Shape Kapsel<\/a> died in the street in Bantry, West Cork last week, meaning he will never face jail.<\/p>\nHe maintained his innocence, continued to live in West Cork and work as a poet,\u00a0 and bizarrely has built a\u00a0TikTok\u00a0following and made his own true crime podcasts.<\/p>\n
Just months before his death, he took to TikTok to share his hope new DNA evidence would prove he had no involvement in the case.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ian Bailey, who has died aged 66, was one of the first to report on the death of 39-year-old Sophie Toscan Du Plantier when she was murdered in 1996 outside her holiday home in a rural part of West Cork in Ireland<\/p>\n
Despite being found guilty of murder, Bailey remained a free man his whole life. Pictured with partner Jules Thomas in 2012 at the Supreme Court in Dublin<\/p>\n
Sophie Toscan Du Plantier (pictured) was murdered in 1996 outside her holiday home in a rural part of West Cork in Ireland<\/p>\n
Bailey has died of a reported heart attack. A local first aider reportedly provided CPR for 20 minutes until the emergency services arrived, but Mr Bailey was unresponsive and pronounced dead at the scene.<\/p>\n
He had previously suffered up to three heart attacks and had been admitted to both Bantry Hospital and Cork University Hospital, where in the latter he had a procedure done on his heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite various locals revealing that Bailey had confessed the crime to them, he\u00a0 has always denied any involvement in the horrendous murder, saying his confessions were ‘a joke’.<\/p>\n
An integral part of French 90s showbusiness culture, Sophie was\u00a0the wife of Daniel Toscan du Plantier, a famous Parisian film producer – and\u00a0a friend of Jacques Chirac.<\/p>\n
She was also mother to Pierre Louis, her much adored son from a previous relationship.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/u><\/p>\n
Sophie had loved to retreat from the spotlight and social whirl of Paris to the rugged beauty and solitude of the wind-blown Irish coast, where she could be alone to think, write and walk.<\/p>\n
Three years before her death she had bought a bleached white house in West Cork,\u00a0 over the churning Atlantic Ocean.<\/p>\n
In December 1996, she returned for a short pre-Christmas break, intending to head back to her husband and son in Paris for the festive celebrations. She never made it.<\/p>\n
Despite various locals revealing that Bailey had confessed the crime to them, he has always denied any involvement in the horrendous murder, saying his confessions were ‘a joke’. He is pictured in 1996<\/p>\n
At the time of her murder, Sophie was 39, and the wife of Daniel Toscan du Plantier, a famous Parisian film producer, and mother to Pierre Louis, her much adored son from a previous relationship<\/p>\n
Sophie’s body, battered almost beyond recognition, was discovered lying face-up in the grass verge of a lane, 100 yards from the house she loved in Toormore, a tiny outcrop, six miles West of the nearest town, Schull. Pictured is her home<\/p>\n
Sophie’s body, battered almost beyond recognition, was discovered lying face-up in the grass verge of a lane, 100 yards from the house she loved in Toormore, a tiny outcrop, six miles West of the nearest town, Schull.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She was clothed in white pyjamas and was wearing hastily laced-up boots.\u00a0<\/u><\/b><\/p>\n
A large rock and concrete block, both spattered with her blood, had been used to strike her repeatedly on the head and body. The coroner’s report noted she had 50 separate injuries.<\/p>\n
At the house itself, there were no signs of struggle or break in. In her bedroom was an anthology of Irish poems open to W.B. Yeats poem, A Dream of Death. It begins, ‘I dreamed that I had died in a strange place\/Near no accustomed hand.’<\/p>\n
Just five days after the murder, Bailey had an article published in the Irish Daily Star, which referred to her ‘tangled love life’ describing Sophie as French temptress.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While reporting on the case for newspapers across Ireland and the UK, Bailey delivered food to Sophie’s neighbour’s house – and saw this as an opportunity to look at the crime scene.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bailey, who worked as a journalist covering the case,\u00a0 continued to live in the community that was rocked by Sophie’s murder until his death<\/p>\n
Many locals claim Bailey had confessed the crime to them.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
In a Netflix documentary released in 2021, Bailey, speaking from his home in Schull, explained he moved to Ireland from England to ‘quit the f****** rat race’ and once there reached out to newspaper editors about doing freelance work, while also writing poetry and doing gardening for money.\u00a0<\/p>\n
‘The victim’s house is about three miles down the road, or about a mile as the crow files,’ he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
‘I’d done some work for her neighbour, Mr Alf Lyons, I was never introduced to her, but I was aware of her but I didn’t know her name.\u00a0<\/p>\n
‘It was alleged, unexplainedly, that a lady seen me down at Kealfadda Bridge in the early hours of the morning. It wasn’t me, it’s completely untrue, at the time I was asleep in the prairie cottage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marie Farrell, who lived in Schull with her husband and children in 1996,\u00a0 placed Bailey at the scene at 3am on the night of Sophie’s murder, making him the prime suspect.<\/p>\n
However, in 2020, Ms Farrell retracted her comments in a documentary, saying the man she saw at the scene was too short to be Bailey.<\/p>\n
Sky Crime’s Murder at the Cottage, passed on evidence to the Irish police, that said that Ms Farrell, a former shopkeeper in Schull, and former Gardai key witness in the murder probe claims she can identify a man in a black coat seen outside her shop a few days before the December 1996 murder, saying he was a man known to Sophie’s husband.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sophie had one lover – Bruno Carbonnet – who was known to her husband, they had split acrimoniously in 1993. He was a suspect in the early investigation but was able to prove he was in Paris at the time of the murder.<\/p>\n
Ian Bailey, who was convicted of the 1996 murder, collapsed in the street in Bantry, West Cork<\/b><\/p>\n
Mr Bailey was one of the first to report on the death of 39-year-old Sophie Toscan Du Plantier when she was murdered outside her holiday home in a rural part of West Cork<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A British journalist who was found guilty in French courts of the brutal murder of a film producer in Ireland never faced a day in jail before his death as a recluse in western Cork. Ian Bailey, who has died aged 66, was one of the first to report on the death of 39-year-old Sophie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3441,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1253],"tags":[1252],"class_list":["post-7458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shape-kapseln-hohle-der-lowen","tag-shape-kapseln-hohle-der-lowen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3441"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7459,"href":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7458\/revisions\/7459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/river-gas.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}