The death in west Cork early this year of the former journalist Ian Bailey meant he could no longer help gardaí with their inquiries into the killing there 27 years previously of a visiting French woman, Sophie Toscan du Plantier – a crime for which he had long been the prime, and sole, suspect.
Gardaí had twice arrested Bailey for questioning about the killing, but he had never been charged until three French judges in Paris convicted him and sentenced him, in absentia, in 2019 to 25 years in prison for the murder of Toscan du Plantier at her holiday home near Schull two days before Christmas 1996.
She was one of 19 women who died violently in Ireland during 1996, an average of one every 19 days. Her killing has already been examined in at least five full-length books, multiple TV programmes by RTÉ, Sky and Netflix, and three true-crime podcasts. This is the first book on the killing to be published since Bailey died after collapsing on Barrack Street, Bantry, last January, aged 66, having avoided prosecution in Ireland and extradition to France.
Senan Molony was one of the first journalists sent to west Cork by a national newspaper after a neighbour discovered Toscan du Plantier’s badly beaten body. He was “utterly beguiled” at first by the local “fixer” hired by his newspaper, the Star. This was Bailey, an English man living for the past five years in the townland adjoining the one where the body was found, who soon was shown to know more about the crime than gardaí did and who had a history of violent assaults on women.
“There is an abundance of material implicating Bailey and pointing to his prosecution,” writes Molony. “This story has haunted me and my career for almost 30 years. It’s a story I could not fully tell before in an Ireland whose defamation laws effectively shield many criminals.”
Former taoiseach Micheál Martin has described the killing of Toscan du Plantier as “a terrible stain on our country”. This book may not be “the final verdict” on her or on Bailey, but it is a comprehensive and compelling collection of circumstantial evidence about her murder.
Ray Burke is a former news editor at RTÉ
