GARDAÍ INVESTIGATING the murder of French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier in 1996 spent more than a month investigating more than 10 suspects before they narrowed their focus to Ian Bailey.
According to Garda sources, the various individuals and their movements were checked out as part of the investigations in the days and weeks immediately after the discovery of Ms Toscan du Plantier’s badly beaten body outside her holiday home at Dreenane, Toormore, near Schull. in west Cork, on December 23rd, 1996.
The initial investigation looked at anyone with a history of violence, and although Toscan du Plantier (39) was not sexually assaulted, the inquiry team also looked at anyone with a history of sexual assaults or unusual sexual behaviour, such as spying on or stalking women.
Among the people investigated was a man who was seen in the Toormore area at about 5.30pm on December 22nd, 1996, and who was later described as “unusual” by a solicitor in the DPP’s office in a review of the Garda investigation of the killing.
Gardaí identified the man, who had been seen by a number of witnesses, and they interviewed him and were able to confirm his story that he had caught a bus back to Cork city from Schull later on December 22nd, 1996, and they eliminated him as a suspect.
Among the other people investigated in the first few weeks after the murder was a man who was known to have a predilection for spying on women and who was also suspected of stealing gas cylinders from houses under the cover of darkness.
The man was arrested and questioned in connection with the theft of some gas cylinders in west Cork, and after his release was asked to account for his movements on the night of December 22nd and 23rd, 1996. His account was investigated and found to be factual.
Another man who was looked at closely had been the subject of a stalking complaint by a woman in Galway, and later had suffered some mental-health problems and spent some time in a mental institution before coming to west Cork. The man had been hired by a firm doing construction work on a roadway near Ms Toscan du Plantier’s house some years earlier, and he too became a suspect.
Gardaí focused much of their attention on him in the first month of the investigation.
The man had been drinking in a pub in Schull on the night of December 22nd, but gardaí were able to confirm he was there until about 1.30am on December 23rd, and they later spoke to a local who had given him a lift home and had corroborated the man’s account of his movements.
Four other people were also investigated in west Cork, but were all discounted when their accounts of their movements on the night in question were checked out by detectives and their stories were found to stand up.
Gardaí also travelled to France in mid-January 1997 and met a French friend of Ms Toscan du Plantier before he was interviewed by French police at a Paris police station, where he provided an account of his movements in December that enabled gardaí to eliminate him as a suspect.
Mr Bailey was later arrested on February 10th, 1997, and again on January 28th, 1998, for questioning about the killing, but he was released without charge on both occasions and has always denied any involvement in the murder.