You make some interesting points regarding Jeremy's mental state and behaviour. Personally I take the view that Sheila was fully involved in the killings. However, I've never been able to totally dismiss the possibility that Jeremy had some foreknowledge and provided some assistance (for example leaving the gun out for her). I think it more likely that elements of his behaviour facilitated and hastened his condemnation. He didn't garner enough sympathy or empathy to save his position from being assailed by corrupt police and ruthless relatives. I suspect he experienced mixed emotions in the aftermath of the tragedy, whereby any initial shock was then buffeted by a new lease of freedom and sense of opportunity. I think the relatives fed off their own prejudices and suspicions.
Thanks. I think if we're all honest about it - both sides of this, and neutral people like me - we must acknowledge that Jeremy's behaviour prior to and after the tragedy was not normal. It's not dispositive of anything, but it has to be factored into the mix. Inevitably it will have raised suspicions among experienced police officers who are conditioned to look for these behavioural cues. The police shouldn't rely on it because an entirely innocent man in that situation might behave weirdly/abnormally, and they didn't rely on it, but they noted it and it influenced them - and I think, to that extent, it was entirely proper.
However, as I accept happened here, they exaggerated Jeremy's behaviour and proceeded to blacken him. This is typical of police officers, not because they are dishonest or corrupt, but because they're human and they are used to making snap judgements about people and will see things in a slanted way. It's a trap we all fall into to an extent, actually.
I think there is compelling evidence (but not proof) that the police moved Sheila's body prior to photography. But why would they withhold the information? They could have just said something like they moved the body because they were trying to revive her as the officers who found her thought she was still conscious or breathing. That, or whatever other rational reason, would have been perfectly acceptable. It's not as if there was some sort of
a priori conspiracy to criminally frame somebody.
I think the police were also horsing around at the scene and things went on they don't want revealed due to the embarrassment it would cause them corporately.
I don't believe the silencer was used in the killings, but I think one can take the line of least resistance on that and simply put it down to innocent suspicion on the part of the family. They found the silencer, concluded it must have been used, and passed it to the police. But in the process, I think they tampered with it more than they are letting on. This makes sense because they would not necessarily initially comprehend its significance and you can imagine them unscrewing it, etc. To rebut that allegation, they seem to rely on the suggestion that it was 'factory-tight', but I am unconvinced.
It also looks to me very much like there was also a mix-up with the silencers recovered and the police are keen not to have that looked into.
I think the reality is that, just like in the Birmingham Six case, you can have a person in the frame who probably did it and you intuitively can see that Jeremy did it, but as is the nature of human life and the way things are in reality, the behaviour of the authorities and others isn't black-and-white. It's not corruption, as such. The probable explanation is more mundane: these are people under pressure and with their own foibles.
I accept we can't rule out corruption, but at the same time, we should reflect on what, in reality, corruption involves. When ordinary people with petty authority, like police officers and forensic scientists, etc., slide into corruption, it tends to happen because they are acting by their own lights and justify it to themselves as 'the right thing to do'. It's not normally like in films where a genuinely innocent man is fitted-up due to a corrupt individual or some institutional malignancy; it tends to happen more because the people involved rationalise their own actions to themselves according to prevailing moral norms. These people wake up one day and realise they have become corrupt, but they're now in a corner and if they come clean and admit it, they will be monsterised.
I think Jeremy acted in a psychotic rage. I reject the inheritance motive - not absolutely, but I think by and large it can't be supported on the facts and there is nothing to support the notion that Jeremy is clinically a psychopath. No doubt he had an idea floating around in his head for a while about how he could do it - lots of people hate their parents and immediate family, so nothing unusual in that - but I don't believe he planned the act out too much, he just adopted a vague notion of putting a rifle by her body and probably got the idea for the whole phone call alibi business after a genuine phone call from Nevill that night in which Nevill berated him, thus catalysing the incident.
My explanation for Jeremy's probable actions is a combination of underlying mental illness that I think Jeremy has (or had), intra- and inter-family dysfunction and drug-taking, and I also think he came under the Faustian influence of Brett Collins. Brett Collins changed his life - for the worse. But whether he is guilty or not, I think the cannabis angle is a major factor in his wider criminality and it would be interesting to consider the neurological and intellectual impact it may have had on him.
I've never looked in to the Guildord Four but respect that you are willing to go against the grain, to suggest what may be an awkward truth?
Birmingham Six.