It’s a wet and blustery afternoon in West Cork. When Hot Press pulls into the picturesque coastal town of Schull, Ian Kenneth Bailey is parked by the side of the road in an ageing Opel Astra. As agreed over the phone just ten minutes earlier, your correspondent hops out of photographer Kathrin Baumbach’s car and joins the 60-year-old Englishman in his vehicle. Kathrin is to follow as he drives to his home in nearby Liscaha.

We haven’t seen each other in quite some time...
“Well, Olaf, I guess you might say that we’re resuming a conversation that we began a very long time ago,” he says, firmly shaking my hand. He seems cheerful for a man who’s been living under a dark cloud for more than 20 years.
I’ve seen his face in countless newspapers, magazines, TV news and online reports over the last two decades, but this is the first time I’ve laid eyes on Ian Bailey in the flesh since mid-October 1996. We met then at a press conference for Neil Jordon’s Michael Collins movie, in a Cork hotel, where we sat beside each other during roundtable interviews with Jordan and the film’s star Liam Neeson (co-star Julia Roberts stood us all up. Would you blame her?).
As often happens at such events, we wound up chatting – and bitching about Julia – between interviews. An imposingly tall, well-built and politely spoken type, Bailey explained that he was originally from Manchester, but that he’d been living in Ireland since 1991. Having worked on a Waterford farm and in a west Cork fish factory, he was only just getting back into freelance journalism, working for local press, and stringing for the Cork Examiner and Sunday Tribune. When the interviews were finished, we shook hands and bade each other farewell.

KAFKAESQUE NIGHTMARE
There was a shock of recognition when I saw him on the RTE News the following February. He and his partner, Welsh artist Jules Thomas, had just been arrested in connection with the brutal murder of the French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier, in the isolated townland of Drinane, just a few miles outside Schull. The 39-year-old Frenchwoman was still in her night-clothes when her badly beaten body was found, near the laneway leading up to her holiday home. It was two days before Christmas.
The accusatory tone of the blanket media coverage of the case seemed to leave little doubt: someone had decided that Bailey was the killer. However, with the passage of time, it became clear that the Gardaí had little or nothing in the way of evidence. The DPP ultimately refused to take him to trial. Ian Bailey was rearrested the following year, but again no charges were brought. In September 2000, Jules Thomas was arrested for a second time, along with her daughter, Fenella, but both were released without charge. In August of 2001, Bailey was arrested for physically assaulting Thomas at their home. He received a three-month suspended sentence at Skibbereen District Court.
I’ve followed his case with interest over the years. And what a strange, twisted, clusterfuck it has been. Bailey has appeared in the Irish courts many times since. He took a libel action against seven newspapers in 2003 (winning against just two of them; many thought that the newspapers got away lightly). Then, in 2014, he took a High Court action for damages against the Minister for Justice and the Garda Commissioner. The case took 64 days, during the course of which some very disturbing behavior by the Gardaí was disclosed (including the alleged bribing of witnesses and pressurising them to make completely false statements). Ian Bailey lost the case, essentially for technical reasons. If I had been the judge, I am convinced I would have decided differently.
I can’t say for sure that he was not the one responsible for the crime. But even formulating that sentence in that way is a betrayal of one of the fundamental principles of a democracy. Everyone is entitled to the presumption of innocence, until proven guilty. This applies as unbendingly to Ian Bailey as it does to me. Did I kill Sophie Toscan Du Plantier? There isn’t a shred of worthwhile evidence to suggest that I did. The same, from what I can see, is true of Ian Bailey.
The fact is that that the Gardaí have behaved absolutely disgracefully in their attempts to find someone on whom to pin the murder. It seems perfectly clear that some have attempted to frame Bailey. Had he actually been convicted of Sophie’s murder, his time would have been long served by now. Instead, he’s still stuck in a bizarre, Kafkaesque legal nightmare.

STRONG COFFEE
As we drive down winding country roads on March 1, 2017, Bailey explains that he’s going to be back in court again in a few weeks. The French authorities are attempting, for the second time, to extradite him to France to be tried for Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s murder. In the intervening two months, that case was heard over two days in the High Court and a decision is expected in July.
Bailey and Thomas’ house is in an area of Liscaha known as The Prairie. It’s a large, comfortably furnished cottage surrounded by beautifully kept gardens. Before taking us into Jules’ studio to introduce us, he explains, “Jules doesn’t really like talking to the media. She leaves all of that stuff to me. But do say hello.”
Sitting at an easel in a large room full of her impressive artwork, Thomas is painting a seascape. A thin, sharply featured and attractive woman in her late fifties, she’s decidedly frosty when I shake her hand. “It’s very nice to meet you,” she says, unconvincingly. However, she appears to have warmed considerably by the time I am leaving a few hours later.
Bailey brews strong coffee and we do the interview at the kitchen table. Before we begin, he produces a legal document for me to sign, embargoing publication of this interview until he and his solicitor, Frank Buttimer, give consent (Buttimer has been representing him pro-bono for 13 years now). “We’re back in court soon and I simply don’t want to complicate things,” he explains.
It’s understandable. I scrawl my signature on the dotted line and press the record button…

OLAF TYARANSEN: You were arrested in this very house in 1997.
IAN BAILEY: Well, I’ve been arrested on three occasions. The first occasion was February 10th, 1997.

February 10th is my birthday.

Right (smiles). I was subsequently arrested on my birthday, which was January 27, 1998. My partner, Jules, was separately arrested on the first occasion. And she was rearrested in September 2000, as was her youngest daughter, Fenella. And I was arrested for the third time, under the European arrest warrant, in 2010. Just before I was going to do my final exams at UCC.

Was the timing deliberate?

It felt as though it had been timed to discombobulate me. I was arrested on that occasion at five minutes to midnight. I had heard it was likely to happen. I was arrested by maybe six to eight officers. I was taken up to Bandon barracks, and detained there and then taken up to Dublin. In fact, on February the 2nd of this year, I was here in the kitchen where we’re talking, and I saw two people going around the house and I recognised one of them as a detective. My immediate thought was that I was going to be arrested under a European arrest warrant for the second time.

Did that happen?

I actually said to them, ‘Are you here to arrest me under the European arrest warrant? Because a second one has been issued in France.’ And they said, ‘No actually, we’re here to serve you this.’ And I was served with a very heavy file, which is in fact the French indictment (puts hand on the file beside him). They were very polite and they said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re just here to serve you with this document.’ But a little bit of adrenaline flows and, when I came to sign the piece of paper to accept what they were delivering, my hand was shaking like a leaf.

You claim that one of the arresting officers in 1997 threatened to put a bullet in your head.

Oh, that was the driver of the car, Liam Hogan, a detective who unfortunately now is dead. He died before the civil proceedings began. He said, ‘Yeah, if we don’t pin this on you it doesn’t matter, because you will be found dead with a bullet in the back of your head.’

Surely this is standard police procedure, shaking a murder suspect up?

I wouldn’t know, because I don’t have any anything to measure it against.

Did you anticipate that first arrest?

No. The death of Madame du Plantier occurred sometime between the 22nd and the 23rd of December 1996. And I was active as a reporter, as you know, because we met at a press conference to do with Neil Jordan’s Michael Collins film. I’ve been working as a journalist my whole life. I had taken a break to come over here and had done various other jobs, but I’d gone back to full-time journalism. In fact, I was the only local journalist who was covering the story, working with French journalists from Paris Match and VSD and the BBC World Service, as well as some papers in Ireland. I was writing for The Sunday Tribune.
It was someone at the Irish Examiner who told you that there’d been a murder.

Eddie Cassidy of the Examiner rang me and gave me the basic details. But it was early 1997 when I started to pick up on the fact that I was being spoken about as a potential murderer. In fact, Helen Callanan, who was news editor at the Sunday Tribune said it to me. I was using the name Eoin Bailey as my byline. And actually she says to me one day on the phone, ‘Eoin, it’s being said up here in Dublin that you’re the murderer.’ My response was to say, ‘Who is saying that?’ And she says, ‘I can’t tell you.’ So I knew there was something strange going on, but I had no idea I was going to be arrested on the 10th of February.

Didn’t you jokingly tell her that you had done it?

My response got me into a lot of trouble and was completely misunderstood. I said to her, ‘Oh yes, yes of course I did it. I needed a story.’ Now I said that using my English sense of dark humour and irony. I’ve lived to regret that.

You gave the cops a statement during the first arrest, even though you were advised not to.

I gave various statements to them although I was advised not to. I gave those statements on the basis that I knew I had nothing to do with this. And my belief is that, if you don’t have anything to do with it, you would cooperate… as I did. But although they couldn’t tell me how I had come to commit the crime, they were absolutely locked into a mindset that I was the killer.

Where were you on the night Sophie Toscan du Plantier was murdered?

We were here. We’d gone into Schull and we came back here.

How did the subsequent two arrests compare to the first one?
The first one was extremely aggressive. I was assaulted in the back of my car by the arresting officer, JP Culligan, who was jabbing me, quite violently, in the side saying, ‘You’d better get your act together, you’d better get your act together!’ The second arrest, in fairness, was less heavy-handed, but still pretty hostile and aggressive.

When you were first arrested, the guards told you that Jules had accepted you were the killer.

I was detained. I didn’t know for the first six hours that she had also been arrested, and they came in to me and said, ‘We’ve arrested Jules as well and, by the way, she has accepted that you are the killer.’ They also at the same time, unbeknownst to me, told her, ‘He has confessed'. And she said, ‘I don’t believe this'. I was physically menaced in the station. One officer came at me and his pulled fist back as though he was going to hit me and then the next thing, he’s got his leg on the table trying to stick his crotch into my face. And the whole situation was like… (shudders). You’re taking me back now, Olaf. It was very, very frightening. And I realised there was no way of convincing these people that I had nothing to do with this.

You claim never to have met Sophie Toscan du Plantier.

I had never been introduced to her and I never met her.

Some people claimed that you had actually met her.

I believe that to be the case. I think her neighbor Alfie Lyons said that he’d introduced me. To give him the benefit of the doubt, he’s either mistaken – or he was persuaded to lie. This happened with a number of statements. We found that the guards had something on the individuals who were making the statements – and that something was the fact that they were dealing in drugs.

Alfie had been busted for growing cannabis.

He was growing quite a lot of cannabis on the hill. He had a case outstanding against him. And I think subsequent to him giving a statement to the effect that he had introduced me, which was a falsity, he received a particularly light sentence. As did another individual much later on, called Leo Bolger, who also gave a statement. Oh, 14 years after the event – it just came back to him! – that he remembered being at Alfie Lyons’ while I was there and Madame du Plantier was there. And that memory amazingly occurred just before he came up before a judge in the circuit court on a charge of cultivating €50,000 worth of marijuana – a crime for which he pleaded guilty and received a suspended sentence.

Were you a marijuana smoker as well?

I used to be. It was very prevalent in the area. I made this point during my civil proceeding. I was asked about this by the senior counsel for the state, Luan O Braonáin, and to my knowledge a number of members of the legal profession used to come down here and have a weekend break with a little bit of weed. That was quite funny because that was 21 years ago, and now you hardly ever come across it.

It’s been reported that in 1999 a French filmmaker named Guy Girard came forward to tell gardaí how Sophie had told him in early December 1996 about this friend she had in Ireland called Ian Bailey who was “exploring themes of violence in his writings”.

I have no knowledge of that at all.

I wondered why he hadn’t come forward sooner…
Yes, you would have thought he would have come forward at the time. Again, I don’t know. You should ask Guy Girard that (shrugs).

Describe the ways in which your life changed after being publicly labelled a murder suspect.

For many years, we were living in fear. The media, in the early days, were camped outside the house. At the time the media had been turned against me.

How do you mean?

A number of members of the media had been assured, as had neighbours of ours, that I was the killer. ‘Have no doubt’: this was the language the guards were using. Much later on, fully-grown journalists have come to me and apologised for having bought into the false narrative. And I noticed that this is actually cropping up again with the Maurice McCabe case and the Charleton Tribunal of Inquiry.

Had you pissed the local cops off in any way?

I think they didn’t like me. There was definitely xenophobia expressed during the first arrest: ‘You’re only an English so and so!’ Interestingly, this came up during the civil case. It was part of the discovery of the civil case – which actually led to the resignation of Commissioner Callinan, and subsequently, indirectly, Alan Shatter and a few other people. We discovered that they had been making recordings of calls to the station. You can see the file, it’s almost about a foot high (taps file on table). We received an awful lot of transcripted telephone conversations in which the guards were talking about me, guard to guard: ‘We must get that fecking English bollix!’

A local shopkeeper named Marie Farrell, who has since been discredited as a witness, anonymously called the cops to say that she had spotted you out that night.

Oh well, I had no knowledge of that in the early days.

She has since admitted that the guards pressured her into changing her statement to say that it was you she saw, although her original description was of a much smaller man. Surely there’s a recording of that phone call?

No, there wasn’t. The Fennelly Commission make the point in their report – this came out during the civil case, because one of the State witnesses was the technical man who dealt with telephone recordings. There was a massive flood in Bandon in 2009, during which Bandon barracks was flooded and a large number of tapes, covering a decade or more, were destroyed. Only a small number remained: they’d been placed on a higher shelf and managed to survive the flood. And those tapes fell into three categories.

Which were?

I went through them with a fine toothcomb, as my legal team did. (1) There were calls between guards and two witnesses, Marie Farrell and Martin Graham, who alleged that he had been recruited by An Garda Siochana to give a statement that would support the case against me. He claimed that he was paid in money and clothes and that he had been supplied with a considerable amount of marijuana; (2) there was another category of calls from the media trying to get comments; and (3) there was a tranche of calls from guard to guard. And the cop to cop calls are very interesting because they talk about the paucity of evidence, the fact that they’re really struggling to build a case against me. That they’ve only got threads and they have to weave something. The need to cloud and filter the evidence and statements, the need to ‘get that fucking bollix, Bailey’. The ‘black bollix’ is how they referred to me. It’s strange. So there was definitely an element of xenophobia there. From my point of few, I can say this: I have never come across a bunch of shaggers like them.

It’s been suggested that the guards accidentally fucked-up the crime scene themselves when they first arrived.

I think that might well be the case. I think there were a number of mistakes made in the early phases.

I’ve heard that one guard put his own feet in the footprints beside the body.

There was always talk about a footprint being found either on the body or close to the body. But that was only hearsay. I could never pin that one down. The body was found early on the Monday morning at ten o’clock by Alfie Lyons’ partner, Shirley Foster. One of the principal problems was that [John] Harbison, the State pathologist, didn’t get down until much later the following day, so the body was left on the hillside for over 24 hours before it was examined. Of course, it had cooled at that point, so there was no actual precise time of death.

You had been on the crime scene in a journalistic capacity.

I had gone out towards the scene and I got no closer than about 150 yards from the scene when two police officers walked up. I asked them if there was any information forthcoming and they said, ‘No, you need to go to the press office.’ So I hadn’t actually gone to the scene. I was in the locality.

After you were released from custody, you were door-stepped by the media and gave interviews to two journalists.

I gave an interview to a number of different journalists.

Do you regret doing that?

Well, one, I’m a journalist. My thinking is that of a journalist. At the time I knew I had nothing to do with it. I didn’t realise that the press had been told, ‘Have no doubt, he is the murderer.’ So I did give a number of statements and, with the benefit of hindsight, there are a few things I probably wouldn’t do. But you can’t undo the past.

Your life became a complete nightmare from then on.

1997 was a very dark year. 1998 was a very dark year. And there were many dark years. If you talk about a 20-year period, the first ten years were very, very tough and bad; the last ten years haven’t been so bad. For five of those last ten years I went up to UCC, and I managed to get three degrees of law.
You wanted to learn the language of the legal system that is prosecuting you.

Well, this was one of the reasons I started studying law. I made my application to UCC and you have to state the reasons for doing so. I said, ‘As my life has become consumed by the law, or legal matters, it seems only fitting that I should study the law.’ I went on that to do that with some degree of success.

Even before your first arrest, you made an ill-advised comment to a local 14-year-old whom you’d picked up hitchhiking.

Malachi Reid. Yes. He asked me how things were going and I said, ‘Well, things were going well until people started saying that I was the murderer and had bashed her brains out’. That got completely twisted and turned.

So you’re saying you were joking.

He just asked me how things were going and I answered things were going fine until people started saying I had something to do with the crime.
I understand that you were a bit more direct than that.

I think I might have been a little bit more direct.

Malachi’s statement to the guards said you told him you ‘went up there with a rock and bashed her fucking brains in’.

I don’t think I used that language, exactly, but I did make mention of it. He lived nearby, and his mother still lives nearby. I would have known him and I would have picked him up on previous occasions. And subsequently he took lifts off me from Schull.
How do you think the people of Schull feel about you?

You’d really have to ask the people in Schull. Certainly, there was a small cell of people – I’m not gonna mention their names; they know who they are – who will have to live with their own karma, but they were definitely in the ‘he did it’ camp. And there were a lot of people early on who were very sympathetic and who were very open-minded and supportive. What has happened over these 20 years is the number of people who were in the ‘he did it camp’ have reduced and reduced. There are still a few who made false statements in connection with this, who dug themselves into a hole. But I’m very comfortable in Schull. People seem very comfortable with me – certainly since the 64-day civil action which brought out a lot of things. Although I didn’t win it, I certainly didn’t feel defeated. That is a matter which is under appeal at the moment. But people are great. We get a lot of support, a lot of cards, a lot of phone calls. It’s always really, really touching and uplifting in what has been a Kafkaesque situation.

Did the police harass you between arrests?

I suppose they harassed me through the media. There was Marie Farrell, really you need to talk to her about it. I see her as a secondary victim of this. They had something on her. They managed to persuade her to believe… One of the worst detectives told her, ‘Have no doubt, it is Ian Bailey who murdered her.’ And this came out during the civil proceeding and he also said, ‘Oh, he is a very strange man that Ian Bailey. He sits on Barleycove Beach under the full moon in a rocking chair naked with ten dancing lesbians reciting poetry to him.’

Sounds like a fun way to spend a night!

If only (smiles). I am a poet and I do ‘do’ poetry, and I have done readings, but not on Barleycove Beach naked with ten dancing lesbians! She said that in evidence in the case. I had never heard the allegation and I was inundated with people saying to me, ‘Ian, when are you going to do one of those naked lesbian poetry readings? Please let me know. I’d like to come along.’

Are you a violent man?

No (shakes head).

Yet you were arrested for assaulting Jules.

I know there have been incidences of violence between myself and Jules, the last one nearly over 20 years ago, where drink was involved. But that has long stopped. I dealt with that problem. I used to drink whiskey, and it didn’t suit me, and she used to drink whiskey as well, it didn’t suit her. But no, I’m not a violent man.

Do you still drink?

Occasionally I’ll have a glass of wine with food. And I may have an occasional pint. One pint.

What’s your relationship with Jules’ daughters like?

Well, there were three here. And two of them I get on very well with, the elder ones, but the youngest one, whose father I sort of replaced… she never really warmed to me, although I tried my best. There’s been very little contact with her.

How do you support yourself?

It’s been a struggle. I live on a shoestring. I’m severely in debt. I owe €1.2 million in terms of cost against the State, but that’s a matter under appeal. We live very frugally. We produce a lot of our own food. Occasionally I get a little bits of work. But it’s tough and it was very tough during the proceedings. There were people who were offering me financial support during the 64-day case. I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without that.

Did you have any inkling that the Irish police might be capable of framing innocent people?

No, I mean I was sort of a naïve stranger in paradise, really.

You must be very pleased to see the recent scandals with the garda whistleblowers.

Yes, of course. It’s interesting what is going on at the moment – and there is material that I can’t talk about and that is going to come out in the future to do with the Fennelly Commission. That commission was set up directly as a result of our discovery application – which led to the discovery of the fact that they had been randomly taping people for many years. And I think around February 2012, the whistleblower controversy was at its height – [former garda] John Wilson and Mr. McCabe had both come out with stories about being daggered by their own – and Enda Kenny came on television on a Friday evening and he said, ‘If anyone in Ireland has instances regarding misconduct please let me know.’ So I wrote a letter to him pointing out the fact that we had personal experiences… That it was a difficult situation because we were taking an action against the State, but we said that we would do whatever we could to assist in any inquiry. As a result of that, the Fennelly Commission was set up.

Where did that lead?

There were two references in the Fennelly Commission to the investigation into the murder and to our circumstances. Both Jules and myself have given evidence to the Fennelly Commission. They’ve listened to all of the tapes. They’ve actually discovered a not inconsiderable number of other tapes, which were relevant, which we did not get – which we should have got on discovery. And that is a matter that will have to be dealt with in the future. They, for the first time, have … (pauses). I really am cautious about saying anything about this, Olaf.

Hot Press won’t be publishing this interview until after Fennelly delivers his report.

OK. They have clearly flagged-up the fact that there was improper behaviour on a number of fronts by a number of guards. Many of them dead, some of them fortunately still alive. And in one case, the essence of the improper behaviour was one of the officers whom I met when I went out to the scene on the day of the murder, who is now retired, talking about post-dating statements if need be. That is something which has been addressed in the Fennelly Commission, and will come out into the public domain.

Were they talking about post-dating your own statements?

No, it was related to Marie Farrell, and trying to keep her sweet as a witness. So there is a weight of material, which is due to come out, which will support our contention that we have been the victims of, at the very least, improper garda conduct.

(The Fennelly Commission’s report was published on April 6th. It found that the guards in West Cork “were prepared to contemplate altering, modifying or suppressing evidence that did not assist them in furthering their belief that Mr. (Ian) Bailey murdered Madame Toscan du Plantier.” However, the commission found no evidence that such actions were actually carried out. Another of its more controversial findings was that there was “almost total ignorance at the highest levels of the force” that the main garda phone line at stations outside of Dublin were being recorded – OT).

Did you ever consider taking your own life?

I did, yes. I did (nods head).

How seriously?

Oh, I tried to do it once in… (pauses). I remember trying to do it in, somehow, a sort of… (pauses). There was a film with Nicolas Cage when he goes to Las Vegas and tries to drink himself to death.

It was called Leaving Las Vegas.

Yes, Leaving Las Vegas. I tried to do a Leaving West Cork, and actually just finished up being arrested for being drunk and incapable in the streets of Skibbereen. My intention had actually been to get myself paralytically drunk and just throw myself into the River IIen, and end it all. That was my absolute rock-bottom. And that happened in the early part of the decade.

Were there any other suspects in Madame du Plantier’s murder?

There was never a proper investigation. My belief has always been that the perpetrator came from France and it was a deliberate assassination. Now, having said that, I never had evidence to prove that. It seems to me that there was never any question of anybody else. There was, for instance, a man in Skibbereen who reported seeing the lady in question driving a car on the way down (home) on the Friday before her demise, with another man in the car. He was a petrol pump attendant and he filled her car with petrol. Ten punts worth of petrol, as it was then.

Was that evidence given to the Gardaí?

That man went to the police after he recognised her photograph. He was told, ‘Oh no, you’ve made a mistake, we know who did it anyway.’ And so they focused on me. The villain of the piece from my perspective was a guard, a former superintendent detective from Cork city who became head of the West Cork branch, named Dermot Dwyer, who gave evidence in the civil case. Prior to my first arrest, he came here and he sat where you’re sitting, here in the kitchen, and we had coffee and, first of all, he asked me if I like to play poker. I said, ‘No, no. Well, I have played poker but I don’t play it actively. But I know what it’s like’. And he said, ‘Well, you should!’ And before he left he said, ‘I’m going to place you at Kealfadda Bridge in the early hours of the morning’. I said, ‘That’s absolute nonsense’. And he said, ‘We’ll see’. That was about a week or so before my first arrest…
(Editor's note: these exchanges were referred to in court. Dermot Dwyer denied making these comments.)

Was he saying, ‘I’m going to stitch you up?’

I believe so, yes. He was there during the 64-day civil proceeding – most days. He infiltrated the press box and he was staring at me constantly like a ghoul. And I know that he has subsequently given a television interview to a French TV crew saying he knows and believes that I was the murderer. So what happened as far as I’m concerned is that there was never truly an investigation. There were two or three suicides in the area that were never investigated, and never really explained.

Who were those people?

Well, one was a German national who lived close by to her, and another a French national, and a man who knew her, who blew his brains out in January of 1997, very soon afterwards. These people were never even considered because they knew who did it from day one… and that person was me. When I say that person was me, I’m not saying that it was me — for clarity (smiles). Dwyer was the person who put me in the frame. I blame him for everything that we’ve gone through.
During your libel action in 2003, Judge Patrick Moran said ‘Mr. Bailey is a man who likes a certain amount of notoriety, that he likes perhaps to be in the limelight, that he likes a bit of self-publicity’.
That was a judge at the defamation case.

Was there any part of you at all that enjoyed the attention?

No. I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.

Could the journalist in you have initially been thinking, ‘Well, Iʼm going to ride out this horrible wave, and then, in two months time, they’re going to catch the real killer and I’ll be able to write a cracking book about what happened to me’?

That’s not a thought that occurred to me. I was being told I couldn’t come back here, because Jules didn’t want to see me because she’d accepted that I was the murderer. I was living in a place about 200 yards down the road and I couldn’t return to that, because it was a crime scene and also there was a hanging mob waiting for me in Schull. This was about sometime between midnight and one o’clock after my first arrest. I’m told she doesn’t want to see me, and that’s sort of confusing. I spent the night away in the house of a friend in Skibbereen. I can see, looking back, that I was in a state of clinical shock. We were arrested on a Monday so I stayed away on Monday night and Tuesday night, and I came back on a Wednesday with a friend in the back of a van who drove through the press hordes at the gate. I came into the house and within minutes people were knocking on the doors — the front door, the back door, journalists, and I went out and I spoke to them. I protested my innocence, as I have done ever since.

How do you feel about journalists now?

Well, there are different kinds of journalists. I know some very, very fine ones — radio journalists, television journalists. I mean, there are also shyster journalists. The journalists that I deal with now I have great respect for and they would be fairly eminent and respected journalists. And as I said before, and this is very touching for me, I had somebody from the Sunday Times approach me at a certain point, I think during the Supreme Court case, and somebody from the Sunday Independent, Maeve Sheehan, who’d actually bought into the false narrative. She came up and she apologised. So I’ve got respect for professionals, lawyers and journalists, but not fly-by-nights. I mean journalism is very exciting, as we know. I like doing what you like doing. Prior to my arrest I had interviewed, oh, the Hothouse Flowers, for instance. I had interviewed Ronnie Drew, Liam O’Flynn, Donal Lunny. They were great people to write about. I was writing articles based on the interviews for the local press.

Did the guards ever come up with a motive for you to have committed the murder?

No. Nothing was ever put to me.

And you had an alibi, confirmed by Jules?

I was here, yup, yup, yup (nods).

There was no DNA evidence?

No. There was DNA found, but it obviously didn’t tally with mine.

And you gave them DNA samples?

I gave them my blood. I gave them my hair. In fact, in January of 1997, they took hair quite violently from myself and Jules. My view was, ‘Take it’, because there was a story, originally, that there was DNA hair samples found. Subsequently during my first arrest I had blood taken. I had nothing to do with it, so I knew that I had nothing to fear or hide on either occasion.
Obviously you wound up having quite a lot to fear.
Yes. It’s the fear of conspiracy. It is the fear of a mindset that has made up its mind that it’s going to frame you and there’s nothing that’s going to shake it. The guards dug themselves into a hole from day one. Dwyer dug himself into a hole. He made a statement saying, ‘I knew who it was from day one’. Once you’ve said that, it’s very difficult to back out and to say, ‘Sorry, mea culpa. I made a mistake.’
Would you feel a lot of empathy for someone like Amanda Knox in Italy?
I’m aware that these things go on around the world. One of the points I’ve made is that Enda Kenny once said, ‘Ireland is one of the best small countries in the world to do business in.’ This is prior to Brexit. My view on that is that Ireland is one of the best small countries in the world to suffer injustice in.
I understand that Jim Sheridan is making a documentary about your situation.
Jim Sheridan, the national treasure that he is, approached me during the 64-day civil action up in Dublin. He came into the court and listened to the proceedings and introduced himself and we had a cigarette at lunchtime. He said he was very interested in the story and wanted to do something about it, but didn’t know what. At the same time, I’d been approached by a well-known investigative journalist, Donal MacIntyre. He expressed the same views. So what I did was, in effect, a bit of horticulture. I cross-fertilised Jim Sheridan and Donal MacIntyre, and I brought them together. As a result it is now a two-pronged project which is a work in progress. Donal MacIntyre is making a four-part documentary for TV3 here in Ireland, and I think for possibly CBS in America. At the same time, Jim Sheridan is making a documentary for the BBC – a Storyville 90-minute documentary. Filming has begun on that and, well, it’s done incrementally over a period of time.

Have you been interviewed?

Oh, we’ve done several sessions.

Are you confident that theyʼre going to be sympathetic?

You never know about the final edit. They seem to be very sympathetic, and I’m sympathetic as well to the du Plantier family — that’s something I really want to stress. I know the family thinks I’m the murderer. I know there’s nothing in the world that I can do to dissuade them from that. I’ve long accepted that. But I’m able to empathise with them. Don’t forget that, from day one, they were being told, ‘Have no doubt, we know who it is, it’s only a matter of time before we get him.’ My understanding is that the former commissioner of An Garda Síochána, Callinan, was in charge at that time of the liaison between Ireland and the French. There are two sets of secondary victims as far as I can see here – there’s ourselves, myself, Jules and our family, and the community; and then there is the French family and the French community.

Have you ever been interviewed by the French authorities?

No. I have made myself available and offered to be. The French gendarmarie came here on two occasions in 2011 and interviewed 30 odd people, including Jules and her daughters, but not myself. They did not come anywhere near me. I think that’s very peculiar. Nobody’s ever explained that one to me. I had written to the French consulate in Dublin in 2005 offering to assist in any way I could. That offer was not taken up.

Youʼre possibly going to be tried in France in your absence.

In 2010, I think, the European arrest warrant came in. From that moment on I was never able to leave Ireland. I’m on the European intelligence register as having a still extant European arrest warrant against me. I wasn’t even allowed to go to my mother’s funeral. And I never will be able to leave Ireland as far as I can see. My human right of being able to travel freely has been robbed from me. But I can handle it, being here.

Would you welcome an Irish trial that could potentially clear your name?

I’ve written to the DPP of late, subsequent to hearing that I was to be tried in France, asking her to look at the French file, which clearly made muster in France, with a view to reconsidering the DPP’s decision not to charge me. I made the point that surely what made muster for a French goose must make muster for an Irish gander. I’ve written four letters now to the DPP — three last year, one this year asking, pleading actually, for her to reconsider the decision and to charge me here. All I get is a one-line response saying, ‘Your letter, dated, is acknowledged’.

Do you think thereʼs collusion between the two police forces?

Mick Clifford, who’s an eminent pundit, made the point in an article that the reason the French and the Irish State supported my extradition, and opposed my appeal against that extradition, was because it suited both the body politic here in Ireland and An Garda Siochána. They would have loved to have had me carted off to France. But they haven’t succeeded and I’m here and I’m battling on, and I’ll be battling on until I have no breath left.

How do you cope with the stress?

Well in the early days, very badly. I used to drink. It wasn’t good. It left me in a very dark place.

Daily drinking?

I felt very, very sorry for myself. I drink and I feel even more sorry for myself — a bit like Morrissey in the song, “I was happy in the haze of a drunken hour/ but heaven knows I’m miserable now.” I reached rock bottom and I went to AA. I became an adherent of AA. I still go to AA occasionally. One of the problems is I was always too much of a focus of attention.

I guess you have a more interesting story than most.

I learnt in AA the serenity prayer, ‘God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference’. I have a number of coping mechanisms, but that would be high up. For instance, I knew there was a likelihood that I would be charged in France. It was the worst fear I was carrying around with me all the time up at university. That was only made bearable by the fact that I was burying my head in study. I was using study to blot out the awful possible reality of my life. I was saying to Jules that I did much better in my exams than I might have otherwise because of that.
But my worst fear, for many years, was that I would be charged in France, and that came to pass. The thing is if I can’t do anything about a thing, I just accept it. Then I switch into the professional mode. I step back from myself. I don’t allow emotion in. I manage to over-ride default emotional settings, which has caused me a lot of pain in the past. During the case, I was standing back from myself… in fact, I was standing back from myself standing back from myself on occasions. It was quite a strange state of mind – but obviously I needed to be in that state of mind to be able to deal with what I was dealing with.

Do you believe in God?

I don’t know if I believe in God; I believe in the power of the universe. When you look up at the stars at night here, you see the most amazing stars. I’m not particularly religious, I am more spiritual. I use Buddhist meditative techniques as a coping mechanism — and gardening, keeping busy. And not allowing any sense of self-pity to permeate, which it did for many years. I managed to get rid of that pathetic sort of response.

Did you ever seek any professional help?

Only legal professionals, because I knew that it wasn’t a medical condition that was the problem. I had a joke with my solicitor, Frank Buttimer, that I went to my doctor and I said, ‘I need a doctor of law, not a doctor of medicine or psychology.’

Would you consider writing a book about your experience?

I’ve tried, but no. I’ve got forty thousand words on the computer and I tried last year and then things happened. Then the story moves on. There’s a quote from a poem I wrote up in Co. Wicklow called ‘Many’. The final line was, “Many are the chapters yet untold before the story ends.” That is the case with my life and this saga. In fact, I don’t know if it’ll ever be over. I might be over before it is over.

Do you think that Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s murder will ever be solved?

I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s a will to. I did believe 20 years ago, and I still believe, that they should have investigated if it was a deliberate assassination from France.

Why would she be assassinated?

I believe the husband, the late Daniel Toscan du Plantier, had a large amount of insurance money on her. At the time of her murder he was having an affair with another woman who he subsequently married, who became his fourth trophy wide, Melita.

Do you think that this experience has made you stronger?

I think it made me a worse person in the early days. I did feel sorry for myself. I was drinking too much. I was drinking to escape. But at this stage, I think it has. I think Nietzsche said it, ‘If it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger’. I am amazed, actually, at how well I have been coping.
(*) On March 30th, more than four weeks after this interview was conducted, the High Court endorsed a European Arrest Warrant for Ian Bailey, issued by French authorities seeking to have him extradited to France to stand trial for the voluntary homicide of Sophie Toscan du Plantier. Bailey’s legal team have lodged an objection. He could potentially still be tried in France in his absence.