Sophie Toscan du Plantier was a French film producer and journalist who had a holiday cottage near Schull, West Cork, Ireland. Just before Christmas 1996 she made her final journey to the cottage. On 23rd December she would be murdered in the laneway just beside the house. We are no nearer to understanding what happened that night, or why, or who killed her in a violent struggle using makeshift weapons found at the scene.
In this episode we talk a little about the ongoing police cold case investigation. I always had very low expectations (and still do) which is why I might inadvertently give the impression that the case is now closed. This is not to make a comment against the police after 29 years, but just to accept that the chance of any breakthrough now, with no eye witnesses, most other witnesses deceased, including the prime suspect, and very limited extant forensic evidence. I always saw the M-Vac experiment to recover DNA to be a last throw of the dice, unlikely to recover anything other than Sophie’s DNA. Geraldine has since mentioned that the M-Vac recovery process has completed but that cross-checking with various DNA samples is ongoing. One might guess that their first task was to compare it all against Ian Bailey’s samples which he voluntarily offered to police shortly after the murder in the winter of 1996/7 to rule himself out.
You may be new to this case, and I always try to provide enough context if you are. The best place you can start is where I started. Below is my very first post on this case, written on Medium in June 2021. How little did I know…? I have revised my thoughts on so many things since then, which is why I wanted to reshare it. It’s as close as I can get to my first thoughts.
You can read Geraldine’s book about this cold case here.
Sophie Toscan du Plantier: My First Post
I found Jim Sheridan’s Murder at the Cottage, showing on Sky in the UK, utterly compelling. It’s a nicely paced, gripping study of one of Ireland’s most gruesome unsolved cases and it dates back to December 1996. Admittedly forensic science was not as advanced as it is today, but it is clear within a few minutes of this documentary that many mistakes we…
