Sophie’s son: My obligation is to bring her killer to trial

The only son of murdered Frenchwoman Sophie Toscan du Plantier has insisted somebody must stand trial for his mother’s death.

Pierre-Louis Baudley-Vignaud, who was 15 when his mother was beaten to death outside her holiday home near Schull, Co Cork, two days before Christmas in 1996, said he felt an “obligation” to ensure her killer was found.

But he said he had drawn no conclusions about the only man publicly identified as a suspect in the case, Ian Bailey, and only wants to see him brought before the courts to account for himself.

“I don’t know if it is him or not,” he told the Irish Daily Mail in his first interview since Sophie’s death. “I just want him to tell everyone it is not him. If he can convince me it’s not him, good.”

Mr Baudley-Vignaud only became active in the campaign for justice for Sophie in the last few years. Her relatives and friends who run the ‘Association For the Truth About the Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier’ had always shielded him from the public gaze.

He said he had decided to take a more visible role partly because Sophie’s parents, Marguerite and Georges Bouniol, were now in their 80s. He was also spurred on by a chance encounter in Schull last year.

The 32-year-old father of two, who named his first child Sophie, regularly visits West Cork and stays in the house that his mother loved. He had never seen Mr Bailey in the flesh until he spotted him in the vegetable aisle of a local supermarket. He said he froze and had to leave the shop.

Of his mother, Mr Baudley-Vignaud said: “We were so close. Between two people, you couldn’t be closer. I am not even closer with my wife now.”

He said he would never give up trying to find out the truth about his mother’s death: “It must come to trial. It is not a possibility for me that it won’t. It is an obligation for me.”

Mr Bailey was arrested in connection with Sophie’s death but never charged. It subsequently emerged that Garda attempts to build a case against him were seriously flawed, with some members of the force accused by the DPP of acting improperly in the probe.

The Garda Serious Crime Review Team have had preliminary talks about reopening the investigation.

The French tried to have Mr Bailey extradited to face trial in France but that move was blocked by the Supreme Court here. The French investigation is continuing, and a team of police are due here in September to interview witnesses.

Meanwhile, Mr Bailey and his partner Jules Thomas are taking claims against the Garda for wrongful arrest and personal injury arising out of the original investigation. That case is due back before the High Court in September.