Bailey case: Witness ‘was not told to lie’

A garda detective who met Marie Farrell a number of times during the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder investigation has denied that gardaí asked Ms Farrell to name Ian Bailey as the man she saw on the road near Schull hours before the victim’s body was found.

Jim Slattery, now retired, denied Ms Farrell’s claims she was told gardaí needed a statement and was asked to sign blank pages when she came to Ballydehob Garda station on February 14, 1997, four days after Mr Bailey was released without charge after his first arrest in connection with the murder.

Asked about Ms Farrell’s evidence that she was told all gardaí needed was a two-line statement that she had seen Mr Bailey, there would be no court case, and there was nothing to worry about, he said that never happened.

He agreed it was unusual no notes were made of an earlier meeting on January 28, 1997, between Ms Farrell and gardaí at Garda Kevin Kelleher’s house. She asked that no notes be taken and she had driven from the house, followed by a Garda car, to the location near Schull where she said she saw a man on the night of December 22/23, 1996, to show gardaí that location, he said.

He and Det Garda Jim Fitzgerald had on February 7, 1997, prepared a memo of that meeting from memory following a request from the investigation incident room for such a memo.

That memo stated Ms Farrell had said she now knew the man she saw on the road near Schull on December 22/23, 1996, was Mr Bailey. Asked about her evidence, that she was told by gardaí to say it was Mr Bailey and he would kill again if he was not stopped and only she could stop him, he said that was not correct.

Mr Slattery is giving evidence in the continuing action by Mr Bailey against the Garda Commissioner and State over the conduct of the investigation into the murder of Ms Toscan du Plantier, whose body was found near Toormore, Schull, on December 23, 1996.

The defendants deny all of Mr Bailey’s claims.

Yesterday, Sgt Frank Looney, now retired, said he filled in a questionnaire based on conversations with Ms Farrell on January 17, 1997, which included references to her seeing a man outside her shop on the afternoon of December 21, 1996, around the same time Ms Toscan du Plantier was in the shop.

Ms Farrell also said she saw the same man the following morning on the road near Schull and had seen him again that very day, January 17, 1997.

He said there were two dates written in different coloured pens on the questionnaire; one was January 17, 1997, and the second was February 27, 1997. He believed he wrote the earlier date and the late Det Garda Bart O’Leary was wrong when he told the 2006 McAndrew Garda inquiry he, Mr O’Leary, recorded both those dates as the dates he checked the questionnaire.

Asked by Tom Creed, for Mr Bailey, how there was a reference to Mr Bailey on a page of the questionnaire when Ms Farrell would not have known Mr Bailey on January 17, 1997, he said he could not explain that.

The case continues.