28 Years Later: Sophie Toscan du Plantier
I return to Crime Guy's most puzzling case
It was 28 years ago today that the body of Sophie Toscan du Plantier was discovered in her driveway, at roughly the same time of day as I have scheduled this article to go live. Sophie remained there for over 24 hours while the Irish authorities waited for the state pathologist to arrive. A crucial period of time during which important forensic evidence was lost. Justice was on the back foot from the very beginning.
In April 2022, I promised to stay quiet about this case until genuine new information came to light. Something happened almost immediately: in July 2022, the police announced they were opening an in-depth cold case review and re-interviewing witnesses. Over 2 years later, they have announced nothing of note, and the review continues. Earlier this year, in January, came the death of Ian Bailey, the only man ever seriously considered for the crime by the police. Famously, the case was so weak he was never charged. Yet many, many people remain convinced of his guilt. Perhaps the notebooks he left behind will offer some clues, but not likely. There was never anything other than weak circumstantial evidence linking Bailey to the crime.
I’ve been re-reading some of the Crime Guy articles about this case. I first heard about it via the Sky Crime documentary made and presented by Jim Sheridan. Although this case was famous in Ireland, it hadn’t really captured hearts and minds in the UK before. I later realised it was the Audible West Cork podcast by Sam Bungey and Jennifer Forde that covered the story before Sky and Netflix arrived, and in hindsight I think the extra time available for a podcast makes the audio version the definitive one. Each version has different flaws, but it was Jim Sheridan’s natural gift for storytelling that captured my imagination and hooked me on the case for over a year. Partly it was good timing too. In spring 2021 lockdown was very much a thing, and it was a time of obsessions for many people.
In the early Crime Guy articles I find myself meandering from one theory to another. I completely discounted Alf Lyons as a suspect and although the police did too, and all the documentaries, I found out this year that many people consider him a likely contender. He certainly had the opportunity and he knew Sophie fairly well, and had disputes with her over the years. But could he really have used a 23kg block as a weapon, in his early 60s? I find myself considering an anonymous itinerant for the crime at one stage, before eventually settling on lesser known suspects, George Pecout and Karl Heinz Wolney, and not being able to choose between them. In August 2021 I claimed not to be trying to find the killer, and suggesting the killer would never be found. In January 2024 I said that whoever he was, even if you think it was Ian Bailey, we could now all agree that the killer is also dead.
This weekend, after I wrote and scheduled this piece, I had an hour to spare and started watching Sheridan’s documentary Murder at the Cottage again. It was then that I realised 23rd December fell on a Monday in 1996, as it does again this year. What this also meant is that 20th December fell on a Friday. It was Friday night when Sophie arrived at her cottage, and it was Friday 20th December that I found myself re-watching her trip play out on my TV, completely unplanned. When I went to bed, I put on the West Cork podcast and lay awake half the night thinking about the tiny little clues that I had forgotten about. The blue dressing gown at the scene, not a coat. Sophie was wearing outdoor shoes when she was found, but we know she sometimes wore those shoes like slippers when she was downstairs in the cottage. Whatever had caused her to go to the gate was on the spur of the moment, in a rush.
What is it that draws us all in? It is the combination of factors, some big, some small, that have fascinated almost anyone who has heard about it. The place, Schull in West Cork, is pronounced Skull. Very obvious on the podcast, not so obvious in a book. Sophie died of head injuries. On her last day on earth, she visited Three Castle Head on the Mizen. The lake there is said to be very deep and it sits close to the Atlantic. It was a windy day, Sunday 22nd December 1996, and on windy days sometimes the wind whips the surface of the lake into misty columns. This effect is known as the White Lady, and she is a harbinger of untimely death. Sophie saw the White Lady and rushed back to see her friends who lived nearby. Sophie, a very blonde, pale, white lady herself, rejected their suggestion that she stay the night with them. Yes, what draws us in is Ireland, the place, the coincidences and the folklore. It seems as though every witness, everyone who knew Sophie, everyone in the area who is not a tourist, has a vivid imagination, a good story to tell about how they came to live in such a strange yet beautiful place.
It was an unexpected out-of-the-blue phone call from Jim Sheridan that encouraged me to write some more about this case two years ago, when I thought I had covered everything. Actual voice calls are so rare now, and I was stunned that he would call me on a Friday night. I might occasionally have tied myself in knots in my writing, and who in true crime hasn’t, but someone I looked up to with such a storied career had read my articles and found them to be somewhat rational most of the time. I was thrilled, and I’ve continued to monitor Jim’s further work on the case. His Lockerbie drama is the focus of attention this Christmas, but we know now that 2025 is the year of his next project relating to Sophie: a dramatised trial of Ian Bailey, featuring Vicky Krieps. At first I assumed she would play Sophie, such is the likeness, but I understand she plays a special juror, No. 8, who works as a kind of proxy for Sophie, a story device that thereby allows Sophie to be present at the trial of her own murder.
This case is still tying us all in knots, 28 years later. Perhaps Sheridan’s new film, called Re-creation, will put things in a new light, and I know there has been a lot more research done in the making of the film. Perhaps the police will one day end their cold case review and make a dramatic announcement. I like to pretend sometimes that I am past caring, that this case is so cold now that nothing can revive it. But I once thought that about Christopher Laverack too. It is amazing how the truth can tunnel its way into the daylight, and just as amazing that sometimes it takes so long, and perhaps many more years than 28.
I don’t think someone in their early 60s is incapable of lifting a concrete block. I’m a 70 year old woman and can lift and move concrete blocks. Alfie Lyons looks quite wiry and fit in the docos. I think he made a much better suspect than Bailey. He was there, he has no alibi, he didn’t like Sophie, had been in conflict with her, interestingly about the gate where she was killed among other issues. He had a bandaged hand. He knew the Gards well, he was a drug dealer and we know the Gards were corrupt in their dealings around drugs. Regarding the blue dressing gown and boots, there is nothing unusual there. Here’s my scenario -Sophie was in her kitchen getting breakfast, she saw something happening at the gate, she pulled on her old garden boots and was already in her dressing gown and went down to confront the person or people at the gate, as she was a confrontational type, and an argument ensued which ended in a violent assault. Makes sense doesn’t it? To say that a person who had to hike a 12km round trip to kill someone they’d never met is ludicrous. Bailey was an outsider in rural Ireland. He was the perfect patsy.
I doubt the block was the murder weapon. Her blood would have spattered it if Alfie hit her with a blunt tool (a wrench, a spanner - any of those multi-use tools). Alfie is the only one who could have done it - anyone else would have had to go to a lot of trouble to get to this very remote, awkward location.