Why was this hidden from the defence and only discovered a year ago?
It was hidden from the defence for the obvious reason that Michael Ainsley wanted to falsely convict Jeremy of 5 murders. Why was it only discovered a year ago? I actually found the quotation nearly two years ago when I was asked to review some materials related to the Met Police Stokenchurch enquiry. It was a record of a discussion on 6th August 2002. Retired DS21 Stan Jones was interviewed by DCI Jeanette McDiarmid and DI Paul Brown. This was in relation to the kitchen telephone at White House Farm. Because Stan Jones loved the sound of his own voice he couldn't resist going 'off-topic'. So, when the discussion was supposed to be about the cream coloured kitchen telephone he just suddenly started talking about the suicide note.
Jones was clearly saying that the police had possession of a suicide note and they knew it was a case of four murders and suicide. Neither police officer picked up on this or questioned him further on this subject. Why? Because the 'system' had convicted Jeremy of murder and the 'system' was not interested in evidence that indicated that he was innocent.
If the Stokenchurch investigators had been competent and diligent they would have realised immediately that Jones had admitted to something of major consequence in Jeremy’s defence. What did they do? They changed the subject entirely; the next question to Jones was, “The point I’m trying to establish if you have knowledge of anybody…using any of the phone (sic) inside the house”. An honest and conscientious police officer keen to establish the truth would have probed Stan Jones further on the issue. For example, which suicide note? What did it say? What happened to it? Why was it not made known to Jeremy’s defence lawyers? Who made the decision to deny the fact of its existence?
Instead, DCI McDiarmid and DI Brown have walked around for the past 18 years in the knowledge that Jeremy is innocent and locked up and it seems that they don't care. They did their job in the Stokenchurch enquiry, which was to make sure that no evidence emerged that would compromise Jeremy's convictions for murder.
Why was this not known before 2018? Because there are an estimated 4 million pages of documentation related to the case and it takes a long time for a very small team of people to read through it all. And we are people who are not paid, not full-time employees, fitting in our research when we have spare time and we have other responsibilities apart from trying to help Jeremy. Hopefully the discovery of this evidence related to the suicide note will contribute to Jeremy's release.