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Murder at the Cottage

375 replies

MrsPelligrinoPetrichor · 21/06/2021 23:01

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?

OP posts:
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6
PoseyFlump · 03/07/2021 10:23

If she thought someone was using her house I wonder why she went back alone in winter?

That's an interesting question and possibly explains why she had been happy to go alone previously but on this occasion had asked numerous people (friend, aunt) if they wanted to go with her.

What happened I wonder on her previous visit to make her nervous? Points even stronger to neighbour dispute or squatter.

MareMare · 03/07/2021 10:25

@RevolvingPivot

Such a sad case. Why now have the sky and Netflix series been released? It's not an anniversary or anything is it?

If IB is innocent I just feel so awful that he's had to deal with all of this for 20+ years.

Such a complex case and many possible suspects. Husband 1 and 2. Partner. Police. IB. Drug Neighbour. Alfie Neighbour.

If she thought someone was using her house I wonder why she went back alone in winter?

I get wanting to be alone but that seems a bit extreme?

It’s 25 years this December, but I think both documentaries were calculating on the success of the podcast from a few years back, and thought they could capitalise on the fact that it brought this unsolved murder to a wider ‘true crime’ international audience. (Though I think the podcast is in many ways a more interesting piece of work). The family obviously thought the Netflix one might help keep it in the public eye and throw up leads if the French trial didn’t find IB guilty, and both sets of documentary makers would also have been aware of the French trial in the near future when they started researching as a sort of natural ‘conclusion’.

Like someone up the thread, I know of people who have travelled from the UK after listening to the podcast precisely as ‘Sophie murder tourists’, to see IB at Schull market and drive up to the house — which, by the way, is really neither that remote nor hard to find. Head west along the main road from Schull, turn off at Kealfadda bridge just before the OSKA outlet, and take the second turning on your left.

PoseyFlump · 03/07/2021 10:30

Many people don't like IB so don't think it matters if he's guilty or innocent.

But if we don't speak up for injustice, even when it's someone who doesn't have the same morals as ourselves, then it could be us or someone we love next time.

IB cooperated throughout the whole investigation. Aren't we always told that if you've done nothing wrong you've nothing to fear?! All these old cases coming to light contradict that! Find yourself a suspect and make it stick seems to be the method. Scary for us all.

RevolvingPivot · 03/07/2021 10:36

Are either of these roads classed as the first left?

@MareMare

Murder at the Cottage
MareMare · 03/07/2021 11:36

@RevolvingPivot

Are either of these roads classed as the first left?

@MareMare

I can’t see that image clearly, @RevolvingPivot. This is the clearest I can make it.
Murder at the Cottage
Wineloffa · 03/07/2021 20:20

I have watched both the Sky and Netflix documentaries and agree that Ian Bailey is an egotistical idiot who courted the spotlight but that doesn’t necessarily make him guilty.

The theory about the feud with the neighbour over the gate is very interesting indeed. A much more plausible motive...

Ouch44 · 03/07/2021 22:11

I said as I watched the Sky series that I didn't believe that no one heard anything. The neighbours look fairly close. My DH slept through a car alarm the other night that woke me straight up but we have really thick double glazing. I don't believe that neither of the them would have heard anything. Might get an idea of thickness of their windows in the footage

Ouch44 · 04/07/2021 00:15

Look what I found on Reddit. The neighbours house is for sale.

www.daft.ie/for-sale/detached-house-dreenane-toormore-goleen-co-cork/3182114

PoseyFlump · 04/07/2021 08:06

@Ouch44 can you figure out if that was AL's house or the other one that was a holiday home?

Ouch44 · 04/07/2021 08:16

Pretty sure that was ALs house and the other one was a holiday home owned by the Richardson's but they weren't home then.

Not sure where I got this from I've read so much now! I also read that they are hoping to reopen the case. Apparently 2 people have provided the name of the French man in the travel agents. They also found "unknown male" DNA on Sophie's boots. Maybe that DNA is now identifiable?

PoseyFlump · 04/07/2021 09:34

Interesting. Not sure if the windows are double glazed, although it was 25 years ago so things change. And being winter time might not have been open (mine are open all year round because I let DP get his own way Grin)

MareMare · 04/07/2021 09:42

@Ouch44

Pretty sure that was ALs house and the other one was a holiday home owned by the Richardson's but they weren't home then.

Not sure where I got this from I've read so much now! I also read that they are hoping to reopen the case. Apparently 2 people have provided the name of the French man in the travel agents. They also found "unknown male" DNA on Sophie's boots. Maybe that DNA is now identifiable?

It’s Alfie Lyons’ house — he died this spring, and presumably his widow doesn’t want to keep living there.
coulditbecominghome · 04/07/2021 09:45

I really want to watch this but since pp said family withdrew I don't think I will. Shame they used the photos.

LadyEloise · 04/07/2021 10:15

@coulditbecominghome
The family withdrew from the Sky/Jim Sheridan one not the Netflix one as far as I know.

coulditbecominghome · 04/07/2021 10:42

Ok thanks I will watch the Netflix one.

queenofarles · 04/07/2021 16:35

I’ve just finished the Netflix doc, so gripping! wasn’t convinced it was Ian from the very start, But Marie, I don’t know , she seems to know more than what she is saying.

MareMare · 04/07/2021 17:45

[quote LadyEloise]@coulditbecominghome
The family withdrew from the Sky/Jim Sheridan one not the Netflix one as far as I know. [/quote]
Though it’s entirely not clear to me why, as the Jim Sheridan one was arguably far more of a character assassination of IB, whom the family is so certain is guilty, because there’s so much footage of him ranting incoherently, appearing drunk, stoned or plain odd in the daytime, being rough transporting a caged cockerel to the point where he thinks he’s injured it, and showcasing his drinking.

The Jules birthday party scenes where he’s checking wine bottles for dregs, drunkenly singing along offkey with the entertainment, and serenading a stone-faced Jules, are excruciating.

Which obviously doesn’t make him a murderer, but gives a far worse impression of him now than the Netflix footage, where he’s far more coherent and sober.

Having seen both of them close together, I now can’t remember which shows pages from his notebooks where he’s writing graphic sexual fantasies, with illustrations? That obviously could also support a hypothesis where he was stalking Sophie as the object of his fantasies — thenotebooks were used in court during his libel action.

I’m actually a bit confused as to what the family removed when they ceased to cooperate with the Jim Sheridan one — the crime scene photos of her feet in their boots are still in, as is the shocking one of her hand taken, one assumes, at the post-mortem, and there’s still a lot of interview footage with her parents, though it’s older than the interview in the Netflix one (her poor mother is much iller), and with Pierre-Louis. Though not her uncle, aunt or brother.

TokyoSushi · 04/07/2021 21:36

Not RTFT but just checking in as I've literally just finished episode 1 of the Netflix one. It's one of those where I realised I was actually holding my breath at the end. Totally gripped, just going to tuck the DC in and then on to episode 2!

PoseyFlump · 05/07/2021 09:29

For anyone new to this I'd recommend watching both the Sky and Netflix documentaries and then reading the DPP document linked by @Fistful. That document explains why the DPP decided there was no case against IB and is excellent imo.

TokyoSushi · 05/07/2021 13:14

@PoseyFlump

For anyone new to this I'd recommend watching both the Sky and Netflix documentaries and then reading the DPP document linked by *@Fistful*. That document explains why the DPP decided there was no case against IB and is excellent imo.
Brilliant, thank you, I'll do that!
MareMare · 05/07/2021 13:23

@PoseyFlump

For anyone new to this I'd recommend watching both the Sky and Netflix documentaries and then reading the DPP document linked by *@Fistful*. That document explains why the DPP decided there was no case against IB and is excellent imo.
Having now seen both, I think the West Cork podcast stands up well to either, even without the film footage of the locations and interviews.

What I would love is someone expert to explain French law insofar as it pertains to this case -- why it was felt there was not only sufficient evidence for a trial, but to actually convict IB, when the evidence is all circumstantial, and involves assuming that Marie Farrell was initially speaking the truth when she put IB at Kealfadda Bridge and later frightened into withdrawing her statement, rather than initially pressured into an unwarranted identification and later withdrawing it.

And of course him having no legal representation meant the evidence wasn't tested at all in Paris.

There also seem to be some oddities/misunderstandings that could easily have been cleared up, like the fact that the French lawyer claimed IB was lying about going to his studio to write an article the night Sophie was killed, because the temperature was near freezing and the studio was in fact an unheated 'shack' -- but what IB and Jules called 'the studio' was a big, solid house further along their lane (Jules's mother had lived there at some point), not some little garden shed.

Chulainn · 05/07/2021 14:21

I can't quite understand how IB could be tried for a crime that happened in a different jurisdiction and wasn't investigated by French police. I know they had a vested interest as the victim was French but any trial should, imo, be in the jurisdiction the murder was carried out in. Jim Sheridan also said that MF's statement was accepted as fact despite her admitting she lied when she identified IB, both outside her shop and at Kealfadda Bridge.

I wonder if the Guards ever investigated MF and her mystery friend. She admitted she was in the area at the time the Guards feel the crime was committed (even though it's a guestimation because of the overly late arrival of the state pathologist and the insistence the body remained insitu until he arrived). What's to say she and her mystery friend weren't involved, or the mystery friend did it and called MF in a panic for a lift? She knew Sophie. That, to me, is more likely than IB killing someone who he didn't know but was pointed out to him approx 18 months earlier. The Guards should have found out his identity and investigated both thoroughly. I don't understand why she inserted herself into the investigation. Of course, this is all speculation and she probably had nothing to do with it but it's another avenue that should have been explored.

The DPP documents are very interesting. Thanks for the link @Fistful.

SisterMichael · 05/07/2021 15:42

It’s ironic that MF didn’t want her husband to know who was in the car and now over the years thousands of people know about it. I think they are still together though so he must have got over it! I wonder what he thinks of all this.

On Alfie Lyons he looked quite slight and not strong enough to pick up a concrete block in the footage easily in they showed of him.

SisterMichael · 05/07/2021 15:44

Sorry I don’t know what happened to my word order in that sentence!

Taytocrisps · 05/07/2021 20:30

I bought the Nick Foster book so I'll let you know what I think (and if it throws up anything else) when I'm finished.