JM said that JB told her he'd used a hitman. Why would she make that up? If she wanted to frame JB she surely would have just said that he did it?
David Shaw's theory is that a lot of JM's stories were gleaned from others: from an insider, from the extended family, the press and local gossip. That's why key aspects of her stories were riddled with so many errors, a number of which just happended to match the errors in AE's account. For example, both JM and AE claimed that Sheila was found on the bed, both claimed that the Bible was on top of Sheila.
There was a profusion of confusing stories in the press and doing the rounds of the local grape vine after the murders, according to Shaw. One story in the tabloids at the time that a scruffy man had been seen leaving the farm and a scruffy local man was viewed by villagers as a suspect - Shaw names him. Another local man is said to have threatened Nevill, this man killed his wife and himself the following year and attempted to kill his mother in law and his child. Shaw seems to suggest that JM could have conflated all of these people into the self proclaimed local villain: Mathew McDonald.
