November 16, 2021 • 55 mins
In this final part of the latest installment of Doc Doc World, Jordan finishes John Dower's 2021 true crime docuseries, Sophie: A Murder in West Cork.
The Netflix series covers the investigation into the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a French film and TV producer who was killed in 1996 while vacationing at her holiday cottage in West Cork, Ireland.
In this second of two parts, Jordan covers Episode 3 of the docuseries.
*Music by Jordan Crittenden and Quincas Moreira
*Watch Sophie: A Murder in West Cork on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81094755
*To support Dark Dark World: http://www.patreon.com/darkdarkworld
*Web: http://www.darkdarkworld.com
*Twitter: @darkworldpod
*Instagram: @darkdarkworldpodcast
*Email: darkworldpod@gmail.com
*Thank you for listening!
The Netflix series covers the investigation into the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, a French film and TV producer who was killed in 1996 while vacationing at her holiday cottage in West Cork, Ireland.
In this second of two parts, Jordan covers Episode 3 of the docuseries.
*Music by Jordan Crittenden and Quincas Moreira
*Watch Sophie: A Murder in West Cork on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81094755
*To support Dark Dark World: http://www.patreon.com/darkdarkworld
*Web: http://www.darkdarkworld.com
*Twitter: @darkworldpod
*Instagram: @darkdarkworldpodcast
*Email: darkworldpod@gmail.com
*Thank you for listening!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Guardie are treating as suspicious the deathof a woman whose body has been found
in a remote area in County Corkon the southern coast. It's one of
the most idyllic hideaways here in themountains of West Cork. There is very
little clim of any type into thevast area, with many isolated locations.
The murderer is the first here inliving memory. Don't let people into your
(00:30):
home. Bring the guarantee immediately.The brutal murder has shocked the public.
I suppose the international dimension gives itan added mystery. France has been gripped
by this case. Just how overwomen could be murdered and probably the safest
place in Ireland beggars belief. He'sbecome a modern Irish murder mystery. The
(00:51):
government set up a special inquiry point. She walked out of court refusing to
answer questions. What's important now isthe truth. It would not be appropriate
for the government's comments. We havemade mistakes. All that space has implications
for all of us. It wasthe case that goes to the heart of
our democracy. This is a murderwhich, unless solved, won't be forgotten.
(01:15):
Previously on Doc Doc World, Ibegan my coverage of Netflix's twenty twenty
one docuseries Sophie, a murder inWest Cork. In part one, we
discussed the brutal murder of Sophie Tuscondu Plantier, a French national vacationing at
(01:38):
her holiday home in Skull, avillage in West Cork, Ireland. When
we got to the scene, thebody was lying in the grass verge.
The body had been on the roadsite. A long time local journalist,
Ian Bailey, an expat from England, became the prime suspect for the guards.
(02:00):
I was driving from Colleen to Skulland I saw a man walking along
the bridge just along here. Ishook hands with him and I noticed markings
on his hands, kind of parallellines, maybe four or five or six
across the back of his hands.I thought maybe he was burning, you
know, maybe getting rid of theevidence. I mean, I can't say
(02:22):
that. I'm not one hundred percentsure. That's what I thought. But
after Ian and his partner Jewels,were detained in question for twelve hours,
the GUARDA had to release them.Apart from a significant amount of circumstantial evidence,
there was nothing with which to provethat Ian Bailey was guilty, so
(02:46):
why did everyone still think he wasthe murderer because he told people that he'd
done it. Today, I'll concludemy coverage of Sophie in this part two
of doc Doc World, Sophie aMurder in West Cork, Episode three.
(03:13):
The final episode of Sophie a Murderin West Cork is called Justice, and
it opens up with various talking headsof the Skull residents people in the West
Cork area telling us about Ian Bailey'sstrangeness even before the murder, just sort
(03:37):
of his history since being in Ireland. And you know, it's hard to
tell if some of it's made up, if it's just snowball like starting with
a little nugget of a rumor thatthen has built up over the years.
But you hear things about we've alreadymentioned sort of his wizard like appearance.
Apparently there have been multiple sightings ofIan outside of his property, practically naked,
(04:05):
just wearing like underwear and nothing elseand howling at the moon or holding
his wizard staff up to the moonand howling and sort of shan shanting,
shouting incantations. Very very odd stuff, but hard to tell if it's really
(04:26):
substantial or not. They're just sortof giving us all the background about Ian,
and it's it's possible that a lotof these people were sort of prejudiced
towards Ian. In the first place, He's an Englishman living in Ireland,
right, He's got this sort ofabrasive personality, and so it's possible that
(04:47):
a lot of these people just startedadding on to that, making him seem
more outlandish than he really was.It's also entirely possible that this stuff is
real. And of course these typesof observations and stories about Ian start to
pick up and get even more grandioseafter it sort of comes out that he's
(05:11):
the prime suspect in the murder ofSophie, And you know, it sort
of reminds me a little bit ofyou know, in the robin Hood Hills
murders that I've talked about at lengthon this feed or this channel, depending
on where you're listening to this.But you know, with Damian Eccles and
the West Memphis three, Damien specificallyjust how people had always been suspicious of
(05:36):
him, but then when it wasthere was any suggestion at all that he
might be involved in the murders ofthree little boys. People start making up
all kinds of stories. Oh yeah, I remember that Damian, he used
to do this, And yeah,I've always had a feeling about that guy.
You should see some of the thingsI've I've seen that he's done.
And guess what I heard about Damian. Sort of the same thing happening with
(06:00):
Ian Bailey here. But if I'mgoing to keep the parallels going, the
character of Ian Bailey is actually muchmore like Mark Buyers, another famous character
from the Robin Hood Hill's case.And you know, just in the sense
that Ian Bailey clearly loves playing tothe camera. He loves that attention.
(06:20):
He wants to be center stage inthe story very much Mark Buyers, who
even though he was part of thestory by his connection by being the father
of one of the victims, stepfatherof one of the victims, he really
sort of tried to turn it intohis own show. This is the Mark
(06:41):
Buyers show. The murder takes aback seat to my grandiosity, and there's
a bit of that with Ian Baileyas well. Anyway, you remember Billy
Fuller, I mentioned that I likedhim quite a bit. He was the
local gardener and skull resident. Helived not too far from Ian and Jewels
(07:03):
and Billy's talking about in present day. He's one of the talking heads here
telling us that he sort of feltbad for Ian when all these stories we're
getting sort of bandied around town.Everyone's saying that Ian's a lunatic, literally
howling at the moon, and wenever trusted him and all that. So
(07:24):
Billy back in nineteen ninety six,feeling bad for Ian, decides to pay
him a visit and let him knowthat people are talking about him and just
tell him what's being said about him, just to give him a heads up.
And here's Billy Fuller, I'm aboundhis house, innocently knocks from the
door. He came the door,let me in. He was sat down,
he had like doing everywhere and likewhich food and this stuff, and
(07:46):
he said, I'll do on aglass aside. I said, what I'm
actually working? I said, Ijust popped in see you. He was
relaxed until I came out with whatpeople are saying about him, that you'd
be howling at the moon and stuff. Straight away. Bang, he just
went into a complete meltdown. Look, and there's like he moved where he
wasn't. He's went white knuckled,and his face changed and he grabbed hold
of the thing behind him like this, and he was astonished, and he
was like, you fuck like thisto me. And I was like,
(08:09):
what he said, you saw inSpa the day before she was killed,
and he saw a tit ask andhe wanted to give a one. He
said that when he went up tothe house about two o'cluple in the morning,
she ran away screaming because you're scaredher. He chased her the corbo
down and he still sunk in theback of a head whils went too far.
He felt like he was saying whathe did. But for me,
you know, I was scared andI left his health. When he was
telling you this story, did itfeel like some form of confession? I
(08:33):
definitely hear now. In case anyof that was hard to understand, I
had the benefit watching it. Ofcourse, I always put subtitles on everything,
even if it's just straight up Englishlanguage with no accents at all,
or American accents, as I'm mostused to. Even then, I have
subtitles on, but I certainly haveit on for anything where there might be
an accent, and it's a littleharder to understand, so in case you
(08:56):
couldn't catch all of that. Basicallywhat Billy is saying as he goes over
there, and Ian just sort ofhas a Jekyl and Hide moment where his
eyes just sort of glaze over andhe becomes like a different person, like
he's in a fugue state or something. And as Billy says, he's saying
what he had done, presumably,but sort of saying it to Billy like
(09:18):
it was Billy who had done it. So he's saying, you saw her
when you were down at the market, and you liked her tight ass,
and you wanted to give her one, so you followed her back and then
you killed her. You know thatkind of thing. But he's almost rocking
in his chair and he's grabbing thesides of the chair behind him, and
his knuckles are white, and it'ssort of like having an episode, really,
(09:41):
and it seemed to Billy like basicallyIan was lapsing into this weird sort
of post traumatic stress episode dealing withthe trauma of what he had done and
was almost confessing to Billy, butby saying you instead of I made it
(10:01):
a little convoluted and strange. Butyeah, that's weird, but we learned
that Billy Fuller wasn't the only personthat experienced Ian Bailey confessing in some form
or another. That may have beenthe most outlandish way that he did it,
but it happened plenty more times.One particular knife New Year's Eve to
(10:24):
be specific, a local couple,Richie and Rosie Shelley, were having drinks
in a local pub and skull andgot into conversation with Ian Bailey and Jules
Thomas. They invited them back latein Year's Eve. Ian started talking about
the murder and he became quite emotionaland started crying. And it was that
(10:45):
sort of early morning thing after drinking, you know, when he'd get strange.
He started crying and hugging Richie Shelleyand saying, I did it,
I did it. I went toofar. They ran screaming from the house.
They ran away. So again,as I'll say, like a broken
record in this episode, damning,pretty damning. Next, we get a
(11:09):
little more background on Ian's partner andlongtime lover and house mate, Jules Thomas.
I think earlier I mentioned that shehad two daughters from previous marriages,
she actually had three daughters. Threedaughters from to previous marriages, and Jules's
daughters were friends with a local boynamed Malachi, who in nineteen ninety seven
(11:35):
was fourteen years old. So thisis a few weeks after the murder,
but back in ninety seven when Malachiis fourteen. Because Malachi was friends with
Jules's daughters, Ian knew who Malakaiwas. Saw him walking home one day
while Ian was driving by and offeredto give him a lift home. Malachi
accepted, he knows Ian family friend. All good, but as they're driving,
(11:58):
Malaki starts to know is that Ian'sacting a little weird. He's probably
been drinking, Malachi thinks, becausehe's sort of slurring and saying odd things.
And then it gets really uncomfortable whenIan says to Malachi, quote what
did I do, lad, Whatdid I do? I went up there
(12:22):
and I bashed her head in witha rock and quote yeah. Malachi was
terrified, said nothing, and Iandidn't say anything else either. On the
rest of the way home, dropsMalaki off, says all right, bye
bye, see you later, andMalachi was terrified, told his mom and
(12:46):
well, he'll come back into thestory and a little bit. Here's what
Ian had to say about confessing topeople like this. I mean, I
don't know if other people do this, but I mean I do use sarcasm
and I do use irony on occasions, and it was just so that's pathetic.
I mean, again, not tokeep bringing this up. At robin
Hood Hills with Damien Echols, therewas talk that once Damien had heard that
(13:09):
he was a suspect and presumably thoughtthat was completely hilarious, knowing he hadn't
done it, he was observed ata softball game or overheard at a softball
game saying, oh, yeah,you know, I killed those kids and
I'm going to kill another one.And I've always been able to picture in
my mind that being sort of blackhumor or being sarcastic, like, yeah,
(13:31):
it's so absurd that people think I'ma suspect, so I'm going to
ham it up. And I couldsee him, you know, someone out
a softball game saying to Damien,heard you killed some kids. Damien him
going oh yeah, you know,me killed three kids. I'm going to
get another one. You know thatI can kind of see. But that's
not what I see here. WithIan Bailey, I don't think it's the
same kind of thing. This isdifferent. He's having episodes here, he's
(13:56):
crying, very emotional. I don'tsee the humor connection at all, and
I think that's that's weak for meand Dermott Dwyer. You remember, the
lead investigator on the case from Dublinis asked by the filmmakers about what he
thinks about Ian's defense that this wasblack humor, and he has a pretty
good quote that he says, well, it's amazing that, you know,
(14:18):
the population of Ireland at the timewas right about five million, and yet
Ian Bailey's the only person that's everjoked about killing Sophie Toscon to Plantier.
You would think if this were justblack humor and anyone would make these sort
of remarks, that maybe a coupleother people somewhere in Ireland might be making
similar jokes. And while obviously DermotDwyer doesn't know for certain that no one
(14:43):
else is making these jokes, hispoint's well taken, right, This isn't
something you're going to be joking about, certainly, not in this way.
And so on January twenty seventh,nineteen ninety eight, we're ninety eight now,
Ian Bailey is arrested for a secondtime. He's brought in now by
(15:05):
the National Criminal Investigation Bureau. TheGarda are still involved entirely, but they
are getting assistance from this NCIB.I guess similar to the FBI here in
the States. They're assisting with theinvestigation. But again, you remember I
mentioned earlier that an Irish law,you get you get two shots at detaining
(15:26):
a suspect and you can keep themfor twelve hours at each time to try
and secure a confession or get somethingto go ahead and file charges. But
again they get no confession. Ithink they were hoping for a confession and
they didn't get it, so theyhave to release Ian Bailey a second time.
(15:48):
In Ireland, the organization or personstasked with determining whether or not charges
can be brought against a suspect isthe DPP, or Rector of Public Prosecutions,
and the DPP just determined that therewasn't enough evidence to warrant a charge.
Now, obviously you've heard all thisstuff that I've been saying. There
(16:11):
are mounds and mounds of circumstantial evidence, but in Ireland the burden of proof
is taken very seriously and circumstantial evidenceis oftentimes just not enough. You know,
here in the US people are convictedon circumstantial evidence all the time,
but it's my understanding here that inIreland it's much more difficult to do that
and much less common. Of course, Ian Bailey lapped up all of the
(16:34):
attention. He loves the notoriety.Whether whether it's for something good or something
bad, it doesn't matter for Ian. He just wants to be center stage.
He just wants that attention. Hecan't resist it. After he's released
for the second time, he's doingall kinds of interviews. He's inviting the
media over to his house, doingtelevision interviews and newspaper interviews. But eventually,
(17:00):
with no more movement on the case, no new suspects, the investigation
kind of stalls, and eventually thecase sort of falls out of the public
consciousness. And so for a coupleof years, no one really thinks about
the case. They certainly don't hearabout the case. It's not being written
about, it's certainly not on TV. But Ian's ego wanted more, he
(17:26):
needed more, and so in Decemberof two thousand and three, so we
have leapt forward a bit here,Ian decides that he is going to sue
all of the newspapers eight in totalor seven in total, seven Irish and
British newspapers that he believes had defamedhim during the investigation of the Sophie Tasconte
(17:49):
Plantier murder case. He believes thathis good name and good reputation were sullied
by these papers and news outlets,and he was suing them for defamation of
character. And by all accounts,by all the people that are talking to
us in this documentary, people believethat Ian did this because he just wanted
(18:11):
the attention. He didn't want peopleto forget about him. He loved everyone
talking about him, even if itwas in this negative way. He needed
more of it, wanted more ofit, and this was a way to
get back in the headlines. Butwhat Ian may not have anticipated was that
(18:32):
this could go badly for him.The newspapers lawyers petitioned the courts to get
the Garda's file on the Sofie toScone to Plantier case, So the entire
investigation file, so all of thestuff they had on Ian, really,
all of the interviews they'd done withanybody at all, it's all there in
(18:52):
this file. And the courts agreeand these lawyers for the newspapers get the
file, and they get all ofthese documents and pieces of information that they
can then bring into the trial anduse as evidence. They subpoena all the
witnesses who had given statements, peoplelike Billy Fuller, people like Malachi,
(19:15):
anyone who had come forward with informationlike that. They subpoena and bring them
in. So basically what ends uphappening here is Ian's going on trial,
because the papers are going to takethe position of yes, we wrote these
things about him, but here's why. This is what was out there.
So this essentially becomes the trial ofIan Bailey for the murder of Sophia Toscon
(19:41):
du Plantier. Not exactly he can'tbe sentenced or anything for it, but
at least informationally, informationally, atleast all of the info comes out and
the public really for the first timegets to learn about the details of the
garda's case against Ian Bailey. Thisagain, I promise this will be the
last time I bring up the romanHood Hills Westmouth is three stuff. But
(20:04):
this is not unlike Terry Hobbs.You may recall Terry Hobbs sued Natalie Mains
of the Dixie Chicks for defamation,thinking he was going to get some big
payday. But then what happened wasthe lawyers for Natalie Maine's team or her
team of lawyers were able to introducewhatever they wanted and basically asked Terry Hobbs
(20:27):
if he was involved in the murders, then ask him all these difficult questions,
introduced stuff about his violent past,and on and on and on.
So totally backfired for Hobbes. Samething here was Ian because a lot of
damning stuff comes out, and itbecame pretty clear to the public that all
(20:48):
of these witnesses, some of whomdidn't know each other, didn't live near
each other, Various people here,all basically with the same story, and
Ian's story doesn't add up. Ian'sstory is out of line with all of
the others. Now, you'll rememberMarie Farrell, and she was crucial because
(21:10):
she was the only person who couldplace Ian out of his house on the
night of the murders. You remembershe saw him at Kilfather Bridge. Well
check this out, you're suree onehundred and ten percent. And Ian Bailey
confirmed that to me when he cameinto my shop, because he said,
(21:30):
I know you saw me on thebridge. Marie Farrell told the course that
Ian Bailey tried to force her ona number of occasions to retract the statement
she made to Guardy. She saidhe told her he knew things about her
and asked her to change her statement. She made many official complaints to the
GUARDI in relation to the campaign ofharassment and intimidation she suffered at the hands
(21:53):
of Ian Bailey. He arrived inthe shop and he said that he knew
I had seen on the bridge,and that he wanted me to tell his
solicitor that a Guardy had made memake up the story about him, and
if I did that, he wouldleave me alone. And when I had
no intentions of doing that, hemade my life help And at one stage
(22:15):
I thought he was so big hecould kill me here in two minutes and
nobody would know. He would makecutthroat gestures like this if he met me
on the straight, or he woulddo this. That type of intimidation went
on for months and months. Shesaid she feared for herself and for her
children. Okay, and there area couple of things in there. There
(22:36):
are a couple of times when Mariesays and he went like this. One
of them, she says, hewent like this, and she does the
cutthroat gesture, dragging her thumb acrossher neck, you know, that thing
we've seen before. And another time, she says, and he went like
this, she puts a gun toher head, using her fingers, you
know, to make the gun.That's all that was. And apparently Ian
(22:59):
had threatened other neighbors as well.People were terrified of him. Now,
women in particular, they didn't trusthim, and they thought he was scary.
Frankly, just a violent, drunk, moon howling weirdo. And they
probably had good reason to be frightenedbecause also at this Libel trial, a
(23:22):
lot of information comes out about Ian'spast and his shockingly substantial history of domestic
violence with his ex wife and withhis current partner, Jules Thomas. Peter
Bieliki, one of the talking headswho I've mentioned earlier but maybe not for
a while, gives some disturbing testimonyat the Libel trial, really stunned people.
(23:51):
And he basically talks about what hesaid at the Libel trial here in
the documentary, and you can listento it as well. A friend of
Jules Thomas's daughters. Peter Blecki toldthe Quarter about an assault on Jules Thomas
by Ian Bailey in nineteen ninety six. I got a knock on the door
and it was Jules's daughter in Virginia. Could I come and take Jules to
(24:12):
hospital please. Jules is sat onthe bed. She's she's crawled up in
a ball. This eye is hugeand turned in. Half of her hair
is out of her head. There'snail marks all over her face, her
lip is ripped open. Nula,who was the little girl, looked at
(24:33):
me and to this day, Ican't sorry. He's just going to say
it was the look from my kid'sface, like help help me please,
And I couldn't, you know.And I've never felt so useless in all
my life. I couldn't help thischild. For some reason, even though
(25:03):
this is discussed at length in theWest Cork podcast, for some reason,
it hits harder in the documentary inSophie. I'm not sure why that is.
I think maybe because the West Corkpodcast goes into his real history of
domestic abuse and they detail many differentevents like this was just one thing that
(25:27):
Bill Ecki's telling us about. Butthis kind of thing happened a lot,
and the West Cork podcast kind ofdives into each one, so it ends
up I don't want to say itends up being less impactful really because it's
so repetitive, but I guess that'swhat I'm saying. The fact that here
(25:48):
in the Dock it's this one instancethat we focus on, I think it
makes it a little more emotional andwe're able to see the humanity of jewels,
and Peter Billicky getting emotional like that, I think makes it easier to
connect with whereas if we had listedall these different events, it would just
sort of seem like this harrowing andmonotonous litany of testimony. And I don't
(26:15):
know, I just thought it wasreally effective here in the Dock. So
well done, John Dower. Andit also comes out, you know,
Peter Billick, He's not the onlyone to talk about this. In the
Libel trial. Many people come forwardtalking about how they would routinely see jewels
with a black eye. It waspretty common knowledge that Ian would hit jewels.
(26:41):
And it's not that people didn't sayanything. People did try to help
jewels and see if she wanted toleave Ian. She never did, but
you know, so it wasn't thatall these people, you know, turned
a blind eye and didn't report itor anything. They made attempts to help,
but it continued on and eventually someof the neighbors gave up on Jewels,
(27:03):
saying why I can't understand why shetakes him back, and look,
spousal abuse, domestic violence is avery complex thing. It's very common for
people to ask why don't they leave? I can't understand why they don't just
leave. Well, there are manyreasons, and as I say, it's
very complex, and some people turnedon Jewels because of it. They couldn't
(27:25):
understand how she could stay with Ian, and others just said, well,
I'll respect her wishes and I won'tkeep bringing it up and reporting it,
but you know, I can't notnotice it. So people were divided about
it, really, but the generalpublic hadn't heard any of this stuff.
So this was bombshell material coming outof this libel trial. And as you
(27:49):
might expect, Ian weighs in onthis as well. He even weighs in
on it for this documentary talking tothe filmmakers. I'm gonna play you this
absolutely gross clip from Ian on thesubject. It's not I don't want to
(28:10):
go back into them, but Imean they are long past. On that
occasion, she'd been drinking. We'reboth are in drinking. Maybe I don't
know what happened, but she startedto grab me and I was pushing her
back, and I heard her inthat process. I'd have to take full
responsibility. But I mean, itdoes take two, you know, it
takes two to thank. But I'mnot trying to absolve my actions or you
(28:34):
know, at all. Yuck,just yuck. I probably don't need to
break down for you why that's soyuck, But I mean, come on,
he's just the classic narcissist, theclassic abuser ian is a very interesting
paradox between being shameless and shameful.It takes two to tango. Mister Bailey
(29:00):
admitted that Miss Thomas had been leftwith trumps of hair missing from her head,
her eye was purple the size ofa grapefruit, and her lip was
severed from her gum. She neededeight stitches. Mister Bailey said he had
drink taken and had lost control what. He denied that he was a violent
man. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not absolving myself if this at
(29:21):
all, I don't mean to minimizemy role in this, but yeah,
but she had attacked me and wehad both been drinking, so gross fucking
hospitalized her. Peter be Alicky,I'd had a conversation with a local guard
and I said, she's not goingto press charges and he said she must
do because if she doesn't, itcould be worse next time, and it
(29:45):
might not even be her in relationto Sophie's murder, when six months before
it not. Most thankfully and hilariously, Ian lost the case and had to
pay all of his legal fees.Also, very much like Terry Hobbs,
(30:07):
sorry I lied, I did bringit up one more time. And now
you know. The added benefit forthe guards here is that the entire public,
like all of Ireland, now thinksthat Ian is guilty of the murder
of Sophie, just from all thisstuff that came out at the Libel trial,
and people expected that the DPP wouldnow definitely prosecute, They would see
(30:30):
that there was enough to bring chargesand Ian would finally be taken to trial
for the murder of Sophie. Butthe DPP did not bring charges. So
if Ireland weren't going to take careof it, maybe France would have to.
(31:00):
In two thousand and seven, inParis, Sophie's son Pierre Louis,
who's an adult now, along withother family and friends, forms an association,
a group called the Association for theTruth about the Murder of Sophie Tascon
Duplantier and the Association essentially they gettogether a couple of times a month and
(31:26):
they go through the case. Theystart doing research, a couple of them
start learning law, really diving inand doing their own investigation. And their
attitude was, look, if Ireland'snot going to handle this, we'll do
it, and hats off to him. In Ireland you must prove guilt beyond
a reasonable doubt. But in Francethe legal system is very different. Here
(31:53):
is journalist Laura Marlowe one more time. I don't think I've brought her up
since episode one, and she wasthe one who had talked about her journalism
focused on Sophie and Sophie's life.She had talked about Sophie's writings, and
I think I had a clip ofher talking about the poem Sophie wrote about
(32:14):
the dead lamb Anyway, Laura Marlowe, here she is again in Ireland,
which is based on the British justicesystem. You have to prove guilt beyond
reasonable doubt, and in France it'sa faissodapov. It's like a bouquet of
evidence. So Sophie's son and Sophie'sfamily, the Association, we're gonna just
(32:37):
call this group the Association. TheAssociation are able to use all of the
witness statements and the testimony from Bailey'slibel trial, and all of the documents
that came out of the Guardophile thatthe newspaper's lawyers had petitioned the guards for.
So all of that info the Associationis able to used to present a
(33:00):
case to the French authorities, whothen decided that there was enough there to
open their own investigation in late twothousand and eight. So now you've got
Sophie's family essentially getting justice for Sophie. They've convinced the French authorities to open
(33:21):
their own investigation in case in hopesof being able to bring formal charges against
Ian Bailey and take him to trialin France. But then we get another
bombshell. Marie Farrell comes forward againand says, I'm positive it wasn't Ian
Bailey. You're certain that he wasn'tpositive. Marie Farrel had retracted her statements.
(33:46):
It was all more or less bullshit. It was in a statements,
and I wanted to withdraw them.The principal witness has suddenly irrevocably removed herself
from the equation. Marie Farle turnedthe whole investigation on its head. She
was with a man who was nother husband. If this came out,
(34:07):
my whole life was destroyed, Ithought, because I thought my marriage was
gone, even though I hadn't beenhaving an affair compromised by that. She
now claims police forced her to falselyidentify their prime suspect. It's only not
to worry about it that I wouldnever have to go to court. That
they only wanted me to say itfor their own records. Wow. Wow,
(34:34):
And all the journalists who are talkingheads in this documentary, you're saying,
like, you know, Marie Ferrellwas one of the most credible witnesses
throughout this whole thing. I believedeverything she said when she came forward.
I believed her initial statement. Ibelieved her at the libel trial, and
yet I also believe her now.She seems credible now during the libel trial.
(34:58):
I believed her. She was givingyou a she was very credible.
When she retracted her statements, oh, I believed her. She was very
credible. Again. I told himI was withdrawing the statements and I was
crying, and I told him,I said, this is it. I'm
withdrawing everything. I don't want anymore of this. I can't handle it,
I can't take anymore. So whatto make of this? Marie Farrell
(35:20):
kept the same story for over tenyears. Why come forward now and change
your story in two thousand and eight. It's a shame that so much of
the case hinges on hearsay and testimonyand statements that can be retracted. The
guards were out of their depth,putting it bluntly, you know, they
(35:44):
hadn't experienced a murder in West Corkfor nearly a hundred years. They have
a very small guard force to beginwith, and the assistance they received from
the Dublin guards wasn't indefinite, wasn'tongoing. They helped initially, but it
just wasn't enough. It was toolittle. They didn't preserve the crime scene
(36:06):
properly, that gait that they hadtaken, that piece of the farmyard Gate
that they had taken for evidence earlyon. I talked about that that went
missing somehow, that beggar's belief.They let people walk all over the crime
scene. All sorts of different peoplewere going in out of there. You
had Ian Bailey running around the crimescene. We talked about the markings that
(36:30):
people saw on Ian Bailey's hands.Now one photographed those. After Marie Ferrell
initially identified Ian Bailey as the manshe saw and kill Fota Bridge, no
one put him in a lineup forher to identify him on the record.
Stuff like that. Oh, actually, by the way, in Ireland,
(36:51):
or maybe this is in the UKas well, or maybe it's a European
thing in general. But instead ofcalling it a lineup as we do here
in this states, like they puthim in a lineup, they call it
an identity parade. How much cooleris that? An identity parade? Love
that? So, yeah, theydidn't put I in bailey inn identity parade.
(37:13):
They didn't put anyone in an identityparade. Sorry, I just want
to keep saying that. And youknow the guards acknowledge this, They understand
that they had failings in this case. Dermott Dwyer's himself says, yes,
we made mistakes, but there wasno malice behind it. There was no
corruption. Everything we did was onthe level. We just made mistakes.
(37:37):
My guy, Barry Rosch says,quote, I don't think anyone would hold
this investigation up as an example ofhow things should be done. But because
there were mistakes in the Garda investigation, does that automatically mean that Ian Bailey
is innocent? End? Quote.In December of twenty eleven, information comes
(37:59):
out as to why the DPP hadelected not to prosecute Ian Bailey, and
it turns out that the DPP feltthat the guards didn't pursue enough other suspects,
that their case was prejudicial towards IanBailey, and that all they really
had on him was circumstantial. Theycharacterized the investigation as a witch hunt led
(38:22):
by guards and angry neighbors who didn'tlike Bailey because he was odd and he
was a blow in, an Englishblow in to be specific. Barry Rash
again says that the DPP opinion isbizarrely biased itself, with almost every point
of contention, the DPP seems toside with Ian Bailey's version, despite the
(38:45):
fact that you have multiple other statementsfrom people who have no reason to lie
coming against Ian Bailey's version, Sowhy are they siding with him? Very
odd. Here's a clip of LauraMarlowe. Again. One of the most
shocking things about the report is itsays, well, yes, baby had
(39:07):
been very violent towards women, butthen, unfortunately this happens all the time,
you know, sort of excusing itand saying that the fact that he
had a history of violence against womenwas not relevant to the case that this
woman was beaten to a pulp.Indeed, the conclusion at the end of
the report is we believe they arenot sufficient grounds to send him to trial.
But the Association over in France,their investigation was ongoing, and while
(39:34):
they're continuing to do their due diligencetrying to get justice for Sophie, Ian
Bailey once again is not enjoying thefact that he's not really in the limelight.
The story has sort of died downagain as far as the headlines go,
and now in November of twenty fourteen, Ian Bailey sues the guard A.
(39:55):
He says that they conspired against him. They a worst Marie Farrell to
make false statements YadA, YadA,YadA. But because Marie Farrell's story had
changed so many times over the years, her credibility was shot. Bailey lost
the suit pretty quickly, really didn'ttake long. He didn't he couldn't use
(40:20):
Marie Farrell and he really had nothing. What was he going to prove?
It was near impossible for him toprove that there was some sort of conspiracy
against him, that all the peopleof West Cork were conspiring with the guards
to railroad. Ian really, Iankeeps bringing himself back into the picture.
(40:42):
He can't leave well enough alone.But anyway, he loses that suit as
well, and once again has topay all of his legal fees. And
now in episode three, we takea little break from all of the case
and the legal proceedings and whatnot,and we spend a little time with Robert
Quinlan, the publican who I lasttalked about when I was covering episode one.
(41:07):
I believe he talks about how reallySophie gets lost in all of this.
You know, after like nineteen ninetyeight, nineteen ninety nine, the
case just becomes the Ian Bailey case, and apart from the Association doing their
work in France, the focus isall really just Ian Bailey. No one
(41:28):
really thinks about Sophie anymore. Thissort of idea. This is in keeping
with what I've talked about a lotlately on the show about you know,
how important victims are to the story, how much of it matters whether they
should be the focus. And Ido think that it's interesting that typically I'm
not really bothered when the victim isn'tcenter stage and we sort of let them
(41:51):
fall by the wayside, and wedo become focused on the course of justice
and getting the person who did this, and that takes over all of our
interest. But with this case,I really did feel like Sophie stayed with
me throughout, and I think that'sprobably a credit to the filmmakers here.
I think they really did a goodjob, and they had some devices,
(42:13):
as I've mentioned, they were ableto use Sophie's beautiful house and this beautiful
setting, this romantic setting of Skull, as a foil for Sophie that it's
a way to put her in thestory. You always get these nice shots
of the house sort of in betweentense moments, and it's really grounding,
(42:34):
really brings us back to why we'reall here, because this innocent, lovely
woman who was so vibrant and hadso many talents and was so kind to
everybody, was just savagely murdered.You know. It's just it sucks.
And they were able to keep herwith us throughout this like she's along for
(42:57):
the ride, and I thought thatwas well done. Now I'll ask you
to remember that Ian Bailey stated onrecord at least a half a dozen times
that he'd never met Sophie Tascon dePlantier, that he'd seen her, she'd
been pointed out to him, YadA, YadA, YadA. And I talked
a little bit about how this hadbeen called into question a couple of times,
(43:22):
and now we're really going to callit into question. Agnes Thomas,
Sophie's best friend, who was originallygoing to go on Sophie's last trip to
Ireland. She was going to comewith her, but at the last minute
couldn't for whatever reason. And inthe documentary in this episode three, she
tells us that when Sophie had gottensettled, when Sophie went out to West
(43:45):
Cork and was staying at her housein school, once she was sort of
settled in, she called Agnes andthey were catching up just sort of letting
her know about her work and howher travels were and whatnot. And at
some point during the conversation, Sophietold Agnes about a man that she'd met
who wanted to meet with her todiscuss a creative project. He knew that
(44:08):
Sophie was a writer and he toowas a writer, a poet. He
wanted to share poems and collaborate,and Sophie and Agnes joke that it was
probably, you know, he's hittingon her, He's just trying to find
a way in. And Sophie didsay to Agnes that he was a little
off putting, a little overbearing,a bit pushy and aggressive, and that
(44:35):
she found him quote a bit worryingas a character end quote. And Agnes
said, you know, oh boy, all right, well, if you
do meet with him, just makesure you meet him in a pub or
a cafe or something that you know, somewhere public. And as we have
Agnes telling us this story here inthe episode, the filmmakers cut in Barry
(44:59):
Ross's cuts in and out of orHe's sort of they go back and forth
between Barry Rush and Agnes Thomas andBarry Rosh is saying you know. He's
pointing out that there are recorded statementsfrom at least eight different people, including
Agnes Thomas, that suggests that Ianknew Sophie and that he was lying about
(45:20):
not having met her, and BarryRush says that the most significant of these
people is a man named Guy Girard, who was another French filmmaker and a
colleague of Sophie's and similarly to AgnesThomas, Guy Girard tells us in the
documentary he's talking to us and tellsus that Sophie had in fact known Ian
(45:46):
Bailey for some time, even beforeher last trip to Ireland. The night
before she left for the last time, she was telling Guy Girard that,
oh yeah, and there's this sortof distant neighbor of mine out there.
His name is and she said IanBailey. And the reason that Guy Girard
(46:09):
remembers this is because he misheard thename or confuse the name with someone else
in his mind and had said toSophie, oh, right, right,
I know him, I know hisfilms, he made this film or that
film. And Sophie said, no, none, no, he can't know
him. He's an Englishman, helives, he lives in West Cork.
He's my neighbor out there, andthat's why guy Gard remembers it and was
(46:30):
like, oh okay, that failingin his mind, that confusing the two
names was why he remembers and ispretty certain that Sophie had told him about
Ian Bailey. It's kind of chilling. I thought i'd include that. So
we fast forward now to May oftwenty nineteen and the French judicial system has
(46:52):
decided to try Ian Bailey for themurder of Madame Sophie Toscon Duplancier. They
are going to prosecute Ian in absentia. This will be a trial in absentia
because the Irish authorities will not acknowledgethe trial, they will not acknowledge the
investigation going on in France, andthey won't extradite Ian. Pierre Louis,
(47:19):
Sophie's son, travels to Westcourt beforethe trial because he thinks he owes it
to the community who knew his motherand welcomed his mother in. He thinks
he owes it to them to explainwhat's going on over in France, that
you know, the Irish legal systemfailed us, but here's what we're doing
in France. I've started this associationand we're going to take this bastard to
(47:45):
trial, you know that kind ofthing. And he holds a little event,
a gathering at a local church inWest Cork, and he gives a
speech talking about why it's important thathe's getting justice for his mother and that
he wants to clear Ireland's good name, to clear their land's good name.
It's very touching, it's very kind. Here is Pierre Louis reading to us
(48:10):
in the documentary from the speech thathe gave to the people of Skull,
Dear France, dear families, dearIrish people. In a few days time,
the trial of the man accused ofkilling my mother will beginning at last.
This is a trial of a crimethat does not fit with what Ireland
(48:36):
is like. This is a trialof a crime that you and I didn't
deserve. And so in France atrial kicks off. There will be no
jury, The case will be decidedby three magistrates instead. Nearly thirty witnesses
(48:58):
were called. They all give theirtestimony, people like Peter Billecki, Billy
Fuller, Agnes Thomas, young Malachi, well he's not young Malachi anymore,
but you know, all these peoplecome forward, they travel to France and
they give their testimony. It's youknow, it's a proper trial. The
only thing that sets it apart isthat Ian Bailey's not there. And in
(49:22):
twenty nineteen, twenty two years on, Ian Bailey was found guilty in absentia
of the murder of Madame Sophie Tascondu Plantier and was sentenced to twenty five
years in prison. Because of thisverdict, in October of twenty twenty,
(49:45):
the Irish High Court must make aruling on whether or not Ian Bailey can
be extradited to France given the newdevelopments, and once again they determined that
Bailey cannot be extradited. They donot find the French Court's findings to be
valid and therefore will not extradite Ian. So as long as he stays in
(50:08):
Ireland they can't touch him. He'sa convicted murderer in France, but he's
an innocent man in Ireland where helives and still lives. You know,
the way this documentary ends, yousee Ian just chilling at the market,
just hanging out at the market,selling his little cakes that he makes and
(50:29):
his little jars of pickles, homemadegoods that he sells, and he's writing
poems and reciting poems, just lovinglife, hanging out in the sunshine,
taking in the sea breeze. It'svery, very weird. And as the
documentary is wrapping up, we hearfrom the residents who still, you know,
see Ian Bailey all the time,and just how unsettling they find it
(50:52):
all. They hate seeing him,they try to avoid him, and they
resent how sort of fee and confidenthe seems, just how well this has
all worked out for him. Communityseem pretty convinced that he did this,
that he is guilty, and they'redisgusted by the fact that he's free.
(51:13):
My own personal take on that is, look, I think it's pretty clear,
pretty obvious that Ian did this.I think that he is guilty.
That said, I understand why he'snot been punished. You know, I
kind of side with the Irish courtshere and that I put a lot of
weight into the burden of proof andinto guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And
(51:37):
while there is a bunch of damningcircumstantial evidence, I just for me personally,
I need physical evidence, I needDNA, I need something that he
can't refute something that doesn't rely onstatements, and you know, people coming
forward, people changing stories, people, people and their memories are flawed.
(52:00):
And you know, for me toconvict someone, I just need it to
be perfect. There can't be youknow, the conviction can't be flawed.
I guess that's what I'm saying.I need to know for certain that this
guy did it, and I don'tknow for certain, But for the record,
Ian Bailey total scumbag, piece ofshit. I totally support anyone who
(52:22):
just wants to walk up to himat that market and punch him in the
face. Totally fine with that.Just doesn't sit well with me to convict
him or send him to prison justyet. Pierre Louis, Sophie's son,
still to this day, visits Skulland he stays in his mother's house there,
where he says that her spirit isvery much alive, and I think
(52:45):
that's very sweet. At first,I was like, Oh, that's got
to be unsettling, like living inthe house where you know your mother was
murdered right outside, but I don'tknow. Hearing him talk about it,
and like seeing the house. I'vealready talked about how nice the house is,
and just how pleasant the area ismakes it Okay. I can see
it and it seems comforting to me, and I totally get that, and
(53:07):
I think it's very nice in touching. And in April of twenty twenty one,
earlier this year, Jules Thomas separatedfrom me and Bailey, so they
are no longer together, at leastnot right now. And that's gonna do
it, folks. That wraps upthe three episode series Sophie A Murder in
(53:30):
West Cork. So where do Istand with it? Drum roll A.
It gets an A, not anA plus, but an A a solid
A. I'm gonna do the quickRotten Tomatoes look up just to see if
we are in similar viewpoints here onRotten Tomatoes. There you go A.
(53:59):
So, yeah, this is notme just giving you a one off rating.
It seems to be supported by themasses, or at least by a
lot of film critics. So yeah, Sophie A Murder and West Cork definitely
worth your time if you have notseen it. If you made it all
the way to the end here withouthaving seen it, well I kind of
just told you everything that happens,so I'm not sure how much you'll enjoy
(54:22):
it now, but hopefully you didwatch it and we're able to follow along
with me here as I went throughit. I'm Jordan Crittenden, host of
Dark Dark World. Thank you forlistening. I appreciate each and every one
of you. Be safe and bekind people. See po
Guardie are treating as suspicious the deathof a woman whose body has been found
in a remote area in County Corkon the southern coast. It's one of
the most idyllic hideaways here in themountains of West Cork. There is very
little clim of any type into thevast area, with many isolated locations.
The murderer is the first here inliving memory. Don't let people into your
(00:30):
home. Bring the guarantee immediately.The brutal murder has shocked the public.
I suppose the international dimension gives itan added mystery. France has been gripped
by this case. Just how overwomen could be murdered and probably the safest
place in Ireland beggars belief. He'sbecome a modern Irish murder mystery. The
(00:51):
government set up a special inquiry point. She walked out of court refusing to
answer questions. What's important now isthe truth. It would not be appropriate
for the government's comments. We havemade mistakes. All that space has implications
for all of us. It wasthe case that goes to the heart of
our democracy. This is a murderwhich, unless solved, won't be forgotten.
(01:15):
Previously on Doc Doc World, Ibegan my coverage of Netflix's twenty twenty
one docuseries Sophie, a murder inWest Cork. In part one, we
discussed the brutal murder of Sophie Tuscondu Plantier, a French national vacationing at
(01:38):
her holiday home in Skull, avillage in West Cork, Ireland. When
we got to the scene, thebody was lying in the grass verge.
The body had been on the roadsite. A long time local journalist,
Ian Bailey, an expat from England, became the prime suspect for the guards.
(02:00):
I was driving from Colleen to Skulland I saw a man walking along
the bridge just along here. Ishook hands with him and I noticed markings
on his hands, kind of parallellines, maybe four or five or six
across the back of his hands.I thought maybe he was burning, you
know, maybe getting rid of theevidence. I mean, I can't say
(02:22):
that. I'm not one hundred percentsure. That's what I thought. But
after Ian and his partner Jewels,were detained in question for twelve hours,
the GUARDA had to release them.Apart from a significant amount of circumstantial evidence,
there was nothing with which to provethat Ian Bailey was guilty, so
(02:46):
why did everyone still think he wasthe murderer because he told people that he'd
done it. Today, I'll concludemy coverage of Sophie in this part two
of doc Doc World, Sophie aMurder in West Cork, Episode three.
(03:13):
The final episode of Sophie a Murderin West Cork is called Justice, and
it opens up with various talking headsof the Skull residents people in the West
Cork area telling us about Ian Bailey'sstrangeness even before the murder, just sort
(03:37):
of his history since being in Ireland. And you know, it's hard to
tell if some of it's made up, if it's just snowball like starting with
a little nugget of a rumor thatthen has built up over the years.
But you hear things about we've alreadymentioned sort of his wizard like appearance.
Apparently there have been multiple sightings ofIan outside of his property, practically naked,
(04:05):
just wearing like underwear and nothing elseand howling at the moon or holding
his wizard staff up to the moonand howling and sort of shan shanting,
shouting incantations. Very very odd stuff, but hard to tell if it's really
(04:26):
substantial or not. They're just sortof giving us all the background about Ian,
and it's it's possible that a lotof these people were sort of prejudiced
towards Ian. In the first place, He's an Englishman living in Ireland,
right, He's got this sort ofabrasive personality, and so it's possible that
(04:47):
a lot of these people just startedadding on to that, making him seem
more outlandish than he really was.It's also entirely possible that this stuff is
real. And of course these typesof observations and stories about Ian start to
pick up and get even more grandioseafter it sort of comes out that he's
(05:11):
the prime suspect in the murder ofSophie, And you know, it sort
of reminds me a little bit ofyou know, in the robin Hood Hills
murders that I've talked about at lengthon this feed or this channel, depending
on where you're listening to this.But you know, with Damian Eccles and
the West Memphis three, Damien specificallyjust how people had always been suspicious of
(05:36):
him, but then when it wasthere was any suggestion at all that he
might be involved in the murders ofthree little boys. People start making up
all kinds of stories. Oh yeah, I remember that Damian, he used
to do this, And yeah,I've always had a feeling about that guy.
You should see some of the thingsI've I've seen that he's done.
And guess what I heard about Damian. Sort of the same thing happening with
(06:00):
Ian Bailey here. But if I'mgoing to keep the parallels going, the
character of Ian Bailey is actually muchmore like Mark Buyers, another famous character
from the Robin Hood Hill's case.And you know, just in the sense
that Ian Bailey clearly loves playing tothe camera. He loves that attention.
(06:20):
He wants to be center stage inthe story very much Mark Buyers, who
even though he was part of thestory by his connection by being the father
of one of the victims, stepfatherof one of the victims, he really
sort of tried to turn it intohis own show. This is the Mark
(06:41):
Buyers show. The murder takes aback seat to my grandiosity, and there's
a bit of that with Ian Baileyas well. Anyway, you remember Billy
Fuller, I mentioned that I likedhim quite a bit. He was the
local gardener and skull resident. Helived not too far from Ian and Jewels
(07:03):
and Billy's talking about in present day. He's one of the talking heads here
telling us that he sort of feltbad for Ian when all these stories we're
getting sort of bandied around town.Everyone's saying that Ian's a lunatic, literally
howling at the moon, and wenever trusted him and all that. So
(07:24):
Billy back in nineteen ninety six,feeling bad for Ian, decides to pay
him a visit and let him knowthat people are talking about him and just
tell him what's being said about him, just to give him a heads up.
And here's Billy Fuller, I'm aboundhis house, innocently knocks from the
door. He came the door,let me in. He was sat down,
he had like doing everywhere and likewhich food and this stuff, and
(07:46):
he said, I'll do on aglass aside. I said, what I'm
actually working? I said, Ijust popped in see you. He was
relaxed until I came out with whatpeople are saying about him, that you'd
be howling at the moon and stuff. Straight away. Bang, he just
went into a complete meltdown. Look, and there's like he moved where he
wasn't. He's went white knuckled,and his face changed and he grabbed hold
of the thing behind him like this, and he was astonished, and he
was like, you fuck like thisto me. And I was like,
(08:09):
what he said, you saw inSpa the day before she was killed,
and he saw a tit ask andhe wanted to give a one. He
said that when he went up tothe house about two o'cluple in the morning,
she ran away screaming because you're scaredher. He chased her the corbo
down and he still sunk in theback of a head whils went too far.
He felt like he was saying whathe did. But for me,
you know, I was scared andI left his health. When he was
telling you this story, did itfeel like some form of confession? I
(08:33):
definitely hear now. In case anyof that was hard to understand, I
had the benefit watching it. Ofcourse, I always put subtitles on everything,
even if it's just straight up Englishlanguage with no accents at all,
or American accents, as I'm mostused to. Even then, I have
subtitles on, but I certainly haveit on for anything where there might be
an accent, and it's a littleharder to understand, so in case you
(08:56):
couldn't catch all of that. Basicallywhat Billy is saying as he goes over
there, and Ian just sort ofhas a Jekyl and Hide moment where his
eyes just sort of glaze over andhe becomes like a different person, like
he's in a fugue state or something. And as Billy says, he's saying
what he had done, presumably,but sort of saying it to Billy like
(09:18):
it was Billy who had done it. So he's saying, you saw her
when you were down at the market, and you liked her tight ass,
and you wanted to give her one, so you followed her back and then
you killed her. You know thatkind of thing. But he's almost rocking
in his chair and he's grabbing thesides of the chair behind him, and
his knuckles are white, and it'ssort of like having an episode, really,
(09:41):
and it seemed to Billy like basicallyIan was lapsing into this weird sort
of post traumatic stress episode dealing withthe trauma of what he had done and
was almost confessing to Billy, butby saying you instead of I made it
(10:01):
a little convoluted and strange. Butyeah, that's weird, but we learned
that Billy Fuller wasn't the only personthat experienced Ian Bailey confessing in some form
or another. That may have beenthe most outlandish way that he did it,
but it happened plenty more times.One particular knife New Year's Eve to
(10:24):
be specific, a local couple,Richie and Rosie Shelley, were having drinks
in a local pub and skull andgot into conversation with Ian Bailey and Jules
Thomas. They invited them back latein Year's Eve. Ian started talking about
the murder and he became quite emotionaland started crying. And it was that
(10:45):
sort of early morning thing after drinking, you know, when he'd get strange.
He started crying and hugging Richie Shelleyand saying, I did it,
I did it. I went toofar. They ran screaming from the house.
They ran away. So again,as I'll say, like a broken
record in this episode, damning,pretty damning. Next, we get a
(11:09):
little more background on Ian's partner andlongtime lover and house mate, Jules Thomas.
I think earlier I mentioned that shehad two daughters from previous marriages,
she actually had three daughters. Threedaughters from to previous marriages, and Jules's
daughters were friends with a local boynamed Malachi, who in nineteen ninety seven
(11:35):
was fourteen years old. So thisis a few weeks after the murder,
but back in ninety seven when Malachiis fourteen. Because Malachi was friends with
Jules's daughters, Ian knew who Malakaiwas. Saw him walking home one day
while Ian was driving by and offeredto give him a lift home. Malachi
accepted, he knows Ian family friend. All good, but as they're driving,
(11:58):
Malaki starts to know is that Ian'sacting a little weird. He's probably
been drinking, Malachi thinks, becausehe's sort of slurring and saying odd things.
And then it gets really uncomfortable whenIan says to Malachi, quote what
did I do, lad, Whatdid I do? I went up there
(12:22):
and I bashed her head in witha rock and quote yeah. Malachi was
terrified, said nothing, and Iandidn't say anything else either. On the
rest of the way home, dropsMalaki off, says all right, bye
bye, see you later, andMalachi was terrified, told his mom and
(12:46):
well, he'll come back into thestory and a little bit. Here's what
Ian had to say about confessing topeople like this. I mean, I
don't know if other people do this, but I mean I do use sarcasm
and I do use irony on occasions, and it was just so that's pathetic.
I mean, again, not tokeep bringing this up. At robin
Hood Hills with Damien Echols, therewas talk that once Damien had heard that
(13:09):
he was a suspect and presumably thoughtthat was completely hilarious, knowing he hadn't
done it, he was observed ata softball game or overheard at a softball
game saying, oh, yeah,you know, I killed those kids and
I'm going to kill another one.And I've always been able to picture in
my mind that being sort of blackhumor or being sarcastic, like, yeah,
(13:31):
it's so absurd that people think I'ma suspect, so I'm going to
ham it up. And I couldsee him, you know, someone out
a softball game saying to Damien,heard you killed some kids. Damien him
going oh yeah, you know,me killed three kids. I'm going to
get another one. You know thatI can kind of see. But that's
not what I see here. WithIan Bailey, I don't think it's the
same kind of thing. This isdifferent. He's having episodes here, he's
(13:56):
crying, very emotional. I don'tsee the humor connection at all, and
I think that's that's weak for meand Dermott Dwyer. You remember, the
lead investigator on the case from Dublinis asked by the filmmakers about what he
thinks about Ian's defense that this wasblack humor, and he has a pretty
good quote that he says, well, it's amazing that, you know,
(14:18):
the population of Ireland at the timewas right about five million, and yet
Ian Bailey's the only person that's everjoked about killing Sophie Toscon to Plantier.
You would think if this were justblack humor and anyone would make these sort
of remarks, that maybe a coupleother people somewhere in Ireland might be making
similar jokes. And while obviously DermotDwyer doesn't know for certain that no one
(14:43):
else is making these jokes, hispoint's well taken, right, This isn't
something you're going to be joking about, certainly, not in this way.
And so on January twenty seventh,nineteen ninety eight, we're ninety eight now,
Ian Bailey is arrested for a secondtime. He's brought in now by
(15:05):
the National Criminal Investigation Bureau. TheGarda are still involved entirely, but they
are getting assistance from this NCIB.I guess similar to the FBI here in
the States. They're assisting with theinvestigation. But again, you remember I
mentioned earlier that an Irish law,you get you get two shots at detaining
(15:26):
a suspect and you can keep themfor twelve hours at each time to try
and secure a confession or get somethingto go ahead and file charges. But
again they get no confession. Ithink they were hoping for a confession and
they didn't get it, so theyhave to release Ian Bailey a second time.
(15:48):
In Ireland, the organization or personstasked with determining whether or not charges
can be brought against a suspect isthe DPP, or Rector of Public Prosecutions,
and the DPP just determined that therewasn't enough evidence to warrant a charge.
Now, obviously you've heard all thisstuff that I've been saying. There
(16:11):
are mounds and mounds of circumstantial evidence, but in Ireland the burden of proof
is taken very seriously and circumstantial evidenceis oftentimes just not enough. You know,
here in the US people are convictedon circumstantial evidence all the time,
but it's my understanding here that inIreland it's much more difficult to do that
and much less common. Of course, Ian Bailey lapped up all of the
(16:34):
attention. He loves the notoriety.Whether whether it's for something good or something
bad, it doesn't matter for Ian. He just wants to be center stage.
He just wants that attention. Hecan't resist it. After he's released
for the second time, he's doingall kinds of interviews. He's inviting the
media over to his house, doingtelevision interviews and newspaper interviews. But eventually,
(17:00):
with no more movement on the case, no new suspects, the investigation
kind of stalls, and eventually thecase sort of falls out of the public
consciousness. And so for a coupleof years, no one really thinks about
the case. They certainly don't hearabout the case. It's not being written
about, it's certainly not on TV. But Ian's ego wanted more, he
(17:26):
needed more, and so in Decemberof two thousand and three, so we
have leapt forward a bit here,Ian decides that he is going to sue
all of the newspapers eight in totalor seven in total, seven Irish and
British newspapers that he believes had defamedhim during the investigation of the Sophie Tasconte
(17:49):
Plantier murder case. He believes thathis good name and good reputation were sullied
by these papers and news outlets,and he was suing them for defamation of
character. And by all accounts,by all the people that are talking to
us in this documentary, people believethat Ian did this because he just wanted
(18:11):
the attention. He didn't want peopleto forget about him. He loved everyone
talking about him, even if itwas in this negative way. He needed
more of it, wanted more ofit, and this was a way to
get back in the headlines. Butwhat Ian may not have anticipated was that
(18:32):
this could go badly for him.The newspapers lawyers petitioned the courts to get
the Garda's file on the Sofie toScone to Plantier case, So the entire
investigation file, so all of thestuff they had on Ian, really,
all of the interviews they'd done withanybody at all, it's all there in
(18:52):
this file. And the courts agreeand these lawyers for the newspapers get the
file, and they get all ofthese documents and pieces of information that they
can then bring into the trial anduse as evidence. They subpoena all the
witnesses who had given statements, peoplelike Billy Fuller, people like Malachi,
(19:15):
anyone who had come forward with informationlike that. They subpoena and bring them
in. So basically what ends uphappening here is Ian's going on trial,
because the papers are going to takethe position of yes, we wrote these
things about him, but here's why. This is what was out there.
So this essentially becomes the trial ofIan Bailey for the murder of Sophia Toscon
(19:41):
du Plantier. Not exactly he can'tbe sentenced or anything for it, but
at least informationally, informationally, atleast all of the info comes out and
the public really for the first timegets to learn about the details of the
garda's case against Ian Bailey. Thisagain, I promise this will be the
last time I bring up the romanHood Hills Westmouth is three stuff. But
(20:04):
this is not unlike Terry Hobbs.You may recall Terry Hobbs sued Natalie Mains
of the Dixie Chicks for defamation,thinking he was going to get some big
payday. But then what happened wasthe lawyers for Natalie Maine's team or her
team of lawyers were able to introducewhatever they wanted and basically asked Terry Hobbs
(20:27):
if he was involved in the murders, then ask him all these difficult questions,
introduced stuff about his violent past,and on and on and on.
So totally backfired for Hobbes. Samething here was Ian because a lot of
damning stuff comes out, and itbecame pretty clear to the public that all
(20:48):
of these witnesses, some of whomdidn't know each other, didn't live near
each other, Various people here,all basically with the same story, and
Ian's story doesn't add up. Ian'sstory is out of line with all of
the others. Now, you'll rememberMarie Farrell, and she was crucial because
(21:10):
she was the only person who couldplace Ian out of his house on the
night of the murders. You remembershe saw him at Kilfather Bridge. Well
check this out, you're suree onehundred and ten percent. And Ian Bailey
confirmed that to me when he cameinto my shop, because he said,
(21:30):
I know you saw me on thebridge. Marie Farrell told the course that
Ian Bailey tried to force her ona number of occasions to retract the statement
she made to Guardy. She saidhe told her he knew things about her
and asked her to change her statement. She made many official complaints to the
GUARDI in relation to the campaign ofharassment and intimidation she suffered at the hands
(21:53):
of Ian Bailey. He arrived inthe shop and he said that he knew
I had seen on the bridge,and that he wanted me to tell his
solicitor that a Guardy had made memake up the story about him, and
if I did that, he wouldleave me alone. And when I had
no intentions of doing that, hemade my life help And at one stage
(22:15):
I thought he was so big hecould kill me here in two minutes and
nobody would know. He would makecutthroat gestures like this if he met me
on the straight, or he woulddo this. That type of intimidation went
on for months and months. Shesaid she feared for herself and for her
children. Okay, and there area couple of things in there. There
(22:36):
are a couple of times when Mariesays and he went like this. One
of them, she says, hewent like this, and she does the
cutthroat gesture, dragging her thumb acrossher neck, you know, that thing
we've seen before. And another time, she says, and he went like
this, she puts a gun toher head, using her fingers, you
know, to make the gun.That's all that was. And apparently Ian
(22:59):
had threatened other neighbors as well.People were terrified of him. Now,
women in particular, they didn't trusthim, and they thought he was scary.
Frankly, just a violent, drunk, moon howling weirdo. And they
probably had good reason to be frightenedbecause also at this Libel trial, a
(23:22):
lot of information comes out about Ian'spast and his shockingly substantial history of domestic
violence with his ex wife and withhis current partner, Jules Thomas. Peter
Bieliki, one of the talking headswho I've mentioned earlier but maybe not for
a while, gives some disturbing testimonyat the Libel trial, really stunned people.
(23:51):
And he basically talks about what hesaid at the Libel trial here in
the documentary, and you can listento it as well. A friend of
Jules Thomas's daughters. Peter Blecki toldthe Quarter about an assault on Jules Thomas
by Ian Bailey in nineteen ninety six. I got a knock on the door
and it was Jules's daughter in Virginia. Could I come and take Jules to
(24:12):
hospital please. Jules is sat onthe bed. She's she's crawled up in
a ball. This eye is hugeand turned in. Half of her hair
is out of her head. There'snail marks all over her face, her
lip is ripped open. Nula,who was the little girl, looked at
(24:33):
me and to this day, Ican't sorry. He's just going to say
it was the look from my kid'sface, like help help me please,
And I couldn't, you know.And I've never felt so useless in all
my life. I couldn't help thischild. For some reason, even though
(25:03):
this is discussed at length in theWest Cork podcast, for some reason,
it hits harder in the documentary inSophie. I'm not sure why that is.
I think maybe because the West Corkpodcast goes into his real history of
domestic abuse and they detail many differentevents like this was just one thing that
(25:27):
Bill Ecki's telling us about. Butthis kind of thing happened a lot,
and the West Cork podcast kind ofdives into each one, so it ends
up I don't want to say itends up being less impactful really because it's
so repetitive, but I guess that'swhat I'm saying. The fact that here
(25:48):
in the Dock it's this one instancethat we focus on, I think it
makes it a little more emotional andwe're able to see the humanity of jewels,
and Peter Billicky getting emotional like that, I think makes it easier to
connect with whereas if we had listedall these different events, it would just
sort of seem like this harrowing andmonotonous litany of testimony. And I don't
(26:15):
know, I just thought it wasreally effective here in the Dock. So
well done, John Dower. Andit also comes out, you know,
Peter Billick, He's not the onlyone to talk about this. In the
Libel trial. Many people come forwardtalking about how they would routinely see jewels
with a black eye. It waspretty common knowledge that Ian would hit jewels.
(26:41):
And it's not that people didn't sayanything. People did try to help
jewels and see if she wanted toleave Ian. She never did, but
you know, so it wasn't thatall these people, you know, turned
a blind eye and didn't report itor anything. They made attempts to help,
but it continued on and eventually someof the neighbors gave up on Jewels,
(27:03):
saying why I can't understand why shetakes him back, and look,
spousal abuse, domestic violence is avery complex thing. It's very common for
people to ask why don't they leave? I can't understand why they don't just
leave. Well, there are manyreasons, and as I say, it's
very complex, and some people turnedon Jewels because of it. They couldn't
(27:25):
understand how she could stay with Ian, and others just said, well,
I'll respect her wishes and I won'tkeep bringing it up and reporting it,
but you know, I can't notnotice it. So people were divided about
it, really, but the generalpublic hadn't heard any of this stuff.
So this was bombshell material coming outof this libel trial. And as you
(27:49):
might expect, Ian weighs in onthis as well. He even weighs in
on it for this documentary talking tothe filmmakers. I'm gonna play you this
absolutely gross clip from Ian on thesubject. It's not I don't want to
(28:10):
go back into them, but Imean they are long past. On that
occasion, she'd been drinking. We'reboth are in drinking. Maybe I don't
know what happened, but she startedto grab me and I was pushing her
back, and I heard her inthat process. I'd have to take full
responsibility. But I mean, itdoes take two, you know, it
takes two to thank. But I'mnot trying to absolve my actions or you
(28:34):
know, at all. Yuck,just yuck. I probably don't need to
break down for you why that's soyuck, But I mean, come on,
he's just the classic narcissist, theclassic abuser ian is a very interesting
paradox between being shameless and shameful.It takes two to tango. Mister Bailey
(29:00):
admitted that Miss Thomas had been leftwith trumps of hair missing from her head,
her eye was purple the size ofa grapefruit, and her lip was
severed from her gum. She neededeight stitches. Mister Bailey said he had
drink taken and had lost control what. He denied that he was a violent
man. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not absolving myself if this at
(29:21):
all, I don't mean to minimizemy role in this, but yeah,
but she had attacked me and wehad both been drinking, so gross fucking
hospitalized her. Peter be Alicky,I'd had a conversation with a local guard
and I said, she's not goingto press charges and he said she must
do because if she doesn't, itcould be worse next time, and it
(29:45):
might not even be her in relationto Sophie's murder, when six months before
it not. Most thankfully and hilariously, Ian lost the case and had to
pay all of his legal fees.Also, very much like Terry Hobbs,
(30:07):
sorry I lied, I did bringit up one more time. And now
you know. The added benefit forthe guards here is that the entire public,
like all of Ireland, now thinksthat Ian is guilty of the murder
of Sophie, just from all thisstuff that came out at the Libel trial,
and people expected that the DPP wouldnow definitely prosecute, They would see
(30:30):
that there was enough to bring chargesand Ian would finally be taken to trial
for the murder of Sophie. Butthe DPP did not bring charges. So
if Ireland weren't going to take careof it, maybe France would have to.
(31:00):
In two thousand and seven, inParis, Sophie's son Pierre Louis,
who's an adult now, along withother family and friends, forms an association,
a group called the Association for theTruth about the Murder of Sophie Tascon
Duplantier and the Association essentially they gettogether a couple of times a month and
(31:26):
they go through the case. Theystart doing research, a couple of them
start learning law, really diving inand doing their own investigation. And their
attitude was, look, if Ireland'snot going to handle this, we'll do
it, and hats off to him. In Ireland you must prove guilt beyond
a reasonable doubt. But in Francethe legal system is very different. Here
(31:53):
is journalist Laura Marlowe one more time. I don't think I've brought her up
since episode one, and she wasthe one who had talked about her journalism
focused on Sophie and Sophie's life.She had talked about Sophie's writings, and
I think I had a clip ofher talking about the poem Sophie wrote about
(32:14):
the dead lamb Anyway, Laura Marlowe, here she is again in Ireland,
which is based on the British justicesystem. You have to prove guilt beyond
reasonable doubt, and in France it'sa faissodapov. It's like a bouquet of
evidence. So Sophie's son and Sophie'sfamily, the Association, we're gonna just
(32:37):
call this group the Association. TheAssociation are able to use all of the
witness statements and the testimony from Bailey'slibel trial, and all of the documents
that came out of the Guardophile thatthe newspaper's lawyers had petitioned the guards for.
So all of that info the Associationis able to used to present a
(33:00):
case to the French authorities, whothen decided that there was enough there to
open their own investigation in late twothousand and eight. So now you've got
Sophie's family essentially getting justice for Sophie. They've convinced the French authorities to open
(33:21):
their own investigation in case in hopesof being able to bring formal charges against
Ian Bailey and take him to trialin France. But then we get another
bombshell. Marie Farrell comes forward againand says, I'm positive it wasn't Ian
Bailey. You're certain that he wasn'tpositive. Marie Farrel had retracted her statements.
(33:46):
It was all more or less bullshit. It was in a statements,
and I wanted to withdraw them.The principal witness has suddenly irrevocably removed herself
from the equation. Marie Farle turnedthe whole investigation on its head. She
was with a man who was nother husband. If this came out,
(34:07):
my whole life was destroyed, Ithought, because I thought my marriage was
gone, even though I hadn't beenhaving an affair compromised by that. She
now claims police forced her to falselyidentify their prime suspect. It's only not
to worry about it that I wouldnever have to go to court. That
they only wanted me to say itfor their own records. Wow. Wow,
(34:34):
And all the journalists who are talkingheads in this documentary, you're saying,
like, you know, Marie Ferrellwas one of the most credible witnesses
throughout this whole thing. I believedeverything she said when she came forward.
I believed her initial statement. Ibelieved her at the libel trial, and
yet I also believe her now.She seems credible now during the libel trial.
(34:58):
I believed her. She was givingyou a she was very credible.
When she retracted her statements, oh, I believed her. She was very
credible. Again. I told himI was withdrawing the statements and I was
crying, and I told him,I said, this is it. I'm
withdrawing everything. I don't want anymore of this. I can't handle it,
I can't take anymore. So whatto make of this? Marie Farrell
(35:20):
kept the same story for over tenyears. Why come forward now and change
your story in two thousand and eight. It's a shame that so much of
the case hinges on hearsay and testimonyand statements that can be retracted. The
guards were out of their depth,putting it bluntly, you know, they
(35:44):
hadn't experienced a murder in West Corkfor nearly a hundred years. They have
a very small guard force to beginwith, and the assistance they received from
the Dublin guards wasn't indefinite, wasn'tongoing. They helped initially, but it
just wasn't enough. It was toolittle. They didn't preserve the crime scene
(36:06):
properly, that gait that they hadtaken, that piece of the farmyard Gate
that they had taken for evidence earlyon. I talked about that that went
missing somehow, that beggar's belief.They let people walk all over the crime
scene. All sorts of different peoplewere going in out of there. You
had Ian Bailey running around the crimescene. We talked about the markings that
(36:30):
people saw on Ian Bailey's hands.Now one photographed those. After Marie Ferrell
initially identified Ian Bailey as the manshe saw and kill Fota Bridge, no
one put him in a lineup forher to identify him on the record.
Stuff like that. Oh, actually, by the way, in Ireland,
(36:51):
or maybe this is in the UKas well, or maybe it's a European
thing in general. But instead ofcalling it a lineup as we do here
in this states, like they puthim in a lineup, they call it
an identity parade. How much cooleris that? An identity parade? Love
that? So, yeah, theydidn't put I in bailey inn identity parade.
(37:13):
They didn't put anyone in an identityparade. Sorry, I just want
to keep saying that. And youknow the guards acknowledge this, They understand
that they had failings in this case. Dermott Dwyer's himself says, yes,
we made mistakes, but there wasno malice behind it. There was no
corruption. Everything we did was onthe level. We just made mistakes.
(37:37):
My guy, Barry Rosch says,quote, I don't think anyone would hold
this investigation up as an example ofhow things should be done. But because
there were mistakes in the Garda investigation, does that automatically mean that Ian Bailey
is innocent? End? Quote.In December of twenty eleven, information comes
(37:59):
out as to why the DPP hadelected not to prosecute Ian Bailey, and
it turns out that the DPP feltthat the guards didn't pursue enough other suspects,
that their case was prejudicial towards IanBailey, and that all they really
had on him was circumstantial. Theycharacterized the investigation as a witch hunt led
(38:22):
by guards and angry neighbors who didn'tlike Bailey because he was odd and he
was a blow in, an Englishblow in to be specific. Barry Rash
again says that the DPP opinion isbizarrely biased itself, with almost every point
of contention, the DPP seems toside with Ian Bailey's version, despite the
(38:45):
fact that you have multiple other statementsfrom people who have no reason to lie
coming against Ian Bailey's version, Sowhy are they siding with him? Very
odd. Here's a clip of LauraMarlowe. Again. One of the most
shocking things about the report is itsays, well, yes, baby had
(39:07):
been very violent towards women, butthen, unfortunately this happens all the time,
you know, sort of excusing itand saying that the fact that he
had a history of violence against womenwas not relevant to the case that this
woman was beaten to a pulp.Indeed, the conclusion at the end of
the report is we believe they arenot sufficient grounds to send him to trial.
But the Association over in France,their investigation was ongoing, and while
(39:34):
they're continuing to do their due diligencetrying to get justice for Sophie, Ian
Bailey once again is not enjoying thefact that he's not really in the limelight.
The story has sort of died downagain as far as the headlines go,
and now in November of twenty fourteen, Ian Bailey sues the guard A.
(39:55):
He says that they conspired against him. They a worst Marie Farrell to
make false statements YadA, YadA,YadA. But because Marie Farrell's story had
changed so many times over the years, her credibility was shot. Bailey lost
the suit pretty quickly, really didn'ttake long. He didn't he couldn't use
(40:20):
Marie Farrell and he really had nothing. What was he going to prove?
It was near impossible for him toprove that there was some sort of conspiracy
against him, that all the peopleof West Cork were conspiring with the guards
to railroad. Ian really, Iankeeps bringing himself back into the picture.
(40:42):
He can't leave well enough alone.But anyway, he loses that suit as
well, and once again has topay all of his legal fees. And
now in episode three, we takea little break from all of the case
and the legal proceedings and whatnot,and we spend a little time with Robert
Quinlan, the publican who I lasttalked about when I was covering episode one.
(41:07):
I believe he talks about how reallySophie gets lost in all of this.
You know, after like nineteen ninetyeight, nineteen ninety nine, the
case just becomes the Ian Bailey case, and apart from the Association doing their
work in France, the focus isall really just Ian Bailey. No one
(41:28):
really thinks about Sophie anymore. Thissort of idea. This is in keeping
with what I've talked about a lotlately on the show about you know,
how important victims are to the story, how much of it matters whether they
should be the focus. And Ido think that it's interesting that typically I'm
not really bothered when the victim isn'tcenter stage and we sort of let them
(41:51):
fall by the wayside, and wedo become focused on the course of justice
and getting the person who did this, and that takes over all of our
interest. But with this case,I really did feel like Sophie stayed with
me throughout, and I think that'sprobably a credit to the filmmakers here.
I think they really did a goodjob, and they had some devices,
(42:13):
as I've mentioned, they were ableto use Sophie's beautiful house and this beautiful
setting, this romantic setting of Skull, as a foil for Sophie that it's
a way to put her in thestory. You always get these nice shots
of the house sort of in betweentense moments, and it's really grounding,
(42:34):
really brings us back to why we'reall here, because this innocent, lovely
woman who was so vibrant and hadso many talents and was so kind to
everybody, was just savagely murdered.You know. It's just it sucks.
And they were able to keep herwith us throughout this like she's along for
(42:57):
the ride, and I thought thatwas well done. Now I'll ask you
to remember that Ian Bailey stated onrecord at least a half a dozen times
that he'd never met Sophie Tascon dePlantier, that he'd seen her, she'd
been pointed out to him, YadA, YadA, YadA. And I talked
a little bit about how this hadbeen called into question a couple of times,
(43:22):
and now we're really going to callit into question. Agnes Thomas,
Sophie's best friend, who was originallygoing to go on Sophie's last trip to
Ireland. She was going to comewith her, but at the last minute
couldn't for whatever reason. And inthe documentary in this episode three, she
tells us that when Sophie had gottensettled, when Sophie went out to West
(43:45):
Cork and was staying at her housein school, once she was sort of
settled in, she called Agnes andthey were catching up just sort of letting
her know about her work and howher travels were and whatnot. And at
some point during the conversation, Sophietold Agnes about a man that she'd met
who wanted to meet with her todiscuss a creative project. He knew that
(44:08):
Sophie was a writer and he toowas a writer, a poet. He
wanted to share poems and collaborate,and Sophie and Agnes joke that it was
probably, you know, he's hittingon her, He's just trying to find
a way in. And Sophie didsay to Agnes that he was a little
off putting, a little overbearing,a bit pushy and aggressive, and that
(44:35):
she found him quote a bit worryingas a character end quote. And Agnes
said, you know, oh boy, all right, well, if you
do meet with him, just makesure you meet him in a pub or
a cafe or something that you know, somewhere public. And as we have
Agnes telling us this story here inthe episode, the filmmakers cut in Barry
(44:59):
Ross's cuts in and out of orHe's sort of they go back and forth
between Barry Rush and Agnes Thomas andBarry Rosh is saying you know. He's
pointing out that there are recorded statementsfrom at least eight different people, including
Agnes Thomas, that suggests that Ianknew Sophie and that he was lying about
(45:20):
not having met her, and BarryRush says that the most significant of these
people is a man named Guy Girard, who was another French filmmaker and a
colleague of Sophie's and similarly to AgnesThomas, Guy Girard tells us in the
documentary he's talking to us and tellsus that Sophie had in fact known Ian
(45:46):
Bailey for some time, even beforeher last trip to Ireland. The night
before she left for the last time, she was telling Guy Girard that,
oh yeah, and there's this sortof distant neighbor of mine out there.
His name is and she said IanBailey. And the reason that Guy Girard
(46:09):
remembers this is because he misheard thename or confuse the name with someone else
in his mind and had said toSophie, oh, right, right,
I know him, I know hisfilms, he made this film or that
film. And Sophie said, no, none, no, he can't know
him. He's an Englishman, helives, he lives in West Cork.
He's my neighbor out there, andthat's why guy Gard remembers it and was
(46:30):
like, oh okay, that failingin his mind, that confusing the two
names was why he remembers and ispretty certain that Sophie had told him about
Ian Bailey. It's kind of chilling. I thought i'd include that. So
we fast forward now to May oftwenty nineteen and the French judicial system has
(46:52):
decided to try Ian Bailey for themurder of Madame Sophie Toscon Duplancier. They
are going to prosecute Ian in absentia. This will be a trial in absentia
because the Irish authorities will not acknowledgethe trial, they will not acknowledge the
investigation going on in France, andthey won't extradite Ian. Pierre Louis,
(47:19):
Sophie's son, travels to Westcourt beforethe trial because he thinks he owes it
to the community who knew his motherand welcomed his mother in. He thinks
he owes it to them to explainwhat's going on over in France, that
you know, the Irish legal systemfailed us, but here's what we're doing
in France. I've started this associationand we're going to take this bastard to
(47:45):
trial, you know that kind ofthing. And he holds a little event,
a gathering at a local church inWest Cork, and he gives a
speech talking about why it's important thathe's getting justice for his mother and that
he wants to clear Ireland's good name, to clear their land's good name.
It's very touching, it's very kind. Here is Pierre Louis reading to us
(48:10):
in the documentary from the speech thathe gave to the people of Skull,
Dear France, dear families, dearIrish people. In a few days time,
the trial of the man accused ofkilling my mother will beginning at last.
This is a trial of a crimethat does not fit with what Ireland
(48:36):
is like. This is a trialof a crime that you and I didn't
deserve. And so in France atrial kicks off. There will be no
jury, The case will be decidedby three magistrates instead. Nearly thirty witnesses
(48:58):
were called. They all give theirtestimony, people like Peter Billecki, Billy
Fuller, Agnes Thomas, young Malachi, well he's not young Malachi anymore,
but you know, all these peoplecome forward, they travel to France and
they give their testimony. It's youknow, it's a proper trial. The
only thing that sets it apart isthat Ian Bailey's not there. And in
(49:22):
twenty nineteen, twenty two years on, Ian Bailey was found guilty in absentia
of the murder of Madame Sophie Tascondu Plantier and was sentenced to twenty five
years in prison. Because of thisverdict, in October of twenty twenty,
(49:45):
the Irish High Court must make aruling on whether or not Ian Bailey can
be extradited to France given the newdevelopments, and once again they determined that
Bailey cannot be extradited. They donot find the French Court's findings to be
valid and therefore will not extradite Ian. So as long as he stays in
(50:08):
Ireland they can't touch him. He'sa convicted murderer in France, but he's
an innocent man in Ireland where helives and still lives. You know,
the way this documentary ends, yousee Ian just chilling at the market,
just hanging out at the market,selling his little cakes that he makes and
(50:29):
his little jars of pickles, homemadegoods that he sells, and he's writing
poems and reciting poems, just lovinglife, hanging out in the sunshine,
taking in the sea breeze. It'svery, very weird. And as the
documentary is wrapping up, we hearfrom the residents who still, you know,
see Ian Bailey all the time,and just how unsettling they find it
(50:52):
all. They hate seeing him,they try to avoid him, and they
resent how sort of fee and confidenthe seems, just how well this has
all worked out for him. Communityseem pretty convinced that he did this,
that he is guilty, and they'redisgusted by the fact that he's free.
(51:13):
My own personal take on that is, look, I think it's pretty clear,
pretty obvious that Ian did this.I think that he is guilty.
That said, I understand why he'snot been punished. You know, I
kind of side with the Irish courtshere and that I put a lot of
weight into the burden of proof andinto guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And
(51:37):
while there is a bunch of damningcircumstantial evidence, I just for me personally,
I need physical evidence, I needDNA, I need something that he
can't refute something that doesn't rely onstatements, and you know, people coming
forward, people changing stories, people, people and their memories are flawed.
(52:00):
And you know, for me toconvict someone, I just need it to
be perfect. There can't be youknow, the conviction can't be flawed.
I guess that's what I'm saying.I need to know for certain that this
guy did it, and I don'tknow for certain, But for the record,
Ian Bailey total scumbag, piece ofshit. I totally support anyone who
(52:22):
just wants to walk up to himat that market and punch him in the
face. Totally fine with that.Just doesn't sit well with me to convict
him or send him to prison justyet. Pierre Louis, Sophie's son,
still to this day, visits Skulland he stays in his mother's house there,
where he says that her spirit isvery much alive, and I think
(52:45):
that's very sweet. At first,I was like, Oh, that's got
to be unsettling, like living inthe house where you know your mother was
murdered right outside, but I don'tknow. Hearing him talk about it,
and like seeing the house. I'vealready talked about how nice the house is,
and just how pleasant the area ismakes it Okay. I can see
it and it seems comforting to me, and I totally get that, and
(53:07):
I think it's very nice in touching. And in April of twenty twenty one,
earlier this year, Jules Thomas separatedfrom me and Bailey, so they
are no longer together, at leastnot right now. And that's gonna do
it, folks. That wraps upthe three episode series Sophie A Murder in
(53:30):
West Cork. So where do Istand with it? Drum roll A.
It gets an A, not anA plus, but an A a solid
A. I'm gonna do the quickRotten Tomatoes look up just to see if
we are in similar viewpoints here onRotten Tomatoes. There you go A.
(53:59):
So, yeah, this is notme just giving you a one off rating.
It seems to be supported by themasses, or at least by a
lot of film critics. So yeah, Sophie A Murder and West Cork definitely
worth your time if you have notseen it. If you made it all
the way to the end here withouthaving seen it, well I kind of
just told you everything that happens,so I'm not sure how much you'll enjoy
(54:22):
it now, but hopefully you didwatch it and we're able to follow along
with me here as I went throughit. I'm Jordan Crittenden, host of
Dark Dark World. Thank you forlistening. I appreciate each and every one
of you. Be safe and bekind people. See po
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