‘BITTERNESS’ | 

Ian Bailey planned ‘insanity defence’ for Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder, Cork cheesemaker claims

Retired cheesemaker Bill Hogan says he has ‘deep sense of futile bitterness’ that Bailey was never charged

Senan Molony

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Ian Bailey was planning a “defence of insanity” in the aftermath of the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder, it has been claimed.

A retired West Cork cheesemaker confirmed in the wake of Bailey’s death on Sunday that the prime suspect in the killing of the 39-year-old French woman in 1996 was prepared to appear insane.

Bill Hogan (79), who knew Ms Toscan du Plantier, said he had “a deep sense of futile bitterness” that Bailey was never charged.

He has also made separate allegations to gardaí about “bloody” clothes said to have belonged to Bailey at the time of the murder and an alleged clean-up.

Mr Hogan said in his sworn statement before gardaí that he was visited by officers “within a day or two” of the murder in December 1996.

“I provided them with all the knowledge I had… I was surprised that Sophie didn’t know many people around the Schull area.

“That’s what the guards told me. I recall one more thing from a visit from Sophie. She said that she really loved it here in West Cork, and she wanted to be spending more time here in the future,” Mr Hogan said.

“Shortly after the guards visited me, a person I know to be Ian Bailey arrived. I knew him from around. On one or two occasions I swapped cheese for vegetables.”

Bailey told Mr Hogan he was assigned to cover the case for a newspaper, that he was the best reporter in Ireland, and that he was going to solve the crime, the statement says.

“He [Bailey] had a theory [about] Sophie’s husband, Daniel, a very powerful man, with all types of connections,” Mr Hogan said.

“He interrogated me in my knowledge of Sophie and I told him what I had told the guards,” Mr Hogan swore.

“Within a few days he called to my house again, and would have made an about another three or four visits to me following this.

“I think it was on the third or fourth visit that Ian said he had to go to France to solve this crime that he was going to do investigative journalism in France to prove that the husband had done it.”

The sworn statement continued: “Ian called to me again the following Monday. He said to me that he could not go to France, that gardaí think he is the chief suspect and that if he went to France he was afraid he would be arrested.

“I was upset and I shouted him, ‘What do you mean? You’re the reporter, not the suspect’.

‘Then Ian whacked himself on the forehead with his hand and his head went backwards.”

The cheesemaker then said that Bailey suggested he would claim “mental” issues and referenced a previous case in Sligo where the defendant was found to be insane.

Mr Hogan said: “He went on to say that he couldn’t remember what happened that night, that maybe he should visit a psychiatrist to get hypnotised. to see what really happened that night. I got him right out of my house at this stage, called the Bandon gardaí.

“The same afternoon I was visited by two or three gardaí and I told them what Bailey had confided to me.”

His reaction was that “I said to myself that Ian had done this murder; he killed her, he was a murderer,” Mr Hogan, who was born in New York of an Irish background, said in his statement.

The Sligo case referred to had involved a man called John Gallagher who shot dead his ex-girlfriend, 18-year-old Anne Gillespie, and her mother Annie (51) in the grounds of Sligo General Hospital in 1988.

Then 22, Gallagher was tried for murder but found insane. Twelve years later, in 2000, he escaped from Dundrum Central Mental Hospital and went on the run.

He later returned to Ireland and was again detained, but after a psychiatric assessment was deemed sane — and released into society. He is still alive.