Ian Bailey: 'The whole story is a tragedy'

Mr Bailey watched the first two episodes of the Sky Crime series Murder at the Cottage, which focuses on the death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier

Ian Bailey, who called for the Taoiseach, the Justice Minister and the Garda Commissioner to order a probe into the garda investigation of the death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Picture: Barbara McCarthy

Ian Bailey has asked the Taoiseach, the Justice Minister and the Garda Commissioner to conduct another probe into the garda handling of unsolved Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder case, alleging he was victim of a conspiracy to frame him.

Bailey said the garda focus on him as a suspect in the weeks after the French film-maker’s murder in West Cork in 1996 has cost him 25 years of his life and has taken away all of his reasonable and legitimate expectations.

“And now finally I’ve lost my partner,” Bailey said, blaming to a large degree the continuing controversy over the case to the recent separation from his long-time partner, Jule Thomas.

Mr Bailey, who has always denied any involvement in Ms du Plantier’s death, made his comments this evening after watching the first two episodes of Jim Sheridan’s five-part Sky Crime series, Murder at the Cottage, on a friend’s laptop last night.

Sophie Toscan du Plantier

“I just thought it was very very sad,” he told Matt Cooper on The Last Word this evening.

“The whole story is a tragedy - the death of madame Sophie Toscan du Plantier which I had nothing to do with, I’ve said that a thousand times and maybe said a thousand times more, and then you have the conspiracy which I’ve always maintained was launched to try to put me in the frame.

“I was looking at photographs of myself as a young man there, and Jules as a younger person, and it’s consumed a quarter of a century of our lives and it’s just so sad.” 

Gardaí investigating the murder arrested Bailey twice for questioning but he was released on both occasions without charge. The Director of Public Prosecution ruled there was insufficient evidence to warrant a prosecution. In 2019, Bailey was found guilty of the murder after a trial in absentia in France.

“I was bonfired on a pyre of lies in Paris,” he said.

He said he has written twice in the last five weeks to the Taoiseach, to the Justice Minister, and to Garda Commissioner, Drew Harris, asking for a re-investigation of the original garda investigation of the case, alleging that he is the victim of a conspiracy to frame him.

“I am willing to cooperate with that should it be sanctioned,” he said.

Two internal garda probes, the McNally review, in 2002, and the McAndrew review in 2005, found no evidence of a conspiracy to frame Mr Bailey, and he described the 2018 GSOC review of the garda handling of the case, which also found no evidence that gardai deliberately falsified evidence, as “an investigation lite”.

And while he believes Jim Sheridan’s project, which has been in the pipeline since 2014, has been objective, he said he has concerns that an upcoming Netflix documentary on the murder case, which is being produced with support from members of Ms du Plantier’s family, could be “a demonising piece of propaganda”.