The State pathologist's report on the killing of Sophie Toscan du Plantier in west Cork in 1996, recently received by her family and seen by The Irish Times, gives a clear picture of the savagery of the attack, writes Lara Marlowe.
AN UNPUBLISHED report on the death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier conveys the savagery of the French woman's killing in west Cork in December 1996, and has provided her family with details of her death.
"It is hard to read, but it gives a far more clear and precise picture than newspaper reports, which were all we had to go on," says Jean-Pierre Gazeau, the dead woman's uncle and the president of the Association for the Truth about the Death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Gazeau, a professor of astrophysics, provided a copy of the report to The Irish Times. He does not want his ageing sister, Marguerite Bouniol, Toscan du Plantier's mother, to read it.
In a landmark defamation trial, Judge Patrick Moran ruled in January 2004 that six newspapers had been entitled to identify the English journalist Ian Bailey as the chief suspect in Toscan du Plantier's killing. Bailey said scratches on his face, hands and forearms, first noticed the day Toscan du Plantier's body was found, were caused by his killing three turkeys and chopping down a Christmas tree.
Newspapers reported that the dead woman had organic matter from her assailant under her fingernails and a clump of hair in her hand. The then State pathologist, Dr John Harbison, recorded: "I took scrapings from the fingernails of both hands and placed them in plastic bags . . . A number of hairs, almost a dozen, were adherent to and even wound around fingers of the right hand. Because of dried blood these were removed with difficulty and some of them parted. I found one long and one very short hair adherent to the back of the left hand." Bailey gave gardaí a sample of his DNA in January 1997.
Liam Horgan, the Garda superintendent in charge of the investigation, confirmed in a telephone interview that three sets of DNA tests have been conducted "over time, as the technology improved". The tests have been inconclusive so far, but Supt Horgan said the samples, held in a secure place in Dublin, could still yield the identity of Toscan du Plantier's killer. Several years have passed since the tests were last conducted. "Some blood samples are so minuscule that they could not be analysed. As technology advances, we can go back to it," Supt Horgan said.
Most of the 20 pages that the coroner sent to Bouniol comprises the 13-page post-mortem report by Dr Harbison. The document also includes a cover note to Marguerite Bouniol, dated April 8th, from the coroner for south and west Cork, a summary signed by Dr Harbison three months after the killing, a two-page report by the Garda Síochána to the coroner, and results of toxicology and chemical pathology tests on the dead woman's body, all of which were negative.
THE GARDA REPORT notes that Toscan du Plantier's body was found "in suspicious circumstances", surely one of the great understatements in the history of crime. In the clinical language of the State pathologist, Dr Harbison describes the scene at Dunmanus West on December 24th, 1996: "In the approach to these cottages, I observed the dead body of a female lying on the grass verge on the roadway. The principal feature of the body was that the head, shoulders and both arms were heavily blood stained."
Dr Harbison describes the body in terms of a multitude of wounds, bruises, lacerations and haemorrhages. Her mother had told me that her beautiful daughter's face was "a pulp". Dr Harbison lists "laceration and swelling of the brain, fracture of the skull, and multiple blunt head injuries" as the cause of death.
The dead woman wore a short cotton top, a pair of cotton "long johns" style underpants and boot-like shoes with socks sewn into the top. The underpants had caught on barbed wire as she fled and were stretched for about three feet between the wire and the body.
"The dead woman had long hair which had become entangled in vegetation," Dr Harbison wrote. This writer couldn't help recalling the Yeats poem found beside Toscan du Plantier's bed. It began: "Nor dread nor hope attend/ A dying animal . . . "
"It was obvious that she had severe head injuries because there were gaping wounds on the right side of the forehead and the right ear was severely lacerated at its lower edge," Dr Harbison continued. He identified two possible weapons near the body: "Beside the deceased's left shoulder and head was a flat slate like a stone which was heavily blood stained . . . Between the deceased's body and the wire fence and within 9in of her left hand was a 9in cavity block."
The block rested on the dead woman's blue dressing gown, and appeared to have been taken from a hut built around an electric water pump, 20-30ft further up the hill. Dr Harbison mentions two blows on the dead woman's shoulder blades. "These could have been the imprints of that block, administering a glancing blow," he wrote. The body did not appear to have been dragged over the ground. Her killer must have pursued her as she ran down the hill, towards a neighbour's house.
Ian Bailey covered the killing for several newspapers. He denied allegations that he reported things only the killer would have known. In the Sunday Tribune, dated December 29th, 1996, Bailey wrote: "The evidence indicates that she was pursued down the rocky track from her home and killed by repeated blows to the back of the head."
Rumours initially oriented the investigation towards France. In the same article, Bailey erroneously reported that "Ms du Plantier . . . had recently informed [her husband Daniel] she intended to remarry her first husband," adding, "on several occasions she had visited west Cork with different companions".
Sophie Toscan du Plantier was not raped or sexually assaulted, Dr Harbison writes. When I interviewed Daniel Toscan du Plantier in 1999 (he died in 2003), he speculated on the motive of his wife's killer. "I can imagine it well," he said. "She could be extremely cutting. She faced someone who was probably drunk, and he made a pass at her and she rejected him in an insulting way and he went crazy. It was like her to go outside to talk to him; she wasn't afraid of anything."
In December 2003, when Bailey sued newspapers for libel, a landscape gardener, Bill Fuller, testified that Bailey, speaking of himself in the second person, told him: "You did it. You saw her in Spar on Saturday. You saw her walking up the aisle with her tight arse. You fancied her. You went up there to see what you could get. She ran off screaming. You chased her to calm her down. You stirred something in the back of your head. You went too far. You had to finish her off."
In addition to Fuller, Bailey is reported to have told or strongly implied to at least seven other people (Helen Callanan, Yvonne Ungerer, Malachi Reed, Richard and Rosie Shelley, Diane Martin and Marie Farrell) that he killed Toscan du Plantier. Farrell, who had earlier said she was threatened by Bailey, retracted her testimony in 2005. Bailey has claimed the "confessions" were misunderstood, that he was either joking or recounting what other people said about him.
The coup de grâce was apparently administered once Toscan du Plantier was already prostrate. "I was able to look at the ground when the body had been moved to note that there was a slight depression with blood on it where the head had lain," Dr Harbison wrote. "This indicated to me that the body had been in that position when the blows were struck."
THE STATE PATHOLOGIST'S report raises two mysteries: what caused "the curious situation that the drops of blood on the clothing were for the most part quite circular, a few with slight 'blobs' on the edges, as if they had fallen vertically on to the long johns rather than dribbled downwards from the deceased's head onto her legs"? The folded part of the cloth was not stained, creating "the impression that this blood therefore fell on these trousers while in that infolded state". Could the drops on the dead woman's pyjamas be the blood of her killer? Future DNA tests may tell.
And what caused the "fine parallel abrasions" that Dr Harbison said resembled "the imprint of a 'Doc Marten' boot" on the dead woman's neck, face and right forearm? Did her killer stomp on her body?
No one told Toscan du Plantier's family they had a right to receive the post-mortem report. "When I was in Dublin in February, the sister of a murdered man told me we could ask for it," Gazeau explains. "I asked Marguerite to write to the coroner, which she did." The coroner, Frank O'Connell, promptly forwarded the report to Bouniol when he obtained it from his predecessor, who retired in December 2006. Under normal circumstances, a coroner's inquest is held when a murder investigation is concluded. The family is entitled to be invited. But no inquest has been held in this case, because the Garda investigation continues.
"The coroner's inquiry was opened by my predecessor solely to take formal evidence of identity, to determine the cause of death and release the body," O'Connell explained. "The inquiry was opened and adjourned until after the police inquiry, as required by section 25 of the Coroner's Act of 1962 . . . I gave Mrs Bouniol everything I have. As long as the police are conducting an investigation, particularly one as difficult as this, they keep the evidence to themselves. This is one of the saddest cases I have come across. My heart goes out to Mrs Bouniol."
Supt Horgan regrets that the case has not come to trial. "Somebody killed Sophie Toscan du Plantier in December 1996," he says. "My responsibility is to bring that person to justice. I am hopeful that we will." There is always the possibility of new DNA results, a confession, or that "other witnesses come forward with evidence not offered until now," he continues.
"People are still very interested and anxious to help; I still think we are gaining a bit of ground. It's a priority here and will remain so."
