Reputation in limbo

Judgment in the Ian Bailey libel trial will not be made until 2004

Judgment in the Ian Bailey libel trial will not be made until 2004. Carl O'Brien looks at the case of the journalist against the press

Once again, Judge Patrick J. Moran cleared his throat. He had already interrupted proceedings at Cork Circuit Court following robust exchanges relating to the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. And as things heated up once again, he felt compelled to warn both sides about going too far.

"We have to be careful that this does not become a court of inquiry into the death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier," Judge Moran said. "[Mr Bailey] is not an accused, he is entitled to bring a claim for defamation."

It was easy to forget. Ian Bailey's libel action against British and Irish newspapers over reports linking him to the murder of Toscan du Plantier was like no other defamation case the State has seen. With almost 30 witnesses, 10 days of hearings and riveting pieces of evidence such as diary extracts, it had all the semblance of a murder trial.

READ MORE

There were "confessions" of murder, allegations of phone-tapping, strange sightings in the early hours of the morning and witnesses removed from the courtroom following claims of intimidation. Bailey himself told the court at one point that he was there to prove his innocence, even though he was the plaintiff in a libel action, not the defendant in a murder trial.

Just three days into the trial, the judge was forced to remind the legal teams three times that the case was ultimately about a person's reputation. Nothing else.

But for the rest of the courtroom, packed on a daily basis with members of the public, curious lawyers and UCC law students, the sense that this was a trial within a trial was inescapable.

Bailey (46), a freelance journalist from England, was arrested twice as part of the Garda's investigation into the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier on December 23rd, 1996. He was never charged and has consistently protested his innocence.

Bailey claims he has been the victim of a stitch-up by gardaí and that his reputation has been destroyed by false and slanderous newspaper articles published after his arrest in February 1997.

"The only reason I am doing this is that I had nothing to do with this murder and this is the only way I can possibly try to end this dreadful thing," he told the court.

It is not clear if he fully realised that in defending his name, his character, conduct and private life would come under such fierce cross-examination.

The results were that details of his assaults on his partner, Jules Thomas,his relationship with his former wife and even the contents of his diaries were scrutinised over long hours of questioning in the public glare of the courtroom.

Bailey moved to west Cork in the early 1990s with plans to make a living from writing poetry. With a career in journalism and a failed marriage behind him in England, he eventually ended up working in a fish factory in Schull. Around a year later he met Jules Thomas, a Welsh-born artist with three daughters. When he moved into her secluded house about six miles outside Schull, it was the beginning of a long-term but occasionally fractious relationship. Bailey assaulted his partner on three occasions between 1993 and 2001, resulting in two barring orders.

Paul Gallagher SC, for the newspapers, made much of what he described as Bailey's and Thomas's attempts to "downplay" the seriousness of the assaults. Thomas described them as "tussles", while Bailey, who accepted his behaviour was shameful, was unable to recall many significant details. Gallagher, however, challenged them with the extract of Bailey's diary from August 1993 which stated: "I feel a sense of sickness at seeing my own account of that dreadful night. I actually tried to kill her. At present she is walking injured with bruises on her face, lips and body."

The account of the "vicious" assault, as well as others in the diaries, showed Bailey had a record of violence against at least one woman.

"And you record that you actually tried to kill her. Can you tell us about that, Mr Bailey?" Gallagher asked.

"I can't explain that," Bailey said.

"You had forgotten that you had been so frank with yourself," Gallagher said later.

Bailey, however, said there was a great difference between domestic violence and murder.

"The fact that I have admitted doing this to Jules does not make me a murderer," he said.

In all, the trial produced around 20 neighbours and former acquaintances of Bailey in the Schull area, many of whom were reluctant to give evidence and had to be called on subpoena.

As one of the neighbours, Caroline Leftwich put it: "I'm nervous. We all have to go home and live in west Cork when this is over. I don't like being the centre of attention."

Of all the locals, the defence placed most emphasis on the evidence of Marie Farrell. She claimed to have seen Bailey between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. at Kealfadda Bridge, around a mile from Toscan du Plantier's house, on the morning of the murder. Farrell, a quiet, nervous woman giving evidence, also said she saw Bailey two days before the murder loitering opposite her shop for around 10 minutes as Toscan du Plantier was browsing on the premises.

Her account contrasted starkly with Bailey's, who said he never left home on the night of the murder, although he said he did leave his partner's bed for several hours in the middle of the night to write an article.

After she had made a statement to gardaí about the incidents, Farrell said Bailey had repeatedly tried to intimidate her into changing her statement. She said he had threatened her by making cut-throat gestures at her on several occasions and once called to her shop with a tape recorder to make a record of her retracting her statement.

Farrell said: "He was terrorising me. My life was a living nightmare. We had a small ice-cream parlour and in the end I ended up in debt because I was so afraid to stay there because of Ian Bailey. I'm afraid to let my children out because of Ian Bailey."

On another occasion, she said Bailey shouted across the street to her: "You didn't see me washing any blood."

Bailey rejected this. He said Farrell had approached him in a pub to say she was under pressure to give a false statement to the gardaí about seeing him at the bridge and "didn't want to see an innocent man blamed" for the murder.

Bailey said he visited her on a number of occasions, at Farrell's invitation, to discuss her statement.

"I had a number of visits from gardaí alleging that I had somehow contacted her or made threats, all of which were bogus," Bailey said.

Bailey also rejected Farrell's allegation that she spotted him at Kealfadda Bridge: "If anyone is saying they saw me washing boots or any of that fictional nonsense, that didn't happen."

Among the most contentious allegations made during the trial were the alleged "confessions" by Bailey in relation to the murder.

Of all of the alleged admissions to the murder, Gallagher said Bailey's "confession" to 14-year-old Malachi Reed in February 1997 was crucial. Reed said that as he received a lift home from Bailey one evening, Bailey appeared to be in an angry mood.

"He was anxious, preoccupied, cursing with himself," Reed said. "I asked him how work was going. He said: 'Fine, until I went up there with a rock and bashed her f**king brains in.' I got a cold shiver, nervousness, and I stayed quiet for the next two miles."

Reed's mother, Irene Amanda Reed, also gave evidence and said she was "terrified" and that her son had placed dead-bolts on the doors of the house.

"Mr Bailey has a tendency to do unpredictable things. He's an unusual person," Reed said.

Bailey, however, insisted that on each occasion he was confessing to the murder in a joking manner, or had been misinterpreted.

There were other alleged confessions as well. In all, four neighbours or acquaintances told the court that Bailey owned up to the murder at various times over a two-year period.

Bill Fuller, who described himself as a friend at the time, said he visited Bailey's house in February 1997 to inform him of rumours linking him to the murder of Toscan du Plantier.

In response, Fuller claimed Bailey said: "You did it. You saw her in Spar on Saturday. You saw her walking up the aisle with her tight arse. You fancied her. You went up there to see what you could get. She ran off screaming. You chased her to calm her down. You stirred something in the back of your head. You went too far. You had to finish her off."

Another local man, Ritchie Shelly, said Bailey had confessed to the murder at a New Year's Eve party in 1998, with the words: "I did it, I did it . . . I went too far." Shelly said the incident had occurred at Bailey's house, where he and his wife had been invited back for drinks after the pubs had closed. As they were getting ready to leave, Bailey - who had drifted off to sleep - woke up and was apparently crying.

Shelly said: "He put his arms around me and said some words: 'I did it, I did it.' Then I asked: 'You did what?' He said: 'I went too far.' "

Rosie Shelly, who was standing in the kitchen at the time, said she heard the same words as her husband.

"It was clear and succinct," she said, "It seemed like a kind of confession."

In each alleged admission, however, counsel for Bailey, James Duggan, insisted his client was saying that "they" were saying he did it, and suggested that the witnesses had forgotten these details.

Gallagher, for the newspapers, however, said it was significant that the alleged confessions usually came at a time of great stress or when Bailey had consumed alcohol.

There was also the key question of what Bailey knew on the morning of the murder of Toscan du Plantier.

Bailey repeatedly told the court that the first he learned of the murder was shortly before 2 p.m. on December 23rd, 1996, when he received a phone call from Eddie Cassidy, a journalist with the Irish Examiner. The defence, however, produced four witnesses, including Cassidy, who provided evidence which, Gallagher suggested, illustrated that Bailey knew details about the murder several hours before he claimed to have first heard about it.

Cassidy said that when he phoned Bailey that afternoon, all Cassidy knew at the time was that a body had been found and that it was a non-national. Despite this, a local, Caroline Leftwich, said Bailey telephoned her that morning to say he could not keep an appointment as he was reporting on the murder case.

"He sounded kind of excited by it, that there had been murder. I asked if there was a victim and he said it was a Frenchwoman, someone on holiday," Leftwich said.

Bailey dismissed this version of events and said he could not have told her this as he was not aware of the details of the murder.

Given the focus on details relating to the murder, the case only began to feel like a libel case in the final days as both sides completed their closing submissions. The newspaper articles, almost forgotten amid the blur of claims and counter-claims, were finally examined in detail by both legal teams.

The articles, containing headlines such as "Sophie man's shame", "Devil in the hills" and "Murder suspect has no alibi", did not name Bailey as Toscan du Plantier's murderer.

However, Bailey's counsel, Duggan, argued there was sufficient innuendo and information in the articles to lead a fair-minded person to that opinion.

"He has had to endure misinformation, slander, character assassination. It is for him a living horror story," Duggan told the court.

Gallagher, however, said his clients were justified in naming Bailey as a murder suspect. He also said Bailey was an unreliable witness having told "lie after lie after lie" after he was contradicted in evidence by as many as 20 neighbours and former friends.

"We say the plaintiff's evidence is wholly and utterly unreliable and that he sought to mislead the court in many significant respects. Every witness called contradicted his evidence in many and crucial respects, including his own witness, Cassidy."

Judge Murray, doubtless relieved to have a sensational libel trial completed before the end of the legal term, will have two weeks to consider before issuing a judgment in early January.