This is an attempt to make a logical case for Nevill not having made a 999 call within the parameters of a 'reasonable doubt' argument.
We start with the tragic crime scene just as it is found and recorded on 7th. August 1985.
We will put aside the issues with the position of bullet casings and the deductions made by Essex Police from these . DI Cook concluded that Nevill had been shot four times upstairs. I find this rather unlikely – for fairly obvious reasons.
Despite my scepticism, for the moment let’s assume DI Cook was correct – and, anyway, it’s just about possible, at a stretch.
If Nevill goes downstairs, he has an advantage on Jeremy, even if injured. The stairs are narrow and steep and turn sharply. Jeremy can’t easily run down these stairs with a gun.
If Nevill reaches the kitchen before Jeremy, then he can reach the phone.
If he can reach the phone, then even if we assume Jeremy has opened the line, it would take mere seconds for Nevill to replace the receiver, lift the receiver, and dial three digits for the emergency services.
Even if Nevill cannot speak into the line due to his injuries, instinctively he would still go for the phone.
Yet we find:
(a). The kitchen door has no blood on it.
(b). The kitchen phone has no blood on it.
(c). There are only two blood prints on the worktop, found very near the kitchen phone.
We can conclude from (a), (b) and (c) that Nevill’s failure to ring 999, if that is what occurred, was a choice.
The major possibilities are:
(i). Jeremy is the killer and he stops Nevill at the point of a gun just as he reaches the phone and before he can dial 999.
(ii). Jeremy is the killer and he takes Nevill downstairs at gun point, which precludes Nevill going to the phone – obviously.
(iii). Jeremy is the killer and Nevill intercepts him at the very outset of the incident.
(iv). Sheila is the killer and Nevill is hesitant in dealing with her, giving Sheila an advantage and Nevill ends up incapacitated by fusillade before he can reach the phone.
I find (i) rather implausible on the evidence because, first, if Nevill reaches the worktop, then he would have to reach the phone. It would follow from this, in turn, that the blood prints must be Sheila’s, in which case Jeremy is innocent; but, there is a small possibility that Nevill reached the worktop and Jeremy pointed the gun at him at that instant. Otherwise, for (i) to be plausible, it would require that either Jeremy has cleaned the phone of blood or the police did. The reason Jeremy might do this is, having thought it all through, he decides that blood on the kitchen phone does not tie in with his staged call from Nevill.
Actually, the idea of the police cleaning blood on the phone, if anything, seems marginally more likely: this might have happened if one of the officers needed to make a call from the house and, having assumed it was an obvious murder-suicide case, didn’t bother recording that he had cleaned the phone of blood and didn’t preserve the cloth used to do this.
I also find (ii) somewhat implausible because there is no reason for Jeremy to have Nevill downstairs once Nevill is shot. It wouldn’t make sense. It also wouldn’t be in character for Nevill to go along.
To my mind, (iii) does not tally with the evidence. Why does Nevill end up shot in the master bedroom and/or on the main landing, and then dead back in the kitchen? It is possible that Jeremy rushes past Nevill and upstairs and then shoots at Nevill back down the stairs, and then they go back to the kitchen, but that doesn’t sound very likely when you consider that Nevill would be Jeremy’s main problem, and also the need for Jeremy to open the phone line and the risk that Nevill would dial 999.
However, (iv) does sound quite plausible. It could happen because Sheila has not yet attacked anybody other than Nevill. Nevill and Sheila could have been at stand-off in the kitchen, during which Nevill manages to rouse a sleepy Jeremy on the phone. When Nevill speaks to Jeremy, Sheila angrily rushes out of the kitchen in the direction of the stairs, perhaps intending to attack June. Running up the stairs would be difficult with the rifle, and so Nevill pretty much catches up with her. She turns and fires at Nevill as they are both on the stairs, maybe hits him, but he doesn’t realise he is injured as such. She starts coming back down the stairs with the gun pointed at him, there is lots of shouting, and probably June is roused and wondering what is going on. The two of them, Nevill and Sheila, end up back in the kitchen. He doesn’t ring 999 because it’s his mentally-ill daughter and he wants to grab the gun off her, but she fires again, and leaves him for dead.
One of the ways we could rescue the Crown’s case is if we say that Nevill did ring 999. There are four possibilities:
1. Nevill didn’t dial 999 and didn’t reach the phone (or chose not to go for the phone).
2. Nevill didn’t dial 999 but did reach the phone. Jeremy or the police wiped the blood off it for some reason.
3. Nevill did dial 999 but the call has not been recorded in police logs.
4. Nevill did dial 999 and the police have misled the court.
2 or 3 would assist the Crown. 1 could assist either side. 4 would assist the defence.
Let’s look at 2 and 3 and test them.
With 2, we’re imagining that Jeremy has just stopped Nevill as he reached and touched the phone. Would Jeremy wipe the blood off the phone? It seems rather unlikely. There’s blood all over the kitchen by this point, isn’t there? Plus, doesn’t Jeremy want people to think that Nevill used the phone? And would Jeremy really be ‘switched-on’ enough to realise that a clean phone would assist his story more?
Now, let’s consider 3. The scenario is that he have Nevill opening an emergency line, but due to his facial injuries, he can’t speak and he has Jeremy on top of him, so the call either ends or (more likely) the line is left open. Jeremy would notice this and after dealing with Nevill, he would close the line. It's here that we have the same problem as with 2 above. The phone was found clean and we’ve covered already why that’s not likely. Thus, possibility 3 is actually the same as possibility 2. The caveat to that dismissal is that, in fairness to the Crown, we would need to research a bit more before we can completely eliminate 3, as we would need to establish how abortive/broken emergency calls operated at that time. Depending on the outcome of this research, it may even be possible to trace the abortive call, if it was made - but that has to be considered unlikely.
The above ruminations are not fatal to the Crown’s case, but it does look like the prosecution are in trouble.
With that, now we come to consider the other two possibilities, 1 and 4.
This is where we look at the calls between, respectively, Jeremy and PC West and between PC West and Malcolm Bonnett.
To recap, PC West was a police officer based at Chelmsford Police Station.
Malcolm Bonnett was a civilian police call operator based at the communications centre in Essex Police HQ.
Regarding these two men, I am unclear on five things:
(i). Whether the HQ communications centre was also the designated ‘call control’ for Essex Police. I think we can assume it was, but if it wasn’t, then this means there may have been a further authorisation step for dispatch of vehicles.
(ii). Whether Malcolm Bonnet also fielded emergency police calls direct from the public. I think it follows that he did if the assumption in (i) is correct.
(iii). Whether PC West and Mr Bonnett communicated by phone or radio.
(iv). Whether PC West and Mr Bonnett were in fact based in the same building.
(v). Whether these audio communications were recorded. If they were, why they have not been released to the defence?
Now let us consider possibility 1: Nevill doesn’t reach the phone. If this was through choice on Nevill’s part, that would suggest one of two further possibilities:
1A: Jeremy is the killer and Nevill ran for the kitchen for a reason other than the phone.
1B: Sheila is the killer and Nevill hesitated.
The simplest way to proceed would be to try to eliminate possibility 1A. Was there something else in the kitchen, or that required him to go via the kitchen, that would have given Nevill a reason to run there? The guns were in a different direction – actually Nevill passed them on the way to the kitchen. Was the easier exit from the farmhouse via the kitchen? The nearest exit from the building via the main stairway was actually via the front door, which is in completely the opposite direction. It is also assumed that all doors were locked from the inside. How did Nevill imagine Jeremy had entered the property? It’s doubtful he would have been able to give the matter developed thought - and let's face it, if he's not interested in the phone, why wouldn't he just hide somewhere or struggle and fight upstairs? Assuming Jeremy was the killer, the argument that Nevill was running for the kitchen phone does seem compelling.
To consider possibility 1B requires only that we acknowledge that Nevill might not have dialled 999 in the face of a belligerent daughter, for the reasons already given. This logically all-but precludes the possibility of a 999 call from Nevill if Jeremy is innocent. Sheila would have no reason to wipe the phone and worktop clean.