THE family of murdered Frenchwoman Sophie Toscan du Plantier said they remain optimistic and will fight for the truth, as the anniversary of her death approaches.

The 39-year-old film producer was found dead in the laneway leading to her holiday home in Schull on December 23rd 1996.

A memorial notice by her family will honour her spirit, which goes on, 29 years after her brutal death.

The notice, which will appear in next week’s edition of The Southern Star, contains a quotation by the French author and philosopher Albert Camus, as well as the French poet René Char.

Sophie’s uncle, Jean-Pierre Gazeau said the René Char quote is: ‘The vision I have of Sophie before she went to her fate because she wasn’t afraid. She had the kind of character that wanted to move forward without fear.’

In relation to the Camus quote, he said: ‘I think about her life as something that never stopped. It’s not because someone passes away that the person completely disappears.

‘Sophie was extremely lively when she was in Ireland. She went there to find some rest and to think about what she was interested in doing in future. The projects she had are still here, and the character of Sophie is still here.’

As a founder of the Association for Truth and Justice for Sophie Toscan du Plantier, Jean-Pierre said the family’s message going into this, the 30th year of her passing, is one of patience.

‘We have to be patient, but we are optimistic because otherwise the objective of the association would be a nonsense,’ he said. ‘We are fighting for the truth essentially.

‘We can say we have had justice already in France, but not completely because the person who was convicted in France passed away almost two years ago.’

Ian Bailey, who died in January 2024​, had twice been arrested in Ireland and questioned in relation to the murder, but he was never charged and he always maintained his innocence despite being convicted of murder in absentia in France.

‘We don’t have the full truth,’ said Mr Gazeau, ‘because we don’t know exactly what happened between 10.30pm on Sunday December 22nd 1996 and 10.30am on Monday December 23rd.

‘We want to know the truth. We hope that in Ireland we will reach, eventually, the truth through the work of the cold case team and the investigation team, in Bantry and Dublin.’

It was Sophie’s son Pierre-Louis Baudey-Vignaud who called for a cold case review of the case, so that the case would not be allowed to fade from public view.

Sophie’s uncle said he understands the level of work that is going into the cold case review and expressed the family’s trust in the process.

He acknowledged that people in Ireland and France have expressed frustration in relation to the delay in releasing information about the special DNA testing carried out on the murder weapon, a concrete block, but he said he understands that this is ‘a complex process’.

And he likened the family’s hope for a win, a definitive result, as being ‘like a lottery’.