Jeremy Bamber

[Dark Knight]

What forensic evidence do you think would have been crucial in this case?

Hoots

I want to know if such forensic evidence exists. Does it? Does anybody know? It's a relevant question and literally NOBODY else has picked up on this point.

It's a case of seeing what is not there, as well as what is. The dog that doesn't bark.

If such forensic evidence doesn't exist, then the Crown's case fails on a 'reasonable doubt' basis. (Which is not to say Bamber is innocent, only that the case isn't proved).

This is because in order to plan a murder-suicide, Bamber would have had to do the following:

- kill Sheila first before anybody else;
- kill Sheila while she was in a state of rest, i.e. lying down in her bed or propped up in bed, or something similar;
- which means he had to kill Sheila in her own room, the second bedroom;
- which means at some point (after killing everybody else - the order of killing for the rest doesn't matter), he then had to move Sheila's body from the second bedroom to the master bedroom.

It follows from all this that if Bamber had failed to catch Sheila in her bedroom first, and in just the right way, his whole plan unravels as he cannot execute a staged murder-suicide.

Think that point through before commenting, and you'll realise it makes sense.

It also follows that for the case against Bamber to stand up, there would need to be forensic support for him (or someone else) killing Sheila in the second bedroom while she was in bed or sitting up, then moving the body from the second bedroom to the master bedroom.

Without this, the case against Bamber collapses like a deck of cards.

I am not here pursuing a self-serving 'narrative of impossibility'. If - if - there is forensic evidence along the lines requested, then the point is satisfied and the Crown's case stands up on this aspect. That is perfectly possible, and we had a police investigation, so let's see the evidence.

Where is it, please? If it exists, then fine. Let's have a link to it.

There is, to be fair to the Crown and the Red side, an alternative possibility, and this is where we get into theorising about how Bamber actually did it. I think it likely he did. Here I will outline what I think most likely happened:

(i). Bamber doesn't plan out the murder-suicide thoroughly, he just has the vague idea that due to Sheila's psychosis, he can put the rifle next to her body, or something along those lines, and people will believe she shot everybody. Therefore, he doesn't realise that he needs to kill her first for it to 'work'.

(ii). Bamber goes ahead and kills them in whatever order. If there isn't the forensic evidence I request above, then we know that Sheila can't have been first.

(iii). Probably what happens is that Sheila runs into the master bedroom, either fleeing Bamber or just out of some sort of general confusion. Bamber kills her. Maybe Sheila knows the twins are dead and she agrees to be killed - I find that plausible. Or, Bamber just shoots her in the neck, or whatever. The forensics can be argued over. There and then, Bamber hits on the idea of a more complex staging. Instead of just leaving the rifle by her body, or whatever he was going to do, he brings the Bible into it and starts faffing around to create a scene he thinks is more convincing.

(iv). Crucially, I don't believe Bamber used the moderator or any moderator. Again, if you think about it carefully, the moderator is a red herring. You have to think about what a moderator actually is. He didn't need to use the moderator to commit the crime. You also have consider the circumstances in which the moderator was found. I see a scenario in which the family figure out that Bamber has 'done it'. It's intuitively obvious that Bamber is a guilty man (I share Colin Caffell's view - "He did it, didn't he"). Also crucially, the family quickly realise that Bamber knows that the family know, so they decide to act and fabricate the moderator evidence.

(v). Coupled with this, you have a police officer who is acting on his detective instincts (which are most likely correct in this case) and is now gung-ho against Bamber and the evidence falls into his lap. Is he going to turn it down or raise sceptical questions about it? Really?

(vi). The next red herring is Julie Mugford. Her evidence is irrelevant and the critical parts of it are hearsay in any case. She was brought into the case to emotionally sway the jury, not because her evidence proves anything one way or the other.

That's an outline of my thoughts. There are other points I could make. Suffice it to say that if, in the absence of proper forensic evidence from the hallway and second bedroom, the Reds have to rely on the alternate scenario above, then I think the Crown's case is in trouble because of the difficulty for Bamber in killing Sheila in the right way, inflicting just the right trauma on her body. I accept it's plausible that, knowing her sons were dead, she could have co-operated and lied down for Bamber, either on the master bed or on the floor (depending on where the body was found), or Bamber could have shot her in just the right way while she was standing up. But the problem the Crown have is that, while it's plausible, it doesn't seem very likely - which is a way of saying that my inclination towards Bamber's guilt is intuitive rather than rational. Like Colin Caffell, I 'know' he did it. But I can't quite explain why - and that's not good enough to keep a man in prison. Sorry.

I welcome thoughtful and polite responses, especially if you can provide me with the link requested.

 

[Dark Knight]

ADDENDUM to the above:

Forgive me, I know this amounts to stating the obvious, but in the context of a 'moderator fabrication conspiracy', it bears repeating.

It's important to amplify a crucial point about the moderator: that it shifts suspicion away from Sheila. That seemingly basic and obvious point cannot be emphasised enough. That's why it's so obvious that it was planted as a carefully-crafted red herring.

But it doesn't follow Bamber is innocent. I think it likely that Bamber is the killer, and that being the case, I have the following further general observations:

A moderator is not, per se, a 'silencer' or even a muffler. It merely alters sound for the purpose of tracking/hunting.

Bamber didn't need the moderator to carry out these killings. Indeed, the absence of a way to achieve complete stealth may explain some of the other evidence, such as the assaults on Nevill.

If I'm wrong and Bamber did find a use for the moderator, it is very unlikely Bamber would have left the moderator at the property. He had no reason to do so. If he did use the moderator, it made more sense to take it with him, bury it and deny knowledge of its whereabouts or existence. Who could have gainsayed him? Even if the absence of corresponding moderators for guns had aroused suspicion, the police initiative against Bamber would have been greatly weakened. Instead, we are asked to believe that he killed his entire family, then calmly returned the moderator to its proper place like a fussing housewife.

No. That moderator is planted evidence.

 

[TomG]

Not sure about the claim about it being impossible to communicate coherently over the phone either. Without searching back I understand that Neville was reported to have said that Sheila was going crazy, not necessarily that he had been shot at the time. He responds by going upstairs when he hears gunfire and comes under fire on the stairs and retreats back to the kitchen. I recall there was a scratch under the ledge above the stove that the Crown said was the result of the rifle being swung which was of particular interest to me as the scratch began at the edge of the corner about the stove where it reached the wall. It's fairly plain that something swung in an arc ( a rifle barrel) would be prevented by the 'arc' from scratching at the corner edge or for any distance along a flat surface. In fact it's an impossibility. I also remember reading the pathologist's report about Sheila's first wound where he (think it was Bernard Knight) concluded that the wound having 'nicked' (from memory) an artery would not have been immediately fatal.
I also remember an impressive reconstruction of the stair way by a person in the guilty camp which was very helpful. It allowed an explanation that Neville had not been in the room when shot, and therefore had not run into gunfire, but by the trajectory had been turned away by gunfire from the top of the stairs. If a person would indeed run into gunfire in a small area they immediately have the chance to disarm, or at least grapple with the shooter, than run the further risk being shot again running away.

The quote "‘Someone shot in the jaw would not be able to talk. The idea of him making the call to Jeremy after that doesn’t work at all.’ comes from Vanezis himself for Carol Anne Lee's Book on the case. It's been a while since I read the book but he doesn't account for the possibility that Nevill was shot in retribution for getting the calls away. I don't know why Venezis or the author failed to accommodate that possible eventuality.

I'm not entirely convinced that the moderator (the one with the paint on the end) had anything to do with the crime. The scratches could have been made by either of the twins being mischievous and scratching the Aga paintwork with the silencer out of boredom, prior to the crime being committed. There is no evidence to suggest that all of the scratches were made at the same time. On the other hand there is significant evidence that the painted surround hadn't been scratched when the original photographs were taken according to photographic expert Peter Sutherst.

As far as I know there is no evidence that Nevill was in the main bedroom when June was initially shot. IMO Sheila shot the twins first because she thought they were being taken away from her or perhaps for more delusional psychiatric reasons. Nevill was shot in the mouth and jaw when he came back into the main bedroom.

Hoots

 

[TomG]

Then my point about you earlier is confirmed. Your position in the case serves your emotional needs. You are free to be irrational, it's your right, but I don't want to discuss the case on that basis, so in a sense I'm 'turning my nose up' at you.

There's nothing in my post that is remotely emotional. Carol Anne Lee's book is very thorough in documenting both Jeremy and Sheila's upbringings. They compare JB's undoubted delinquency against Sheila's psychiatric issues. I merely evaluated that Sheila was the likelier of the two to commit the murder.

Hoots

 

[Samson]

The quote "‘Someone shot in the jaw would not be able to talk. The idea of him making the call to Jeremy after that doesn’t work at all.’ comes from Vanezis himself for Carol Anne Lee's Book on the case. It's been a while since I read the book but he doesn't account for the possibility that Nevill was shot in retribution for getting the calls away. I don't know why Venezis or the author failed to accommodate that possible eventuality.

I'm not entirely convinced that the moderator (the one with the paint on the end) had anything to do with the crime. The scratches could have been made by either of the twins being mischievous and scratching the Aga paintwork with the silencer out of boredom, prior to the crime being committed. There is no evidence to suggest that all of the scratches were made at the same time. On the other hand there is significant evidence that the painted surround hadn't been scratched when the original photographs were taken according to photographic expert Peter Sutherst.

As far as I know there is no evidence that Nevill was in the main bedroom when June was initially shot. IMO Sheila shot the twins first because she thought they were being taken away from her or perhaps for more delusional psychiatric reasons. Nevill was shot in the mouth and jaw when he came back into the main bedroom.

Hoots

I am perfectly sure for a lot of reasons June was shot first.
Sheila made a noise with buckets downstairs alerting Neville to investigate. The row over custody continued, Sheila grabbed the gun left loaded by Jeremy, and Neville phoned Jeremy, then dropped the phone when he heard gunshots upstairs. This was a catastrophic event, entirely unpredictable.

 

[TomG]

I am perfectly sure for a lot of reasons June was shot first.
Sheila made a noise with buckets downstairs alerting Neville to investigate. The row over custody continued, Sheila grabbed the gun left loaded by Jeremy, and Neville phoned Jeremy, then dropped the phone when he heard gunshots upstairs. This was a catastrophic event, entirely unpredictable.

I've tried to invite myself into the mindset of Sheila that night to figure out what she might have done. I think the twins were shot first since they were the source of the row with Sheila's motive being if I can't have them no-one is going to have them. They may have only shared 3 or 4 shots at first but Sheila initially thought they were dead. Nevill hears the commotion and goes downstairs to get help while June tries to reason with Sheila in the main bedroom. June says something stupid like "you'll go to Hell if you've harmed any of these children". Sheila responds by saying "if I'm going to hell, you're coming with me and fires around 3 or 4 shots into June as she lies in bed. Sheila may still have a couple of rounds in the magazine when she goes downstairs to confront Nevill. Nevill may have sustained one of the wounds to the upper arm or shoulder at this point with the last bullet in the magazine.

Neville goes upstairs to check on June and the twins while Sheila reloads. Everyone is now debilitated having receieved GSW's from the first magazine. Sheila goes upstairs with the magazine reloaded and confronts Nevill where he is attending to June in the main bedroom. Nevill tries to reason with her by telling her that he's phoned to get help for all of them. "So you've been shooting your mouth off have you? "You won't be doing that again" says Sheila who then dispatches two shots into Nevill's mouth and jaw. Nevill flees downstairs to the kitchen where he sustains the rest of his GSWs and bruising. Sheila goes back upstairs having reloaded a third time and finishes off June who has been able to get up and has managed to get to her feet for a short time before collapsing. Sheila finishes her off with a shot between the eyes. Sheila then finishes off the twins with the remaining bullets in the magazine.

Sheila wants to kill herself and go with the twins but she is aware that the gun is severely limited in its ability to kill efficiently, so she completely deranged by that point. The person that the cops were talking to "from inside the farm" was Sheila.

 

[TomG]

I want to know if such forensic evidence exists. Does it? Does anybody know? It's a relevant question and literally NOBODY else has picked up on this point.

It's a case of seeing what is not there, as well as what is. The dog that doesn't bark.

If such forensic evidence doesn't exist, then the Crown's case fails on a 'reasonable doubt' basis. (Which is not to say Bamber is innocent, only that the case isn't proved).

This is because in order to plan a murder-suicide, Bamber would have had to do the following:

- kill Sheila first before anybody else;
- kill Sheila while she was in a state of rest, i.e. lying down in her bed or propped up in bed, or something similar;
- which means he had to kill Sheila in her own room, the second bedroom;
- which means at some point (after killing everybody else - the order of killing for the rest doesn't matter), he then had to move Sheila's body from the second bedroom to the master bedroom.

It follows from all this that if Bamber had failed to catch Sheila in her bedroom first, and in just the right way, his whole plan unravels as he cannot execute a staged murder-suicide.

Think that point through before commenting, and you'll realise it makes sense.

I agree with what you are saying up to this point. JB has to shoot Sheila first if he's going to make it a murder/suicide. He has to shoot her in the neck into her head (where else?) for it to work. JB is also severely limited by his choice of weapon since the Anshutz 0.22 rifle and low velocity amunition only claims "stopping power" in the case of vermin, according to the Eley website. He also knows he has to kill her with one shot, any more is bound to be questionable. He also has to creep in through the bathroom window without alerting either of the dogs or the light-sleeping Nevill before he even gets that far.

If JB was the killer he obviously didn't get the opportunity to Kill Sheila in her bed with one shot, it means that Sheila was up and moving around the house, so what was Sheila doing all the time when the rest of the family were being slaughtered, and why didn't she sustain the same number of GSW's as the rest of the family? Why is there no evidence that tried to protect her children? All of this means that there must have been some degree of compliance from Sheila. Since the opportunity to kill Sheila in her bed was missed it now means that JB must have her compliance in her own murder/suicide. That's where it all falls apart for me. Sheila's compliant death-cum-suicide is more of a convenient outcome for the pro-guilt community rather than a logical one.

As far as forensics go, WHF was not considered to be a crime scene at initially. There had been dozens of cops and various others tramping in and out of the building, the carpets were all ripped out and burned so there was precious little to investigate since so much evidence had been destroyed or dispersed by the time the cops had considered the deaths to be murders. DNA profiling was in its infancy at the time but so what? DNA traces cannot be dated; therefore, JB's DNA on any given surface would have had no relevance.

Hoots

 

[Samson]

I agree with what you are saying up to this point. JB has to shoot Sheila first if he's going to make it a murder/suicide. He has to shoot her in the neck into her head (where else?) for it to work. JB is also severely limited by his choice of weapon since the Anshutz 0.22 rifle and low velocity amunition only claims "stopping power" in the case of vermin, according to the Eley website. He also knows he has to kill her with one shot, any more is bound to be questionable. He also has to creep in through the bathroom window without alerting either of the dogs or the light-sleeping Nevill before he even gets that far.

If JB was the killer he obviously didn't get the opportunity to Kill Sheila in her bed with one shot, it means that Sheila was up and moving around the house, so what was Sheila doing all the time when the rest of the family were being slaughtered, and why didn't she sustain the same number of GSW's as the rest of the family? Why is there no evidence that tried to protect her children? All of this means that there must have been some degree of compliance from Sheila. Since the opportunity to kill Sheila in her bed was missed it now means that JB must have her compliance in her own murder/suicide. That's where it all falls apart for me. Sheila's compliant death-cum-suicide is more of a convenient outcome for the pro-guilt community rather than a logical one.

As far as forensics go, WHF was not considered to be a crime scene at initially. There had been dozens of cops and various others tramping in and out of the building, the carpets were all ripped out and burned so there was precious little to investigate since so much evidence had been destroyed or dispersed by the time the cops had considered the deaths to be murders. DNA profiling was in its infancy at the time but so what? DNA traces cannot be dated; therefore, JB's DNA on any given surface would have had no relevance.

Hoots

I just hope a few posters return to answer these issues, Obviously anyone shooting up in a house can expect everyone to wake up. I would. Given that expectation Jeremy is not a candidate, so as everyone agrees, it is the other suspect. And Sheila would expect Neville to wake and potentially overpower her if she shot a plethora of bullets into the brains of her twins first, which seems the obvious answer to any suggestion she killed them first Tom.

 

[Samson]

Sleep.

Infants’ and children’s cycles contain a relatively large amount of slow-wave (N3) sleep—the non-dreaming, restorative kind that is also known as deep sleep.

http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/science/variations/changes-in-sleep-with-age

Here we can conclude that the twins could sleep through the gunfire, and clearly did.
The first two volleys occurred in rapid succession, severely disabling first June, then Neville. The twins slept through or could never have been in their found positions.
It does not change a great deal figuring when Sheila killed them, but it appears she killed herself when the house was surrounded. Given that the incident was unplanned, it would take a huge amount of fortitude and probably occurred when it seemed the only way out at a late stage, hence the wet blood.
This is how Robin Bain finished after shooting his family, at the last minute.

 

[TomG]

Sleep.

Infants’ and children’s cycles contain a relatively large amount of slow-wave (N3) sleep—the non-dreaming, restorative kind that is also known as deep sleep.

http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/science/variations/changes-in-sleep-with-age

Here we can conclude that the twins could sleep through the gunfire, and clearly did.
The first two volleys occurred in rapid succession, severely disabling first June, then Neville. The twins slept through or could never have been in their found positions.
It does not change a great deal figuring when Sheila killed them, but it appears she killed herself when the house was surrounded. Given that the incident was unplanned, it would take a huge amount of fortitude and probably occurred when it seemed the only way out at a late stage, hence the wet blood.
This is how Robin Bain finished after shooting his family, at the last minute.

Hmmm! I'm finding it difficult following your train of thought. If Sheila shot June first you'd have to ask why? It seems that June was the one that Sheila was trying to take the twins away from her and put them up for adoption. If that were the case I'd agree with you but, then why kill the twins at all, if they were so precious to Sheila? There is no evidence that Nevill was in bed at all when June was first shot. All the empty shell casings were at her side of the bed. There was no evidence that Nevill was even in the main bedroom WHEN June was shot.

Hoots

 

[Samson]

I can't solve motive, not a shrink, but the crime scene is clear. It is common ground there were either 4 people or 5 in the house when the shooting began. June and the twins were shot in their beds, Neville was not.
Only the twins could be assumed to sleep through and the evidence gets us there.
It looks uncommonly straightforward to run with the first and obvious solution as I have outlined, Sheila and Neville are downstairs, the gun is preloaded by Jeremy, ( an unfortunate circumstance which is a necessary pre condition for the massacre), and then
1. She shoots June in bed
2. She shoots Neville as he responds by coming up the stairs.
3. With two dead bodies she thinks of the world outside, her future, and the twins' future.

Her solution is to shoot the twins who do not suffer, then herself.

The strangest thing in all this is that no one on this forum seems to care about this prodigious injustice, and even normally smart posters see a ridiculous and impossible narrative. I am just a New Zealander, but there are a host of Brits here I thought would be concerned at the acts of the police, the judiciary, the home office, and Bamber's appalling relatives.

 

[Dark Knight]

I agree with what you are saying up to this point. JB has to shoot Sheila first if he's going to make it a murder/suicide. He has to shoot her in the neck into her head (where else?) for it to work. JB is also severely limited by his choice of weapon since the Anshutz 0.22 rifle and low velocity amunition only claims "stopping power" in the case of vermin, according to the Eley website. He also knows he has to kill her with one shot, any more is bound to be questionable. He also has to creep in through the bathroom window without alerting either of the dogs or the light-sleeping Nevill before he even gets that far.

If JB was the killer he obviously didn't get the opportunity to Kill Sheila in her bed with one shot,

That is not the question, though.

The question is: Could Jeremy have killed Sheila in her bed? The answer is clearly yes. The problem here is not impossibility. Clearly, the Crown's theory is possible. Jeremy could have done this with or without waking Nevill, and the fight with Nevill could have happened because he woke Nevill while carrying out the necessary first killing.

The question here is actually whether there is sufficient evidence. Jeremy could have killed Sheila in this way, perhaps also messing up the first shot and having to fire again, or the rifle could have gone off accidentally, or whatever. But that scenario has to be supported by a key piece of evidence: which is evidence that Sheila's body was moved from the second bedroom to the master bedroom.

Where is the evidence for this? Without that evidence, the Crown's case falls apart.

it means that Sheila was up and moving around the house, so what was Sheila doing all the time when the rest of the family were being slaughtered, and why didn't she sustain the same number of GSW's as the rest of the family? Why is there no evidence that tried to protect her children? All of this means that there must have been some degree of compliance from Sheila. Since the opportunity to kill Sheila in her bed was missed it now means that JB must have her compliance in her own murder/suicide. That's where it all falls apart for me. Sheila's compliant death-cum-suicide is more of a convenient outcome for the pro-guilt community rather than a logical one.

We don't know that she was moving around, but we don't know Jeremy was either. For me, it's about evidence or lack thereof.

To be fair to the Crown and the 'Red' team, it is actually quite plausible that Sheila complied with Jeremy and allowed herself to be killed in the way he directed for her. This would be under circumstances where Sheila realised that Jeremy had already killed her biological children and her adopted parents. For a woman like Sheila, she would have nothing to live for at that point, so in a sense Jeremy's murder of her would indeed be a real 'murder-suicide', just one assisted by Jeremy.

Also, bear in mind when discussing this point that we do not know for sure how Sheila was found. Essex Police did move her and we can't rely on what they say about it. Probably Jeremy shot her on the bed, not on the floor. She may have been sitting up.

As far as forensics go, WHF was not considered to be a crime scene at initially. There had been dozens of cops and various others tramping in and out of the building, the carpets were all ripped out and burned so there was precious little to investigate since so much evidence had been destroyed or dispersed by the time the cops had considered the deaths to be murders. DNA profiling was in its infancy at the time but so what? DNA traces cannot be dated; therefore, JB's DNA on any given surface would have had no relevance.

Hoots

You may have misunderstood me. I am not concerned here with Jeremy's forensics. My question here is about forensic evidence for moving the body.

To recap, in order for Jeremy to be the killer based on the Crown's case, it is probable (I would say, close to certain) that he would have to:

- kill Sheila first;
- kill Sheila in her own bed, while she was in a lying or slightly sitting-up position or something similar.

This is because he needed to inflict trauma on Sheila's body of a particular kind in a particular way. He would then have had to move her body to the master bedroom. The reason he needed to do this was because if he tried to stage the murder-suicide in the second bedroom, that looks suspect, but her body in the master bedroom looks highly plausible.

So where is the forensic evidence of the body being moved?

You seem to be saying that there was no such forensic evidence, and it may have not been looked for or even thought of. But I want to know for sure what was and wasn't done. Is there such evidence or not?

Let us say you are right and there isn't such evidence in existence, then I do not understand how an intelligent jury could have convicted him. Yes, I think he did it, but that's not the point. The case must be proved to the legal standard and it wasn't.

Now let me tell you why, despite the above, instinctively I 'know' Jeremy did it. None of what follows proves Jeremy did it or justifies decades in prison, but it is enough to tell me that more likely than not, he is the killer:

(i). Jeremy made a small but very telling and important error in his staging of Sheila's suicide. It's one of two critical errors that gives the game away. Let's say Sheila was the culprit, she would not have laid down and shot herself in the master bedroom. She would have shot herself with the twins. She would want to be with her boys, not with June. The reason this mistake of Jeremy's is an obvious give-away is that, if you stop and think about it, moving Sheila to the master bedroom would make more sense than moving her to the twins' room, as the master bedroom is nearer, thus an easier location with less forensic risk.

(ii). The second error Jeremy makes is to shoot Sheila twice. Probably this was accidental on his part, but another thought hit me: what if this whole thing began as a genuine accident, or even a genuine failed suicide attempt by Sheila? Either could have occurred with Jeremy present, and in that scenario, he came up with the whole scheme there and then. I've mentally parked that thought. Whatever happened, two shots make a real suicide improbable (though, admittedly, not impossible). It is the one point that really shifts the spotlight to Jeremy. Essentially, it looks like he bungled it and I think the most likely explanation is that he didn't think through the murder scheme with enough sophistication, he just came into it with this vague notion that he could kill them all in whatever order and then leave the rifle by Sheila's body, maybe winning her compliance for the fatal shots due to her being in a demoralised state when she realised her twins were dead and she had nothing to live for.

(iii). Let's look at the phone calls. I consider the idea of Nevill calling Jeremy rather than the police quite plausible. This was 1980s rural Essex and a local Magistrate may well have wanted to keep hush-hush a violent psychotic episode involving his adopted daughter, who - at that juncture - might not yet have harmed anybody in the house, at least to Nevill's knowledge. Remember this was a family who were very familiar and comfortable with guns. Calling the police immediately would not necessarily follow. Indeed, the more I think it over, the more the idea of dialling 999 actually sounds unlikely, even far-fetched. I can see that Nevill would not have done that. To that extent, Jeremy's cover is plausible. But here's the problem: it was the middle of the night. How did Nevill know that Jeremy would be awake? OK, OK, maybe Nevill called him in the hope of waking him up. Maybe they'd had calls at that hour before. Etc., etc. You could construct a plausible rationalisation for it. So why didn't Jeremy do so? Here's the follow-on problem: Jeremy, when he received this phone call from Nevill, was either awake but in bed or bolted awake and quickly answered it. Is this likely? It is certainly possible, and Nevill could have been on the line listening to it ring for a long time, but remember that Sheila is supposedly running round with a gun. Maybe Sheila and Nevill are both in the kitchen in a stand-off posture at this point and Nevill is letting it ring while trying to calm her down. But for me, it all just doesn't seem very likely. The scenario has too many intuitive holes. It seems more likely than not to me that Jeremy did not receive that call and he is making the whole thing up.

 

[Dark Knight]

While thinking about this case just now, I had a look at this recent Guardian article:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...ek-review-of-cps-refusal-to-disclose-evidence

It contains this paragraph:

"In 2018 the Guardian revealed that a week before the trial, the head of biology at Huntingdon Forensic Science Laboratories wrote to Essex police saying the blood on the silencer “could have come from Sheila Caffell or Robert Boutflour”, another relative. That letter was not disclosed to the defence."

Edited by jsfisher: 

Quote tags edited for correct syntax.

...snip...

Edited by jsfisher: 

Edited for compliance with Rule 10 of the Membership Agreement.

 

[TomG]

I can't solve motive, not a shrink, but the crime scene is clear. It is common ground there were either 4 people or 5 in the house when the shooting began. June and the twins were shot in their beds, Neville was not.
Only the twins could be assumed to sleep through and the evidence gets us there.
It looks uncommonly straightforward to run with the first and obvious solution as I have outlined, Sheila and Neville are downstairs, the gun is preloaded by Jeremy, ( an unfortunate circumstance which is a necessary pre condition for the massacre), and then
1. She shoots June in bed
2. She shoots Neville as he responds by coming up the stairs.
3. With two dead bodies she thinks of the world outside, her future, and the twins' future.

Her solution is to shoot the twins who do not suffer, then herself.

The strangest thing in all this is that no one on this forum seems to care about this prodigious injustice, and even normally smart posters see a ridiculous and impossible narrative. I am just a New Zealander, but there are a host of Brits here I thought would be concerned at the acts of the police, the judiciary, the home office, and Bamber's appalling relatives.

First of all there's nothing "clear" about the crime scene. What were Sheila and Nevill doing downstairs? I know that the noise of the gun wasn't particularly loud but when adults are shot multiple times it's unlikely that they would do so quietly. There was probably a lot of shouting, wailing, crying and pleading going on. There is also the probability that once Nevill was aware that Sheila had the gun he would have tried to get the twins out of the house to safety though Sheila may have tried to block him from getting to the twins. There's not much difference between our narratives really, only the timing of the shooting of the twins. I'm not sure that the twins would have slept undisturbed through this mayhem.

I agree with most of your points regarding the actions of the police. The 1980's in particular was riddled with police incompetence and corruption with many innocent people ending up in prison as a result of police malpractice in high profile murders. I remember too that West Midlands Serious Crime Squad had to be totally disbanded in 1989 due to serious malpractice.

I've discussed the WHF killings on the blue forum a few years ago and I got the impression that the evidence of the paint on the moderator from the Aga surround made the conviction safe for many pro-guilt individuals. With this "convenient" ace card it meant that they would win the debate without offering any counter-argument and without having to think too much.

In my experience the pro-guilt stance doesn't involve too much thinking out the box, it just needs compliance with the existing cop narrative as a matter of convenience. When I suggested on the blue forum that Nevill had been shot in the mouth in retribution for using the phone it really upset some people since it was out of the box thinking to them, but in actual fact it was only a reasonable counter-argument from Vanezis' observation that Nevill couldn't have got calls away due to the wounds to his jaw and mouth.

You could argue that JB would never have used the Anschutz and low-velocity bullets for the murder since he would know that they were only intended to stop farm vermin. However, they would just argue that he wanted to make the murders look like mayhem in order to implicate Sheila and very nearly succeeded. I've argued that JB would have had to consider how he was going to get in the bathroom window without alerting either of the dogs. The counter argument is that's exactly what he did since the ensuing carnage proves the point. Again, no rational thinking is needed, just compliance with the cop narrative of events, and a self-righteous hatred of JB not as a killer but of his persona.

Hoots

 

[TomG]

(i). Jeremy made a small but very telling and important error in his staging of Sheila's suicide. It's one of two critical errors that gives the game away. Let's say Sheila was the culprit, she would not have laid down and shot herself in the master bedroom. She would have shot herself with the twins. She would want to be with her boys, not with June. The reason this mistake of Jeremy's is an obvious give-away is that, if you stop and think about it, moving Sheila to the master bedroom would make more sense than moving her to the twins' room, as the master bedroom is nearer, thus an easier location with less forensic risk.

I don't agree. First of all the anschutz 0.22 rifle with it's subsonic bullets were only designed to "have stopping power" for vermin. It's obvious that it took multiple shots to dispatch the twins as well as the adults; therefore the gun was woefully inefficient as killing weapon. This is evident in the kitchen with the die-hard Nevill refusing to die quite as intended even after be hit by multiple shots. By that time Sheila had dispatched everyone, eventually, she would have thought about suicide but with the gun being so inefficient she probably thought that she might only inflict a maiming wound to her brain that might not kill her outright. She would then be in no position to inflict a coup de grace.


Hoots

 

[Dark Knight]

I don't agree. First of all the anschutz 0.22 rifle with it's subsonic bullets were only designed to "have stopping power" for vermin. It's obvious that it took multiple shots to dispatch the twins as well as the adults; therefore the gun was woefully inefficient as killing weapon. This is evident in the kitchen with the die-hard Nevill refusing to die quite as intended even after be hit by multiple shots. By that time Sheila had dispatched everyone, eventually, she would have thought about suicide but with the gun being so inefficient she probably thought that she might only inflict a maiming wound to her brain that might not kill her outright. She would then be in no position to inflict a coup de grace.


Hoots

I don't understand what you're saying. If the rifle can kill, then it can kill. She just needed to point it at herself in the right way, bang, and she's dead.

 

[TomG]

I don't understand what you're saying. If the rifle can kill, then it can kill. She just needed to point it at herself in the right way, bang, and she's dead.

That's not what happened though is it? The gun and subsonic ammunition were manufactured with the intention of having stopping power with vermin. The ammunition wasn't even guaranteed to kill small animals such as foxes and badgers. How would Sheila know in her delirium what the right way was when it took her multiple shots to kill the rest of the family. None of them had suffered a coup de grace bullet wound through the neck into the head, even when they were totally debilitated? The bottom line is that the gun and ammo wasn't guaranteed to kill small animals outright with one shot far less humans.

https://eley.co.uk/eley-subsonic-hollow/

Hoots

 

[Dark Knight]

That's not what happened though is it? The gun and subsonic ammunition were manufactured with the intention of having stopping power with vermin. The ammunition wasn't even guaranteed to kill small animals such as foxes and badgers. How would Sheila know in her delirium what the right way was when it took her multiple shots to kill the rest of the family. None of them had suffered a coup de grace bullet wound through the neck into the head, even when they were totally debilitated? The bottom line is that the gun and ammo wasn't guaranteed to kill small animals outright with one shot far less humans.

https://eley.co.uk/eley-subsonic-hollow/

Hoots

How do you know that's not what happened? The rifle doesn't need to be a classic assassin's weapon to do what Sheila would need it to do if she was the culprit. She just points it at herself, bang, and she's probably dead. If she's still alive, she just points it at herself again, bang, and she's probably dead. Why would Sheila have thought about it beyond that?

 

[Dark Knight]

That is not the question, though.

The question is: Could Jeremy have killed Sheila in her bed? The answer is clearly yes. The problem here is not impossibility. Clearly, the Crown's theory is possible. Jeremy could have done this with or without waking Nevill, and the fight with Nevill could have happened because he woke Nevill while carrying out the necessary first killing.

The question here is actually whether there is sufficient evidence. Jeremy could have killed Sheila in this way, perhaps also messing up the first shot and having to fire again, or the rifle could have gone off accidentally, or whatever. But that scenario has to be supported by a key piece of evidence: which is evidence that Sheila's body was moved from the second bedroom to the master bedroom.

Where is the evidence for this? Without that evidence, the Crown's case falls apart.



We don't know that she was moving around, but we don't know Jeremy was either. For me, it's about evidence or lack thereof.

To be fair to the Crown and the 'Red' team, it is actually quite plausible that Sheila complied with Jeremy and allowed herself to be killed in the way he directed for her. This would be under circumstances where Sheila realised that Jeremy had already killed her biological children and her adopted parents. For a woman like Sheila, she would have nothing to live for at that point, so in a sense Jeremy's murder of her would indeed be a real 'murder-suicide', just one assisted by Jeremy.

Also, bear in mind when discussing this point that we do not know for sure how Sheila was found. Essex Police did move her and we can't rely on what they say about it. Probably Jeremy shot her on the bed, not on the floor. She may have been sitting up.



You may have misunderstood me. I am not concerned here with Jeremy's forensics. My question here is about forensic evidence for moving the body.

To recap, in order for Jeremy to be the killer based on the Crown's case, it is probable (I would say, close to certain) that he would have to:

- kill Sheila first;
- kill Sheila in her own bed, while she was in a lying or slightly sitting-up position or something similar.

This is because he needed to inflict trauma on Sheila's body of a particular kind in a particular way. He would then have had to move her body to the master bedroom. The reason he needed to do this was because if he tried to stage the murder-suicide in the second bedroom, that looks suspect, but her body in the master bedroom looks highly plausible.

So where is the forensic evidence of the body being moved?

You seem to be saying that there was no such forensic evidence, and it may have not been looked for or even thought of. But I want to know for sure what was and wasn't done. Is there such evidence or not?

Let us say you are right and there isn't such evidence in existence, then I do not understand how an intelligent jury could have convicted him. Yes, I think he did it, but that's not the point. The case must be proved to the legal standard and it wasn't.

Now let me tell you why, despite the above, instinctively I 'know' Jeremy did it. None of what follows proves Jeremy did it or justifies decades in prison, but it is enough to tell me that more likely than not, he is the killer:

(i). Jeremy made a small but very telling and important error in his staging of Sheila's suicide. It's one of two critical errors that gives the game away. Let's say Sheila was the culprit, she would not have laid down and shot herself in the master bedroom. She would have shot herself with the twins. She would want to be with her boys, not with June. The reason this mistake of Jeremy's is an obvious give-away is that, if you stop and think about it, moving Sheila to the master bedroom would make more sense than moving her to the twins' room, as the master bedroom is nearer, thus an easier location with less forensic risk.

(ii). The second error Jeremy makes is to shoot Sheila twice. Probably this was accidental on his part, but another thought hit me: what if this whole thing began as a genuine accident, or even a genuine failed suicide attempt by Sheila? Either could have occurred with Jeremy present, and in that scenario, he came up with the whole scheme there and then. I've mentally parked that thought. Whatever happened, two shots make a real suicide improbable (though, admittedly, not impossible). It is the one point that really shifts the spotlight to Jeremy. Essentially, it looks like he bungled it and I think the most likely explanation is that he didn't think through the murder scheme with enough sophistication, he just came into it with this vague notion that he could kill them all in whatever order and then leave the rifle by Sheila's body, maybe winning her compliance for the fatal shots due to her being in a demoralised state when she realised her twins were dead and she had nothing to live for.

(iii). Let's look at the phone calls. I consider the idea of Nevill calling Jeremy rather than the police quite plausible. This was 1980s rural Essex and a local Magistrate may well have wanted to keep hush-hush a violent psychotic episode involving his adopted daughter, who - at that juncture - might not yet have harmed anybody in the house, at least to Nevill's knowledge. Remember this was a family who were very familiar and comfortable with guns. Calling the police immediately would not necessarily follow. Indeed, the more I think it over, the more the idea of dialling 999 actually sounds unlikely, even far-fetched. I can see that Nevill would not have done that. To that extent, Jeremy's cover is plausible. But here's the problem: it was the middle of the night. How did Nevill know that Jeremy would be awake? OK, OK, maybe Nevill called him in the hope of waking him up. Maybe they'd had calls at that hour before. Etc., etc. You could construct a plausible rationalisation for it. So why didn't Jeremy do so? Here's the follow-on problem: Jeremy, when he received this phone call from Nevill, was either awake but in bed or bolted awake and quickly answered it. Is this likely? It is certainly possible, and Nevill could have been on the line listening to it ring for a long time, but remember that Sheila is supposedly running round with a gun. Maybe Sheila and Nevill are both in the kitchen in a stand-off posture at this point and Nevill is letting it ring while trying to calm her down. But for me, it all just doesn't seem very likely. The scenario has too many intuitive holes. It seems more likely than not to me that Jeremy did not receive that call and he is making the whole thing up.

I'd forgotten a couple more reasons why I think this points to Jeremy. I've not looked at the case in a long time and accidentally missed out these:

I missed out from the bit about the phone calls something very important. After he received the call from Nevill, Jeremy doesn't just rush over. Instead, he calls the police, but he doesn't ring 999, he calls the local police station. Why? I can understand Nevill calling Jeremy instead of dialling 999, but if Jeremy is going to call the police, why would it be the police station? That doesn't make sense, and though I'm not quite sure why Jeremy would do this, it adds to the impression that something about his story isn't quite right.

The other point is simply the fact that Sheila was in her nightie when she was found. How could she have carried the ammunition around with her while firing at her family? Does this seem a likely scenario? At one point, I did come up with a two-gun theory to explain how Sheila could have been the culprit, but it's all very convoluted.

 

[TomG]

How do you know that's not what happened? The rifle doesn't need to be a classic assassin's weapon to do what Sheila would need it to do if she was the culprit. She just points it at herself, bang, and she's probably dead. If she's still alive, she just points it at herself again, bang, and she's probably dead. Why would Sheila have thought about it beyond that?

For the reasons I've just told you upthread. Nevill took 8 shots in total while June took 7. Nevill took 4 shots to the head, 6 if you count the two to the mouth. With reference to the burn marks on Nevill's back Vanizis states "that those marks are the effect of the muzzle of the rifle being prodded against Nevill’s pyjama top whilst he was still alive." Which is a clear indication that the 4 shots to Nevill's head were not immediately fatal.

The wounds suffered by June are pretty much the same. The wounds to her ear, neck, and chest may have been fatal with a higher calibre gun and ammunition but the ammunition used was not intended to deliver a lethal wound according to the Eley website. June was able to get up and walk around the bed before collapsing in front of the main bedroom door where it took a fatal shot between the eyes to eventually kill her.

So it wasn't a case of 1 or 2 shots and "bang" your dead was it? Yes she did manage to kill the whole family...eventually, but there is no evidence that the gun and ammunition would be lethal enough to kill herself outright with 1 or 2 shots.

Hoots