IN JUST under a fortnight, the family and friends of murdered French woman Sophie Toscan du Plantier will gather for a small service in West Cork to mark the 10th anniversary of her brutal death.

But her now frail, elderly mother, Marguerite Bouniol, this weekend says that her "hope is fading" that justice will ever be done for her daughter.

Bouniol has broken her silence for the first time since the gardai's key witness, Marie Farrell, said she had falsely identified Ian Bailey as the chief suspect in Sophie's murder.

Without any trace of anger or bitterness, Sophie's mother recounts the first days of her family's decade-long nightmare. "That day, I cannot even remember, I was in such a state of shock that day. The days after were the ones I remember clearly . . . more horrible, terrible than the first day. Every day since then, the pain has remained the same for my husband and I. There seems to us to be no resolution, no evolution [to the murder investigation], " she told the Sunday Tribune, speaking by telephone through a translator from the couple's Paris home.

"For us, this is a terribly sad time. Christmas is a really peaceful and happy time for everyone, but it is not for us. It is the time of year when we lost our beautiful daughter. We come to where Sophie lived and celebrate a quiet mass in her honour. We love to be in the house that was hers . . . it is like being with her. We have found so much comfort and support from the people of the area around Goleen. They have been so nice and so sympathetic.

"The manner in how Sophie's life was taken was so brutal and so odious. All of my family love Ireland and despite everything, we still love Ireland as Sophie did. For us, it is shocking that a killer could live among the people of a country and not be charged with murder."

Marguerite said it was the family's belief that the Irish police "did their best". She blames the office of the director of public prosecutions (DPP) . . . which has possession of the file in relation to her daughter's killing for over eight years . . . for not bringing anyone to account for the murder.

"In France, the guilty person would have been charged a long time ago, " she says. "They would not be walking freely around."

Perhaps showing the dramatic difference in criminal justice systems . . . where Ireland has an advocate system with independent judges and prosecutors compared to France's system with prosecutorial magistrates . . . the murdered woman's mother cannot understand why the DPP will not release the murder file to their French counterparts.

Failure of Irish justice "A FRENCH judge has attempted to obtain the Irish police files under a rogatory commission, which permits the transfer of such material.

The judge has never got a satisfactory answer to explain why this file has not been sent to the French authorities. I do not see this as a problem caused by the Irish police, but a problem with the Irish justice system, " she said.

"As far as I and my family are concerned, the law in Ireland protects more the murderer than it protects the victim." She describes the delay of more than 24 hours in the arrival of then state pathologist Prof John Harbison at the scene of Sophie's murder as a "terrible mistake" of the Irish investigation. At the time, Ireland had only one full-time pathologist.

After chief witness Marie Farrell last year did a complete u-turn in her claims that she saw Ian Bailey near Sophie's house on the night she died, garda commissioner Noel Conroy ordered a special investigation into Farrell's claims that she was pressurised by gardai into falsely implicating Bailey as the chief suspect.

Conroy appointed Assistant Commissioner Ray McAndrew to head the internal probe.

But while Marguerite remains supportive of the garda probe, the Bouniol family had never been told of the McAndrew internal investigation until informed about it this weekend by the Sunday Tribune.On Farrell's dramatic u-turn, which the family gleaned through news reports soon after the event, Marguerite is diplomatic. "It is strange that for eight years she maintained she had seen [Ian Bailey] and then says differently."

On Farrell's claim that she was pressurised into pointing the finger of suspicion at Bailey, Marguerite says it is "not possible to contemplatef that police could have done such a thing".

"But if she [Farrell] could change her mind, then for us this is not such a big thing. There are many other people who have similar, important evidence."

Despite all that has happened, Sophie's mother says she is "not angry" at Marie Farrell, who may yet face a perjury charge over her evidence in the 2003 libel case brought by Bailey against several newspapers in which she reiterated her initial claims that he was near the scene of the crime.

The start of a love affair SOPHIE'S family describe the 38-year-old filmmaker as a woman of rare physical beauty, selfassured but privately doubting her own talent, a loyal friend, demanding and often unhappy in love. A native of the Lozere region in south central France, she spent two summer holidays with a family in Dublin who took her around Ireland and this is where her love affair with this country began.

Sophie Bouniol was divorced and raising her young son alone when Daniel Toscan du Plantier first met her in 1988. She had handled public relations for the French film production board Unifrance since 1983 and met du Plantier when he became chairman of Unifrance's board.

He described the woman he met as "very beautiful, very difficult. She looked like an angel, but she had a volcanic character, and easily became aggressive." Du Plantier met Sophie again during the 1989 Cannes film festival and their courtship went from there.

As the deputy mayor of Paris's second arrondissement, Marguerite Bouniol conducted the marriage of her daughter to Daniel (50) in June 1990. Sophie stopped working at Unifrance and gradually established herself as an independent film producer. Through her husband, she met some of the world's most famous film directors and mixed in the highest echelons of French society.

In a 1999 interview in The Irish Times, Sophie's aunt, Marie Madeleine Opalka, recalled how Sophie caught the eye of the late Francois Mitterand at a reception. She and her husband were invited to a private dinner with Jacques Chirac when he was still Mayor of Paris.

Sophie told Chirac about a documentary she was making about African art . . . a few months later, Chirac, then France's president, sent her a fax to say how much he enjoyed her programme.

Despite her many celebrity friends, Sophie did not enjoy all the media attention and this was one of the reasons that she, like so many Europeans, sought out a tranquil holiday home on the edge of the continent in west Cork.

While house-hunting there, she kept a diary and wrote: "Could I bear the solitude of a country like Ireland? Certainly . . . it resembles Lozere. I would like to write there, in this noisy, windy tranquillity, go there out of season, settle in for the autumn and winterf" After her murder, conflicting reports emerged about the stability of the du Plantiers' marriage.

Her parents were upset after their daughter's husband remarried and had a child only months after Sophie's murder.

Marguerite says now: "I was shocked, but he [Daniel] is a man who could not live on his own.

I know he was really unhappy after Sophie's death. He was detached from Sophie's family but step by step he came to see us. Finally, after some delay, he came to Ireland to see Sophie's home there and said that we were right to try to convince him to share in this part of her memory."

Daniel Toscan du Plantier died suddenly of a heart attack during the Berlin Festival in February 2003.

Sophie's parents take some solace from the love that Sophie's son Pierre-Louis has developed for his mother's Irish home.

"He always showed a lot of courage. He does not show his pain. Both of his grandparents tried to protect him from the terrible events of his mother's murder. Now he does not follow the case in the way that we would, but he loves to come to Ireland to his mother's house. He says that it is like meeting his mother again."

Asked whether she believes that anyone will ever be charged with Sophie's murder, Marguerite says she remains hopeful. "But hope is fading. It is 10 years and the killer still walks free in Ireland."

McANDREW INVESTIGATION DOSSIER The 'Sunday Tribune' has learned that the McAndrew investigation team has heard allegations that members of the gardai allegedly made direct threats against Ian Bailey's life.

>> A member of the force threatened Bailey with a 'silver bullet' and told him that he would be got dead on a roadside, it has been claimed.

>> McAndrew's team is investigating a claim that an unnamed third party was allegedly offered a quantity of cash and drugs in a bid to gain his assistance in obtaining information on Ian Bailey.

>> The new probe has access to documentary evidence from a third party that allegedly supports Ian Bailey's version of the infamous 'taping incident'.

>> There are claims that Bailey was physically and psychologically abused during the investigation.

>> Marie Farrell's claims of intimidation at the hands of Bailey are allegedly discounted by a separate source.

The dramatic new allegations are expected to have major consequences for An Garda Siochana.