Sophie Toscan du Plantier: The Re-Investigation

Everyone is frustrated at the slow pace of the police re-investigation into the 1996 killing of Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

Grasping at straws is an overused phrase. I have never in my life grasped at straws. If I need a straw, I pick one up. I don’t know why that is a phrase. But it is a phrase, and it is apt. It is now three years since the police re-opened the case into the killing of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Their original suspect, Ian Bailey, died during this period of time.

The police chose Ian Bailey as their suspect on 23 December 1996, the day Sophie Toscan du Plantier was killed. Yet it has taken over three years for them to (not) choose a new suspect, or indeed to posthumously confirm Ian Bailey as the killer.

We hear the police have consulted the FBI, but I have not seen anything from the FBI on the matter. Now we see the police are talking to an entrepreneur, Jared Bradley, CEO of M-Vac systems. Their team travelled from Utah to Ireland to use their new equipment to take DNA samples from the forensic evidence, which has been slowly degrading for close on 30 years in the police archive.

M-Vac equipment has apparently been helpful in other cases. But most people close to this case believe the only blood on Sophie’s clothes belonged to Sophie. Nobody really believes the killer’s blood got onto the evidence. So will this amazing equipment just confirm what I suspect? That the blood belongs to the victim?

Jean Pierre Gazeau, Sophie’s uncle, who had some involvement in the Netflix version of events, has claimed there are 6 Irish police officers working on the new investigation.

In their article dated 25th July 2025, the Irish Sun stated in relation to the concrete block found at the murder scene: “It is widely believed that the killer had to leave his own blood on these.” This is certainly not widely believed, and certainly not by me. In fact, there are many people who believe the concrete block was not the murder weapon at all, and that it was already lying there on the ground when the attack began.

This case is intensely frustrating. Without the local hysteria these days, perhaps it is a good thing that police are taking their time. Why could they not ignore the ridiculous pressure at the time of the killing and take such a dispassionate approach in 1996? If they had, Ian Bailey would never have been associated with this crime. We might have found the killer while he was still alive. Because whoever your favoured suspect is, he is dead.

I did not think this at the time but I think it now: is this re-investigation just a way to stall off public pressure? The police and government can claim they are looking into it, because undoubtedly they are, but with no deadline and no end in sight, they can just leave the case open for year after year.

Is M-Vac another stunt? I do not think so. I agree that investigators should (literally) leave no stone unturned. But where is the enormous gate they lost? If the stones were not the weapon and therefore do not contain any trace of the killer, the gate may well have done. The killer may have used the gate to steady himself. Taking samples off the gate would have been interesting, but the gate was ‘lost’ many years ago.

We all hope for a resolution soon, even if the conclusion is that there simply isn’t enough evidence surviving today to solve this case. That is what I am anticipating, and it will disappoint many. But thirty years is a long time. Whoever is the killer, he is dead, so we will never know what motivated him. I know it is time to let this go. I want to move on from it. But these little developments keep happening.

There is still a lot of interest in what happens next. I think a more realistic hope is that someone still alive somehow knew what happened, or found out what happened, and that person may yet talk.

Sophie Toscan du Plantier