He said that Schull is becoming a tourist spot due to the documentaries – “It’s a kind of ‘Baileyland’ – like we have Disneyland. The people want to see him.”
The uncle of Sophie Toscan Du Plantier, Jean-Pierre Gazeau has hit out at Ian Bailey calling him a “deeply narcissistic” charachter.
Gazeau also told Pat Kenny on Newstalk on Thursday that he believes that the West Cork region of Schull is becoming a version of Disneyland for Ian Bailey due to recent documentaries into his neice’s tragic murder.
“Ian Bailey has a specific character, a deeply narcissistic character,” he said.
“The region of Schull is becoming – because of the documentaries and so on – is becoming a touristic place.
“And it’s a kind of ‘Baileyland’ – like we have Disneyland, the people want to see him. And in some sense, he is happy with that”.
Gazeau added that he thinks investigators made “mistakes” at the beginning of the investigation, saying that he doesn’t believe Bailey’s confessions to a “series of people” were just “black humour”.
“I think certainly there were some mistakes at the very beginning because that region of Ireland wasn’t absolutely used to this kind of event,” he said.
“Why Ian Bailey was really fast considered as a prime suspect – there was circumstantial evidence of course.
“But what about the scratches? What about the schedule of Ian Bailey during the night?
“What about the fact he confessed to a series of people he did it? He cannot find the kind of excuse as black humour – I don’t believe that”.
In 2019, a French Court found Ian Bailey guilty of voluntary homicide, sentencing him to 25 years in prison.
Ireland didn’t extradite Bailey due to a Supreme Court ruling in 2012 that the Irish extraterritorial provision was not the equivalent of the French legislation and therefore they were not reciprocal.
Bailey was not present for the French trial after winning the legal battle against his extradition. He has maintained his innocence in regard to the murder.
Over the past quarter of a century, facts and information about the death of Sophie Toscan du Plantier are still being released to the public, with most people in Ireland able to give a broad strokes retelling of the murder.
The brutal murder, which took place in the town of Schull in West Cork in 1996, triggered one of the biggest murder investigations Ireland had ever seen and became a national obsession.
Sophie: A Murder in West Cork, a documentary looking at the tragic murder made by the Oscar-winning producer Simon Chinn (Man On Wire, Searching For Sugarman) and filmed in West Cork, as well as other locations around Ireland and France, was released on Netflix at the end of June.
Bailey appeared in the documentary but only gave Netflix “limited access”.
Furthermore, a separate documentary from Sky, directed and narrated by six-time Oscar nominee Jim Sheridan was also released last month, while another one from the producers of Chernobyl is also in the works.
Prior to those documentaries, a podcast from Amazon’s Audible service, titled West Cork, also examined the inner workings of the case and garnered huge popularity and critical acclaim.
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