Jules Thomas said her former partner Ian Bailey could be ‘insufferable’ and had an ego ‘that made him enemies’ – but she continues to insist he was not capable of murder.

And she said it is her hope gardaí will someday discover ‘who committed the dreadful murder’ of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, ‘principally’ for the French woman’s family.

She told the Mail: ‘It’s terrible for them. I thought from the word go it was so terrible for them.

‘And it’s so tough also for Ian’s sister Kay.

‘Exactly a year ago this weekend we scattered Ian’s ashes together into the sea at Dunmanus Bay. I turned and said: “Kay, I know he had absolutely nothing to do with that murder.” I was afraid a seed of doubt may have been planted by guards. They believed they had their man.’

Ian Bailey died in January 2024 after he collapsed outside his rented home in Bantry, where he moved after Ms Thomas finally ended their relationship two-and-a-half-years earlier.

Ian Bailey died in January 2024 after he collapsed outside his rented home in Bantry

Sophie Toscan du Plantier, who was found battered to death in a remote area of West Cork, Ireland, December 24th 1996

The Welsh-born landscape artist continues to live in the cottage – just a few miles from Sophie Toscan du Plantier’s holiday home – which has been her home ever since the 1970s.

She met Bailey after the English journalist moved to the west Cork town of Schull in 1991 and had been working in the local fish factory.

They had a tempestuous 30-year relationship before they split in 2021, when Ms Thomas told the Mail she wanted him out of her house because she had given up all hope of them having a future together.

Ian Bailey and Jules Thomas had a tempestuous 30-year relationship before they split in 2021

However, she always stood by Bailey and insisted he was innocent of any involvement in what is arguably Ireland’s most notorious unsolved murder.

While they were together, she suffered several brutal assaults at the hands of Bailey but took him back against her ‘better judgement’.

She recalled: ‘Whiskey was his downfall; he promised never to drink whiskey again but he didn’t keep his promises…

‘After staying sober for five years and regularly going to AA meetings, he graduated from college, hoping, he said, that he “would not slide down the slippery pole”. But he did…’

On a sunshine-dappled afternoon, the artist showed me around her beautiful garden in the hills near Goleen.

Sitting by a lily pond that her former partner had dug out, along with other water features that had transformed the rocky farmland, she recalled: ‘He wasn’t much of a gardener.

‘He loved building walls and put up the stone wall along the driveway.

‘Part of it subsided with all the rain at the start of the year. He had placed a big horrible stone in the middle it with a face he’d carved; that caused the stones to move… so you could say his ego brought the wall down.’