Were you there.
As already said, the bedroom phone was moved downstairs to justify why Nevill was downstairs.
However a possibility both phones were in the kitchen.
I believe this 'moving phones' theory is totally wrong. It's just another red herring thrown up by Essex Police and the prosecution. If you examine the evidence, especially statements, you will realise it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Accordingly to a statement by Jean Bouttell dated 16th. December 1985, there were four telephones and four telephone points in the house.
The phones:
The cream rotary dial phone in the main bedroom.
A fawn-coloured digital phone in the main kitchen.
A cordless phone also in the main kitchen.
A blue digital phone in the upstairs office.
The telephone points:
In the ground floor sitting room.
In the drinks cupboard along the main hallway between the main kitchen and sitting room.
In the main bedroom, on the left of the bed (nearest the boxroom).
In the first floor office.
Bouttell states that the telephone point in the drinks cupboard was always used to plug in the telephone in the kitchen.
About the phones, she states:
The blue digital phone was never moved from the first floor office.
The fawn-coloured phone was always kept in the kitchen, just beneath the hatch to the drinks cupboard.
The cream dial phone was always in the main bedroom.
The cordless phone was Nevill's.
She mentions nothing about the phones being moved around, yet in the same statement she goes on to say that she cannot remember what the position of the phones was when she visited on 5th. August, and did not notice the position of the phones until 23rd. August, when she found a phone under the magazines in the kitchen. She handed it to Barbara Wilson in the upstairs office.
About the phone in the magazines, Bouttell cannot confirm it was the fawn-coloured phone. She only deduces this later when she notices that the fawn-coloured phone is not in its usual position in the same kitchen and the cream rotary dial phone is there, instead of in the main bedroom.
She asks Jeremy about this later that day and he says the phone she found under the magazines is a spare and she should leave it in the office - which she thinks is odd, as she had not noticed a spare phone before. Jeremy also told her that the usual kitchen phone, the fawn-coloured digital phone, had gone wrong and that is why the rotary dial phone was in the kitchen.
Bouttell confirms she subsequently used a phone that she believes was the same one as that found under the magazines, and she reports it was in perfect working order. She is "almost sure" it is the very same fawn-coloured phone as that once used in the main kitchen.
If we now turn to Douglas Pike's statement of 19th. September 1985, he refers to taking away a cordless phone on 5th. August 1985. If that is the case, and if we assume that the fawn-coloured phone was not a cordless model, then this seems to contradict what Jeremy told Bouttell, though at the same time, it does seem strange that Jean Bouttell cannot recall the position of the phones on that same date, which was her last visit before the shootings.
So far, we have facts that tell us that the theory Jeremy moved the phones around is groundless. Bouttell can't even be sure of what phone she found or later used, but let's give her the benefit of the doubt in that respect and say she was right, it was the fawn-coloured phone normally seen in the kitchen. That being so, it appears, as Bouttell says, Jeremy did indeed give an odd explanation for the fawn-coloured phone being found in such a strange place - under magazines - but that in itself confirms nothing since:
(a). Jeremy himself can hardly be expected to account for the telephones in somebody else's house, and he may simply have been confused - just as Bouttell was; and,
(b). Bouttell affirms that the kitchen is where the fawn-coloured phone would normally be found anyway, while Douglas Pike confirms that the rotary dial phone was already downstairs before the shootings. This implies that there was no phone in the main bedroom on 6th. August 1985, since the Bambers would not put the fawn-coloured digital phone in the main bedroom in place of the rotary dial phone that was working fine. And Jeremy would hardly do this.
We ought to be able to stop there and dismiss the whole thing. Like Walletgate, it's plainly a load of rubbish.
However, there is more to say.
First, the Campaign Team give an account of all this that, ironically, weakens Jeremy's position. They claim that at the trial Jean Bouttell gave evidence that:
"...the phones had gone wrong so many times in the past year that she described it as “musical phones..."
Source:
https://www.jeremy-bamber.co.uk/telephonesThat would seem on its face to give life to the prosecution theory in the eyes of the desperate. Who knows? Maybe the fawn-coloured phone was in the bedroom after all? (As an aside, the Campaign Team also allege that Ainsley contradicted the evidence by stating in his Interim Report to the DPP that the fawn-coloured phone was also found on the upstairs office shelf, but I disagree. I think Ainsley simply confused the discovery of phones on the morning of 7th. August with the later discovery of a phone handed by Jean Bouttell to Barbara Wilson).
I don't have Bouttell's trial evidence, so I can't confirm if she really did talk at the trial about 'musical phones', but if she did, it seems a bit inconsistent with what she told the police in her statement of 12th. December 1985.
Let's give the prosecution the benefit of this and - just as an exercise - assume that there was a fawn-coloured phone in the main bedroom, maybe because the phones were moved around. If, just to cover things, we're making this assumption, then I agree that we should ask why it was moved and when.
There are three possibilities:
(i). Jeremy moved the main bedroom phone before the incident.
(ii). Jeremy moved the main bedroom phone after the incident.
(iii). Somebody else moved the phone (and this would be without Jeremy's knowledge, as he has never mentioned it).
Possibility (i) seems unlikely as it would be noticed and Jeremy would anticipate this.
Nobody here can comment on possibility (iii) as we have no way of knowing when it was moved and why, and nor can Jeremy it seems. And there would be no reason for him to know, unless he is guilty.
Possibility (ii) has five problems:
First, Douglas Pike in his statement of 19th. September 1985 confirms that the phone taken for repair was a cordless phone. He also states that the cordless phone came with a two-way adaptor and he removed this adaptor when he left on the 5th. August 1985. Now please refer back to Jean Bouttell's statement of 12th. December 1985, in which you will see she does not specify a location for the cordless phone, only that Nevill used it, but states that the fawn-coloured phone was usually in the kitchen. The rotary dial phone was then found by police in the main kitchen on the morning of 7th. August 1985, and that was the same phone as the one seen in the kitchen (again, see Douglas Pike's statement of 19th. September 1985). All that being the case, we must ask not why Jeremy swopped the phones round, but why Nevill or June did so at all. Why would the fawn-coloured phone be put in the bedroom and the rotary dial phone put downstairs? That simply makes no sense. Surely Nevill or June would keep the rotary dial phone in the bedroom and leave the fawn-coloured phone in the kitchen? In other words, they would do nothing, with the result that Jeremy would be hiding the rotary dial phone under magazines, yet that is not the phone that Bouttell found.
Second, Jeremy would have stalled the line in such circumstances by lifting the kitchen phone off its receiver, rendering the upstairs phone inoperable.
Third, if - as Adam and the prosecution claim - Nevill was being shot in the bedroom, nobody would expect him or June to be sat at the bedroom phone trying to get hold of the police, assuming they could even get a line. As I think Snow has pointed out, the police would not at all have been surprised in such circumstances to find a phone in the main bedroom left unused.
Fourth, the phone under the magazines was found to be working. If Jeremy is guilty, he would know that there was a possibility that the police would not accept a murder-suicide scenario at face value and there might be further police inquiries immediately on discovering the bodies. You are suggesting he 'hid' the phone where it could easily be discovered by sceptical police officers, and in a strange place. Who puts a working phone under magazines? It seems unlikely to me.
