If no-one disturbed anything - how did police enter the kitchen?

[Alias]

Also on the subject of ritualistic cleaning, I don't really know much about this. Would it be done in such a hap-hazard way? I would have thought if Sheila was trying to clean up she'd have been much more obssesive about it - not just used whatever she could find to try and clean up the blood. As i said, i don't really know about it so i may be wide of the mark.

What you say sounds reasonable to me.

[andrea]

didnt AE question who has had used the shower at WHF because the shower head wasnt in its cradle?
one officer renarks that sheila was spotlessly clean as if she had just got out of the bath, the ritualistic cleaning isnt a dumb theory like some people claim, its got credibility, alot of suicides do the cleaning thing as part of the whole ritual.

[grahameb]

didnt AE question who has had used the shower at WHF because the shower head wasnt in its cradle?
one officer renarks that sheila was spotlessly clean as if she had just got out of the bath, the ritualistic cleaning isnt a dumb theory like some people claim, its got credibility, alot of suicides do the cleaning thing as part of the whole ritual.

But why didn't she put any underwear on?

[Alias]

didnt AE question who has had used the shower at WHF because the shower head wasnt in its cradle?
one officer renarks that sheila was spotlessly clean as if she had just got out of the bath, the ritualistic cleaning isnt a dumb theory like some people claim, its got credibility, alot of suicides do the cleaning thing as part of the whole ritual.

But why didn't she put any underwear on?

Maybe she didn´t have any more clean?

[grahameb]

didnt AE question who has had used the shower at WHF because the shower head wasnt in its cradle?
one officer renarks that sheila was spotlessly clean as if she had just got out of the bath, the ritualistic cleaning isnt a dumb theory like some people claim, its got credibility, alot of suicides do the cleaning thing as part of the whole ritual.

But why didn't she put any underwear on?

Maybe she didn´t have any more clean?

Entirely possible.

[ngb1066]

In a typical murder scene obviously the police would not be using cushions etc to soak up blood.,they would surely leave it as is. We know that they were working on the assumption it was a suicide/murder. Do you think this is another example of them not taking any care because they basically didn't think it mattered?

That's a very astute observation.  You would expect the police in this kind of situation, to give an explanation?  Does anyone know of any such explanation from police?  Have they even attempted to blame Jeremy Bamber for using the cushion and items to soak up the blood, as part of his murder spree?

I think it more likely that Ralph used the cussions to fend off his attacker? Only an opinion for what it's worth.

He may well have used something.  I surprises me that he didn't reach a gun?

or Sheila as a part of the ritualistic cleansing?

Did this concept become abandoned by the defence or is it still on the table?

It was advanced at trial as a possibility and has not been abandoned.

ngb, do you agree there is a common misconception that people are tempted to fall back upon?  'Only Bamber knows what happened'  'Only Bamber knows the truth' etc. 

It seems to me rather that the entire defence campaign, from Jeremy Bamber to Mike Tesko to Ewen Smith, Barry Woods, GDS, to the current team, has all been about a journey trying to painstakingly piece together what happened. 

It becomes incredulous to believe that so varied and so great a number of professionals could allow themselves to be fooled by some arch manipulator, operating from his prison cell.

Rochford  -  I agree with what you are saying here.  Of course if JB is guilty he knows what happened, but if he is not he is in the same position as his team in trying to work out exactly what happened, based upon the available evidence.  He has done a lot of the research work himself, assisted by Mike Tesko for a long period when he had little or no other support.  He is now assisted by his current team who are working with him to analyse the vast amount of material there is relating to the case.  They are of course tryng to obtain further material and are using experts to carry out further analysis of some of the evidence.  I do not believe that JB has been manipulating his advisors -to a large extent he is relying upon them to help him to piece this together.  As a separate point I am not sure he has always been well served by some of those advising him in the past.

 

[curiousessex]

In a typical murder scene obviously the police would not be using cushions etc to soak up blood.,they would surely leave it as is. We know that they were working on the assumption it was a suicide/murder. Do you think this is another example of them not taking any care because they basically didn't think it mattered?

That's a very astute observation.  You would expect the police in this kind of situation, to give an explanation?  Does anyone know of any such explanation from police?  Have they even attempted to blame Jeremy Bamber for using the cushion and items to soak up the blood, as part of his murder spree?

I think it more likely that Ralph used the cussions to fend off his attacker? Only an opinion for what it's worth.

He may well have used something.  I surprises me that he didn't reach a gun?

or Sheila as a part of the ritualistic cleansing?

Did this concept become abandoned by the defence or is it still on the table?

It was advanced at trial as a possibility and has not been abandoned.

ngb, do you agree there is a common misconception that people are tempted to fall back upon?  'Only Bamber knows what happened'  'Only Bamber knows the truth' etc. 

It seems to me rather that the entire defence campaign, from Jeremy Bamber to Mike Tesko to Ewen Smith, Barry Woods, GDS, to the current team, has all been about a journey trying to painstakingly piece together what happened. 

It becomes incredulous to believe that so varied and so great a number of professionals could allow themselves to be fooled by some arch manipulator, operating from his prison cell.

Rochford  -  I agree with what you are saying here.  Of course if JB is guilty he knows what happened, but if he is not he is in the same position as his team in trying to work out exactly what happened, based upon the available evidence.  He has done a lot of the research work himself, assisted by Mike Tesko for a long period when he had little or no other support.  He is now assisted by his current team who are working with him to analyse the vast amount of material there is relating to the case.  They are of course tryng to obtain further material and are using experts to carry out further analysis of some of the evidence.  I do not believe that JB has been manipulating his advisors -to a large extent he is relying upon them to help him to piece this together.  As a separate point I am not sure he has always been well served by some of those advising him in the past.

 

A good starting point would be to settle on the times and sequence of telephone calls made on the morning of 7th August 1985. On this point only Jeremy knows the answers and the defence team are totally reliant upon what Jeremy settles upon in terms of the time and sequence of telephone calls in terms of his version of events.

In my opinion Jeremy's discrepancies in those early statements warranted further questions being asked. Those questions rather than providing clarity in order to resolve the discrepancies led to more questions. The initial conclusion was that it was 4 murders and a suicide and it was Jeremy who made the outside world aware that Sheila was going beserk and had the gun inside White House Farm.

If I have understood NGB's previous posts and responses correctly, even NGB agrees there is a sequence and timing of telephone calls which implicate Jeremy being guilty. Some may say that is unfortunate but nonetheless that is the case.

[Hartley]

Unfortunately there are only two confirmed phone calls made and even the timings of those are questionable to some extent, they were 26 years ago and they aren't going to get any clearer due to the passage of time.

The call from JB to JM, which JB changes when that call was made in his statements, and there are witnesses at JM's end which indicate further discrepancies, although how reliable they are is for you to decide.

And the other confirmed call is from JB to the police, again there are discrepancies surrounding the time due to the two police phone logs giving the time of 3:26 and 3:36, however with this call we are a lot more confident about the time being 3:26 due to the time of JB's arrival at the scene.

[ngb1066]

In a typical murder scene obviously the police would not be using cushions etc to soak up blood.,they would surely leave it as is. We know that they were working on the assumption it was a suicide/murder. Do you think this is another example of them not taking any care because they basically didn't think it mattered?

That's a very astute observation.  You would expect the police in this kind of situation, to give an explanation?  Does anyone know of any such explanation from police?  Have they even attempted to blame Jeremy Bamber for using the cushion and items to soak up the blood, as part of his murder spree?

I think it more likely that Ralph used the cussions to fend off his attacker? Only an opinion for what it's worth.

He may well have used something.  I surprises me that he didn't reach a gun?

or Sheila as a part of the ritualistic cleansing?

Did this concept become abandoned by the defence or is it still on the table?

It was advanced at trial as a possibility and has not been abandoned.

ngb, do you agree there is a common misconception that people are tempted to fall back upon?  'Only Bamber knows what happened'  'Only Bamber knows the truth' etc. 

It seems to me rather that the entire defence campaign, from Jeremy Bamber to Mike Tesko to Ewen Smith, Barry Woods, GDS, to the current team, has all been about a journey trying to painstakingly piece together what happened. 

It becomes incredulous to believe that so varied and so great a number of professionals could allow themselves to be fooled by some arch manipulator, operating from his prison cell.

Rochford  -  I agree with what you are saying here.  Of course if JB is guilty he knows what happened, but if he is not he is in the same position as his team in trying to work out exactly what happened, based upon the available evidence.  He has done a lot of the research work himself, assisted by Mike Tesko for a long period when he had little or no other support.  He is now assisted by his current team who are working with him to analyse the vast amount of material there is relating to the case.  They are of course tryng to obtain further material and are using experts to carry out further analysis of some of the evidence.  I do not believe that JB has been manipulating his advisors -to a large extent he is relying upon them to help him to piece this together.  As a separate point I am not sure he has always been well served by some of those advising him in the past.

 

A good starting point would be to settle on the times and sequence of telephone calls made on the morning of 7th August 1985. On this point only Jeremy knows the answers and the defence team are totally reliant upon what Jeremy settles upon in terms of the time and sequence of telephone calls in terms of his version of events.

In my opinion Jeremy's discrepancies in those early statements warranted further questions being asked. Those questions rather than providing clarity in order to resolve the discrepancies led to more questions. The initial conclusion was that it was 4 murders and a suicide and it was Jeremy who made the outside world aware that Sheila was going beserk and had the gun inside White House Farm.

If I have understood NGB's previous posts and responses correctly, even NGB agrees there is a sequence and timing of telephone calls which implicate Jeremy being guilty. Some may say that is unfortunate but nonetheless that is the case.

I doubt if after the passage of time since the events at WHF we are going to get any more clarity on the sequence and timings of telephone calls.  What we have are written statements from various witnesses, together with records of their evidence in court at trial.  This evidence varies a lot, as is to be expected when witnesses (or most of them) are doing their best to remember exactly what happened and when either (in the case of Julie Mugford's flatmates) they had no reason to note the exact time of the call or (in the case of Jeremy Bamber) he was being asked to recall, initially when he must have been in a state of shock, the sequence and times of calls made when he had been awoken in the middle of the night and confronted with an unusual and alarming situation.   I do not believe that this will be the critical evidence in relation to the eventual outcome of this case, although I accept that it is evidence that the Court of Appeal is likely to take into consideration in revewing the safety of the convictions in the light of the new grounds of appeal.

 

   

[S.Grant]

With reference to Jeremy's recall of the sequence of the calls he made in the early hours of 7th August I can maybe add something to the debate ... just a few years ago my friend had to recall the sequence of some telephone calls for the Coroner's Court ... she had no reason to mislead or to lie ... she stated as she recalled ... but when her recall was compared to her police statement (taken on the morning of the presumed death) the sequence was markedly different ... indeed there were several discrepancies ... my friend was mortified as she was being honest ... the Coroner told her not to worry ... that in a time of high emotion the memory plays tricks ... seems to me that could apply to Jeremy's recall too.

[Hartley]

With reference to Jeremy's recall of the sequence of the calls he made in the early hours of 7th August I can maybe add something to the debate ... just a few years ago my friend had to recall the sequence of some telephone calls for the Coroner's Court ... she had no reason to mislead or to lie ... she stated as she recalled ... but when her recall was compared to her police statement (taken on the morning of the presumed death) the sequence was markedly different ... indeed there were several discrepancies ... my friend was mortified as she was being honest ... the Coroner told her not to worry ... that in a time of high emotion the memory plays tricks ... seems to me that could apply to Jeremy's recall too.

I think that discrepancies are to be expected, unless you have a photographic memory people just can't remember every single detail and they are often influenced by conversations with other people. Hence why in court witnesses are often given their written statements to refresh their memory.

It's simply the case that we don't have much to go on, so any discrepancies are being jumped on, whether it's in JB's statements or one of the police officers statements, almost certainly a number of these discrepancies are simply mistakes, an incorrect recollection of events.

[grahameb]

With reference to Jeremy's recall of the sequence of the calls he made in the early hours of 7th August I can maybe add something to the debate ... just a few years ago my friend had to recall the sequence of some telephone calls for the Coroner's Court ... she had no reason to mislead or to lie ... she stated as she recalled ... but when her recall was compared to her police statement (taken on the morning of the presumed death) the sequence was markedly different ... indeed there were several discrepancies ... my friend was mortified as she was being honest ... the Coroner told her not to worry ... that in a time of high emotion the memory plays tricks ... seems to me that could apply to Jeremy's recall too.

I think one problem is when examining stuff like this after many years is that we don't see the wood for the trees. We tend to look for things that aren't really there. Or we tend to look at people's statements and expect them to be perfect when the truth is we are imperfect creaturesand we all make silly mistakes. I would be more suspicious if all Jeremy's statements were exact in every way. But I bet even then he will have his critics who would have to ask, why are his words so perfect?

[grahameb]

With reference to Jeremy's recall of the sequence of the calls he made in the early hours of 7th August I can maybe add something to the debate ... just a few years ago my friend had to recall the sequence of some telephone calls for the Coroner's Court ... she had no reason to mislead or to lie ... she stated as she recalled ... but when her recall was compared to her police statement (taken on the morning of the presumed death) the sequence was markedly different ... indeed there were several discrepancies ... my friend was mortified as she was being honest ... the Coroner told her not to worry ... that in a time of high emotion the memory plays tricks ... seems to me that could apply to Jeremy's recall too.

I think that discrepancies are to be expected, unless you have a photographic memory people just can't remember every single detail and they are often influenced by conversations with other people. Hence why in court witnesses are often given their written statements to refresh their memory.

It's simply the case that we don't have much to go on, so any discrepancies are being jumped on, whether it's in JB's statements or one of the police officers statements, almost certainly a number of these discrepancies are simply mistakes, an incorrect recollection of events.

I think you're right Hartley. We do tend to put everything under a microscope when we don't need to. And I think it applies to us all. The reason being as you say, we haven't much to go on and so we jump on every detail. My friend said to me once when I was looking for a certain explanation in the Bible I think it was. He said, "Perhaps you're looking for something that isn't there?"

[curiousessex]

With reference to Jeremy's recall of the sequence of the calls he made in the early hours of 7th August I can maybe add something to the debate ... just a few years ago my friend had to recall the sequence of some telephone calls for the Coroner's Court ... she had no reason to mislead or to lie ... she stated as she recalled ... but when her recall was compared to her police statement (taken on the morning of the presumed death) the sequence was markedly different ... indeed there were several discrepancies ... my friend was mortified as she was being honest ... the Coroner told her not to worry ... that in a time of high emotion the memory plays tricks ... seems to me that could apply to Jeremy's recall too.

I think that discrepancies are to be expected, unless you have a photographic memory people just can't remember every single detail and they are often influenced by conversations with other people. Hence why in court witnesses are often given their written statements to refresh their memory.

It's simply the case that we don't have much to go on, so any discrepancies are being jumped on, whether it's in JB's statements or one of the police officers statements, almost certainly a number of these discrepancies are simply mistakes, an incorrect recollection of events.

I think you're right Hartley. We do tend to put everything under a microscope when we don't need to. And I think it applies to us all. The reason being as you say, we haven't much to go on and so we jump on every detail. My friend said to me once when I was looking for a certain explanation in the Bible I think it was. He said, "Perhaps you're looking for something that isn't there?"

If written statements are to be considered as of little value why are the police statements and logs dissected to identify any discrepancies which are regarded as evidence of conspiracies and set up?

Cross examination is a fundamental and integral part of our legal system. Cross examination is effectively the stress testing of all witness statements to the court.

If I recall correctly the CCRC, in the provisional decision not to refer the case to the Court of Appeal,  have already given an indication of their opinion regarding statements and their reliability.

[Hartley]

With reference to Jeremy's recall of the sequence of the calls he made in the early hours of 7th August I can maybe add something to the debate ... just a few years ago my friend had to recall the sequence of some telephone calls for the Coroner's Court ... she had no reason to mislead or to lie ... she stated as she recalled ... but when her recall was compared to her police statement (taken on the morning of the presumed death) the sequence was markedly different ... indeed there were several discrepancies ... my friend was mortified as she was being honest ... the Coroner told her not to worry ... that in a time of high emotion the memory plays tricks ... seems to me that could apply to Jeremy's recall too.

I think that discrepancies are to be expected, unless you have a photographic memory people just can't remember every single detail and they are often influenced by conversations with other people. Hence why in court witnesses are often given their written statements to refresh their memory.

It's simply the case that we don't have much to go on, so any discrepancies are being jumped on, whether it's in JB's statements or one of the police officers statements, almost certainly a number of these discrepancies are simply mistakes, an incorrect recollection of events.

I think you're right Hartley. We do tend to put everything under a microscope when we don't need to. And I think it applies to us all. The reason being as you say, we haven't much to go on and so we jump on every detail. My friend said to me once when I was looking for a certain explanation in the Bible I think it was. He said, "Perhaps you're looking for something that isn't there?"

If written statements are to be considered as of little value why are the police statements and logs dissected to identify any discrepancies which are regarded as evidence of conspiracies and set up?

Cross examination is a fundamental and integral part of our legal system. Cross examination is effectively the stress testing of all witness statements to the court.

If I recall correctly the CCRC, in the provisional decision not to refer the case to the Court of Appeal,  have already given an indication of their opinion regarding statements and their reliability.

You misunderstand me, they are not inconsequential or considered of little value at all, but it doesn't surprise me that there are often discrepancies and inaccuracies. On that basis the thing to do would be to seek other sources of information to figure out which discrepancy is correct, for example other witnesses statements, or as you say cross-examination.