Sophie Toscan du Plantier

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 were made by police at the scene and in the hours following the horrible killing.

Sophie Toscan du Plantier was a French filmmaker who was married to a very famous film producer, Daniel Toscan du Plantier, who once counted President Jacques Chirac amongst his friends. Sophie had developed a connection with Ireland as a child and always dreamed of the country. One of her dreams came true: she managed to buy a cottage in West Cork, a cottage she visited just before Christmas 1996. She was never to return to France, and was brutally murdered just inside the grounds of the cottage, in the private driveway by a fence. Her body was discovered by a close neighbour on the morning of 23rd December 1996. Sophie remained there for at least 24 hours before the pathologist was able to attend.

Human nature drives justice, the media, and the behaviour of society more keenly than we like to admit. I am certain that wealth, fame and beauty in part explain why this murder fascinates so many people, over 25 years after it happened. The international angle is also compelling. This viewer is disappointed that the documentary did not fully explain that there are at least 3 other suspects: one from Ireland, one from France and another from somewhere undisclosed. The documentary makes veiled reference to a sighting of a man in a beret outside a shop the day before Sophie was killed, but doesn’t properly study it. Only afterwards, reading the Irish press, is it possible to understand why. The three men are being actively investigated by Irish police and it would have been unethical to name them in a TV series. But at least acknowledging their existence, leaving the door open to justice, would have made the series even more compelling than it already is.

I tried to think through the last movements of Sophie following the logic of the documentary: that Sophie was visited on the night of her murder at home in her cottage. But no scenario I could think of seemed likely. It didn’t seem likely that she had answered the door to a stranger in her nightwear, then hurriedly half put-on a pair of boots to come outside and help the stranger with whatever was wrong. Had his car broken down? Instead, perhaps she was expecting a visitor. But if that was the case, why would she rush out to meet him in the driveway? Perhaps it was to open the heavy gate? But what could possibly have gone so wrong in those few minutes that she never made it back to the house alive? Surely an argument on that scale would take much longer to deteriorate into violence? No sequence of events, just using logic, fitted the facts as presented in the show.

But now I have read some recent articles and it seems there is a theory that Sophie did not come alone to Ireland. There is a suggestion that she was accompanied by a man who was secretly staying with her. If this is so, it suddenly makes her last minutes very clear. They got into an argument inside the house. Angry and upset, Sophie threw on a pair of boots and made off down the lane. Her friend caught up with her at the gate, which was closed. They continued to argue, he became violent and killed her. He then returned to the cottage (as evidenced by blood on the outside of the back door) and fled in his car or by taxi, thus explaining why the gate was open when the crime was discovered the next morning.

If Sophie was not alone in the cottage, the gist of her final minutes become obvious. Only if she was staying there alone do the known facts leave me completely stumped. Yes, we have been let down by the police, but no investigation is perfect. More than anything else, you feel that the local population and Sophie’s family have been let down by a total breakdown in international cooperation. Both French and Irish police tried to cover their mistakes, harass witnesses and plant ideas that do not bear scrutiny. If they one day find that Sophie was staying in Ireland with a man, suddenly everything neatly fits into place. They just need to prove who that individual was.