Gardaí will prepare a file for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) when they receive results of DNA tests by Irish scientists on various exhibits from the Sophie Toscan du Plantier murder investigation.
According to sources close to the Garda Serious Crime Review team examining Ms Toscan du Plantier’s murder in west Cork in 1996, results from the Forensic Science Ireland (FSI) laboratory in Co Kildare are still awaited.
Gardaí hired American company, M Vac Systems, to come to Ireland to see if its advanced DNA collection system could find any DNA traces that might enable them to identify Ms Toscan du Plantier’s killer.
Ms Toscan du Plantier had been bludgeoned to death with a rock and a concrete block.
M Vac chief executive Jared Bradley travelled to Dublin in July with forensic scientist Suzanna Ryan, who used the DNA technology to examine various exhibits including clothing and the rock and concrete block.
The process involves applying a wet solution to exhibits and then vacuuming up the solution along with any dislodged DNA samples.
When the results are delivered, the cold case investigation team will follow standard procedure and prepare a file for the DPP.
“This is going to be kept very tight, but it will just be like any other case where gardaí get back DNA results from FSI – the results will be included in the file that will be sent to the DPP and the DPP will make a decision then on the evidence that gardaí have gathered for the file,” a source said.
“There’s been a lot of media reports recently that Sophie’s killer’s DNA has been found, but the cold case team have yet to hear back from FSI and they are happy to let them go about their work and they’re not into speculating on anything until they receive results from the scientists.”
Another source close to the investigation said the M Vac technology may turn up nothing other that Ms Toscan du Plantier’s own DNA, or it might return several DNA profiles.
“It’s quite possible they draw a blank, but equally it might return two or three samples – the concrete block had been used to build a pump house, so it might well yield some skin cells from whoever built the pump house or maybe from the scenes-of-crime examiners who removed it,” the source said.
“The exhibits were also examined by a French forensic team in 2011 so it might well return something that turns out to be from someone on the French team – they just don’t know at this stage, and if there is one thing gardaí in this case have learned, it’s to be patient.”