IAN BAILEY says he would have been able to clear his name had it not been for corruption within gardaí.
The self-confessed prime suspect for the murder of French filmmaker Sophie Toscan du Plantier sat down with Virgin Media's Colette Fitzpatrick for an interview which aired on Irish television on Monday night.
Bailey professed his innocence and suggested that Garda members made "deliberate mistakes" in order to smear him and make him out to be the killer.
"From day one, there was man in charge of liaising between the Irish authorities and the French, he told them from the get-go, 'don't worry we know who [the murderer] is," Bailey said.
Colette quickly interjected saying that there was no evidence of gardaí corruption during the investigation, in spite of a few mistakes.
"Mistakes made in a case are mistakes made in a case, they don't mean anything other than that," she said.
Bailey replied: "Well unless they're deliberately made.
"We know that a lot of evidence, a lot of statements, original statements which would have probably helped to clear me, went missing," he added.
Ms Toscan du Plantier was killed outside her home near Schull, Co. Cork in December 1996.
Bailey, who lived a stone's throw away from her house at the time, was arrested twice by gardaí in the months following but was never officially charged.
He has consistently claimed that authorities in Ireland had it out for him from the start and were keen to pin the crime on him regardless, but there is no evidence for this.
During his interview with Virgin Media, Bailey claimed that he had a theory that Sophie's real killer died a long time ago, and was "someone from Bantry," but admitted he had little evidence to prove this.
