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?

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

He burnt the evidence - coat, boots, mattress.

[Fistful]

@MrsPelligrinoPetrichor

He burnt the evidence - coat, boots, mattress.

But there was not a trace of him at the scene or on her body, despite the frenzied manner of her death, the improvised nature of the weapons and the struggle she evidently put up. (Or inside her house, if anyone’s still going with the theory that she knew and entertained the man who killed her.)

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

But they said back then there would have to be a lot of evidence left to test for DNA, nowadays it's a hair ,this was a long time ago .

[Espirito]

I agree with what Spandrel says, adding to what's portrayed in the podcast and sky documentary. Also with PP about the taxi scene. Gobsmacking narcissism.

Whether IB did it or not (I vacillate wildly on this) he is a deeply unpleasant, violent man who has actively courted publicity and clearly revelled in it from the start, without a thought to the source; Sophie's terrifying, lonely and brutal murder. She was a whole human being, leaving a grieving child, parents, friends (and husband?). The fact he obviously enjoys promoting himself off the back of that is vile.

[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?

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

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?

Probably the fact her family said IB was meant to meet up with Sophie about a project ( highly believable) and she wanted a companion to stay stay with her over Christmas when she was clearly very used to and enjoyed being alone. His documented history or violence plus his 'confessions,' also the fact he was talking about a murder of a French woman before that info was released .Sorry that's not a single piece of evidence.

I watched the Sky , listened to most of the pod cast ( not quite finished yet) and am on episode 3 of the Netflix.

Her poor, poor family , to court attention is appalling, he (Ian Bailey) revels in it.

[Sailorsgirl44]

When did her family say that IB was meant to meet up with her about a project?!! I don't think this was said?

Unfortunately he was not the only male in the area with a documented history of violence.. If this was evidence enough to put someone away then the jails would be overflowing!

IB is an loud man who lives to get a reaction from people.. He is sarcastic and loves to shock - I think his 'confessions' were more related to his way of carrying on than real actual confessions. Also a number of those who he 'confessed to' didn't report it for a long time.. And I think its more that everyone in west Cork was caught up in it and the hype.

The Guards messed up hugely on this case... They took a blinkered view that it was Bailey - if they could have found a single shred of evidence they would have shouted about it from the mountain tops..

[PoseyFlump]

How did the family know it was IB she was meeting? Is that based on the friends recollection that she had ‘blocked from her memory for six months’ about a poet? (And after IB was a suspect)

How many other men in the area also had a history of violence and domestic abuse?

Did he really confess or was it his black humour of saying ‘I was okay until I got accused of smashing someone’s head in’ type of comments?

If a journalist rang him to ask if he was covering the story isn’t it likely he would have known about the murder before it was released generally?

There just isn’t anything convincing in there for me. I’m sure a victims family would rather believe this than the possibility your mother was murdered by a secret lover but that’s looking more likely to me. And I can’t see that secret lover being IB.

Colin Stagg wasn’t a likeable character either and look how that ended up.

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

When did her family say that IB was meant to meet up with her about a project?!! I don't think this was said?

It's covered in the Netflix series.

Yes I thought of Colin Stagg too Posey Flump

[PoseyFlump]

Will have to watch the Netflix one now but I'm wondering if it will be too biased. The Sky one at least showed IB warts and all but felt truthful. Although I never really got a sense of how far away IB lived from the cottage nor how he would have traveled if he had done it.

[Bjarnum]

Didn't Jules say the guarda took the overcoat?

[PoseyFlump]

The problem with memory is that it's sometimes hard to pinpoint exactly when it was you knew something.

My parents are terrible for telling me things that I had previously told them and they'd forgotten I had!!

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

I think the Netflix series covers a lot more .

There's an actress who played Sophie in a Crimewatch type show and they were filming, guess who turns up and tries to get involved? He also tells her he'd seen Sophie just the other day. Possibly why she's felt spooked,not by the The White Lady at all?

There was also another witness who they missed out altogether on the Sky series who was a young woman( at the time) who stayed with IB and Jules and the night of the murder he was soaking his long black coat in a big bucket in the bathroom,the one he burned the next day. Very credible witness and confirmed this in the French trial.

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

My parents are terrible for telling me things that I had previously told them and they'd forgotten I had!!

Mine do the same

[Sailorsgirl44]

I will watch the Netflix one this evening hopefully! I knew there was something about a friend of Sophie saying a 'poet in Ireland' had been bothering her..but the friend said this long after the actual murder I think? Surely you would say it immediately if your friend has been murdered?

The problem with memory is it is hugely unreliable.. My husband is a Guard and he says five people could witness the same incident and you'll get five different accounts of what happened.

[PoseyFlump]

I find it interesting though that Jules' daughters seem to have backed up their mother's version of events. She says the fire was before the murder. That he got scratched from chopping down a pine. That he only had one black coat not two.

I mean, if my mother was in an abusive relationship and I thought he'd committed a murder I wouldn't be giving him an alibi about scratches!

@MrsPelligrinoPetrichor how long is this Netflix three parter? What time am I going to get to sleep tonight?!

[PoseyFlump]

My husband is a Guard and he says five people could witness the same incident and you'll get five different accounts of what happened.

I watched a really interesting tv experiment about that once. The mock crime was a street burglary and the thieves all wore balaclavas. One witness's brain changed what he saw from light to dark so instead of a black balaclava and white eyes he saw the opposite and described dark sunglasses!!

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

The Netflix series is 3hrs in total.

The other thing that wasn't mase clear at all in the sky series is that the studio that Ian lived in was 250 yards down the lane from Jules' main house. He was there the night Sophie was killed,she can't possibly give him an alibi as she'd have no idea what he was doing.

Possibly the daughters backed up their mother because if they didn't Ian might have taken it out on Jules who he had nearly blinded not only beaten her black and blue and pulled half her hair out!

[PoseyFlump]

@MrsPelligrinoPetrichor after watching Netflix are we still left feeling that the biggest cock up is the delay in examining the body to obtain time of death? If she really had eaten breakfast that would put some things to bed (IB seen washing his boots at night etc)

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

Not only the delay but the sheer number of people walking across the crime scene. There was justified laughter at loosing the gate.
I honestly think had it not happened 30 years ago they'd have banged him up years ago because of DNA advancement.

Christmas trees don't scratch your hands and arms, briars do though and I had them on his hands and arms.. This was a long time ago,there wasn't the opportunity to whip your phone out and take a photo sadly. I think we just about had Nokia phones and could text, couldn't we?

They show a clip of IB leaving the police station and although he looks a bit tired and pale, he's got his hands in his pockets and looks just like someone who thinks he's got away with it, sauntering along the road, the arrogance is astounding.

[CliffsofMohair]

@Spandrel

I've been eagerly waiting for this as I listened to the West Cork podcast. I found that to be very biased, the podcasters clearly formed a bond with Ian and Jules and they took the approach that he was just a harmless poet living this bohemian lifestyle and why didn't the nasty Garda just leave him alone.

They glossed over the domestic violence and overall treatment of Jules and the whole podcast seemed to be about poor old Ian. Sophie was barely mentioned.

Already I'm encouraged by the film's more sympathetic view of Sophie and her family.

But Sophie's family were satisfied with the West Cork podcast, according to the producers in the 'extra' at the end and they've certainly never said anything to the contrary while they withdrew their cooperation from Murder at the Cottage and have been vocally critical of its use of photographs of Sophie's body, and the scenes where Jim Sheridan and Nick Foster talk to Ian Bailey from the Paris courtroom, which her uncle told the media 'turned the trial into a kind of farce'.

(I believe that all those archive interview clips with Sophie's parents those are old are replacing up-to-date interviews with her family, but the family withdrew permission for them late in the day, so the producers replaced them with old footage.)

I actually think the podcast stands up well to Murder at the Cottage.

I think the two podcast makers were very aware that their longterm access to IB might make it look as if they were biased, but I think that part of the 'story' as they see it is examining how a man who's been suspected of a murder for 25 years lives his life, and how his partner does.

I didn't think they softpedalled the violence to Jules at all, but in a podcast, all you can do is talk to people and describe things, and Jules really wouldn't play ball and just kept saying Ian shouldn't drink spirits, whereas the strength of a TV documentary is that you can show images, and those images of Jules' battered face and the sheer amount of hair he'd pulled out had a much bigger impact.

I'm also pleased she eventually left him. (Though she is funding the purchase of a caravan so he has somewhere to live, as he is penniless and homeless, and his only income is from selling pizza in the market. He was trying to crowdfund a collection of his own (truly terrible) poetry recently, but I don't know if he reached his target.)

I was actually just listening to the final episode of WC today, and I was struck how they edited it so that the last speech IB makes in the whole 14 episodes is his utterly narcissistic tirade in the taxi on his way to be arrrested. They're very late and his lawyer phones to ask where he is and then phones back to tell him that there's not going to be a public arrest on the steps of the courthouse, but business will be conducted discreetly indoors, and IB (who apparently wanted a showy handcuffing and was carrying a book of his own poetry) loses it and starts shouting about how they need to wait for him, and then starts telling Jennifer Ford, the podcast maker, who, as her husband points out in the voiceover, was 6 months pregnant, that she'll have to get out of the car and out of his way fast so he can make his 'entrance'.

I found that actually quite chilling, especially given how well he knew them both at this point -- this heavily pregnant woman who'd spent years sitting around his kitchen table talking, was just an obstacle to get out of his way. I thought it was a brilliantly ambivalent moment to end on.

In a small community like that I can imagine that Sophie's arrival was quite the talking point. Attractive, wealthy French woman moving in - completely alone. Wouldn't surprise if some local drunk fancied his chances one night and tried to break in to get to her and it escalated into murder.

Not really. One thing that neither the podcast (by two Londoners) and Murder At the Cottage (by a Dubliner) really got right is that Schull is really not just the remote little backwater of 'blow-ins' and' locals' they both represent it as. It has also attracted the seriously moneyed, especially yachting types, and there are lots of multi-million euro second homes, Jeremy Irons and Sinéad Cusack live nearby, so do David Puttnam and Graham Norton, Saoirse Ronan just bought a house not far from there etc etc, and it's quite common to randomly run into famous people in the pubs around in the summer. A foreigner who bought a modest house, came a few times and year and kept herself to herself would barely register for most people.

What I think has been under-explored is the context of the local drug scene lots of people growing weed, and a lot of small deserted cove for import of harder stuff and fairly longstanding rumours that the murderer may have been a locally notorious senior cop, now dead.

So true. There would have been nothing unusual about a French/German/Dutch person setting up home in that part of Cork. Unremarkable.

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

There's also a very telling bit where IB tried to pin it on a former friend and says "You were up at her house, you tried it on with her and her tight little arse and you got carried away!" It's really shocking. It's like he's confessing through this friend. Totally believable.

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

Also, they show her bedin yje Netflix series which had been built up high so she could look out while in bed, no curtains and probably watched by whoever was pestering and eventually murdered her.

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

**sorry typos!

[PoseyFlump]

It's interesting that she had pjs on and roughly tied boots. So something was urgent enough to not get dressed for but not so urgent that she ran out of the house barefoot. It does have 'an argument with someone you know' feel to it.