Joyce Fegan: Will Sophie Toscan du Plantier and other murdered Irish women ever get justice?

Pierre-Louis Baudey-Vignaud as a child with his mother Sophie Toscan du Plantier. With so many eyes now on Sophie's case, one would assume there would be some chink or break in the case, because if we aren't watching or listening to these documentaries for justice, then what are we watching them for? Picture courtesy of Netflix

The unsolved murder of a woman just outside her own home 25 years ago is the subject of two highly publicised documentaries released in the space of 10 days. The mystery still captures the public’s imagination after all these years and leads to extensive coverage about the case.

We will sit as armchair detectives, speculating and analysing all available evidence, but will Sophie Toscan du Plantier, who was brutally killed at the end of her lane, and whose body was left out in the winter cold for 24 hours afterwards, ever receive justice?

What about the many other women murdered in Ireland for whom there will be no glossy TV documentaries, no newspaper columns, no lengthy radio segments?

Women’s Aid keeps a file on women murdered in Ireland. Sophie is included in that file. It currently runs from 1996 to 2019. There are 229 other women’s names in there.

Of these women, 87% were killed by a male known to them. We refer to these murders as femicide — a term broadly accepted to be the killing of women and girls by men.

And of the 230 femicides in Ireland, 40, or 17% of these cases, remain unsolved — Sophie's being one of them.

On the file it states the perpetrator beside each murder, as in partner, ex-partner, male relative or unrelated known male. Another option under the perpetrator heading is "no one held responsible" — there are 34 of these, Sophie's included.

Another option is "missing feared murdered". There are six of these.

These women and girls are:

• Fiona Pender, 25, missing since August 1996.
• Ciara Breen, 17, missing since February 1997.
• Deirdre Jacob, 18, missing since July 1998.
• Fiona Sinnott, 19, missing since February 1998.
• Saoirse Smyth, 28, missing since April 2017.
• Giedre Raguckaite, 29, missing since May 2018.

In the case of teenager Ciara Breen, it is thought she went out to meet someone she trusted. She left her house at night, through her bedroom window, with the intention of returning as the window was left on the latch. Her mother, Bernadette, died in 2018 without finding truth, justice or Ciara's remains.

There was a chief suspect in Ciara's case. He has since died.

In the case of Fiona Pender, according to An Garda Síochána, she was last seen at her flat at Church Street in Tullamore at 6am on Friday, August 23, 1996.

"At that time she was 7 months pregnant and had spent the previous day shopping for baby clothes with her mother in Tullamore. She was in good form and was looking forward to the birth of her baby," states An Garda Síochána.

Whoever murdered Fiona didn't just take one life, and with such an advanced pregnancy — they would have known this.

And she was last seen at her flat, her home, the place we are meant to be most safe — a place we only let people in who feel safe to us.

There has always been a main suspect in this case who, to this day, remains a free man.

In 2019, award-winning documentary-maker Shauna Keogh made a two-part series about Fiona Sinnott for Virgin Media. Fiona went missing very near her Wexford home (like Ciara Breen and Fiona Pender) in February 1998. It was coming up to her daughter's first birthday — something she was very excited about and was preparing for.

A former partner told the gardaí he saw Fiona at home, the morning after she was last seen in public.

Fiona's family fully cooperated and are in the 2019 documentary, where they see her medical records for the first time. Sourced by Keogh and the family for the documentary, the records make for disturbing reading.

The records detail physical abuse such as kicks to the head and bite marks to her body. The dates on the records indicated for the first time that she was the victim of abuse, up to six months into her pregnancy.

Similar to Fiona Pender's case in Offaly, there is a main suspect in Fiona Sinnott's murder too. And whoever killed her, he killed not only a daughter and a sister and a friend, but a mother to an infant baby.

Fiona's family say they know well who killed their sister and daughter.

Diane Sinnott, Fiona’s sister, told this newspaper in 2018:

We know who killed Fiona. For so many years we were afraid to mention names but not anymore."

Fiona Sinnott's case has been described as Ireland's "most solvable" case.

“Notwithstanding the fact that there have been no developments, I would still consider it eminently solvable,” retired detective Alan Bailey told the Irish Examiner in 2017, “it is the most solvable of all of the ‘Operation Trace’ cases.”

He headed up Operation Trace — the search unit for Ireland's missing women in the late 1990s.

In both Fiona Sinnott's and Fiona Pender's cases there is no body, but there is a very credible main suspect, and people around that main suspect who are capable of providing new evidence and information that will give these women justice and the respect they did not receive in death. Their truth-telling, anonymous or otherwise, may even give their families back the bodies.

And in a far more recent case of "missing feared murder", Giedre Raguckaite has been missing since May 2018 — she was last seen being assisted into a house in Laytown, Co Meath, by two men.

Ireland of 2018 was a very different place to Ireland in 1996 or 1998, so hopefully, technology may assist in Giedre's case. Vanishing into thin air is no longer as easy a task as it once was.

With so many eyes now on Sophie's case, one would assume there would be some chink or break in the case, because if we aren't watching or listening to these documentaries for justice, then what are we watching them for?

And what of Ireland's other missing or murdered women and girls, where there are very credible suspects, are our eyes going to go there? 

There are dozens of other unsolved murders of women - some very solvable.

It must be a terribly painful place for a family, to know who killed your daughter or sister, but to be totally powerless to do anything about it. You operate within the laws of the land, while a violent criminal who committed the worst of crimes remains shielded, protected and free.