Is West Cork one of the greatest true crime podcasts since Serial?
In West Cork, they simply refer to it as “the murder”. The area in Ireland’s far south-west is so remote and the community so tight, that no further qualifier is needed to explain.
It’s not just the worst thing that has ever happened there, it remains one of the highest profile and longest running unsolved cases in Irish history.
West Cork podcasters Sam Bungey and Jennifer Forde.Credit:Ben Russell
On December 23, 1996, the dead body of 39-year-old French TV producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier was found near her holiday home. She was wearing a nightdress and boots, and was brutally bashed and tangled in briars and barbed wire.
Suspicion soon fell on English journalist Ian Bailey, who lived nearby. He had a reputation as a big drinker, a narcissist, an attention-seeker and a bad poet. He was also known for physically abusing his partner, painter Jules Thomas. But was he the killer?
Sophie Toscan du Plantier pictured with her husband, Daniel, in Cannes in 1996. Credit:Getty
That’s what the husband-and-wife team of documentary-maker Jennifer Forde and journalist Sam Bungey set out to investigate when they decided to make the West Cork podcast in 2015.
“We went to West Cork thinking that it might be difficult to get people there to revisit this painful thing from the past,” says Bungey. “But we found that for most of them, this wasn’t in the past at all. It was still right there, and everyone was still trying to deal with this unresolved, terrible event.”
They still recall the first time they met Ian Bailey, late on a Wednesday night in a local pub called The Black Sheep.
“We got there early and then he walked in the door, this gigantic guy wearing a deerstalker hat and a massive mac coat,” says Bungey. “There may as well have been a crack of lightning behind him.”
Although the Director Of Public Prosecutions in Ireland couldn’t find enough evidence to warrant a trial, in France a trial was held in absentia in 2019. Bailey was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison. But Ireland will not extradite him.
Former journalist Ian Bailey, who is wanted by French authorities investigating the murder of film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier leaves the High Court in Dublin following an extradition hearing in July 2020. Credit:PA
A bizarre cast of characters straight out of fiction emerges across the podcast’s 14 episodes, including a woman who claims she saw Bailey at the scene of the crime, but keeps changing her story; a former housemate of Bailey’s who agrees to become a police mole in exchange for money and hashish; and the police themselves, who in tapes obtained from within their station prove to be like bumbling caricatures.
As Forde says, “Nobody in this case was straightforward. Many of them were duplicitous.”
One of the most complex characters is Bailey’s partner, who finally left the relationship in April after three decades, but still maintains he is innocent.
Flowers near the home of Sophie Toscan du Plantier who was murdered in West Cork in 1996.Credit:Getty
Forde and Bungey were also at pains to ensure Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s life was illuminated, not just her death.
“If you look at the press coverage from the time of the murder she’s very much treated as a victim,” says Forde. “We put Sophie right at the beginning of the podcast so people could get a good sense of who she was. We wanted to celebrate her life.”
West Cork has been lauded as one of the greatest true crime podcasts since Serial, and it has been optioned by Sister Productions (Chernobyl) to be adapted for a drama series. On Twitter, fans of the show are leaning towards Dominic West to play Bailey. Two television documentaries are scheduled for this year.
After spending more time with Bailey than just about anyone, do Bungey and Forde have an opinion on his guilt or innocence?
“We’ve asked ourselves that question a million times, haven’t we?” says Forde, looking at her husband. “And we did vacillate between what we thought about him.”
Bungey nods in agreement. “We’re definitely both of the view that the investigation of the murder was woeful. And that has obscured the truth, no matter where you land on Bailey’s innocence or guilt.”
“So the answer to your question is we just don’t know,” says Forde.
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