Quietlife as you are fairly new to the forum I have cut and pasted details regarding phones and phone calls below from the Jeremy Bamber website
Jeremy definitely believes Sheila was responsible for the murders but there has been much discussion over past months that Neville could have been forced to use the phone.
Shona without proper explanation says Jeremy was definitely responsible for the murders (if she had proof of this I am sure the CCrc would offer her a job tomorrow on the back of her solving the mysteries in this case)
I like to listen to both sides with an open mind.
At this moment in time I still think someone else could have been involved but I don't know
Nevill's Call to Police
One of the big mysteries in this case which has always been harmful to Jeremy's testimony was the prosecution's case that Nevill Bamber didn't call the Police. This is featured in the Daily Mirror Article 05/08/10. Jeremy did say that his father called him and in turn Jeremy also called the police.
But we know that Nevill did call the Police - view the Police transcripts of Nevill's call here and Jeremy's call here
Question: It’s looks as though one log is just a copy of the other, meaning they are both regarding Jeremy’s call.
The logs are rolling documents and were started when the calls were made and added to as the events of the morning unfolded. An explanation (by the proesection) for the anomalies below is that the officer who took the calls simply made a mistake about the times. What do you think?
For instance at the top of the Essex Police Communications log (Nevill’s call) it shows ‘mobiles dispatched to the scene’ (mobiles being police vehicles). It shows 3 police cars being dispatched and then the time each arrived, it also shows 3 police tactical firearms vehicles being dispatched and also when they arrived. So we can clearly see that it was a rolling log, added to as the events unfolded.
The message that confuses people is “message passed to CD by son of Mr Bamber after the phone went dead, Mr Bamber has a collection of shotguns and .410’s”
By referring to Jeremy Bamber’s call message report timed at 03.36 there was no word of him mentioning which firearms were at White House Farm in that call. By referring to PC Myall’s 8th August 85 Statement he says that on arrival at the farm he asked Jeremy to tell him which guns were in the house. It was only at this point that headquarters were contacted by radio to say that the son had given a list of firearms and the circumstance of the phone call he received, which the officer in the radio car CA07 relayed to HQ. This was logged as above.
Nevill’s call
Jeremy’s call
Made at 3.26
Made at 3.36
Police dispatched car CA7 (3.35am)
Despatched another car CA5
CA7 arrives at the scene at 3.48
CA5 arrives at 4.23
Refers to Sheila as ‘Daughter’
Refers to Sheila as ‘Sister’
Address White House Farm
Address Head St, Goldhanger
860209 – WHF number
88645 – Jeremy’s phone number
Says his Daughter has gone ‘Beserk’
Jeremy says Sister had gone ‘crazy’
Nevill says Sheila was 26 yrs
Jeremy says Sheila was 27 yrs
Nevill lists shotguns and .410’s
Jeremy makes no mention of any other guns in the house
He says she has got one of ‘my’ guns
Jeremy Says ‘the gun’
Question: Isn’t it possible for Jeremy to have made both calls if they are ten minutes apart?
It could be argued that Jeremy made the call from WHF and then went to his home at Goldhanger and made the second call, but it’s not possible to get from one to the other in less than 10 minutes without going by car on the main roads. Jeremy’s car remained outside his house until he went to meet police. All of the roads were accounted for and no one saw Jeremy or his car or anyone suspicious along the route from his home to WHF. This is why the prosecution’s case was that Jeremy had cycled across farmland to carry out the murders.
Question Why was this log never shown to the jury?
At the trial Nevill’s call log was passed off as Jeremy’s call. Jeremy’s call log was not disclosed to the Defence until 3 March 2004. Malcolm Bonnet put in his witness statement 13th September that the call he received from Jeremy was at 03:36. It is for this reason that the trial judge put in his summing up that this anomaly was simply Mr Bonnet or Mr West Putting the wrong time down.
Had the actual message log from Jeremy been disclosed almost twenty years earlier then it would have been apparent that the police received two telephone calls. Jeremy’s call was to PC West and Nevill’s call was to Malcom Bonnet, but PC West informed Malcolm Bonnet of Jeremy’s all and so this is why Mr Bonnet passed off Jeremy’s call as being to him to disguise Nevill’s call being made.
Question: If Both Nevill and Jeremy called the police why weren’t these calls recorded?
What is incredible is that all police calls were recorded onto audio tape as Mr Bonnet (a civilian who took calls for the police) said in his 16.12.85 statement. According to the ICO letter see (Doc A7) & list of evidence destroyedEssex Police destroyed the audio tapes after 28 days and this was standard practice unless the Defence asked for them, but Jeremy wasn’t arrested until after this 28 day period.
Nevertheless this story doesn't appear to be true as documents recently released to the Defence show that these tapes were actually kept and copied during September. Action 146 states that the tapes of the calls were copied after the 12th September 85. This was carried out on action report number 123 and also dated 12th September 1985. These tapes were supposed to have been destroyed on 7th September 1985 but they cannot possibly have been as copies were made of these calls.
The court then, should have been able to listen to these calls, both voices would have been distinctly different from one another. Instead of this, at trial Nevill’s call at 3:26 was passed off as Jeremy’s. Jeremy’s later call at 03:36 was kept secret and only disclosed in March 2004. The “JB Calls” on audio must still exist as additional copies were made after 12th September 1985 and there is no record of their destruction as there always is when exhibits are destroyed. Could these tapes be part of the Public Interest Immunity documents stored in the Chief Constable’s safe?
Question: Why did the police despatch more than one car?
They despatched two cars in response to two calls about the incident. Why would the same police officer, collar number 1990, make two different records of a call from the same person, at different times (3:26 and 3:36am), referring to details passed to him about the caller’s "daughter" in one, and the callers "sister", in the other?
The patrol car which overtook Jeremy en route to the farmhouse that morning, (CA07) was responding to the call made by Nevill, not to the call made by Jeremy, as confirmed by the fact that CA07 left to go to the scene, (3:35am), one minute before Jeremy made his call to the police at 3:36am (this anomaly was apparently commented upon during the judgement at the last (2002) appeal).
Note, that the patrol car, CA05, was dispatched to respond to the call made to the police by Jeremy at 3:36am, as verified by the fact that these details are recorded in the message log relating to Jeremy's call, "Dispatched CA05 to scene"...
Question: Jeremy couldn’t have called the police if Nevill had really called him as the phone was off the hook at WHF and would have still been connected to Jeremy’s line making him unable to make another call out from his phone.
This is not the case. It is apparent that during the call made to the police by Nevill Bamber (3:26am) that he left the handset off its cradle, and that this would be consistent with Nevill having earlier called Jeremy, and the line going dead, because Nevill would have tapped the cradle to enable him to make the call to the police at 3:26am, so that by the time Jeremy attempted to re-establish contact with Nevill at WHF, he kept getting the engaged tone because Nevill was speaking to the police. Later, the police got the operator to check the line at WHF from where Nevill had made the call at 3:26am, who confirmed that at that stage, the handset was off its cradle...
Telephones at White House Farm
There has recently been much discussion over the telephones at White House Farm. This was brought up at the 1986 Trial of Jeremy Bamber. Key witnesses made statements and gave testimony about the phones that were at the farm.
Firstly there were usually three phones at White House Farm; a cream dial phone in the master bedroom; a blue digital dial one in the upstairs office; and a cordless phone which was kept in the kitchen. There was also another phone at the Farm that was a ‘fawn’ colour and it also had a digital key pad and it is unclear where this phone was usually kept although it was found in the kitchen under some magazines.
There had been a thunderstorm which had caused damage to the phone system and an engineer called Mr Pike made a statement that he took away the cordless phone and that he did not leave a replacement. The farm secretary Mrs Wilson had been on holiday and was not entirely sure where the phones were moved to as a result of this storm. Nevertheless Mrs Jean Bouttell testified in court that the phones had gone wrong so many times in the past year that she described it as “musical phones” when asked in court simply because the phones were moved around so frequently by the Bamber Family. She said it was common practice for the cream phone from the bedroom to be moved down into the kitchen.
After the tragedies happened on the 7th of August 1985, Chief Supt Harris used the phone to call Assistant Chief Constable Simpson on that morning before SOCO carried out their search of the house but this was denied at the 2002 appeal, evidence released in 2004 now proves he did make this call using the cream telephone in the kitchen. When the police finished their SOCO investigations and handed the keys to the family, by the weekend of the 10th of August Ann Eaton and Jean Bouttell started cleaning the house. Additionally numbers of people had been in and around the house including, Basil Cock, Barbara Wilson, Robert Boutflour, Pamela Boutflour, Chris Nevill, David Boutflour, Karen Boutflour and Anthony Pargeter.
On the 23rd of August Jeremy had been back to the farm, Barbara Wilson had commenced her duties as farm secretary reporting to Jeremy. Jean Bouttell had also commenced her regular cleaning duties. Jeremy had increased the wages of the farm workers during this time. And he asked Barbara Wilson to clear out many of the papers in the office for him. It was on this date that he asked Jean Bouttell to clear out other belongings in the house. As we all know after a family member has died we have to face the difficult task of removing their belongings from our lives and Jeremy was no different from any other person in facing the emotional and practical difficulties of doing this.
Jean Bouttell testified that Jeremy had asked her to remove the pile of magazines in the kitchen and it was during this clear out that she found the fawn coloured phone. She said that she asked Jeremy what she should do with it and he replied that it was just a spare. When she later checked the phone some three weeks later at the request of the police she found that it was working. Barbara Wilson also states that she checked the phone and found it to be working. Neither of these witnesses stated that Jeremy had told them that the phone was broken. The police asked Jean to check the phone some three weeks later and she found it to be working.
It has been suggested that Jeremy deliberately removed the phone from the bedroom that his father slept in so that he could not call the police when Jeremy allegedly broke into the house to kill the family. Firstly, Jeremy could not be responsible for the storm which had again damaged the telephone equipment and secondly is Jeremy expected to remember where each phone was at each moment when he didn’t even live in the house? Is it reasonable to expect Jeremy to know which phones were supposed to be where at this time? Is it not a reasonable assumption that if the Bamber’s phone was broken that one of them would take a phone from the upstairs bedroom and use it to replace the broken one? Particularly if, amongst the piles of untidy clutter littered throughout the house they didn’t know where the spare phone was.
Considering the number of moves that the telephones had made during the last year which seems to have been at least two or three times up until the 7th of August is it not reasonable that Jeremy wouldn’t have spent his days thinking about where the phone was? Is it not reasonable to wonder at how many people had been in the house ‘looking for evidence’ long after the initial police SOCO search between the 7th of August and the 23rd of August? Is it not reasonable to assume that the ‘spare’ phone could have been moved at any time by anyone to its position under the magazines during Ann Eaton’s clean up of the farm house?
The other area for concern is the amount of rumour which has emerged into the media since the trial of Jeremy Bamber. Barbara Wilson made no less than 14 statements to the police before Jeremy’s trial all dated 16.12.85, 05.10.85, 06.10.85, 11.10.85, 17.09.85, 19.09.85, 22.11.85, another on 05.10.85, and more on 08.11.85, 12.09.85, 16.11.85, 25.10.85, 26.11.85, and 27.09.85. In one statement she even described Jeremy as "a likeable young man". Out of all of these statements she never mentioned at any time that Nevill had told her that Jeremy had intended to kill him or anything which could be interpreted as such, Nevill had no premonition whatsoever that he might die in the near future. Neither did Barbara Wilson mention this at trial. If Nevill Bamber had told an employee such a thing why did this employee not mention this at trial to assist in the conviction of Jeremy Bamber and why did she not go to the police with this ‘story’ on the 7th of August? It is only in the Roger Wilkes book and on various television programmes that this has been suggested and we will leave you to make your own conclusions about why this story has been invented for various forms of media.
