Defence claims Ian Bailey had confessed to murder

The newspapers who are fighting a libel action taken by English journalist Ian Bailey on coverage of the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier claimed today that the plaintiff confessed to killing the Frenchwoman with the words, "I did it, I did it, I went too far."

Mr Bailey strenuously denied this allegation and stressed that he told various people that this is what was being said about him, not that he did it but that it was being said that he did it.

Mr Gallagher said that Mr Bailey and his partner, Jules Thomas, invited Mr and Mrs Ritchie and Rose Shelley out to their house, The Prairie in Schull, Co Cork, around New Year’s Eve of 1998 and that they talked about poetry and the murder of Ms du Plantier two years earlier.

Paul Gallagher, senior counsel for the newspapers, said "Mr Shelley wandered in to your bedroom looking for a phone and you said to him, ‘I did it, I did it, I went too far’ - And you broke down and sobbed."

Mr Bailey said: "I said it was being said that I did it. That is a mantra I kept hearing (that he did it). At Christmas time, it all comes back. It is quite dreadful. I have lived with it for seven years. Unless something is done it will keep coming back."

Mr Gallagher said the defendant told Sunday Tribune news editor, Helen Callanan that he had killed Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

Mr Bailey said: "It was being said that I was the killer. I said to her in jest, ‘That’s right, yes.’ I did not think at the time. It is hard to take a false allegation seriously."

Mr Gallagher said: "This was before your arrest and you told her you were the murderer."

Mr Bailey said: "I jocularly responded, ‘Oh yes’. I was not laughing. I couldn’t take the allegation seriously."

In January or February of 1997, Mr Bailey gave a 14-year-old boy, Malachy Reid, a lift home.

Mr Gallagher said that while the boy was in the car, "you (the plaintiff) said you went up there with a rock and bashed her brains in."

Mr Bailey said: "I said it was being said that I did."

Mr Gallagher said that Mr Bailey was in the habit of speaking in the second person and that he said to Bill Fuller in Schull after he (Mr Bailey) was arrested in February 1997, "yes you did it. You saw her in Spar and she turned you on, walking up the aisle with her tight arse. You went to see what you could get and she was not interested"

"You chased her. It stirred something in the back of your head. It went a lot further than you intended.

You were describing yourself in the second person."

Mr Bailey denied that.

Cross-examination of the plaintiff will continue tomorrow.