GARDAI believe the French television producer murdered in west Cork before Christmas may have known her killer. There were no signs of a break in at her luxury holiday home. She had been in bed shortly before her violent death.
The parents of Ms Sophie Toscan du Plantier (38) accompanied her body to Dublin yesterday, from where it was flown to Paris for burial.
Her husband, Mr Daniel Toscan du Plantier (55), a prominent French film producer, has been in contact with gardai from his home in Toulouse and promised any help he can give in finding his wife's killer.
Gardai from the technical bureau in Dublin have been combing the five bedroomed house about three miles from Schull for clues.
They are searching the house and grounds for the murder weapon which they believe was a heavy instrument with a blunt edge used to batter the woman, first in the house and later as she ran outside for help.
They think she fell in the boreen and, after trying to protect herself, her attacker dropped a heavy object, such as a stone or a concrete block, on her head.
A trail of blood led from the house where the attack began to where the body was found by a neighbour on Monday morning.
There was a clump of hair in the dead woman's fist which gardai hope will help identify her murderer. She had not been sexually assaulted.
While people in the area reported seeing her alone from the time she arrived in Cork on December 20th, gardai have not ruled out that she may have met someone in west Cork who had arranged to stay in the holiday home with her.
Supt J.P. Twomey of Bantry Garda Station said she was in nightwear when discovered and her bed had been slept in.
She may have let someone into the house after she retired for the night or that person may have been in the house with her already. Two empty wine glasses were found on a table.
Gardai are checking ferry and flight passengers who may have arrived in Ireland at the same time as Ms Toscan du Plantier and those who left on Monday, the day her body was discovered. They are also checking cars hired in the area.
House to house investigations are under way and gardai hope to assemble a picture of the woman's final hours. The neighbours who found the body did not hear any disturbance on the night of her death.
She had an open ticket and seemed unsure when she would return to Paris, where she has a 15 year old son by her first marriage. Her neighbours understood she was to spend Christmas Day with them, but she told others she was due to leave Ireland on Christmas Eve.
Ms Toscan du Plantier drove to Crookhaven last Saturday to visit the O'Sullivan family and had a cup of tea with them in their pub. Mrs Angela O'Sullivan said yesterday she seemed in good form.
"She told my son she was returning to France after Christmas but a few minutes later told my husband she was going back on Christmas Eve when we invited her over for drinks," she said.
Her son and one of his friends occasionally came with her to Ireland and her parents accompanied her sometimes to the house she bought five years ago. While she was reported to be estranged from her second husband, they were on good terms but he had not been to Ireland with her recently.
Mr du Plantier heard the news of his wife's death from French radio when he was spending Christmas in his house in Toulouse with friends, including the chairman of Channel Arte, the French cultural television station for which Sophie worked.
He is chairman of d'uni France, Film which promotes French films internationally, and the couple met eight years ago at the Cannes Film Festival when he was director of a large chain of cinemas.
He has produced a number of French films, including works on Don Giovanni and the Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh. Sophie was his third wife. He is divorced from the French actress, Marie Christine Barrault.
Ms Toscan du Plantier produced programmes for Channel Arte, including a documentary on the state of the film industry in Europe and one on primitive African art, which she admired.
The murder received only cursory coverage in the French media this week. About the only point made by the French media has been Garda shock at the brutality of the murder in a country where such violent crime is a rarity.