair, a sallow complexion and a generally dishevelled appearance. The man was spotted standing on the road across from the Farrells’ shop, apparently hanging around aimlessly. The question immediately arose – who was this man?

  ***

  Gardaí had carefully noted all those who had attended the general area around the crime scene on 23 December. Detective Garda Bart O’Leary spotted what appeared to be scratches on the hands of Ian Bailey, the freelance journalist, who had attended the scene to report on the crime for Irish, British and French media outlets. He was the first member of the media at the Toormore scene. The scratches were reported to the detectives leading the investigation.

  After 23 December, Mr Bailey had been contributing material to various Irish, French and UK publications on an almost daily basis about the murder. His work largely appeared in the Irish Star, Sunday Tribune and several French newspapers. Gardaí began to carefully study these articles. Detectives also began to cross-reference witness statements about the timing and circumstances of Mr Bailey’s arrival at the crime scene.

  On 27 December, four days after the murder and just 24 hours before Mr Carbonnet was interviewed by French police in Rouen, Mr Bailey was formally nominated as a suspect in the case by gardaí. This was noted in Job Book No. 166 at Bandon Garda Station, a formal garda reporting document assigned to the incident room where the murder was being investigated.

  The garda decision to nominate Mr Bailey as a suspect was largely based on the timing of Mr Bailey’s arrival at the scene and the fact that he had scratches on his hands.

  Days later, on 31 December 1996, Garda Denis Harrington and Garda John Paul Culligan were sent to question Mr Bailey about his movements on 22 and 23 December. Both observed the scratches on his hands. Mr Bailey explained that the scratches had resulted from killing several turkeys for Christmas and cutting the family’s Christmas tree from the top of a nearby evergreen. Garda Harrington, years later, would recall the scratches as looking like ‘briar-cuts’.

  Gardaí were also aware of Mr Bailey’s past and the fact that there had been two incidents of domestic violence during his relationship with his partner, Jules Thomas, in 1993 and in 1996. One of the gardaí now involved in the du Plantier investigation was the same officer Ms Thomas had informed she wished to formally withdraw an assault complaint previously levelled against Mr Bailey.

  The most serious of the domestic violence incidents occurred on 15 May 1996, when Ms Thomas had sought a protection order against Mr Bailey. The journalist had been drinking when the assault against Ms Thomas occurred. It was so serious that Ms Thomas’s daughter, Virginia, had called a family friend and neighbour, Peter Bielecki, and asked him to check on her mother. The Welsh artist was found with a swollen eye, scratches to her face, what appeared to be bite marks on her hands and a clump of her hair torn out.

  When she was discovered by Mr Bielecki, Ms Thomas was lying on the bedroom floor of her home, curled into a foetal position. An appalled Mr Bielecki, who was a west Cork-based sculptor, later described the whimpering noises she was making as almost ‘animal-like’. Years later, he would describe the scene of Ms Thomas lying on the floor crying like someone who ‘had their soul ripped out’.

  After a brief separation, Mr Bailey and Ms Thomas reconciled and resumed their relationship. Both were adamant that all was well in their home and their entire family was looking forward to a happy Christmas in December 1996.

  As is usual in such cases, gardaí distributed questionnaires throughout the area to determine if anyone had seen or heard anything suspicious around Toormore or the surrounding area. They were given to neighbours, people who worked in the area and anyone who attended the scene or may have known the deceased. In the days immediately following the murder, Mr Bailey received a visit from investigating gardaí and readily agreed to complete one of the questionnaires.

  On a separate occasion, shortly afterwards, he voluntarily provided fingerprints and hair samples to gardaí – a level of voluntary cooperation with the garda investigation that would later have enormous importance attached to it by officials in the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) office. One legal officer would note that Mr Bailey had gone to great lengths to assist and cooperate with the garda investigation – behaviour usually consistent with an innocent person who is eager to eliminate themselves from a police inquiry.

  Having studied all the questionnaires and witness statements, gardaí noted discrepancies between Mr Bailey’s and others’ accounts of his movements that day.

  Central to their queries was the timing of when Mr Bailey first learned that the deceased was a female French national. Mr Bailey was adamant that a phone call he received from Eddie Cassidy, the west Cork correspondent for The Examiner, included speculation that the dead person was a foreign national and possibly French. But Mr Cassidy had already denied to gardaí that he had told Mr Bailey, at 1.40 p.m. on 23 December, that there was a possible French link to the killing. Mr Cassidy was adamant he did not know at that point it was a murder, let alone that it involved a French woman. At that early stage, all he knew was that a body had been found. He said he initially believed the body could be that of a New Age traveller who had died in a hit-and-run.

  Other statements also contradicted elements of Mr Bailey’s precise timeline of events on 23 December. One photographer, Michael McSweeney of the Cork-based photographic agency Provision, said Mr Bailey had told him that photos of the crime scene were taken at 11 a.m. – some two hours before Mr Bailey said he had first learned of the killing. Mr Bailey flatly denied this. Another witness contradicted Mr Bailey’s statement that he had never met Sophie. Goleen shopkeeper James Camier said he learned of the murder of a French woman from Ms Thomas around 11 a.m. on 23 December – something Ms Thomas would emphatically deny, insisting the shopkeeper had confused events with a meeting some 24 hours later on Christmas Eve.

  A further piece of information came from a neighbour in Liscaha, who reported that a bonfire had been lit in the back garden of The Prairie on St Stephen’s Day. The timing of the fire and what precisely had been burned in it would become the source of major contention between Mr Bailey and the gardaí in the weeks and months ahead.

  Mr Bailey strenuously denied that any such bonfire had ever been lit over Christmas. Statements were later given to gardaí by two neighbours, Brian and Ursula Jackson, about the fire. Mrs Jackson, who had cancer, died before she could offer evidence in Mr Bailey’s 2003 libel case against eight Irish and UK newspapers. Her husband, Brian, did offer evidence and said he believed Mr Bailey was tending a fire in the back of the Liscaha property on 26 December 1996. He said he had heard Mr Bailey’s voice calling out and recognised who it was. Mr Bailey remained adamant that no such fire ever occurred on St Stephen’s Day. ‘I did not have a fire. Jules did not have a fire. I have no knowledge of a [St Stephen’s Day] fire.’

  Also in doubt were the contents of the disputed fire. While gardaí investigated whether clothing may have been burned, the judge in the 2003 libel case would say that even if there had been a bonfire, it was possible that nothing more than branches could have been burned.

  On 30 January 1997, Ian Bailey received anothe
r visit from gardaí involved in the murder investigation. This time, they were accompanied by a senior officer. This officer stayed out of the general conversation until the very end when, Mr Bailey later claimed, he leaned forward and told the journalist that he could place him at or near the scene of the murder early on 23 December.

  Another reason for the garda visit that day related to concerns raised by one detective over a Sunday newspaper article written by Mr Bailey. This article, according to the detective, contained a lot of details about Ms du Plantier’s family and the French investigation. The level of detail struck the detective as odd – and gardaí were tasked with clarifying where such information had come from.

  In all his statements to gardaí, Mr Bailey maintained that he had never left the home he shared in Liscaha with Ms Thomas once they had returned home from a social evening out on 22 December. On their way home, they had briefly stopped the car to admire the winter scene and the twinkling Christmas lights across the valley near Liscaha.

  Once they had parked their car back at Liscaha, Mr Bailey said he went to his workroom to complete an article he was writing and never left the property until after he received the phone call from The Examiner the following day about the grim discovery at Toormore. It was a watertight alibi. He also maintained he had never met Sophie Toscan du Plantier over her previous four years in west Cork, only having her pointed out to him from a distance through the window of a local house.

  Ms Thomas told gardaí she had gone to bed that evening and left her partner writing in the workroom. She said she vaguely recalled him getting into bed but could not specify a precise time. When she got up for breakfast the following morning, on 23 December, there was a handwritten article on the table, indicating that her partner had worked for a major portion of the previous evening. The first time both left the house on 23 December was to travel the four kilometres to Toormore in respect to the phone call Mr Bailey had received from The Examiner.

  But gardaí received a number of statements from people in west Cork in relation to comments Mr Bailey had allegedly passed about the crime in the days after 23 December. Detectives took statements from members of the media, both Irish and foreign, in respect of conversations with Mr Bailey. These statements led detectives to further scrutinise his version of the timeline of events on 23 December.

  By this stage, a detailed statement had been taken from Mrs Farrell about what precisely she had seen at Kealfadda Bridge in the early hours of 23 December. Her account varied somewhat between her initial statement and follow-on statements taken by gardaí in respect of the exact description of the suspicious individual she claimed she saw at Kealfadda Bridge. These variations in the physical descriptions of the strange man on the road would, years later, assume enormous importance. The number of statements taken from Mrs Farrell indicated just how much weight gardaí attached to this evidence.

  Gardaí believed the focus of their investigation was narrowing. A case conference was called and gardaí reviewed all the statements and evidence they had so far. The decision was made to arrest Ian Bailey and question him at Bandon Garda Station. This was despite his alibi and the fact that none of the forensic evidence linked him to the scene. But, for gardaí, Mr Bailey was emerging as a key suspect in the case. It would soon become apparent that, from February 1997, the sole focus for gardaí in west Cork was on this journalist and poet.

  At 10.45 a.m. on 10 February 1997, gardaí arrested Mr Bailey at The Prairie and brought him to Bandon Garda Station for questioning. Mr Bailey was horrified that gardaí now clearly believed him to be a suspect, despite his vehement protestations of innocence and full cooperation with their inquiry from its very early stages. His partner, Jules Thomas, to the distress of her children, was also arrested and taken to Bandon Garda Station. Mr Bailey repeatedly warned gardaí that they were making a mistake.

  This major development in the case did not escape media attention. There was already a media presence when Mr Bailey arrived at Bandon Garda Station in a garda car at 11.55 a.m. Despite his best efforts to shield his face, Mr Bailey was photographed being led into the station for questioning. Later in the day, a large group of reporters and photographers would assemble outside the garda station to await developments. Years later, Mr Bailey claimed he had been warned by gardaí that there was ‘a hanging mob’ outside the station.

  Mr Bailey and Ms Thomas were separately met at the garda station by Chief Superintendent Dermot Dwyer, one of the most experienced detectives in Cork and a veteran of multiple murder investigations in both Cork city and county. According to Ms Thomas, he told her that the case would now be resolved by forensic evidence. Both had been arrested under Section 4 of the Criminal Justice Act, 1984, which meant they could be questioned for an initial period of six hours that could then be extended to 12 hours. Ms Thomas was arrested around 90 minutes after her partner.

  Mr Bailey was read his rights and, three minutes after arriving at the station, he requested to see a solicitor. Bandon-based solicitor Con Murphy arrived at the station at 12.26 p.m. Mr Bailey was, throughout his period of questioning, allowed toilet breaks and provided with food and drinks as well as cigarettes. A superintendent authorised the taking of blood, fingerprints, palm prints and photographs. At 4.37 p.m. Mr Bailey was medically examined by a local GP before his period of detention was extended for another six hours. Then, at 10.44 p.m., he was released without charge.

  Ms Thomas was likewise released without charge after questioning, and both returned to The Prairie. Journalists and photographers called repeatedly to their front door, asking if they wished to make any comment on the dramatic development. They later admitted that they were in a state of total shock over what had just happened and were appalled to discover that they were now under siege from the media.

  ***

  Despite the public perception that the garda investigation was progressing rapidly, nothing happened for weeks, to the consternation of everyone. On 17 April, the inquest into the killing was held in Bantry. The usual procedure was for the cause of death to be given so that the bereaved family could be issued with a death certificate. However, given the fact that the death was the focus of an ongoing garda murder investigation, the inquest would then be adjourned. In many murder cases, the inquest is never resumed.

  State Pathologist Professor John Harbison offered very brief evidence, essentially just outlining the cause of death. He explained that Sophie Toscan du Plantier had suffered multiple injuries, but her death was due to a fractured skull and laceration of the brain. He found, from his post-mortem examination, that the skull fracture had been caused by trauma or impact from a blunt, rather than a sharp, object. No other evidence was offered before the inquest was adjourned.

  On 27 January 1998 Ian Bailey was arrested a second time by gardaí. He was taken to Bandon Garda Station for questioning. Again, after almost 12 hours, he was released without charge. I was in Bandon that dark winter evening for the Irish Independent and I will always remember the bewilderment within the media over what was happening.

  It is exceptionally rare for a person to be interviewed under arrest a second time without a charge being planned. So when Mr Bailey was released without charge and went the short distance from Bandon Garda Station to the office of his solicitor, Con Murphy, for a legal consultation, there was a palpable sense of confusion amongst the reporters gathered as to exactly what was going on and what would happen next.

  Under Irish law, a person cannot be arrested a third time for questioning about the same matter unless there is an intention by gardaí to level a charge. It slowly became apparent that nothing of the sort was likely in the du Plantier investigation without further evidence coming to light.

  Ultimately there were court proceedings, but they turned out to be civil rather than criminal. Mr Bailey commenced libel proceedings against eight Irish and British newspapers in 2001, before suing the State for wrongful arrest. The battle lines had been firmly drawn and Mr Bailey was now determined to
use the law to underline his innocence in relation to the matter.

  ***

  Shortly after Mr Bailey’s second arrest, gardaí concluded their investigation and a case file was ready for the DPP. When submitted on 12 February 1998, it amounted to more than 2,000 pages of witness statements, interviews and a summary of the evidence gathered by investigators. Gardaí involved in the probe believed that sanction for a charge would be forthcoming. But, instead, an official in the DPP’s office, Robert Sheehan, wrote back with a series of detailed questions for gardaí about the case file.

  These questions were duly answered by gardaí. A second case file was submitted in March 2001, but the DPP again would not sanction a charge. Later a chasm would open between gardaí and the DPP over the relative strength of the case file submitted. In particular, the DPP had raised concerns over the reliability of one of the key witnesses interviewed by the gardaí, whose evidence was absolutely central to the garda case. There was no forensic evidence, so this witness assumed paramount importance in the garda case.

  On 7 November 2001, the DPP formally ruled out the possibility of any charge being levelled against Mr Bailey. The decision was taken on the basis that any prosecution would simply not be sustainable on the evidence presented in the case file. The DPP found that there were major concerns about the reliability of the witness to whom the gardaí had attached so much importance – Mrs Farrell.

  Central to these DPP concerns were the variations in the descriptions of what the Longford woman had seen at Kealfadda Bridge. In her first statement to gardaí, the peculiar man spotted walking with the distinctive gait was described as being of medium height, around five foot eight inches tall. This description was later revised upwards to around five foot ten inches in height. Later, Mrs Farrell would tell gardaí that the man was ‘very tall’. It was clear the DPP was concerned by the disparity between the original height description and Mr Bailey’s physical stature. The original description of the strange man at Kealfadda Bridge has him standing five foot eight inches in height, whereas Mr Bailey stands at six foot three inches in height. If the first description, rather that the subsequent statements, was accurate, it was apparent to the DPP that the individual could not have been the Manchester-born journalist who insisted he had never left the home he shared with Ms Thomas on that evening.