IN the end, Ian Bailey’s drinking was suicidal.
He was supposed to get in shape for a triple heart bypass, but the world’s most famous murder suspect nevertheless hit the bottle and the smokes as if every day was his last.
Bailey was terrified Irish police were about to rearrest him for the murder of glamorous filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier.
The prime suspect might have been facing an awful miscarriage of justice — or was a cold, calculated killer who had cheated justice for 27 years.
On Sunday, Bailey collapsed and died in the street in Bantry, West Cork, aged 66, after suffering a suspected heart attack.
The Manchester-born journalist was undoubtedly a narcissistic, boorish drunk who mercilessly beat his wife — but was he a murderer?
In January 2022, in a wide-ranging videoed interview with Bailey at a West Cork pub, I was able to get a measure of the man.
Bailey had commandeered a corner table at the Perrin Inn, Glengarriff, as his office and was treated with something approaching celebrity by some locals.
Mum-of-four Caroline Somers, whose family ran the pub, revealed: “He’s good with the kids. Ian scares people, until they meet him.”
Yet this was a man accused of pummelling Sophie’s head beyond recognition with a breeze block.
Listening to this dishevelled man, his eyes red-rimmed with alcohol, as he spun the case for his defence, I came to a sickening realisation: He appeared to be enjoying recounting the grisly details of Sophie’s murder.
Afterwards, he relished posing for pictures.
It was as if recounting his story allowed Bailey to again relive the power he felt from murdering Sophie.
Before the interview I had done a deep dive into the twists and turns of a murder case that has divided public and legal opinion.
It was two days before Christmas 1996 when the body of French TV producer Sophie was discovered near her remote Irish holiday home.
Mum-of-one Sophie, 39, had bought the white-painted cottage on Ireland’s West Cork coast in 1993.
At 10am on December 23 a neighbour found her battered body in a bramble-lined lane leading to the house.
Sophie was wearing walking boots with no socks, a white T-shirt and long johns which were snagged on nearby barbed wire.
It appeared she had been trying to run from her attacker.
Had a local man called in the hope of romance then hideously disfigured her when the offer was unrequited?
To crush Sophie’s skull was beyond violent and seemed to have been done in rage, rather than a premeditated act.
In the remote peninsula of some 400 houses, half of which were holiday homes, there was hope the murder would soon be solved.
Yet local police were out of their depth and failed to secure the crime scene. Sophie’s body was left outside until a pathologist arrived 28 hours later.
Bailey, who lived three miles away in Lissacaha with Welsh artist Jules Thomas, was quickly on the scene acting as a local correspondent for newspapers.
“I was the lead reporter,” he told me, with characteristic vanity.
A 6ft 4in rugby-playing grammar school boy, he was a Fleet Street veteran who once ran a news agency in Cheltenham, Gloucs.
Bailey was able to supply lurid details of the murder which were so revelatory that the spotlight began to turn on him.
His case wasn’t helped when he bragged to a journalist that he had killed Sophie “to further his career”.
Later he said his remark was “black humour”.
Bailey would be accused of admitting to the murder on two further occasions.
Once, a teenage neighbour asked how he was.
Bailey is alleged to have replied everything was fine “before I went up there with a rock and bashed her f***ing brains out”.
When I put these allegations to Bailey he seemed to be stifling a smirk.
Although there was no forensic evidence linking Bailey to the murder, his scoops led to his arrest in February 1997.
While under investigation he wrote stories alleging Sophie had “multiple male companions” and suggested the killing was orchestrated from France.
Bailey claimed to his dying day he had never met Sophie, though neighbour Alfie Lyons had said he was 90 per cent sure he had introduced them.
Then there were the scratch marks on Bailey’s face and hands — consistent with someone who had been in a struggle in a bramble-filled lane.
During our interview I asked about the scratches. He blamed them on a turkey and lopping a Christmas tree.
And his alibi on the murder evening had changed under police questioning.
First he had been out with Jules in the pub, then he had spent the night at a friend’s, before settling on a scenario that he had slept at home before waking to work in an annex 50 yards away.
Coolly, he told me there were “a few anomalies” in what he told cops “but it wasn’t anything deliberate as it was made out to be”.
Bailey was arrested for a second time and later tried and found guilty in his absence by authorities in France.
Ireland’s High Court rejected an extradition request.
As our interview ended, I stared into his eyes and asked him directly if he killed Sophie.
Without a flicker of an eye or twitch of the face, his emphatic response was: “No”.
Like every functioning psychopath, Ian Bailey was an adept liar.
Despite hobbling on his damaged achilles tendon, he agreed to walk to a nearby location to have his photo taken.
It was a moment he appeared to relish, puffing himself up for the pictures as if he was a top-selling author, rather than a murder suspect.
In recent months he has been cashing in on his infamy by charging around £13 for TikTok “shout outs”.
And there were the T-shirts bearing his image that he hawked on Facebook for around £17.
While I believe the Irish police need to look no further than Bailey for their murderer, many disagree.
They include ex-partner of 30 years Jules Thomas, who Bailey savagely assaulted three times.
The most horrific attack was in 1996, when a neighbour found her with a swollen eye, scratches to her face, a clump of hair torn from her scalp and what appeared to be bite marks on her hands.
The mum of three who split from Bailey in 2021, said on hearing news of his death: “I feel nothing. I’ve had no emotional connection with him for quite a long time”.
As to whether Bailey was the murderer, she added: “It isn’t about believing he did it or not.
“I know he was innocent. I knew he couldn’t have done it.”
My grim assessment of his guilt is shared by a journalist who was with Bailey at the crime scene and interviewed him after his first arrest.
Senan Molony wrote in the Irish Examiner that he “never had any doubt” that Bailey killed Sophie.
He recounted how Bailey told him the scratches on his hands came from Christmas trees he had cut down to sell.
The journalist said: “I can still see his mouth opening and closing like a goldfish when I protested, ‘Who the hell buys a Christmas tree on the 23rd of December?’”
Late singer Sinéad O’Connor would also interview Bailey.
As he got progressively more drunk during their chat, she said his “sweet old gentleman” persona was replaced by a “brooding, angry giant”.
Over in France, Sophie’s brother Bertrand Bouniol insisted: “Mr Bailey was found guilty by French justice but never went to prison because of the Irish justice system.
“My sister was brutally murdered and her murderer was able to continue a normal life.”
Sophie’s family want the Irish police to continue their investigations.
Finally establishing Bailey’s guilt would allow them some closure and Sophie, who dearly loved Ireland, to finally rest in peace.
