Episode 410: The Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier | Morbid

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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.

She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.

And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk, and I am absolutely loving it.

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Visit audible.com slash morbid. On November 13th, 2022, four University of Idaho students were murdered.

Today, finally, the true story. Based on over 300 interviews, in their own words, family members talk about their heartbreak and grief.

Students and townspeople describe that terrifying night.

Police detail the dramatic investigation and arrest of Brian Koberger.

You've never read a true crime like James Patterson and Vicki Ward's The Idaho Four.

The true story, it's finally here. Hey weirdos, I'm Alina.

And I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. It's morbid during the holiday season.

There it is. Yeah, it's the holiday season, so everybody's stressed out.

Nobody knows how to drive lately. Nobody knows how to drive.

Everyone's kind of mean. Yeah. But it's cozy as fuck.

It is. I did go to the Berkshires last weekend, and OMG, it was so gorge.

It snowed. The first snow happened there.

Ugh. So that put me in such a good mood to do holidays and everything.

But then I had to drive home on the Mass Pike.

Yeah. So that didn't put me in a good mood.

Not great. I was like, well, I'm over this.

The Berkshires is like a snow globe. Yeah.

It's like a little, it's like a Hallmark movie.

Yeah. When you walk down Railroad Street, you're just like, oh, am I just, am I from the big city?

Yeah. And I'm going to meet a- well i don't need to but like if i was single when i when i met this but whenever john and i go there we just like come up with a movie yeah like john's like it's me i own a bakery downtown and you're the big city ceo that's coming in to take over my bakery that's what i thought when i was leaving i was like i feel like i'm watching a hallmark movie in reverse yeah i was like leaving the small quaint beautiful town to like come back to work yeah which i'm excited about because like hey guys but like hey yeah so yeah do you guys love hallmark movies i need to know you were gonna say horror movies because that's just like who your soul is you're like hey do you guys love hallmark movies also if you guys aren't listening to scream yet you gotta listen because oh yeah we're right that it just made me think of it because we're right in the middle of the hellraiser uh series we just did numero dos and i dipped halfway out because i had to go to the And I think you need to go listen if you haven't yet.

And Caleb's a fucking gem of a human. Caleb is one of the funniest people I've ever met.

Like, let's just talk about Caleb. Did you see Caleb's Instagram story last night?

No, it was just him in front of a bathroom mirror, like looking at himself.

And then he just backed up. And I was like, what was the point of that?

But I also loved it. Yeah, it's just who he is as a human.

He's one of those people. And I think you'll get this if you listen to the podcast.

And if you know him as a human... Yeah.

He's just one of those people that's like a shot in the arm.

Oh, my God. You know how like those are rare people that you don't want to do something or you're having a bad day.

And then you just like get around Caleb and you're like, well, fuck, everything's great.

It's like, oh, shit. So he's just one of those people.

Yes. This is Caleb Appreciation Day. I don't know why.

Scream days just make me happy. And Caleb makes me happy.

We're trying to get him to move to Massachusetts.

Yeah. We're going to bring him over here.

Everyone message Caleb and tell him to move to Massachusetts.

Yeah. He'll have his inbox. There you go.

Let's harass them into coming here. I mean, I've been doing it for years at this point.

Yeah, why not? But yeah, I think there's some... I'm excited about next year's horror movies.

I think there's going to be some good ones.

There's a few good ones. I mean, Scream.

Yeah. Oh, can we talk about that for a second?

Yeah. I actually just saw that it's going to be in New York.

Like it's based in New York. Oh, really?

Yeah. I don't know if that's like for real.

Actually, Caleb posted like a thing, like a poster for Scream, the new Scream.

And it says like in New York. And then I saw this synopsis that said like all the kids leave fucking Woodsboro.

Woodsboro. Thank you. And go for like a fresh start in New York.

And I was like, wait, is that real? And I mean, you would know.

I'll just I'll text Chad. Yeah. I'm excited.

It sounds cool. But that's wow. That's interesting.

I was surprised, but I'm like, I'm excited to see it.

And I think it's coming out March 10th. Yeah, I know it's coming out in March.

Yeah, I'm excited for it. I'm so fucking stoked.

Like keep bringing me back into that world.

I'm here. I'm here for the ride. Let's go.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. And you know what?

You can come listen to six. I was just thinking because there's so many screams that there's so many Hellraisers and we're just beginning.

Are we going through all of them like week by week?

I think they'll be like spread out. I think there'll be like little things in between like your pick.

I was going to say because my next pick on scream.

This is just like a scream stand pod at the moment.

Mine is a don't worry, darling, which you can tell like we have very specific picks.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you guys are going to be surprised by Don't Worry Darling, though.

And if you didn't like it, I don't want to hear it.

It was such a beautiful fucking masterpiece.

It's the Harry Styles of it all. Honestly, as much as I love Harry, he wasn't phenomenal.

Really? No. Wow. He wasn't horrible in it by any stretch of the imagination, but he wasn't like I don't think it's his big break by any means.

Yeah, he wasn't Flo Pugh. No, I want him on in New York singing to me at all times. yeah that's one of the things sorry we're just gonna like rant for a little while here we are before we start you guys love when we do this you know you guys you love this you like this you love having a little sit down talk i hope you have a coffee with you i hope you wrap it a present let's just chat for a second don't worry we're gonna get into the story i promise yeah of course But just speaking of that, Ash and I keep, we're like, we both hit the concerts this year.

Of our dreams. Like literally our dream concert.

And like neither one of us have experienced that real deep concert withdrawal.

Before, like I've gone to many concerts that I loved that I said, wow, that was the best show I've ever been to.

But never has it stuck with me like Ghost.

Like I am literally months out and still every day.

I'm like, why am I not at a Ghost concert right now?

That's how I feel about Harry Styles. And the saddest thing about that concert is like you had such a beautiful experience the whole way through.

Yeah. I had a euphoric experience in that crowd.

And I was on cloud 11. I was further than nine.

And then somebody stole Drew's wallet. And we realized it as we were at the merch counter about to get me everything my heart dreamed of.

He was like, just get what you want. And I was like, I love you so much. and then he was like do you have my wallet and i was like why the fuck would i have your wallet he was like i don't know where my wallet is and i was like yeah that's a bad way to end it we didn't find it and then this really sweet um man who like worked at the garden was like oh no like wallets are never gone forever like we always recover them just call back and then the next day i started seeing people are still you trying to use my yeah people are shit Yeah, people suck.

Truly are shit. Like, that's a real shit move.

It really sucked. And it's a hairy listener, too.

I was like, whoa. That's the thing. You come and listen to the smooth vibes of Harry Styles and then you steal someone's wallet and try to steal their money.

You jam around to truth. treat people with kindness and sing along to the gd words and then you try to use my gd wallet like bye not cool you know what's even sadder is um when drew like went through his name change i got him that wallet and had his initials his new initials embossed on it that's bullshit yeah so fuck you whoever took it six months ago Fuck you.

I know. I feel bad that your concert experience ended that way because mine just ended with you floating to the car, literally floating to the car.

And actually a listener. named Amanda, who we actually met at the ghost concert.

They came up and talked to us. They're like so sweet.

They have a crochet shop called Killer Cat Crochet.

And you can find them on Etsy and Instagram.

They're amazing. They appreciate us. Yeah.

The cutest. I died. Like as dolls. We need to post that.

Yeah. But also, Amanda, shout out to you because we're talking about the ghost concert right now.

At one point during the ghost concert, they like shoot out confetti.

And we were in like this. We were on like the side of the stage.

Yeah. Like in a seat. And so we didn't get like showered in the confetti.

And I remember watching it and being because I'm me.

She cried. And I was like, oh. I want some of that because I was like, it's like a cool thing because I could see people like grabbing it.

Yeah. Oh, I want ghost confetti. And I just thought it.

I didn't say anything about it. Amanda read your mind.

And then we got a package like a month later because.

Yes. I think it was just like we had taken a minute to go to the post office.

And Amanda sent me a bag of the confetti. that she had gathered in front of us right now i can tell you right now i am literally looking at it it sits on my desk so when i record it's sitting right in front of me so thank you so much for doing that but it was honestly we were just talking about it this morning we were like we need that most concerts again yeah 2023 they got to come back to the united states like harry's in chile right now and ghost is just in sweden yeah like we can't get out there right now i want to go to sweden hey we're going to sweden guys he's there real quick just taking a quick trip overseas to see tobias to see toby Oh, you guys are on a nickname basis now.

But yeah, we just wanted to rant about this.

Listen to ghosts. Listen to Harry Styles.

Watch movies. Listen to Scream. Harass Caleb.

Do all of that. That's our assignment for you for the week.

That's our PSA here. Also, I hope that everybody is doing really well right now.

Because I know this is kind of like we were saying, like everybody's angry and la-di-da-do.

And I know seasonal depression gets really tough right now for people.

And the holidays can be stressful. Yeah, money is tight.

Expectations and pressure and just a lot. everybody in your life loves you and you don't need to get them a swanky gift so that they know they love you or vice versa they love you we love you and you know what like everyone takes some time off during Christmas you deserve it yeah we're not going to we're not going to but you absolutely should we will still be what you'll get content through Christmas break content content content because it's going to be your Christmas break but definitely not ours and that's fine that's it's fine i want to provide some entertainment for you when you're sitting there wrapping gifts yes and one thing i actually saw just going back to like the seasonal depression of it all um is that like lighting helps warm lighting oh i have heard that yeah so like little holiday lights little twinkle lights it really does yeah yeah like twinkle lights like i don't know if you guys have seen that tiktok where it's like we don't use the big light like number one rule in my house we don't use the big light it's all like mood lighting yes yeah but there's twinkle lights up so much mood lighting in my house i love it cozy cozy Why choose a Sleep Number smart bed?

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All right. Well, it's been 10 minutes of us just yapping.

It's like the old days. I know, for real.

And then if it is like the old days, you have to interrupt me a crazy amount.

Like I used to interrupt you in the worst spots ever.

Like I'm going to say in December and then you interrupt me.

Okay, cool. All right, cool. So I'm actually going to be telling a story.

I kind of want to get serious for a second because this is a really terrible story.

Oh, good. And it is technically unsolved.

So it's unsolved in a very strange way because we've really never had a case like this before.

But it starts in 1996 in December. In December of 1996, a heinous murder occurred just a few miles outside of the tiny village of Shull in Ireland.

Just two days before Christmas, the body of 39-year-old French filmmaker, wife, daughter, and mother, Sophie Toscan Duplantier, was found not far from her vacation home.

Ooh. Yes. What a beautiful name. I know.

Sophie Toscan Duplantier. Ooh. Like, so pretty.

Yeah, that's beautiful. And she was absolutely stunning.

Now, I was going to say, go for it. The cottage was supposed to be her safe haven.

It was supposed to be a little getaway from the hustle and bustle of her busy life in France.

And when Sophie was discovered, she was wearing presumably what she had planned to go to bed in.

Her leg was wrapped up in barbed wire and she had been savagely beaten, mostly to her face and head.

When police checked the property where she was found and took a look also around her cottage, they really didn't find much to go on, and there were certainly no signs of a break-in, which was strange.

The only thing that they really did find that they were like, okay, like, clearly something's bad here other than her.

Yeah. And they hoped that police would find the perpetrator soon, but many, many ridiculous mistakes were made throughout this investigation.

And though a certain suspect was arrested on multiple occasions, he would never serve time.

And not everybody is fully convinced that he had anything to do with this.

Some people are totally convinced of this suspect's guilt and think that there's still a murderer on the loose.

Oh, jeez. But other people sit there and question the validity of the entire investigation and the integrity of those involved in the investigation.

Oh, boy. Lots of questions lingering. Also, Sophie, she was stunning.

Stunning. And she seemed like she was just like a really nice person.

Oh, she just has one of those faces that you're just like, I want to know you.

Mm-hmm. Exactly. And she was a mother. Yeah.

It's awful. So let's hear a little bit more about Sophie.

She was a Leo, so a leader. And she was born on July 28th, 1957 in Paris, France.

Her parents were George Boniol. I'm sorry if I said that wrong.

I did look up the pronunciation and that was what I got.

All right. And he was a dentist. And then her mother was Marguerite Boniol, who worked as a civil servant, it said.

Sophie was the oldest of their three children, and all of them were raised in the family apartment where Sophie's father also had a space of his own to do his dentistry.

Not too much is public about Sophie's childhood, but she was known to be really bright and curious throughout her entire life.

And again, throughout her entire life, she took a very strong interest in culture, specifically Irish culture, which like rock on, brother.

Yeah, yeah. Now, when she became a teenager, she actually got multiple opportunities to travel to Ireland.

And there she learned to speak English. She took every single chance she got to go.

And she developed such a deep love for Ireland.

She loved diving deeper into the history of the country.

She wanted to know everything she could about the architecture, just the culture overall.

And there's actually a word for people that love Ireland.

It is a hibernophile. Oh, that's cool. Because you hear about like Francophile.

Yeah. You know, or like Bibliophile or something like that.

But that's funny. It's a Hibernophile, which really to me sounds like somebody who loves hibernation, which is me.

Which is me. But I'm a Hibernophile because I also love Ireland.

There you go. And well, it's not just that you love it, but you see what I'm saying.

I see what you're saying. But that is exactly what Sophie was.

Ireland was her happy place. So it's really tragic that that is where she ended up being brutally murdered.

Yeah. So when she finished high school in France, she stayed in Paris for a while.

And at first she thought that she would get a law degree.

But the subject really proved just to be way too dry for her.

She wanted creativity, artistry. She wanted to be inspired.

Law was just not for her. So after two years of trying to make it work, she decided to drop out of the program.

But it wasn't a total loss because Sophie actually met her first husband while she was at university, Pierre Jean Baudy.

The two of them married in 1980 when Sophie was 22 years old.

And when they first got married, Sophie worked at the video store that Pierre's father owned and also worked part time at a little bookshop.

Oh, that's cute. Now, they obviously weren't rolling in it financially, but at first they were really happy and they were making it work.

Yeah. Now, one year into the marriage, the couple found out that they were expecting a baby boy and they decided on naming him after his father.

And when little Pierre was born, he was given the middle name...

Louis. And most of the time they referred to him by his middle name.

So he was Little Louis. I love that. Really cute.

I think Louis is such a cute name. I do too.

I love that name. Yeah. So Sophie and Pierre were absolutely over the moon about their baby.

But at the same time, they were struggling as a couple.

They were happy to be parents, but finding difficulty in kind of managing a family.

Yeah, their relationship. In their relationship.

Being parents was brand new to them, obviously, and quite stressful.

Pair that with the financial stress that they had, and it was really just a recipe for disaster.

So sadly, they ended up separating just a few months after their son was born, and they did eventually divorce.

Oh. Now, clearly, you know, being a mom in general is one of the biggest and toughest jobs that someone can take on.

But then you take away a partner and half of your financial income.

That's going to be a serious struggle. Oh, I can't imagine.

So needless to say, Sophie was having a hard time after her divorce now being a single mom.

And on top of that, her family was not super pleased with where she was at.

They were said to be a bit conservative and religious.

So not only were they upset that she dropped out of school, but also about the divorce.

Ah. They didn't really see eye to eye with Sophie during this time.

She was a liberal young woman trying to find her footing in a very different world than they were kind of used to.

And so there was a bit of a rift in their relationship during this point in time.

Okay. But luckily, all three of the adults in the situation realized that they could put aside their differences and maintain a relationship for the sake of their son and grandson.

And Louie. And they put the work in, but I'm sure it was like a little bit tension filled for a bit.

Yeah. Now, fortunately for Sophie, she landed a job in the mid 80s working as a promotions officer at Uni France, which is a huge organization that puts together promotions for French films at big festivals and events all across the world.

Kind of sounds like, um, is it Sundance?

Yeah. Yeah. Kind of sounds like that. Perfect.

So Sophie would soon meet her second husband, Daniel Toscan Duplantier.

He was a well-known and very well-respected French filmmaker who also had a pretty high-sitting title at Uni France.

He was chairman. So he's really well-known, actually, for his work on hit films Frederico Fellini and Maurice Pialat.

I hope I said those correctly. I love it.

It sounds great to me. Yeah, I love it. I think French is, like, so pretty.

Oh, I love French. Speak French to me. Seriously.

But he was really, like I said, well-known, well-respected.

And there was a bit of an age difference between the two of them.

Daniel was 16-year Sophie Sr. And he had kind of a reputation for being a bit of a playboy.

His reputation preceded him a bit. But...

But anyways, the two of them really hit it off like regardless.

And they actually ended up getting married in 1990.

Oh, look at that. Yeah. So Sophie's mother, Marguerite, officiated the wedding.

Oh. Which I think is so beautiful. Oh, I love that.

Like the sweetest thing ever. Yeah. And this was it.

Sophie had found her footing. She was happy.

She was in love. At this point, she was more than financially secure.

And she was kind of a celebrity in the film world at this point.

Kind of killing it. She's really killing it.

And she, like I said, she was kind of a celebrity in the film world, but she wasn't totally comfortable with that because she still liked her privacy, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. Who doesn't? Yeah. So from the outside, people were probably jealous of Sophie because, like, she's marrying this big shot.

She has this beautiful marriage. Like, la-di-da-do.

They would spend their days working on creative projects in their mansion together.

At night, they would join each other at different events, mostly for, like, Haya Society in Paris.

Ooh. And Daniel really loved the city and Sophie liked it, but it wasn't always for her.

She'd been born a city girl. She grew up in the city, but she always felt like there was somewhere else out there for her.

Somewhere where she could just go and dive into like her creativity and find the inspiration that she'd been looking for.

Yeah. And for her, I'm sure you'll be shocked to hear, that place became Ireland.

She'd always pictured like a cozy home in the Irish countryside.

Which I'm just like, oh, that's so warm.

I can feel that right now. I want to go there.

I want to go to there. And although Daniel couldn't relate to the desire, he respected it.

He was like, I feel that. Yeah. And he knew it was important to his wife, so he actually bought her a holiday home toward the end of 1992.

Now, I wrote 1922, so that's why there was a weird pause there.

We went back in time. Yeah. he also bought her a time machine it was great it was awesome yeah she uh he bought her a delorean yeah there you go no no just just a home just that just a home yeah now the cottage overlooked roaring water bay and it was in this tiny little settlement known as tormore like super super tiny we're talking essentially a cul-de-sac bring me there yes i want to go to there So Sophie was able to visit her country home multiple times a year.

Sometimes she'd go by herself. Other times she'd go with her son and Daniel.

She'd bring her parents like she could just do whatever she wanted there.

Yeah. And the locals called her a blow in, which could blow in kind of sounds a little rude when you first hear it.

But it's actually an endearing term for people who have second homes in Ireland that they kind of use.

Oh, they like blow in and out kind of thing.

Yeah, exactly. Come in on the wind, leave on the wind.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah. So on the morning of December 20th, Sophie was blowing into her cottage, but this time she was by herself.

She wanted a little creative time away before she was coming home to celebrate Christmas with her family.

So she arrived at the Cork airport in the morning and then headed to the local gas station to pick up some necessities.

She had rented a car to drive to her cottage.

Okay. She spent some time by herself at the cottage preparing it for her short stay, and then later that afternoon, she spent time at the courtyard bar and restaurant in Shull, kind of just shooting the breeze with some of the locals, and then she headed home.

It was a normal day in the place that she loved.

And Sophie's neighbors, there weren't that many of them, but they loved her too.

They knew her as a gentle and friendly soul, but they agreed she was a very private person. they knew what she wanted them to know yeah and i think that's a good way to be yeah my neighbors know literally nothing about me so i love that it takes a village but to an extent yes exactly we wave we say hello we know maybe each other's names and that's it there you go so according to my neighbors know a little bit more about each other but i think it's like i have a weird neighborhood you have like yeah you do and i think it's different when you have kids yeah because you kind of like have to meet your neighbors a little more because you're like out playing yeah we just like we all are like and everybody's very much like neighborhood watch at each other like everyone knows what cars are coming into everyone's driveway yes the first couple times that i like pulled into the neighborhood i remember literally people peering out their windows and i was like hello yeah like we're we're not we're an army in this neighborhood like we will get you No, they probably think I live here.

They probably do. Because I do. Because you essentially do.

I'm a dual resident. There you go. So according to the Irish Times, Sophie definitely was somebody who tried to participate and engage with people in her home away from home.

But again, private. Yeah. So December 20th and 21st, Kind of were like, it sounded like they were quiet and typical days for Sophie.

But the 22nd had shaken her up a bit. She traveled to a place known as Three Castlehead.

It's actually something we should do an episode on because it's haunted as fuck.

Oh. There's like castle ruins there and all these different ghost stories.

It's this area of open grassland and it contains the ruins of Dunlow Castle. oh amazing now allegedly like i was just saying the ruins are haunted and there are a few bad omens that one could stumble across so people thought maybe sophie had stumbled upon one of these things one of these omens particularly the woman in white and if you come across the woman in white it's basically said that like you're going to die oh yeah okay it's really kind of creepy that that don't want to visit there Now, yeah, so maybe Sophie encountered that or one of the other omens that kind of left her kind of like shaken up or maybe it was something else, but it was said something that day had freaked her out.

So after her walk through the ruins, she did meet her friends for tea and made plans to see them the next day before she was due to head back to Paris.

So when tea was finished, she went home for the evening.

She spoke with her husband that night around 10 or 11 p.m.

Daniel said that their conversation was very convivial.

Did I say that right? Or is it convivial?

I don't know, actually. It just means pleasant.

That's a word I'm not familiar with. Yeah, I think it's convivial.

Yeah, that sounds good. I like it. Ooh, new word.

I know. I love a good new word. I like that.

And it's got a good mouthfeel. It does. So yeah, their conversation was awesome. and he said that nothing seemed to be worrying her at all at that point and she was her upbeat usual self they had been said to have been having some trouble in their marriage in recent months but there were no harsh words between them during that conversation thankfully okay That would be the last time Daniel would speak to his wife.

And she was coming home the next day. The next day.

And I'm at least happy that they had a nice conversation.

Yeah, thankfully. You know, especially if they were kind of having struggles.

Those kind of things you're just like, wow, you guys didn't know that this is it.

Like you didn't know. Like just talking about casual things and you have no idea that that's the last time you're going to talk to them.

That's something about this job that has changed me.

Yeah. Completely changed me. Absolutely.

Drew and I do not go to bed angry. It's happened once in our entire relationship.

We like I always say I love you to people.

I say I love you to you when I leave. Like you just because you just never know what's going to happen.

And I never want any yuckiness lingering in the air.

God forbid something happens. You don't want regrets.

No. So the next morning, right around 10 a.m., a woman named Shirley Foster was heading into town to get rid of her garbage from that week.

I love how fucking quaint this is. It's adorable.

I would be so pissed if I had to drive my garbage somewhere, though.

Yeah, that would suck. Yeah. Yeah. But she did.

And she also wanted to get some last-minute holiday shopping finished.

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Shirley was one of Sophie's neighbors, and though she hadn't seen Sophie on her drive, she noticed that Sophie's backdoor light had been on all evening the night before, so she knew she was still home.

So as she reached the end of their street, she saw what she thought was a large and broken doll lying in the grass near the side of the road.

At first, she didn't think much of it because she was like, oh, it's trash day.

Like, maybe that fell out or, you know. Yeah.

But then when she was driving back, she got a closer look and realized that this was no doll.

This was a body. So she's not far from her house at this point.

She starts screaming, laying on her horn to try to get her husband's attention and actually ends up running back to their home to retrieve him.

He immediately called the Irish police, known as the Garda, which translates into the Guardians of the Peace.

Oh, I love that. Like their full name. I'm not going to try to say their full name because it will be so heinous.

But you know that that's what it translates to.

Know that it says that. I'm just going to shorten it to Garda.

There you go. So after he hung up with them, he remembered that Sophie was in town and ran to her home to tell her what was going on.

When he got there, he saw that her rental car was in the driveway, but nobody was answering his knocks at the door.

And before leaving, he looked down at the knob and noticed the blood smears that I had spoken about in the beginning of this.

So the police arrived and they found the body of a woman who was still in her nightclothes.

She was laying on her back in the grass, slightly tilted to the right, and she clearly had suffered a great deal.

The area was immediately secured and cordoned off and a report began.

Sergeant Gerard Prendeville reported that the body was, quote, scratched and cut and her hair was covered with blood, as was her face.

However, there was an area under her nose that, quote, appeared wet as distinct from dried blood.

Huh. So it hadn't been very long, it seems.

Oh, wow. Her top had been pushed up and her pants pulled down slightly, seemingly from an intense struggle, not from like any kind of assault.

They weren't positive about that. Her leggings had been caught in barbed wire, which was still wrapped around one of her legs.

So she had been running and got caught and dragged it along with her.

And this is going to get really intense.

I just want to let you guys know. They would soon learn that she had been struck to the side of the head more than 11 times, crushing her skull.

Then her killer used a concrete block from nearby and dropped it onto her head.

The final blow was likely the cause of death.

Her right ear had also been lacerated. Yeah, it was very, very intense.

But her head was not the only part of her body that sustained brutal trauma.

Multiple fingers were broken, and there were scratches all over her hands and arms.

Some of those were from the barbed wire, but others were clearly defensive wounds.

She fought hard for her life. Oh my god.

But there were there were boot marks imprinted on her forearm, neck and face.

Oh, my God. This was absolutely brutal. There were no signs of a sexual assault and also no drag marks nearby, which led the police to believe that she had been killed where they found her.

Wow. So Shirley Foster and her husband Alfie knew that this was Sophie.

And they told the police that they hadn't seen her since she had arrived a couple days before.

They explained, though, that they did see that light in the back of her house on all night.

But they said they hadn't heard any kind of commotion the night before or on any night since she'd been here.

Yeah, and it's like if she was killed out there, it would seem like it would be very loud.

You would think, right? Yeah. Yeah. Sophie's home was searched and the only sign of a struggle that police found was that small amount of blood on the doorknob on the front door, which then led out to a lane to where her body had been found.

But it sounds like it wasn't like a huge amount of blood.

And then they did see two chairs in front of the radiator and two wine glasses on the mantle of the fireplace, one of which still had a little bit of wine in it.

Now, immediately you say, OK, so she had somebody over.

Yes, maybe she did. But some of her friends also said that that was how she liked to read.

She sat in one chair and put her feet on the other.

OK, but then we have the two wine glasses.

Yeah, there was another person. That's what I think.

Yeah, I don't. There's no doubt in my mind.

Yeah, that's exactly what I think. Yeah.

So there was also a book of poetry next to the glasses.

A look inside Sophie's rental car showed that the passenger seat was pushed back as far as it could go, which led them to believe that she'd recently been in the car with a very tall human.

Yeah. In the hour that Sophie's body was found, a local doctor, Larry O'Connor, arrived and pronounced Sophie dead on the scene, obviously.

And shortly after that, Father Dennis Cashman read Sophie her last rites.

Both men left very quickly after they finished their jobs.

And for some reason, this is going to blow your fucking mind, and it is the most insane and ridiculous thing I've ever heard in my life.

Sophie's body was left where it had been discovered for the next 24 hours.

What? I'll say that one more time for the people in the back.

Sophie's body was left where it had been discovered for the next 24 hours.

What? Because the police had to wait for the state pathologist, Dr. John Harbison, to arrive from Dublin.

But, like, I feel like maybe you could have brought her to a more secure location where there was no exposure to the elements.

Well, that's the thing. I'm like, did they cover her with anything?

Did they tent it off? Did they have somebody patrol, like, on guard all night?

It doesn't sound like it. What the fuck?

She was left there for 24 hours, exposed to the elements.

And they lost crucial evidence. Like, I understand that you need a pathologist, a medical examiner, a coroner to show up at the scene and that's when you can move the body.

Right. But like, you got to do something here.

Well, it's like, do we have anyone else we can call?

That's the thing. It's like, there's no one else in the area.

Exactly. Like, you guys got to fix that.

Mm hmm. So 24 hours later, the doctor arrived and did his examination on the body.

His first note was that there was a slight depression in the ground beneath Sophie's body, indicating that the blows had been struck when she was lying on her back in the grass.

Okay. The cause of death was listed as laceration of the brain, fracture of the skull, and multiple head injuries.

Oh, my God. But the time of death was not something that the doctor could provide.

No. Because Sophie's body had been left outside.

For 24 hours. In the rain. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

The best he could do was say that Sophie was killed sometime between Sunday night and into Monday morning.

Helpful. Wow. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah. After the exam was complete, the investigators started working on a theory as to what happened.

Tormor, like I said, was a very, very tiny settlement, barely even a town, really just three houses and a cul-de-sac at the end of a very small lane.

It was highly unlikely that a stranger would go unnoticed, basically because of what we were just talking about.

Yeah, I was going to say, it's basically the same kind of neighborhood.

In an unknown car, people are going to be like, who the hell is that?

Who the hell are you? Right, exactly. What's going on?

Exactly. Exactly. And it was also unlikely that a stranger just stumbled upon Sophie's house.

And again, no sign of a break-in, so that doesn't make sense.

Investigators were confident that Sophie knew the killer.

They also believed that this had to have been a large and powerful man who had carried out this heinous crime because the strength it would take to wield the 55-pound cement block that had been the final blow was pretty obvious.

Yeah. And then those two wine glasses. The two wine glasses.

Feels like that was someone else. Exactly.

And in addition to that, there was a heavy iron gate at the entrance to the road that was usually closed.

But on the morning Sophie was found, the gate was wide open.

Police again believed it would have taken a lot of might to open that gate completely.

Okay. Now, there was nothing stolen from the home, no evidence again of a sexual assault, so they believed that this was somebody Sophie knew who had become angry with her for some reason or another.

Okay. Perhaps she even invited this person in, like you were saying, for a glass of wine, and then things went awry and this man turned on her, became so violent that she ran out of her home and was chased to where she'd been found.

Yeah, that seems pretty likely. That's what I think happened.

Yeah. So once the news started spreading across West Cork, excuse me, The investigators thought it would be smart to hold a press conference to get in front of the story.

The superintendent from the abandoned Garda station, Bertie Kelleher, explained to the press that this case was absolutely being treated as a homicide, but did say that the police were puzzled.

I was going to say, what else would you treat that as?

I have no idea. Like what? But they were like, don't worry, we're treating it as such.

Thank you. Thank you for informing us of that.

But they're puzzled. They said there's a lack of evidence.

Robbery was clearly not the motive. And the neighbors had heard nothing.

Yeah. I mean, that is puzzling. All of it is.

And the fact that there's only blood on the doorknob.

Right. And it's the outside of the doorknob, right?

The outside of the doorknob. Yeah. Weird.

It's strange. So one odd thing of note also that had been shared was that the light in the back that Shirley had seen on all night was turned off sometime in between when she went to sleep and when she found Sophie's body.

Because when she woke up the next morning, the light was off.

I'm assuming she'd gone to bed late and saw that it was on pretty much all night.

Now, none of Sophie's neighbors knew of anybody who would have wanted to kill her, but they said, we don't know that much about her personal life.

But what we know of her when she comes in, I don't know how anybody would want to kill her.

Yeah, like, she's great. Yeah. But, like, you only know people, especially your neighbors, so well.

Mm-hmm. And especially if they are, like, they're not there full time.

Exactly. So the only thing Shirley Foster could recall was that she'd met a man named Bruno once.

He was Sophie's friend and a painter who they'd shared dinner with at Sophie's home a couple of times.

And all Shirley and her husband could remember was that, yep, he was a painter and he was a fairish man, not very tall.

So immediately people are like, I don't know about that.

Yeah. And they also remembered he was around Sophie's same age.

Which I mean, like, the tall thing, I'm like, yeah, it makes sense.

But, like, he could also just like to have his seat back.

Yeah, or he could have been carrying something.

Yeah. And, like, needed to put it in the front, you know?

Yeah, it doesn't necessarily... yeah you know it really doesn't like rule people out the only thing that he would have to be is strong that's true 35 pound block exactly so sophie's housekeeper josephine helen was questioned and she also didn't know that much about sophie's personal life she simply told investigators that she got a call from sophie a couple days before her visit sophie was just calling to say she was going to be in ireland can you kind of get the house ready for me i'll be spending some time in my cottage for a And Helen said she repeated this information to a man who had done some work at Sophie's house and a good amount of her own neighbors.

Okay. So really not super helpful. Yeah.

She's like, I told some people. I told a handful of people.

I don't know. The police were trying, but they had really set themselves back, to say the least, on day one of the investigation.

You can't just leave a body in the harsh winter weather for 24 hours and expect to have a lot to go off of, if anything.

No, you really can't. And you also can't expect to find much evidence on a murder weapon that was also left to the elements.

Because they didn't find that concrete block and the other stone that had killed Sophie for a week.

Are you kidding me? No. And at that point, key evidence had been compromised and had rained multiple times.

Of course. But nonetheless, they were trying now to make up for some serious fucking missteps.

So they were working on a timeline that tracked Sophie's movements from the time her plane landed in Cork until her murder.

And another team was canvassing the area around where she lived.

They were literally doing house-to-house searches at this point and at some point would stumble across the home of Ian Bailey, a journalist that shared his home with his partner, Jules.

I'm not going to say her last name just because some really crappy things happen and I just don't think there's a need to say her last name.

Yeah. Their home was just two miles across the fields from Sophie's own home.

Ian Bailey had actually been one of the earliest journalists to start investigating Sophie's murder.

Sophie was one of 55 people murdered in Ireland in 1996, so the press took to the story instantly because this didn't happen.

Like, before Sophie's body had even been moved, they wanted to know what was going on.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, Father Cashman, the priest who had read Sophie, her last rites, remembered that he began getting calls almost instantly after he'd done so, asking him for a comment on the murder or if he could give them directions to the scene.

Jesus. Reporters were going nuts. I also, just like as a quick side note, I had no idea that you could read last rites after someone died.

Neither did I. I don't think it's something that... Like a common thing?

Yeah, I don't think it's common, but I think you can.

In these kind of circumstances? Yeah, I think it's kind of like a loophole, for lack of a better word.

I just didn't know that. I didn't either.

So that's interesting. It's funny. Did you just Google that?

Yeah, I was Googling. I was like, I had no idea that that was a thing.

When I was doing it, I Googled it too, because I thought you had to do it before.

Yeah. But I think it's like, she really would have had no way of knowing.

So it's like, yeah. Extenuating circumstances.

Interesting. So Ian... Ian was a journalist from Britain who had come to Ireland in the years previous.

He, just like Sophie, had found inspiration and fell in love with the village of Shill.

It was this small place where he was just inspired.

In Britain, he had spent almost 15 years as a journalist.

But when he moved to Shill, he actually focused more on poetry and really only worked as a journalist, it was said, when he needed money for cigarettes and beer.

But he may have needed money for other things.

I don't know. Yeah. People in town knew him from the pubs and they said that he was known to drink too much.

They said he became disruptive and oftentimes he was asked to leave the bar or escorted out.

And he did show up to the crime scene right after the police had been called.

Okay. When they asked what he was doing there, they were like, hello, like you can't be here.

Yeah. He told them that he'd actually been tipped off by a reliable contact and decided to come along to the scene to report on it.

Journalistic. Yes. Other journalists hadn't even heard of the murder yet, and Bailey was already sending well-informed reports to Irish newspapers.

Okay. It seemed a little bit hairy at first.

It kind of seemed like he was always at least one step ahead of other journalists.

Okay. So the investigators on the scene found him strange and suspicious.

He arrived very early in the day. It wasn't like he was just passing by and saw the commotion.

And who was this reliable contact of his that already knew something was going on?

It was just kind of fishy, and it didn't leave anyone with a good feeling.

Yeah. So... They recognized him while they were doing their house-to-house visits, and his partner Jules had first answered the door.

When she invited them in, they saw Ian as well.

So they got to work asking them questions about where they'd been the previous night, and as the couple explained, they'd really just enjoyed a night at home together, they went to bed with each other.

As they were saying all this, investigators took note of a myriad of scratches on Ian's face. arms and hands.

All they could think of were the defensive wounds that Sophie suffered and that there were actually skin cells found underneath her fingers, which is lucky.

They hadn't lost everything in those elements.

She'd clearly fought her attacker. So after Jules and Ian gave their alibis, the investigators asked about the scratches and Ian told them that he had gotten them while he was cutting down a tree and the rest of them from a turkey that he had slaughtered recently.

Jules confirmed this. She said Ian had not left the house at any point on the night that Sophie had been killed.

And she also backed up his story about being tipped off on the murder.

And though the police weren't so sure, they thanked the couple and moved on with their search to the next house.

They left without taking any photographs of the cuts and scratches on Ian's body.

Why? So it was said that he had those, but we don't know that for sure because there's no photos.

That's fucked up. Not good. I'm going to say it right now.

I'm not going to share too much of my opinion on this because...

We don't really know what happened. Yeah, it's kind of up in the air.

There are inklings. People think they know what happened, but we're not totally sure.

This is one of those you just hear the facts.

Everyone decide for yourself. Exactly. I don't want to influence anyone into making a decision.

Yeah, I'm just going to tell you what I know.

Yeah. So New Year's came and went. And though they were being scrutinized by the media, that's the other thing.

The police in this case are being scrutinized by the media.

And you know how that goes. You just heard in the Yorkshire Ripper case.

Mm-hmm. They weren't much closer to finding a suspect, though they were being scrutinized.

But then a gas station employee, Sean Murray, reported to the police just days after Sophie's murder, actually, that he had seen her at the Texaco gas station on the afternoon of December 23rd, the same night she was killed.

And she was in the company of a man who had been sitting in the passenger seat.

The police barely followed up on this tip and just disregarded it.

Are you kidding me? They didn't think it was important.

A man in the passenger seat. Like that's literally, yeah, that's what you're looking for.

What the fuck? They were like, yeah, they just kind of disregarded that tip.

Cool. They would get their next tip on January 11th after a show on Crimeline TV aired a segment of Sophie's murder asking that the public come forward with any tips they might have.

So that night after the show, a woman who identified herself only as Fiona called the station and said that on the night of December 23rd, she had seen a man in a black coat standing next to the Kelthada Bridge between 2.30 and 3 a.m.

To her, it seemed like he was trying to hide his face in his hands.

Okay. But before the police could take down any more information or any information about this woman other than her name, she hung up.

And when they traced the call, they determined that it had been made from a public phone in Shull.

So there wasn't a lot they could do. So the next week, the chief superintendent, Noel Smith of West Cork Garda Division, came on Crimeline a second time and asked Fiona to please contact detectives at the Bandon Garda station to give them some more information on the man she'd seen.

So Fiona obliged. Oh. And she called again.

That's lucky. From a public phone. I know.

But she didn't really give any more information than she had the first time.

And again, hung up quickly before they could ask her any questions.

Fiona. Fiona's not really helping. I love your name, but like, come on.

That's not even her name. Then a few days later, she made a third call to the station telling detectives that she would not come down to the station for questioning.

Fortunately for the police, though, this call was made from her landline, and they were able to trace the call to a home in Shoal owned by a woman named Marie and her husband Chris.

Marie, come on. Marie, girl. So the couple were known to run a small clothing boutique together in Shell and an ice cream shop in West Cork.

That's adorable. It's really fucking cute.

That is fucking precious. It is so quaint.

It is. I love it. Quaint is just like all I fucking desire.

Quaint and haunted. That's all I want. No, I'm good with haunted, but like I just want quaint.

I want some haunted in there, but like Ireland could provide.

I was going to say. Yeah. And you can like kind of pick.

Yeah, for sure. Like, choose your own adventure.

Yeah. But anyways, when they found out her real identity, and you'll realize why she didn't want to give too much more information, Marie explained that on December 21st, she had seen Sophie in the clothing shop that she owned, and that though Sophie seemed to be alone, there was a quote-unquote weird-looking man also in the shop lingering close behind her.

Like, weird-looking man. Yeah, like... What exactly does that mean?

And also, can you, like, what was weird about it?

Can you describe this weird looking man?

I think basically she was insinuating that he was creepy because he was following Sophie.

And I don't think he would have been a weird looking man had he not been following Sophie.

So the man, she said, was wearing a long black coat and a beret.

So fashionable. And she actually saw him again the next day hitchhiking.

He tried to flag her down for a ride, she said, but she didn't stop.

And the next time she saw him was on that bridge around 2.30 a.m. on the night that Sophie was killed.

That is strange. Yes. And then she called the police a second time because she'd actually seen the man in the grocery store and found out what his name was.

What? Ian Bailey. Oh. So after she's actually identified as Marie, they're like, okay, thanks for telling us everything.

We're going to be following up. But she called them first.

It was like, wait a second. I got a name for you.

Wow, Marie. She told them that she called under the fake name previously because she didn't want to involve her husband in this case.

The reason being was that when she had seen Ian Bailey on the bridge at 2.30 in the morning, she was out with an old boyfriend.

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Okay. Okay. Okay. Weird. So even though they didn't have much in the beginning of 1997, what investigators did have all pointed to this Ian Bailey guy.

Yeah. Not only had he showed up at the crime scene eerily premature in their opinion, he had scratches all over him, according to them, and he'd also been spotted by Marie...

And he was six foot four and had a heavy build.

Oh. So he's exactly who they're looking for.

Yeah, he does fit the bill. He definitely had the strength that it would take to lift and throw down that concrete block to murder Sophie.

And then on February 4th, 1997, a boy named Malachi Reed reported to the police that he'd gotten a ride home from Ian Bailey a few days earlier and Ian had told him that he was the one who had killed Sophie.

Oh. Yep. He's just telling people? Mm-hmm.

Allegedly. Allegedly. Malachi said very gruesomely that Ian had told him he, quote, went up there with a rock and bashed her fucking brains out.

Oh, dark. That is very dark. And this was the second time that the police had heard of a confession from Ian Bailey, because a woman named Helen Callanan had informed them that Ian Bailey had told her he'd killed Sophie to advance his journalism career.

Eek. The comment came after she actually asked him to cover the story for Dublin Sunday Tribune, but later found out that he'd become a suspect in the case, so she kept pressing him and pressing him, and she said that was the answer she got.

My goodness. Now, on February 10th, Ian Bailey was arrested at his home and brought into the abandoned Garda station to be questioned.

His partner Jules was also arrested about an hour later in Shull, and they were brought to the same station for questioning.

And there's no physical evidence yet connecting him.

No, no physical evidence connecting him.

Okay. But it's there is physical evidence there and we don't have it yet.

But like right now, it's like, yeah, it looks pretty good.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, definitely. You can understand.

You can totally understand why he was there, why they kind of like pointed in on him in the first place.

It gets a little shaky later. Gets a little hairy.

Gets a little shaky. I'm not saying either way what I think, but it does get shaky.

Yeah. So the couple spent the next 12 hours being questioned separately.

And most of the questions were focused on where Ian had really been on the night of Sophie's murder.

And also his history of quote unquote strange behavior in town.

Ian explained to the detectives that he was simply eccentric.

He was like, I'm kind of a weird guy. And I'm into shit that people aren't into.

So I think they think I'm weird. Which, that's a tough... it is tough it's a tough little area to to live in you know what i mean where it's like you're weird and then something like this happens and it's like well you can't like convict me because i'm weird because i'm weird and i drink a lot and i'm tall yeah that's not fair but it's a reason to talk to someone and they they have to they're getting of course they do from these people that are saying you confessed right they're saying he confessed allegedly so it's like You can't ignore that.

You have to bring him in. Totally. So they then asked about his conversation with Helen, and he insisted to the police that he was simply joking.

He said he was kidding. Okay, that... It's not funny.

What the fu... And also, like, who jokes about that, my dude?

You should not be joking about that. Yeah, that's weird.

And he said again that he'd been joking when he made that similar claim to Malachi. i don't it's not it's not good yeah so it's not a joke my god no never like fun fact you should not ever joke about murder if you are jokingly confessing to a crime you deserve to be convicted of that crime because what are you doing like what why would you joke confess to a crime no well like what do you what what are you doing if you didn't do it and you're jokingly confessing you're just fucking up the investigation that's the thing it's like if you didn't do it and you're just joking about it that's fucked up on a whole different level it is and you have derailed the investigation it's like the yorkshire ripper we just literally pointed our hands at each other that was great the guy who called the hoax letters and wrote the letters yeah derailed the investigation and caused some lives to be lost like or at least caused them to him them to not be able to catch him in time to save those lives exactly so it's like this kind of shit is not funny it's not a joke and you're gonna get yourself fucked because if you start confessing the shit you didn't do too bad man like nobody gives a shit if you joked about it that's all they have is your confession And the thing is, if Ian Bailey didn't do this, because again, I don't know.

Yeah. He absolutely did derail the investigation if that's what happened.

Which is not cool. Which sucks. So when they asked about Marie's claims, he told the police that yes, he had been in shul on those few days that she'd seen him.

And yes, he actually had been wearing a long black coat.

But that he certainly was not the man she'd seen on the bridge because he was asleep in bed.

He was sticking to that same story. Alright.

But what he didn't realize was that Jules, again, had also been arrested and that she was in a room adjacent to the one he was in, telling the detectives that part of what she had originally told them about him being home all night wasn't exactly true.

Oh, no. She said that he actually had gotten out of bed on the night of the murder and woken her up slightly.

He didn't realize that she'd woken up and she didn't see him again, she said, until the next morning.

He had come in with those scratches and she said they had not been there the night before.

Oh, no. And that she actually knew nothing of a tree or a turkey being the sources of those scratches.

Oh, no. It's not good. That's not good. So the police were like, okay, Jules, thanks for that.

And they walked back into the room with Ian and they were like, hey, you want to hear what Jules has to say about this?

And then Ian started to backtrack a bit.

He said that they had actually gone out that night and that they got back around 2 in the morning.

And he had actually been on the bridge that night but that he was looking at the moon.

And when he did look at the moon, he did get a premonition that something bad was going to happen.

Okay. So he also did get up in the night, he said.

That was true. But he said only to go downstairs to write in the kitchen and also that he went for a walk to his studio, which was not far from their home.

Okay. The story was suspicious, to say the least.

It's really never a good alibi that you were looking at the moon because nobody's there to confirm that except for you and the moon.

Yeah, like that's nice and calming. Yeah.

But the moon can't help you. Yeah. And weird that the moon would give you a dark premonition about a woman who you claim to have never met.

Yeah. It's just strange. But I don't know.

So they were like, yeah, this story is a bit suspicious.

And throughout the entire interview, the police felt like he was being cagey and evasive in his responses to their questions.

And then the second story also gave him a convenient explanation for what they'd thrown at him.

But at the same time, he hadn't confessed to them.

And again, they still had no direct evidence to tie him to this crime.

So with that, he was free to go. All right.

The report from that night was at least filed with the director of public prosecutions and the chief superintendent.

No, no, no. Sorry. It was filed with the director of public prosecutions.

And then the chief superintendent told the press that this was a sign of progress in the case.

Okay. Which like maybe it was, but like you didn't really get a whole lot.

So I don't know if I would say that quite yet, but like, but sure.

It's not my job. So I don't know your descriptions.

I don't know your life. I don't know your life.

Now, back in Paris, Sophie's husband, and now widower, Daniel, was getting increasingly frustrated with the lack of information that he was receiving from the Irish police regarding his wife's murder investigation.

He'd actually only learned that Sophie had been murdered from the French news.

Oh, that's fucked up. He wasn't contacted.

Are you kidding me? He found out via a news source that his wife had been murdered.

That's fucked up. Brutally. Ridiculous.

Every interaction since then that he'd had with the Garda, he said, was sparse and did nothing to ease his fears that this case was getting colder and colder with each passing day.

Eek. And he did learn in February that there was a potential suspect, but nothing more than that.

So he took it upon himself to file criminal proceedings in France against the unknown killer, because at this point he doesn't even have a name, which he hoped would only encourage more communication between the French police and the Garda in Ireland.

Yeah. It's an unusual step to take, filing a criminal complaint against an unknown person in another country.

But it was the step necessary to ensure that the French authorities would now actually be mandated to communicate with the Garda.

Yeah. And share details about the investigation.

It's also kind of important to point out that not everybody can do this.

This kind of happened, I think, because he's a prominent man in French society.

I was going to say this makes sense. Exactly.

I do just want to point that out. But yeah, not all of us.

Not everybody would get the same treatment.

Right. But I'm happy that he was able to do that.

Of course. So Daniel really only hoped that this would get him some kind of information about Sophie's murder, but ultimately there wasn't much to share.

Ian Bailey was mentioned as a viable suspect, again in a lengthy report that was filed with that director of public prosecution's office in September of 1997, but still no charges had been brought against him.

So Daniel was feeling more and more frustrated because now a year had passed since Sophie had been murdered and nobody was in prison for this.

He and his lawyers explained their frustrations to the French press in December of 1997, and in a response, Ireland's Minister for Justice, John O'Donoghue, I mean... this is a mess.

Yeah, it really is. And I understand to a degree.

That's the thing. There's so much we don't know about how investigations work.

And especially within different countries.

That's the thing. And in different countries, it's even, it's more different than what it is here.

And I know here, like what's going on with the Idaho murder case.

Oh my God. People are getting frustrated with that.

Wrong information is coming out because people are running with wrong information.

They're not letting a lot of it out. It has to do with the media.

And that's the thing. Sometimes they have to keep a lot to themselves so they don't scare off who they think might have done it.

Or they can chase down a lead or they can get a better conviction.

There's a lot of different ways. like, layers to why this happens.

And it is frustrating. It is totally frustrating.

It's incredibly frustrating. And none of us can really understand it unless we are in that field of work, which if some of you listening are, like, you probably know there are reasons.

But you can see both sides of it. You can see.

I can totally see why the Irish police were like, God, damn it, we can't share too much.

And I could see why France was like, this is one of our people.

You have to let us know what's going on.

And I can a thousand percent see where Daniel was coming from.

What the fuck happened to my wife? Oh, it's a mess.

You can see every single part of this. And I would hate to be involved in this on any level.

Yeah, I was going to say, I wouldn't sit in anybody's shoes here.

No. And honestly, especially not Daniel's.

Oh my God, no. My heart seriously goes out to him.

Yeah, that really breaks my heart. And Sophie's family.

Yeah. So the detention, excuse me, the tension between Sophie's family and the Garda became a critical aspect to this story with many, many public disagreements between everybody involved.

And fortunately, like I was just saying, the media got involved and kind of went crazy.

They had a field day with reports on that.

And it was really just hurting the investigation.

Yeah, it never works out. Because they're spending time responding to claims and fighting with France.

And trying to refute things. Exactly. Yeah, correct things.

Mm-hmm. And all at the same time, Ian Bailey was still being investigated quietly while all this fighting was going on.

And now people connected to him were being interviewed.

More and more people were coming forward with their own version of confessions that Ian had made to them.

Some people said he was drunk and confessed.

Others said they'd just gone on a ride with him and he confessed.

According to them, he was confessing left and right.

Jesus. But it's tough because there's only two people there.

Yeah. You know? But if he is like, but if you're confessing all over the place, it's like, Jesus, dude.

Yeah. And because it's like, you're looking pretty guilty here.

Totally. So because of those further confessions, Ian was arrested again on January 27th.

But again, due to a lack of evidence, he was released hours later.

That's infuriating. This is a theme. He's going to get arrested.

He's going to let go. He's going to get arrested.

He's going to let go. And it's like, if you're joking, shut the fuck up.

Yeah, you gotta stop. Stop that. You're lying about these confessions and they didn't happen?

These other people? What are you doing? Shut the fuck up.

What are you doing? Goddamn. But Anne was persistent in saying he'd actually never even met Sophie and most definitely didn't kill her.

But as they were interviewing people connected to the two, it was becoming clear that they were They were very aware of each other's existence.

People had claimed to see them together, whether it was at an event or in a store.

In a 1999 interview with French filmmaker Guy Girard, the director actually told the Garda that he'd had a conversation with Sophie the December that she was killed, that month, and she mentioned Ian Bailey by name and referred to him as a friend.

Huh. Yes. That's interesting. And she said that he was exploring themes of violence in his writing, which was true.

So why was he so adamant that he didn't know her?

Yeah. Why would you lie about not knowing her?

I don't know. Because that doesn't make you guilty that you knew her.

No, of course not. So why would you lie about it?

It's weird. So in 1998, new DNA tests were conducted, but they didn't produce any new clues.

And by 2000, not much other movement had been made in this case.

God, this is infuriating. But in September of that year, Jules and her daughter were arrested in her cork apartment, but neither interview gave the police anything new to work with and they were let go.

But that was not the last time that police would be connected with Jules or Ian.

This is a trigger warning for domestic violence.

If you don't want to hear this, I would skip forward a few times.

So, in August of 2001, Ian Bailey was arrested.

Not for murder. This time he was actually arrested for brutally assaulting his partner, Jules.

Oh, that's awful. He claimed that he had only pushed her while they were arguing in the car.

But the report and Jules's injury showed that this was an incredibly violent attack.

And also don't push your partner. No, even not touch them in an aggressive way.

Yeah. It was violent. They had been out at a party, and on the way home, they had gotten into some kind of argument with each other.

And as things escalated, Ian grabbed Jules by the hair and hit her in the face, according to the police report.

And again, according to the police report, quote, her eye was swollen to the size of a grapefruit, and she was missing clumps of hair from her head.

Oh, my God. Her lip had been ripped away from her gums.

She had bite marks on her arms and hands.

Oh my god. It was brutal. And in a later case, Ian agreed that it had been worse than he'd initially said, but that it really wasn't that severe and he was not usually a violent man.

I don't give a fuck. To which I say, sir, get real and get help and take several seats.

Because there were actually five total reports of domestic violence to Jules on Ian's behalf.

Yeah, you don't just suddenly do something like that to someone.

You're a violent person. You are violent.

If there are clumps of hair missing from your partner's head and her eye is swollen to the size of a grapefruit.

Her lip is ripped away from her gum. And there are bite marks on her body.

Bite marks. You are violent. You are violent on a different level.

And you need help. Yeah. Like, fucked. Maybe you're not a murderer, but you are violent.

Yeah, that is for sure. So in the years that followed, Ian would volunteer for interviews, and he kind of seemed to be welcoming media attention.

He would pose for pictures at Sophie's murder site.

In one, he actually pretended to be looking into the window of her cottage.

But his arrest for his attack on Jules really started to raise questions regarding his capacity for violence, especially against women.

Yeah. Many stories started writing about this.

And Ian realized that being in the public eye and doing these different interviews probably wasn't making him look so great.

So in December of 2003, he filed a libel suit against seven different newspapers that he claimed were slandering him by linking him to Sophie's death.

The suit said that he had been harassed by journalists since he was first arrested in 1997, and his lawyer said that he was the subject of a trial by media, regardless of his guilt in mistreating his partner.

He did win two of those cases, and the judge on the case, Judge Patrick Moran, said that if sympathy seemed to be lacking, it was because, quote, Bailey is a man who likes a certain amount of notoriety, that he likes perhaps to be in the limelight, that he likes a bit of self-publicity.

Okay. So you won two out of those seven.

Ian Bailey not only felt like he'd been lambasted by the media, but also by some of the witnesses in the case.

And this is where things do fall apart a little bit.

In 2003, Marie from the ice cream store and the clothing store she gave an interview to the irish times claiming that she was being terrorized by ian and had been for years since her initial report to the police she said that he quote made her life a living nightmare she actually said that he was the reason she had to close her ice cream shop oh wow He wanted her to retract her original statement to the police and said that when she refused to do so, she said, he got threatening and aggressive with her.

Now, a month after these claims, Ian's lawyer, Frank Budimer, I believe, sent a letter to Marie informing her that if she did not retract her claims that she'd given to the Irish Times, he would have to file a suit for defamation.

She refused to get rid of her claims. But then in 2004, her story did start to unravel.

Ooh. Yes. Anne's lawyer apparently found out that there was a report that Marie had made with the Garda about Ian threatening her and Shull.

But on the time she said she was being threatened by Ian, he was with his lawyer in a meeting.

She later contacted Ian's lawyer herself to apologize, allegedly, and told him that she'd actually fabricated her entire story because she was being coerced by the detectives.

She said even her story about seeing him on the bridge and the night of Sophie's murder was not the truth.

Oh, so this entire investigation just turned all the way on it.

So sadly, what was supposed to be a murder investigation had now turned into a media circus and a sue off with all these defamation suits and lies and everything.

Yeah. And now it was coming out that the police had potentially threatened or coerced one of their star witnesses into making her statement.

Wow. So in October of 2005, Ian's lawyer, Frank, wrote to the Minister of Justice, insisting that the Garda Commissioner, Noel Conroy, launch an inquiry into the potential corruption involved in the investigation of Sophie's murder.

Oh, no. So now, instead of continuing to search for the killer, the police, who were supposed to be doing so, were being investigated themselves. oh this is not looking good no so conroy did launch that investigation and found out indeed that marie had been pressured to lie and since she had retracted her original statement she was now being harassed by the local police telling her that she wouldn't have a day's peace if she stayed in shill and refused to stand by that original statement they were like you need to stand by that statement or like you will be fucked whoa that is bad real bad because that is their main witness absolutely like we have all these people being like oh ian told me this and told me that and oh i saw him here but hers was saying like she had a timeline she had a timeline yeah and now it seems as though she was being pressured into saying that oh not good So now that all this was going on, Sophie's brother felt like he needed to drop the civil suit that had been brought against Ian Bailey because he basically said the intention of the suit to begin with was just to pressure the Garda.

And now that they were already being pressured, it really wasn't necessary.

But because the case was so poorly mishandled from the beginning, it was going to be incredibly difficult from this point to separate the truth of the investigation from the lies.

Oh, man, that's so messy. Yeah. And just because it was mishandled doesn't necessarily mean that Ian Bailey got off scot-free.

Yeah. So if he was an innocent man, that sucks.

Yeah, absolutely. So in February of 2010, the French authorities used a law under Section 44 of the European Arrest Warrant Act of 2003, which allowed them to investigate crimes that were committed on French citizens while they were outside of France.

So now France is like, we're going to investigate this.

Yeah. And French judge Patrick Gauchon, I believe, issued a warrant for Ian Bailey's arrest in connection with Sophie's murder.

He demanded that Ian be extradited and stand trial in France for this murder.

The Irish authorities did endorse the arrest warrant and again arrested Ian on April 23rd.

This time he was held again at the Bandengarda station to await a hearing before the High Court.

Okay. So French authorities spent the next year conducting their own investigation, all while he was being held there.

They interviewed more than 30 witnesses in West Cork, and they reviewed the active investigation files.

And while they carried out their investigation, Ian was brought before the high court in March of 2011.

Wow. Remember, this started in 1996. Yeah.

And they approved his extradition to France.

Did I say that right? You did. Cool. Yeah.

However, he was able to file an appeal with the Supreme Court, which was heard in 2012.

And that court rejected the initial approval. and stated that the current international law, quote, prohibited surrender because the alleged offense was committed outside of French territory and that there was no Irish law in existence that would allow for a person to be tried internationally for a crime committed in Ireland.

That's a pretty loopy hole. It's hairy. Yeah.

That's exactly what it is. It's a loophole.

But they were like, no, we're not sending him there.

Yeah, I don't love that. So with that, Ian was free to go.

Okay. But it wasn't the last of this case.

Ian stayed in Ireland and spent the next seven years filing case after case against the Irish authorities, claiming that he'd been falsely arrested, falsely imprisoned, and that there had been illegal wiretaps on his phones at this point.

Okay. All of these cases were unsuccessful, actually, but did shed additional light on potential more wrongdoing by the Garda.

Yeah, and if he's... One thing, obviously, you can see both sides of this, but if he's actively going so hard... to try to, like, go after them and clear his name.

That's opening him up to a lot. So it's like, it wouldn't be in his best interest to do that if he was guilty.

But then again, and I'm saying, I'm just doing, like, a devil's advocate thing here.

To me, I'm like, that doesn't, like... If you were guilty, I don't know if you'd go that hard.

You'd kind of try to just like sulk away and be like, well, I got away with it.

But it's like on the other side, we have seen things where people do involve themselves later and it ends up getting them caught.

Right. But I feel like that's a little rarer on that side.

I agree. So it's an interesting thing to watch.

It's like a dichotomy. Yeah. I'm like, I can see this both ways.

It's true. It really is. crazy too i know so there were additional and again unsuccessful suits by ian bailey and he was ordered to pay all the legal costs that occurred during these cases which totaled between two and five million dollars wow again to your point not something you would do i would think yeah if that's gonna be ultimately what you have to pay yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of twists and turns here that i'm like i don't know this case is bonkers yeah So while all that was going on, French authorities were still, they were like, I don't give a fuck, we're continuing our investigation.

Yeah. And they believed that all of their interviews with witnesses and meetings with experts supported their belief that Ian Bailey was guilty.

That's how France felt. They again filed for his extradition in 2017.

Jesus. And again, Ireland's Supreme Court declined.

Wow. So realizing that they were between a rock and a hard place, French authorities decided to try Ian Bailey in absentia.

Oh, I was wondering. Meaning that they would hold a full trial in France without Ian Bailey being there.

Wow. I know, dude. Isn't that bonkers? That's wild.

I tried to find out how many times they've done that, because it's not common at all.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like it's easy to find.

Yeah, I couldn't find out exactly how many times it's happened, but I do know it's rare.

Yeah. So the trial started on May 27, 2019.

And after just four days of arguments, Ian Bailey was found guilty in this trial of Sophie Toscan Duplantier's murder.

And in France, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

But still, the Supreme Court in Ireland refuses to extradite him.

It has been 25 years since. since Sophie was murdered, 26 years, and still no one is behind bars.

Wow. So much of the media attention surrounding this case focuses on the court battles instead of the actual crime committed here.

Yeah. Now, interestingly, in 2018, another investigation was made into the Garda's handling of this case, and this time, no evidence was found against them.

There was no falsified evidence at all, but that the case was definitely poorly managed. what the hell are we supposed to believe here that's the thing it's like who really knows what happened in this investigation after all the he said she said and the investigations and the re-investigations and the arrests and the lies and the truths it's fucking crazy yeah But what's really important to focus on here is that a woman was murdered.

Yeah. And because of the mismanagement, her killer, whether Ian Bailey or somebody else entirely, is free to roam the earth while Sophie is gone and her family is left devastated.

Yeah. Wow. Now, Ian Bailey still lives in Shull, the last I saw, and is fully aware that him leaving Ireland would put him at great risk for being arrested and sent to serve time for murder in France.

Yeah. But it is important to remember that though his behavior could be perceived as incredibly strange and at times makes you question his guilt, there was no physical evidence tying him to the murder.

That's what gets me. And I'm about to drop a motherfucking bomb on you.

What? In fact, there were fragments of skin and hair found on Sophie's body, and they were not a match for Ian Bailey.

Oh, shit. Not a match. I mean, what? That's very West Memphis 3.

It is. Where like no physical evidence ties them to the case.

And in fact, physical evidence would seem to... Point away.

Point away. Point to another direction. That's...

Very interesting. Interesting. So all we can do is hope that someday the real culprit is found or that science advances enough to test new evidence in the case leading to the killer.

And interestingly, you just found something that happened one day ago.

Because as you tell me a story, I'm always like looking at pictures of the people and stuff like that or like questions that I have that I just want to quickly look.

Yeah. And I just happened to find that the Irish Examiner posted an article yesterday.

Crazy. literally yesterday and it's funny too actually we were meant to record this listen to me being like european we were meant to like a few days ago yeah but it didn't work out so we're recording this actually kind of meant to be it really was because the the title of this is ian bailey says he has information which may be of use to the duplantier that's how you say duplantier investigation so he actually came forward and said that what do you say here it says This is his quote in this article.

He said, I'm fully cognizant of the cold case review, which I had initially called for in the new appeal.

I'm standing ready to cooperate and assist the cold case review and have certain information which may be of use and interest.

My full sympathies are with the family of Miss Duplantier.

My prayer has and will always be that the truth comes out.

I have nothing to do with this crime. And now the I guess some of the detectives that are on the new case are He had, what's his name?

His name is Superintendent Moore. Okay. I believe it is.

It's the new detective on the case. And he said that new witnesses in the case have been identified on almost a weekly basis.

Wow. yeah which like this that's wild so hopefully it sounds like in this in this new investigation a cold case investigation they have more they've got more to go on and it seems like they're they're motivated like actually now yeah it seems like they're really going for it because he said that he believes that there are still people who have information about this murder out there and he said maybe they weren't in the position to come forward 26 years ago but now's the time to come forward Because the thing is, that's a tiny, tiny town.

Yeah. No one saw anything that night. Someone knows something.

No one heard anything. Someone knows something.

And again, there was fragments found on her body.

That don't match. That don't match him. Ian Bailey, that's wild.

So it's like, who do those match? Regardless of what he has or hasn't done in his life...

And how, you know, any strange behavior, any strange coincidences.

Right. If that doesn't match, that's an interesting bit of information.

That's an interesting turn, for sure. And that doesn't mean he did it.

That doesn't mean he didn't do it. We don't know.

And that's why I'm so thankful that it's actually being reinvestigated for like the 400th time.

Wow. That's... That's interesting. I'll be interested to follow this some more.

Yeah. See what comes out of it. Yeah. So Sophie's son actually now owns her beloved cottage, which makes me so happy.

That makes me happy. And he visits every year.

Oh, I love that. And this will make you cry.

And it made me cry when I heard it. Sophie's jacket is still hung up on the kitchen door.

The last place she hung it. That literally just made my entire body chill.

Yeah, I got goosebumps again. And I know that.

Oh, yeah. Because I think she has like grandchildren now.

Mm hmm. Doesn't she? And her son says that he will never stop fighting for justice.

Good. And I did see that he does believe that Ian Bailey is the man responsible for his mother's death.

That was before this whole cold case investigation got open, so I'm not sure what he believes now, but he will never stop fighting.

And honestly, all we can hope here is that the killer, whoever it is, is finally brought to justice.

And put behind bars. And as we've seen, it can happen.

Yeah. It can easily happen. Freaking awesome.

Loretta Jones? Yeah. Come on. Look at that.

I mean, Golden State Killer? Mm-hmm. Joseph D'Angelo?

Like, we can, this can happen. Absolutely.

There's never a time where you say, well, it's been too long, we can't figure it out.

We don't know. We're still looking for Jack the fucking Ripper.

Like, seriously. Come on. Although, Tobias thinks he found her.

I think Tobias nailed it, so. All roads lead back to Tobias.

Always. But I really, that's all I can hope for is that this new cold case investigation that some, an answer comes out of it.

And it sounds like. And justice comes out of it.

Sounds like it could happen. I really hope for that.

I have a lot of hope that this case will be solved.

I really and I have a lot of faith for some reason that it will be.

And if you happen to be there and 26 years ago you saw you or someone you know was not in the position to say something.

Now's the time. Now is absolutely. They said that they will keep your shit in the utmost confidence.

Yeah. And just remember, this woman was a wife, a mother, a daughter.

She's a grandmother. She deserves and her family deserves to know what happened.

Yeah. So, yeah, I really do hope that someday we can come on here and give you an update and say, hey, this is really what happened.

Yeah. Because, you know, we just don't know.

Ugh. What a sad story. It really is. All around.

She had her whole life ahead of her. Yeah.

So, with that being said, guys, we hope you keep listening.

And we hope you keep listening. it weird but not so weird that you don't really investigate things properly if that's your job and not so weird that you ever confess to a murder because like you really shouldn't do that if you didn't do the murder yeah you guys know better than that you do love you bye If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

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[The Unsolved Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier: A Cold Case Reopened]-[Episode 410: The Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier]

📋 Summary

The Tragic Murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier

A Botched Investigation and Lingering Questions

The Shadow of Ian Bailey

Legal Battles and International Complications

New Hope for Justice

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript