Murder at the Cottage

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

Documentary on Sky Crime, I think it is 5 episodes.

Omg it was so good ( if a programme about a murder can ever be 'good')

I can't remember anything about this in the news at the time so I was watching it with fresh eyes.

I started watching it, DH came in to get a coffee, sat down and he was hooked too which is rare.

Anyone else seen it?

@AppleJane

I read that MF had committed benefit fraud previous to the murder. If that is true and she approached the whole thing from the start with the intent of what she could gain (like a council house) then you can't believe any of her words.

I truly believe there was no man in the car and the guards knew that too. They used the 'secret affair' as a fake excuse.

The alleged benefit fraud was in the UK, though. I don’t think she was ever on benefits in Ireland. This was the house she and her husband sold in Schull when they said police harassment forced them to leave—

www.daft.ie/for-sale/detached-house-11-ard-cleire-ardmanagh-schull-co-cork/3270460

Though it’s been claimed they got the site for a reduced price from the county council because of a detective putting in a word with a local politician. They did have to then pay the county council 137,000 euro when they sold because the planning terms of the site were intended to prevent property speculation, and you were supposed live there for a set number of years before selling.

www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/high-court/marie-farrell-says-family-suffered-loss-after-selling-home-for-over-500k-1.2040720

Is it certain that it was a man that killed Sophie?

Topblogger the concrete block was very heavy, many men would have been unable to lift it.

@TopBlogger

Is it certain that it was a man that killed Sophie?

The concrete breeze block that was one of the murder weapons was extremely heavy and was used multiple times — I can’t remember the weight now, but heavy — and it’s thought unlikely that most women would have been able to manage that kind of weight.

Google says an 8" concrete block weighs between 2 and 3 stone. Most women, especially those who live on farms would be capable of lifting that when they're in a fit of rage.
I suspect this is another piece of convenient propaganda put out by the guards.

It's very statistically unlikely that it's a woman though, given that the vast majority of violent crime is committed by men. Sophie would have probably been able to outrun if not fight off another woman.

I get a bit impatient with this very common line of speculation tbh. It smacks of "but women commit crimes too" as though there's some kind of actual equivalence.

@irishfeminist

It's very statistically unlikely that it's a woman though, given that the vast majority of violent crime is committed by men. Sophie would have probably been able to outrun if not fight off another woman.

I get a bit impatient with this very common line of speculation tbh. It smacks of "but women commit crimes too" as though there's some kind of actual equivalence.

Agreed. It’s vanishingly unlikely that her murderer was a woman.

I thinks it's unlikely to be a woman.. But I think it's possible that Marie Farrell knows more than she has said? And it is grossly irresponsible for the man she was alleged to have been with that night not to come forward and corroborate her 'evidence'.

There are other possible suspects too who are rarely talked about.

A German man living one mile away - they were acquainted. He was single at the time and was home alone after coming in that evening from playing music in Crookhaven. He had previously been violent with a partner. He left the area about 6 weeks later and committed suicide in Germany in 1997.

There was a French man also living locally who has since died.. He knew Sophie. I can't remember more details off hand but I sometimes wonder if the murderer went 'under the radar' as there were so many 'colorful characters' in the area.

Well, isn’t the man Marie Farrell says she was with dead? Or at least the last name she gave?

www.irishpost.com/news/sinead-oconnor-ian-bailey-lying-216075?utm_source=whatsapp&utm_campaign=article&utm_medium=web

Christ, trust Sinead to jump on the latest bandwagon in her neverending thirst for attention.

www.corkbeo.ie/news/local-news/sinead-oconnor-tells-corkbeo-difficult-21060103

Well, at least the idea that it’s his shite poetry she’s interested in seems not to be true. She says she writes for the Sunday Independent now, and wanted to write about him. Actually what she says she asked him is probably not too far from what many people on here appear to want to ask him.

@DoorAjar

Well, isn’t the man Marie Farrell says she was with dead? Or at least the last name she gave?

He's dead now but wasn't at the time..

Hhmm so Sinead didn't contact IB and say 'Have you ever thought about putting your poems to music?' But instead said 'wanna do lunch so I can ask you difficult questions and fuck you over?'

Now which modus operandi would a real journalist use? Flattery or threats? Is there no one involved in this case that doesn't talk out of their arse?!

I'm watching the Netflix series now. I'm on episode 1 and confused. They have interviewed loads of people but some have such tenuous connections. What was the point in interviewing the woman who played Sophie in the reenactment? I understand why they mentioned the reenactment but whether the woman was an actress or not is completely irrelevant. The way they have conducted the interviews and the way the interviewees are sitting/talking seems overly dramatic too. Imo, it lacks the gravitas that the Jim Sheridan programme has. The murder itself was dramatic. There was no need to try and go overboard on the programme. Jim Sheridan simply went through the facts. To me, the Netflix one is a lot less credible as a result of its staging.

@Chulainn IIRC the actress made some vague statement saying 'somewhere at the back of my mind I think IB told me he knew Sophie'. Or some such nonsense.

[quote AppleJane]@Chulainn IIRC the actress made some vague statement saying 'somewhere at the back of my mind I think IB told me he knew Sophie'. Or some such nonsense. [/quote]
I think it's a shame they over dramatised it. It has some good points and the current interviews with the family are interesting (although I'm taking the aunts' premonition of doom with a pinch of salt). However, I'm not watching it with the same focus as I watched the Jim Sheridan one.

I agree @Chulainn. I was annoyed the Jim Sheridan one didn't make it obvious where IB lived in relation to Sophie nor that the bridge was in the wrong direction but as a whole I thought it had the edge on Netflix. It's interesting to use all of them like a jigsaw puzzle. Have you read the DPP document yet?

@AppleJane I'm halfway through the DPP document. It's fascinating as it cuts through all the innuendo and startling statements from both programmes and factually pulls it apart. You're right, it's like doing a jigsaw, fitting the pieces from each programme, and the DPP documents, together.

I don't understand why Dwyer is still so insistent IB is guilty when the DPP has stated the Guards didn't have enough evidence. I think the Netflix one is slanted towards IB being guilty and is showing interviews with those who agree.

I still don't understand why MF and mystery man weren't suspects. She put both of them in the vacinity around the assumed time of the murder. Even though she offered evidence, surely any decent Guard would go through her alibi with a fine tooth comb to rule her/him out. There's no way they could have done that without interviewing the mystery man. It seems incompetent (although not the only example of incompetence in this case) not to do this. Either she's involved in the murder, covering up for the murderer or she is a fantasist who loved the drama and lied to increase the drama and her own importance. I've side eyed her since I watched the JS programme (as anyone reading this thread has probably noticed).

@irishfeminist

Christ, trust Sinead to jump on the latest bandwagon in her neverending thirst for attention.

In fairness to sinead if he’s telling lies about her I’m not surprised she wants to refute it.

@PoseyFlump

For those of you who have seen all the documentaries and listened to the podcasts, what would you say is the single best piece of evidence against IB?

He knew a couple of things before he'd been told them. He needs to be forced to explain who he ''heard'' these things from and then that needs to be checked out.

Yes but why insert herself into this story at this point in time? It's been in the Irish news for 25 years. Bailey has been flogging his baked goods in Schull market for many years now, he's the most accessible murder suspect imaginable. He'd talk to anyone. She's just swooping in because of the two recent documentaries with a global reach, it's pathetic.

ItPearl - The DPP report shows that Bailey didn't 'know things' before others... It goes through that 'evidence' in some detail.

I agree @irishfeminist. You could argue Sinead and IB have both acted very similar, trying to be taken seriously as a journalist and jumping on a big story that comes along.

I'm not a fan of IB but I can't stand how journalists pretend to befriend someone so they can use them up and spit them out.

Has anyone actually read what SOC wrote, or is it only this short, filmed interview? In which she genuinely appears to be rather more sympathetic towards him than not, asking him questions about his eccentricity and saying it's not a crime, unless you're a 'square' person -- she also makes some deeply dopey remarks about how IB had done something risky in coming to a 'theocratic', pre-Good Friday Agreement Ireland...

www.independent.ie/news/there-was-xenophobia-towards-my-englishness-ian-bailey-tells-sinead-oconnor-why-he-was-the-ideal-suspect-for-sophietoscan-du-plantier-murder-40662944.html

Honestly, so many of the people writing and making documentaries and podcasts about this case have zero idea of what west Cork is like it's had a fairly entrenched alternative living scene since the 70s, with lots of crusties/new age travellers/alternative communities from overseas living in the vicinity as well as, in places like Schull, significant numbers of second homes owned by people, Irish and foreign, with huge money and boats. This isn't the Valley of the Squinting Windows by any means, and it wasn't in the 90s, either.

To but it bluntly, IB wouldn't have stood out as remotely unusual, unless his own crass behaviour made him so. English drifters with a mildly artistic/unconventional bent, some of them not particularly nice or well-integrated people with criminal records for drugs, are ten a penny in west Cork.

I can easily believe he encountered some xenophobia, but it's likely to have been exacerbated by his drunken attention-seeking, violence to his partner etc, long before the murder. No one likes the guy who can't hold his drink and is continually banging a stick on the floor of a pub to command attention for his dire poetry, proclaimed while banging a bodhrán, when other people just want to get in with their evening out.

He may well be completely unaware of the extent to which he has contributed to his own ostracism -- I keep seeing interviews where he says he was 'saddened' by being asked to leave a restaurant, but the only time I was in a pub (Levis's Corner House in Ballydehob) he was asked to leave, it was because he was aggressively drunk and loudly heckling the band. And the owners gave him several warnings before he was chucked out.