Hi Gascoigne,the phone conversation is on pages 157-158 of CALs book-The murders at Whitehouse farm--CAL says she interviewed leading figures from the 1985 enquiry,including Ferguson,Vanezis and Malcolm Fletcher.She says 'i have also drawn on several thousand pages of UNPUBLISHED documentation such as witness statements,police records,court documents,personal letters,notebooks and memoirs in an effort to write a balanced,comprehensive study of the case' She also says some of the crime scene photos on the web and elsewhere have been substantially re-touched. She also says some statements on the web about Sheila have been made up,but she is quoting from original records.So does this mean CAL had access to photos and statements that no one else has seen,including JB?
To her credit, Carol Ann Lee does add references, and so I have now been able to check her source for the "zombie" claim. It appears this was an article in the Guardian, "The Bambi I Married". Unfortunately, Carol Ann Lee does not provide the date of the article, but I expect it was contemporaneous and was written by or about Colin Caffell. If so, that means the source for the "zombie" phrasing is Colin Caffell himself, which in my view makes it inconsequential for our purposes as he is far from an objective source and his book, while excellent, is not factual (nor does it purport to be, in fairness). I shall have to check both editions of Mr Caffell's book to see if he uses the word there too and perhaps also contact The Guardian as the article does not appear to have been indexed online
Adam does not give a page number for Wilkes' use of the word, but again, Wilkes' source was probably Colin Caffell.
There is an outside chance that Robert W. Boutflour uses the word in his statement of 10th. September 1985, but unfortunately the 2013 thread to which Mike uploaded that statement does not include all pages of it, so I have added a request for that document to the requisitions thread I have just started.
I hope this assists. In summary, I can't be absolutely sure at the moment, but it looks like the word has been drawn from the previous writings of Colin Caffell or an article about him.
Turning to your question about Carol Ann Lee's access to documents. She was afforded privileged access to crime scene photographs, including photographs of the bodies of the twins. The Campaign Team claim that she has had sight of documents denied to Jeremy Bamber. I do not know if that is true. I do however wonder how an ordinary author can be given access to sensitive documents and photographs and I suspect it was not Essex Police who co-operated with her, but one or more retired officers: most likely, Mike Ainsley, possibly also Ron Cook, maybe Bob Miller too (he died prior to publication). Now I have the book in front of me, I am looking at her Acknowledgements section at the end, and Essex Police is conspicuous by its absence, but she does credit individuals, including the officers I have just mentioned.
