The way I see it having panned out, was that the police had one of the silencers from the first morning of the police investigation into the shooting tragedy (7th August 1985), this was the silencer which DS Jones collected from the farmhouse after he returned there from Jeremy's cottage, and that this same silencer was the one which DCI Jones kept on his desk at Witham Police Station and used it as a paper weight. Now, I have always believed that on the evening of 9th August 1985 that DS Jones acting on instruction from DCI Jones returned the silencer to the farmhouse when they attended the scene to return the door keys back to the family. But, it may well have been the case, that a shotgun or a rifle was returned to Peter Eaton on that occasion. Moving on from this, it deserves consideration that Peter Eaton never handed over a silencer to DS Jones at all on the evening of 12th August 1985, police still had the silencer which DS Jones collected from the scene earlier...
I think its somewhat bizarre that we have two accounts one where the husband Peter Eaton hands over a silencer on 12th August 1985, and his wife, Ann Eaton hands over another silencer to police on 11th September 1985 and that both the relatives and the police are making out that there was only just the one silencer! The part which troubles me concerns the presence of Basil Cock at the scene when the relatives purportedly found the silencer - he has fingerprint dust on everything and all over the place in his version of the events, but that couldn't have been the case back in August 1985, because police didn't start fingerprinting at the scene until after 8th September 1985. This being so, everything points to the silencer having been recovered from the cupboard at the scene in September 1985, whilst Jeremy was in custody...
The relatives must be guilty of lying about when they say they had found the silencer!
They couldn't have found it in August 1985, because there was no Basil Cock there on that occasion, and moreover, no fingerprint dust all over the place at the scene until after the first week in September 1985..
Nobody makes a witness statement mentioning the find or the recovery of a silencer until 12th September 1985, because that was when the relatives took possession of it (DRB/1)...
"Moving on from this, it deserves consideration that Peter Eaton never handed over a silencer to DS Jones at all on the evening of 12th August 1985, police still had the silencer which DS Jones collected from the scene earlier..."A clue to the deception is that the telescopic sight originally had the reference SBJ/2, the reason being that it had been found at the same time as the silencer SBJ/1 on August 7th. It should seem strange that an item which was allegedly not collected by DS Jones, but left at the Eatons' house should have originally had the reference SBJ/2 even though it was not even collected until after the the silencer reference had been changed to DBR/1.
The point being that since it was allegedly collected by DC Oakey at a time later than the changes to references with David Boutflour's initials, it's hard to make sense of a reference which harks back to a time before the exhibit reference for the silencer was changed. But the truth is they, the police, had collected it on August 7th 1985.
When the relatives handed in the items they found on their visit to Whitehouse Farm on September 11th, they handed in the "other" silencer which had been deliberately contaminated.
They were then told to sign fraudulent statements backdating the finding of those items to August 10th.
The story that Jones collected the silencer from Peter Eaton on August 12th, but left the other other things at the Eatons' house was almost certainly made up by Stan Jones and with that familiar anecdote thrown in. Peter Eaton relates that DS Jones drank half a bottle of whiskey on the evening when he collected it before driving home.
How likely is that Peter Eaton would be dumb enough to say something which could potentially get Stan Jones into trouble when Jones was their saviour and benefactor. It was basically Jones who by framing Bamber got them the inheritance.
Apart from a drinking and driving offence, the police are not allowed to drink when on duty Putting two and two together, Jones probably told Mr Eaton to say that. He made up the anecdotes for witnesses, to add a touch of realism.
He told Robert Boutflour to write down things in his diary which he Stan Jones had made up.
Jones wanted to make it look like the police had been careless and that the relatives had noticed what the police had missed, even though they had supposedly searched the premises.
So when the silencer was supposedly found by his son David, Robert Boutflour exclaims "The buggers aren't looking! He relates that when he told Jones about finding the silencer, Jones responded with "What silencer? It was all play acting with Uncle Bobby the leading man and his daughter Ann Eaton best supporting actress.