DNA experts visit west Cork to solve Toscan du Plantier cold case

Times

24-07-2025

A team of forensic experts from the US has travelled to Ireland to examine evidence from the murder of the French film-maker Sophie Toscan du Plantier with groundbreaking new DNA testing methods.
The group, headed up by Jared Bradley, chief executive of M-Vac Systems, flew from company headquarters in Sandy, Utah to Dublin this month to test samples preserved from the crime scene in west Cork.
It is understood the tests focused on a heavily bloodstained flat rock and concrete block believed to have been used to batter the mother of one to death near the entrance to her isolated holiday home outside Schull before her body was found on the morning of December 23, 1996.
Samples from a blood-smeared metal gate, briar bushes and a barbed wire fence near where the body was found were also analysed, as were the night clothes that the victim wore on the night she died.
The testing was carried out by Bradley's team alongside Forensic Science Ireland personnel, utilising one of the most effective instruments in modern forensic technology.
The M-Vac is a wet-vacuum DNA collection system which involves spraying a solution on a surface while simultaneously vacuuming it off. An FBI study found it was capable of collecting multiple times the yield of DNA compared with typical swabbing techniques. It also works on surfaces that present difficult challenges for collection.
On his way to Dublin, Bradley expressed hopes that his work could lead to a breakthrough in the case. 'Praying for a fantastic outcome from this trip. If what I believe will happen actually does, it will be massive for us in a host of ways. Please pray for us,' he said.
Detective Superintendent Desmond McTiernan, head of the serious crime review team, recently discussed the international scope of the investigation.
• Sophie Toscan du Plantier: DNA opens door to solving murder
'We are trying to develop new leads. I would say that it is going very well and we are being extremely comprehensive,' he said. 'From the forensic perspective we are trying to develop it more. There are advancements there on a worldwide scale. We have gone abroad. We have close links with the FBI, and that is working quite well.'
Claire Glynn, an Irish-born professor of forensic science at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, voiced her support for the technology and its use in the Toscan du Plantier murder probe.
'I always recommend the M-Vac machine because it is such a power tool to recover trace amounts of DNA from very difficult surfaces such as bricks and old pieces of leather. It is able to get great results,' she said.
'The efficacy of the instrument for this case is proved by comparison to the murder in December 1995 of 17-year-old Krystal Beslanowitch in Utah.
'Based on the articles I have read and seen and the assumption that swabbing [was tried] on the flat rock and the concrete block used to murder Sophie, it is difficult to say any other collection method would be appropriate,' Glynn added.
'I say that based on the murder of Krystal in Utah in 1995, where granite rocks were swabbed multiple times between 1996 and 2013 with no interpretable results, but when the M-Vac was brought in the investigators were able to collect 42 times the previous DNA material and provide a profile of the killer leading to conviction. The similarities between that case and Sophie's is uncanny.'
No one has ever been charged or convicted over the murder of Toscan du Plantier, one of Ireland's most notorious unsolved crimes.
Ian Bailey, an English journalist, was the self-confessed prime suspect in the case but consistently denied any involvement in the murder. He was arrested twice for questioning but never charged, because of insufficient evidence.
• Jules Thomas: My leukaemia was caused by Sophie Toscan du Plantier stress
The High Court in Dublin denied French efforts to extradite Bailey, but a French court convicted him in absentia in 2019, sentencing him to 25 years in prison.
Bailey died in January last year at the age of 66. His ashes were scattered off the coast of west Cork, where he had lived, following a memorial service last month.
The case remains a source of ongoing public interest, spawning podcasts, documentaries and films exploring the circumstances around the killing.
The garda's serious crime review team, with bases in Cork and Dublin, is understood to have put much of its investigative efforts into seeking advances in forensic science, but it has also re-examined the original investigation and subsequent reviews, leading to it checking more than 1,600 witness statements over the last three years.
A team of seven detectives operating out of Bantry garda station has interviewed more than 300 witnesses in Ireland, Europe, the US and Australia as part of the comprehensive probe.