A Jeremy Scenario

[Adam]

This is more a note to myself than anything.  When adding the additional section 5 to my original post, it occurs to me that if Jeremy knows Nevill could be asleep downstairs, that puts a hole in the prosecution scenario because you then have to explain how Jeremy comes to shoot Nevill.  It can't be that Jeremy goes upstairs first.  I agree with Rob that Jeremy must negate Nevill first. 

Does this mean that Jeremy lures Nevill into the kitchen, maybe by making some noise?  One possibility is that Jeremy makes his presence known to Nevill, but in an apparently benign way, thus tricking him.  Yet the back and front doors are locked from the inside, so wouldn't Nevill be angry and suspicious, if anything?  I have a few thoughts on this, but I tend to the view that Jeremy may have entered the farmhouse knowing that he could immediately alert Nevill and have to struggle with him, but then isn't that bad planning with a huge risk that Nevill would alert the outside world or get to a weapon first?

The problem of thinking aloud!  Another possibility is that Jeremy decided that, if necessary, he could start upstairs and deal with Nevill later on the basis that Nevill does not hear or does not fully realise what is going on.  Jeremy then returns down the stairs and at that point is confronted by a puzzled Nevill.

What evidence is there that Nevill used to sleep all night downstairs. Rather than in his bed?

[Adam]

This is more a note to myself than anything.  When adding the additional section 5 to my original post, it occurs to me that if Jeremy knows Nevill could be asleep downstairs, that puts a hole in the prosecution scenario because you then have to explain how Jeremy comes to shoot Nevill.  It can't be that Jeremy goes upstairs first.  I agree with Rob that Jeremy must negate Nevill first. 

Does this mean that Jeremy lures Nevill into the kitchen, maybe by making some noise?  One possibility is that Jeremy makes his presence known to Nevill, but in an apparently benign way, thus tricking him.  Yet the back and front doors are locked from the inside, so wouldn't Nevill be angry and suspicious, if anything?  I have a few thoughts on this, but I tend to the view that Jeremy may have entered the farmhouse knowing that he could immediately alert Nevill and have to struggle with him, but then isn't that bad planning with a huge risk that Nevill would alert the outside world or get to a weapon first?

The problem of thinking aloud!  Another possibility is that Jeremy decided that, if necessary, he could start upstairs and deal with Nevill later on the basis that Nevill does not hear or does not fully realise what is going on.  Jeremy then returns down the stairs and at that point is confronted by a puzzled Nevill.

Bad idea. Nevill was 6.4 & 15 stone.

[Adam]

This is more a note to myself than anything.  When adding the additional section 5 to my original post, it occurs to me that if Jeremy knows Nevill could be asleep downstairs, that puts a hole in the prosecution scenario because you then have to explain how Jeremy comes to shoot Nevill.  It can't be that Jeremy goes upstairs first.  I agree with Rob that Jeremy must negate Nevill first. 

Does this mean that Jeremy lures Nevill into the kitchen, maybe by making some noise?  One possibility is that Jeremy makes his presence known to Nevill, but in an apparently benign way, thus tricking him.  Yet the back and front doors are locked from the inside, so wouldn't Nevill be angry and suspicious, if anything?  I have a few thoughts on this, but I tend to the view that Jeremy may have entered the farmhouse knowing that he could immediately alert Nevill and have to struggle with him, but then isn't that bad planning with a huge risk that Nevill would alert the outside world or get to a weapon first?

The problem of thinking aloud!  Another possibility is that Jeremy decided that, if necessary, he could start upstairs and deal with Nevill later on the basis that Nevill does not hear or does not fully realise what is going on.  Jeremy then returns down the stairs and at that point is confronted by a puzzled Nevill.

Doubtful. As said, Nevill would be upstairs, asleep, behind closed doors.

[Adam]

In my scenario above, Nevill is shot first, as you can see.  There were blood finger marks near the phone, which may indicate Nevill was trying to reach it.  He may have been stopped by Jeremy, who has then pushed him away, and Nevill has then made for the kitchen door, perhaps in the forlorn hope of getting to the den or the back door.

June is shot before Sheila as she comes out on to the landing to see what the commotion is.  June crawls around a bit, leaving blood, then Jeremy shoots her between the eyes; or, Jeremy leaves June for dead but she is still alive and is moving around, and he shoots her between the eyes later after killing the twins.

Pulling Sheila off the bed makes sense as part of a murder-suicide staging.  If he killed her in bed, it may look suspicious.  I would guess it's also an instinctive control thing.  He has to act quickly.  He needs to take control.  The springiness of the bed may make lining up the rifle barrel with her still on the bed difficult.  So he quickly pulls her off.  He is holding the rifle while he does this.  He then pins her down.  Peter Vanezis' evidence is probably correct that Sheila was shot while slightly sitting up.  What may have happened is that as he is pinning her down on the floor, she starts to struggle, and he may have inadvertently shot her before he quite had her lying flat.

Were there?

[Adam]

In my scenario above, Nevill is shot first, as you can see.  There were blood finger marks near the phone, which may indicate Nevill was trying to reach it.  He may have been stopped by Jeremy, who has then pushed him away, and Nevill has then made for the kitchen door, perhaps in the forlorn hope of getting to the den or the back door.

June is shot before Sheila as she comes out on to the landing to see what the commotion is.  June crawls around a bit, leaving blood, then Jeremy shoots her between the eyes; or, Jeremy leaves June for dead but she is still alive and is moving around, and he shoots her between the eyes later after killing the twins.

Pulling Sheila off the bed makes sense as part of a murder-suicide staging.  If he killed her in bed, it may look suspicious.  I would guess it's also an instinctive control thing.  He has to act quickly.  He needs to take control.  The springiness of the bed may make lining up the rifle barrel with her still on the bed difficult.  So he quickly pulls her off.  He is holding the rifle while he does this.  He then pins her down.  Peter Vanezis' evidence is probably correct that Sheila was shot while slightly sitting up.  What may have happened is that as he is pinning her down on the floor, she starts to struggle, and he may have inadvertently shot her before he quite had her lying flat.

June was shot 5 times in bed. Then twice on the bedroom floor.

[lookout]

What was going on in the 2 hours after the parents deaths before Sheila's death ?

[Steve_uk]

Here is how I currently believe Jeremy committed the shootings, if he is guilty.

1. Assumptions

I make the assumption that the crime is premeditated.  I do also have a 'spontaneous violence' scenario, but that is for another time.  It follows that the Jeremy who carries out the massacre in this scenario is deranged and evil.

One important feature of this scenario is that Sheila does not have to be moved from her bedroom to the master bedroom.  I am of the view that if Jeremy did this, Sheila had to be killed either in her own bedroom or the master bedroom, but without being moved from one to the other.  You will see how it happens in my scenario, if you read on.  What I posit here resolves major problems with the prosecution case that an honest person must confront and grapple with.  It means there is no perambulating Sheila, no need to explain Sheila at all.  Her involvement is relegated entirely to passivity - and, I believe, in a way that is at least plausible.  It also resolves a major problem with the blood evidence and crime scene sequencing concerning Nevill.  His blood is not needed in the master bedroom and he does not have to be upstairs at all.

Jeremy does not use the bicycle to go to and from the farm.  I suspect he did bring the bicycle back to the farmhouse at some point prior to the incident, perhaps with June's knowledge, under the guise that it would be used by Julie but in fact with the intention of using it on the night of the 6th./7th.  In the end, he decides against cycling, realising a ladies' push bike of that type would not be very practicable on the route he intends to take.

I also have Jeremy carrying out the massacre without the silencer.  I believe the preponderance of evidence is strongly against the use of a silencer in these shootings.  I think Jeremy would have considered using the silencer, as it would have benefits, but in the end he realised that the shooting should only last a few minutes and therefore on balance the ease-of-use of not having a silencer would be preferred over the advantages of sound suppression. 

You may draw whatever conclusions you like about my likely thoughts on the extended family's actions, based on my decision to omit a silencer from this scenario.  I will add nothing more as I do not wish to be sued for libel.  Such matters are extraneous to the thread anyway.

If Jeremy is guilty, I do not believe he planned the phone call from Nevill and his own call to the police.  I think his original intention was to just turn up the following morning and find them all dead.  He made the phone calls up 'on the hoof' that night after Nevill ended up in the kitchen.  Rightly or wrongly, Jeremy reasoned that there needed to be an explanation for why Nevill was found away from the rest of the family.  For those who doubt me on this point, I ask you to stop and consider it logically: Jeremy can't plan Nevill ending up in the kitchen!  It's next-to-impossible, so here I offer some emergency caulkhead. Unless Jeremy can improvise in this way, we are left with another major hole in the prosecution case.

I do not have Jeremy switching handsets around.  I think that has always been a red herring.  It was a theory propounded by the late journalist and miscarriage of justice campaigner, Bob Woffinden, as an explanation for his switch to a guilty stance in the Bamber case, but I took apart Woffinden's reasoning in a previous thread (last year, I think).

I believe Nevill died last.

2. Background

Jeremy is determined to kill his parents.  He plots to do this himself, but he also thinks about the possibility of inciting Sheila to do it, believing that her mental illness may make her vulnerable to suggestion.  Jeremy reasons that with his parents out of the way and Sheila institutionalised, he can accept potentially sharing his inheritance with Colin and ultimately the twins as they will be easier to influence.

Jeremy even considers inciting Colin and rants about his parents to Colin on the night of 3rd. August 1985 at a housewarming party.  Jeremy's imprecations fall on stony ground with Colin.  While Colin dislikes June in particular, he is equally put-off by Jeremy's obnoxious attitude.

Jeremy has been formulating a more ambitious plan in his mind in which he kills his parents and makes it look like Sheila has run amok.  This increasingly seems workable during July and early August as Sheila's mental state declines.  Jeremy is quite proud of this plan and how clever he is.  Then, at the housewarming party, he hears Colin mention that Sheila and the twins will be staying at the farm for a week or so.  Jeremy realises this is his chance to wipe out the entire family, including the twins, and decides he will put the plan into effect.  He hopes that maybe Colin might stay at the farmhouse too.

3. The scenario

It is 6th. August 1985, at White House Farm.  Sheila is in a bad way and Nevill and June are worried she will now have to be sectioned.  They would like to see more of the twins and decide to broach the topic of childcare with Sheila with a view to arranging a permanent move for her to the local area, perhaps living at Bourtree Cottage, with Jeremy moving in to the cottage at Gardeners Farm.  They hope this change of scene will improve her condition.

Between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., Jeremy is collecting combined rape from the front field and bringing it in the trailer to the barn for processing.  The field is next to the house and every now and then he stops by the kitchen to listen in on a conversation at the kitchen table between Nevill, June and Sheila.  Jeremy is studying Sheila carefully and notes that she seems quite moody and lethargic.   

Jeremy takes the rifle out and loads it on the pretext that he is to shoot some rabbits.  He tests the rifle by firing one shot.  He then returns and leaves the rifle in the gun cupboard, still loaded.  This is necessary as he does not want his father messing around with the rifle and leaving it somewhere else.

Jeremy finishes work at 9.30 p.m., having agreed with his father that Nevill will collect in the last trailer of combined rape.  Len Foakes then sees Nevill come out to do just that.

Jeremy is keen to get away because he needs to prepare for the night ahead.

At 10 p.m., Jeremy calls Julie Mugford.  If Julie is his accomplice, then the purpose of this call is to signal the go-ahead for the plan that night and to make Julie aware she will receive a call later.  If Julie is not his accomplice, then the purpose of the call is to help support the idea that Jeremy is at Bourtree Cottage, not White House Farm.

Jeremy purposefully spends the next two or so hours watching TV.

At 10.05 p.m., Pamela Boutflour calls June and speaks to Sheila as well.  After the call with Pamela, Sheila retires to bed.  The twins are still awake and she decides to read them a story on the bed in the master bedroom while waiting for June to come up.  One of the twins brings a cuddly toy which he places on the bed.

June then retires to bed and Sheila is very tired and decides to sleep in the main bed alongside her mother, to be near the twins.

Nevill does not finish work until 11 p.m. and is obviously tired.  He knows that Sheila may be sleeping in the master bedroom to be near the twins and does not wish to disturb June, Sheila or the twins at this late hour, so stays downstairs.  His clothes are obviously grimy, sweaty and dirty, so he undresses and showers, then changes into pyjamas and perhaps makes himself a drink in the lounge or at the decanter set in the kitchen.  He intends to sleep in the den, or maybe the upstairs office at the far north end of the house.

At around midnight, when it is dark, Jeremy sneaks out of Bourtree Cottage and Goldhanger on foot, taking a route he has planned in advance.  He is dressed in dark clothing and wearing a hood and/or balaclava.  He is careful and it takes him some 50 minutes to reach the environs of White House Farm. 

Jeremy climbs through the window at about 1 a.m.  He makes a bit of a clatter.  Nevill is still quite alert in the lounge and hears something, so gets up to investigate.  Meanwhile, Jeremy makes his way to the den, takes out the rifle and some spare ammunition and makes his way back to the kitchen.  By this point, Nevill has returned to the lounge, having found nothing.

Oblivious to Nevill, Jeremy climbs the main staircase.  Nevill hears him and again gets up to investigate, this time discovering Jeremy, who turns and fires on his father before pursuing him back to the kitchen.
There is perhaps a struggle between the two, but in any event Jeremy gains the upper hand and leaves his father for dead, after firing shots into him. 

Nevill is still alive, barely, and drifts in and out of consciousness over the ensuing hours without moving much.

After negating his father, Jeremy can hear an inquiring voice from upstairs.  He re-loads and climbs the stairs quickly.  Seeing his mother on the main landing, he perhaps fires on her initially from the stair landing.  She staggers back into the master bedroom, and he then kills her. 

Sheila is just waking and is confused and tired.  Jeremy quickly seizes her, pulls her off the bed and on to the floor, then shoots her in the neck area.  She does not have time to think or struggle.  He assumes she is dead.

Jeremy then re-loads, perhaps having to return to the den, from where he brings some ammunition into the kitchen.  He returns upstairs and now kills the twins.

Jeremy then returns to the master bedroom.  He leaves the Bible near Sheila, and then moves to place the rifle on or near her body.  It is at this point he realises she is still alive.  Jeremy now makes two mistakes.  He decides to shoot her again, to make sure, rather than suffocate her.  A two-shot suicide will always raise suspicion.  Having made that decision, he compounds one error with another by not partially re-loading the magazine (either before or after, it wouldn't have mattered), instead he spends the breach cartridge and leaves the magazine empty.  A related problem, arising from the first mistake, is that when shooting Sheila again, Jeremy does not fire at an angle roughly consistent with the first shot, with the consequence that he leaves a large triangulation between the two shots - which is inevitably suspicious when you consider the size of the weapon and the likely physical acuities of Sheila herself.  Yet this mistake was probably unavoidable once the first mistake was made.  Peter Venezis' evidence was, I believe, correct in this respect, in that Sheila was first shot when sitting up slightly.  In this scenario, that means that as Jeremy is pinning her down, he quickly fires, maybe rashly or inadvertently, having not quite got her into a flat position because she is beginning to struggle.

It is now roughly 1.45 a.m.  Jeremy has transfer bloodstains on him, so before he leaves, he changes clothes - borrowing some of Nevill's.  He also takes a small bag or rucksack and uses this to remove the stained clothing from the scene.  He then realises that he may have a problem.  Nevill is in the kitchen, away from the rest of the family.  He hadn't planned for this.  Won't there be questions about how Nevill got there, away from his own family, without simply disarming Sheila?  Won't there be questions about why Nevill didn't use the phone or flee for the den, or exit the house?  (In the event, we can ask these questions anyway about the case against Jeremy, but that's another discussion and has already been covered in previous threads).

I'm not necessarily suggesting Jeremy is mentally sharp enough to formulate these questions, as such, in his head there and then, but he has a general sense of the issues he may face once investigators come on the scene, due to Nevill being found at the other side of the house.  Jeremy decides that he needs to have Nevill make a phone call from the kitchen to someone else.  He can't create a 999 call because that would bring the emergency services to the location very quickly, perhaps immediately, and he also assumes such calls may be recorded or may involve him having to stay on the line for an extended period of time until police responders arrive; and anyway, he is not confident he can throw Nevill's voice.  (He may even have first tried making a 999 call, then thought better of it, and this may serve to explain why the Jeremy of today is so confident a 999 call was made.  It was an abortive call and nothing was said because he hung up immediately, but he may imagine there is a record of it somewhere). 

Jeremy then remembers that there is an answerphone connected to his phone line at Bourtree Cottage and a further plan forms in his mind, which he decides is quite clever.  He dials the number for Bourtree Cottage and the answerphone kicks in.  He then leaves the phone off the hook.  He finally departs the farmhouse at around 2.10 a.m. and makes his way back to Goldhanger by the route he came, now in quite a hurry, but still being quite careful. Along the way, he finds a discreet place just outside Goldhanger to hide the bag/rucksack for retrieval after dark during the forthcoming evening. Probably the south end of Fish Street, at a guess, if I know that part of Goldhanger right.

He makes it back to Bourtree Cottage by just before 3 a.m.  It is just turning to early twilight, still dark.

You may think Jeremy took a huge risk leaving the cottage at all due to the potential for being seen, and you would be right, but Jeremy reasons this out in his mind and decides that if he is seen on the way out or on the way back, he will say it was a burglar or intruder or somebody like that, and he suddenly also reassures himself that if he is seen on the way back, he can try to mix-up the times and conflate the sighting with him leaving after alerting the police, which is what he now intends to do.  In any event, he decides he can talk his way out of it.

At Bourtree Cottage, Jeremy is slightly confused about what to do next as he has complexified his own plans (perhaps needlessly).  Thinking quickly, he disconnects the answerphone and resolves to hide it somewhere in the house and dispose of it later that evening at the same time he goes to collect the incriminating bag.  He then quickly rings Julie Mugford.  It is now, maybe, 3.15 a.m.  He speaks to her relatively briefly.  If Julie is his accomplice, then this call would have been made anyway.  Collecting his thoughts, he then decides he needs to call the police, and events then follow the official narrative, with Jeremy speaking to PC Michael West at approximately 3.25 a.m.

For the purpose of building this scenario, I do not propose to explain why Jeremy would go to the effort of calling local police rather than simply dial 999.  There is a healthy argument that if Jeremy is guilty it is in his better interests to dial 999, and I am unconvinced by the arguments in the other direction typically trotted out by guilters.  Certainly, if Jeremy is guilty, his decision looks esoteric, but it may simply be down to his own impaired thinking in an unplanned situation.

Nevill is still alive until about 7 a.m. or so as the police are outside.  Possibly Sheila is also still alive.  But both are grievously injured.

In his story to the police, Jeremy mixes truth, fact and lies, telling them about the kitchen table conversation but also saying he left the rifle out in the scullery.  He remembers that he had left ammunition on the kitchen worktop, and realises that fits his narrative well as it makes it that bit easier for Sheila to load the weapon.

4. The firing order

My scenario requires Jeremy to reload twice (loading three times in all), each time charging the weapon fully by making up the magazine to 10 cartridges, totalling 11 cartridges - i.e. 10 in the magazine, one in the breach.  We have to assume this because it is a low calibre rifle.  Consequently, one problem I have is making the cartridge count work and I have had to add more spent cartridges than I think were discovered, along with a test fire.

We assume Jeremy starts with a full magazine of 10 cartridges plus one cartridge in the breach, i.e. 11 cartridges.

First Fusillade                       Shots on target       Wasted bullets                Remaining cartridges
                                                                                                                         Total  (Magazine)

First load                                                                                                     11       (10)   

TEST FIRE                                         0                              1                                 10       (9)                                                                                                                     

NEVILL                                              8                              0                                   2       (1)

First re-load: 9 cartridges                                                                             11       (10)

Second Fusillade     

JUNE                                                 7                              1                                 3         (2)

SHEILA                                             1                               0                                 2         (1)

Second re-load: 9 cartridges                                                                         11        (10)

Third Fusillade

DANIEL                                             5                               1                                5         (4)

NICHOLAS                                         3                               1                                1         (0)

SHEILA                                              1                               0                                0         (0)
 
                                                    25                            4     

5. Variation on this scenario

Nevill ending up in the kitchen is a big problem for Jeremy in this scenario, however I have thought of a variation on it in which Jeremy overhears Nevill mention at the kitchen table that evening that he will be out late and will sleep downstairs so as not to wake the others.  It may even have been discussed that Sheila would "again" sleep in the master bedroom, so as to be near the twins.  (Of course, Jeremy may also have been aware that Nevill sometimes slept downstairs, especially at that time of year, and anticipated this - perhaps intending to kill Nevill last, or first).

In that case, Jeremy would not lure Nevill upstairs.  You would also think that Jeremy would not invent the phone call, he would simply tell the police that Nevill's habit was to sleep downstairs, including when Sheila is asleep in the main bedroom.  That is what I believed at first, but then I realised there is a flaw in it, which is that Jeremy would then need to explain how it is that Sheila gets up and out of the main bedroom without disturbing June and how she gets hold of the rifle without alerting Nevill.  This may seem only a small problem, but in Jeremy's mind it may have loomed large and led him down a course of logical-intuitive reasoning to invent the phone call and pretend that Nevill was upstairs initially, Sheila was in her own bedroom, and Nevill followed Sheila downstairs.  You may think I am over-crediting Jeremy and he would not think of these things, but I think he could, as they are at root intuitive points that may occur to somebody in that situation.

This variation is only a change in Jeremy's rationalisations for his own actions at the scene.  It doesn't alter the technical details, including the firing order given in section 4 above.                   

A bit like this thread really.

[Steve_uk]

In my scenario above, Nevill is shot first, as you can see.  There were blood finger marks near the phone, which may indicate Nevill was trying to reach it.  He may have been stopped by Jeremy, who has then pushed him away, and Nevill has then made for the kitchen door, perhaps in the forlorn hope of getting to the den or the back door.

June is shot before Sheila as she comes out on to the landing to see what the commotion is.  June crawls around a bit, leaving blood, then Jeremy shoots her between the eyes; or, Jeremy leaves June for dead but she is still alive and is moving around, and he shoots her between the eyes later after killing the twins.

Pulling Sheila off the bed makes sense as part of a murder-suicide staging.  If he killed her in bed, it may look suspicious.  I would guess it's also an instinctive control thing.  He has to act quickly.  He needs to take control.  The springiness of the bed may make lining up the rifle barrel with her still on the bed difficult.  So he quickly pulls her off.  He is holding the rifle while he does this.  He then pins her down.  Peter Vanezis' evidence is probably correct that Sheila was shot while slightly sitting up.  What may have happened is that as he is pinning her down on the floor, she starts to struggle, and he may have inadvertently shot her before he quite had her lying flat.

June was shot first as she lay in bed. The first hail of bullets went through her pillow.

[lookout]

Not a good shot was it ?

[Steve_uk]

Not a good shot was it ?

Well they passed through the pillow after hitting her. A rifle meant to kill vermin.

[Munksa]

Well they passed through the pillow after hitting her. A rifle meant to kill vermin.

Low velocity gun, that's why needed multiple shots. But the gun choosen was right for the massacre. At face value looked like a mad person gone crazy when in reality everytime it hit the targets!

[Roch]

Low velocity gun, that's why needed multiple shots. But the gun choosen was right for the massacre. At face value looked like a mad person gone crazy when in reality everytime it hit the targets!

Easy to handle lightweight weapon, fired at close range within rooms. Both adults less physically mobile with each shot. Possibly even stationary. Shooter not injured (other than fight wounds).

[Rob_]

Low velocity gun, that's why needed multiple shots. But the gun choosen was right for the massacre. At face value looked like a mad person gone crazy when in reality everytime it hit the targets!

I don't understand what you are saying Munksa? virtually non moving targets at point blank range it would be harder to miss.

[Jane]

I don't understand what you are saying Munksa? virtually non moving targets at point blank range it would be harder to miss.

I think I may. Jeremy had won prizes for shooting. Could mean he prided himself on being something of a marksman. Sheila wasn't, ergo, put a gun in Sheila's hands and her lack of competency would be shown by the results. JB really didn't want it to look like a competent marksman had carried out the murders. He wanted it to look like Sheila had.

[lookout]

Why did June and Nevill appear to have been killed at least 2 hours before Sheila was ?