I have just finished reading Roger Wilkes’s book Blood Relations,the title expressing a certain ambiguity and irony contrasting as it does the adopted Jeremy and Sheila where the consanguinity was absent with the steadfastness of the prosecution’s case represented by the centuries- old farming bloodline of the Eaton’s and the Boutflour’s. The book comprises fifty chapters in all,detailing objectively this symbiotic relationship,the evidence,the trial and Jeremy’s subsequent and failed appeals.
The author does say at various stages that Jeremy is the only person who knows the truth as to what happened that morning of Wednesday August 7 1985,yet had he cooperated with this author in a way which he had previously with others failed singularly to do,in the hope that the book would depict a portrait of his innocence then Jeremy upon commencing reading would have been bitterly disappointed.
From the very beginning we get the feeling that Jeremy was the Prodigal Son,the parallel with the Biblical story in the Gospels of the man who had returned home after travelling widely and spending his fortune lavishly in the process and throwing himself upon the mercy of his father,yet this is where the story diverges as it becomes clear that both Ralph(Nevill) and June were not soft touches where finance was concerned,typical of their relatives and forbears who had thus kept the money in the family from one generation to the next. Jeremy had oh so obviously read his father’s will whereupon he would inherit the farm if the trustees thought that he had earned it,which is one explanation for Jeremy ostensibly settling down to the agricultural existence so evidently alien to him in the last year of his parents’ life.
The book is quite obsessed with finance,and this blackens Jeremy at the expense of Sheila,as of course this was the Prosecution’s case for the motive of gunning down an entire family. We are again told of Nevill’s temporary financial embarrassment as his legacy of Clifton Hall from his mother needed work in which to convert it into flats,and the subsequent bestowal of half of this to his sister Diana’s children Jackie and Anthony,another legacy which Jeremy would undoubtedly have been aware of as he snooped around his father’s den and safe. This is the reason for Nevill asking secretary Barbara Wilson to change the location of the safe key,the importance of that room and the authority emanating from it underlined in Jeremy’s consciousness after the murders when he instructed Barbara to destroy all documents, Jeremy’s position of feet up on the desk as he barked orders from the swivel chair. Jeremy would also have seen the bills for Sheila’s private medical treatment totalling £15,000,along with older school fees from Gresham’s which Nevill liked to keep,further reinforcing in Jeremy’s mind the trick and conspiracy his parents had perpetrated by packing him off to Gresham’s at eight years of age. Thinking of the future his parents were sure to want to do the same with Nicholas and Daniel,which would take another slice off his inheritance. His bitterness manifested itself openly in a comment to Doris Foalkes,wife of Len an employee,to whom he declared “I’m not sharing any of my money with Sheila”. This is confirmed when he rejects Robert Boutflour’s suggestion of giving Sheila shares in the caravan park.
Jeremy was quite blunt about his feelings towards his sister on that August morning. PC Myall,considering that they may be facing a siege at White House Farm as he had possibly dealt with in past scenarios enquired: “Who’s she more likely to be annoyed at seeing,you or us” to which Jeremy replied: “Both of us.I don’t get on with her at all. I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me.” It is Jeremy,at this stage the young,respectable public schoolboy who is calling the shots,and who successfully plants into the minds of the attending policemen the idea that Sheila had run amok inside the house with a loaded gun that he himself had left loaded on the settle only a few hours before. It is Jeremy who used the pretext of shooting foxes the night before,yet who had not used the telescopic sights,nor could not clearly remember whether he had discharged the rifle,possibly thinking about the wiping of the rifle after the glove came off in the struggle with Nevill,necessitating him to remove all traces of him using that weapon. None of Sheila’s fingerprints were found on the gun and one has to ask why did Sheila need to wipe the gun at all,thereby confirming Jeremy’s jitters about this evidence which was evidently occupying his thoughts that morning.
Yet Jeremy was prepared for the onslaught he was about to face;prepared for the endless Police questioning redolent of that stiff,formal,artificial atmosphere he had endured for nine years as a boarder at Gresham’s. His answers are careful,guarded and taciturn,where an innocent man would want to complete a full picture of his life and family to give credence to what he was saying. In reply to the known fact that he spent ten minutes in the fields with Sheila and the twins on the Tuesday and what did they talk about his reply is a resolute “No comment” as possibly his subconscious begins to realize the enormity of what he has done. This is contrasted by Julie Mugford’s words in court which were heartfelt,unrehearsed and unwavering. It’s not just the lies he told in his statements to Police,the telephone call from Nevill,his claim to Colin he had driven quickly to the farm,his rapport with his father when Ann Eaton knew they had had a recent argument over money,but Jeremy’s hardheartedness after the crimes,his refusal to acknowledge any regret over leaving a loaded rifle out and his lies that it would have not fitted into the gun cupboard with the silencer and sights attached,his desire to have the dog put down,his avoidance of the relatives at every turn in complete contrast to his demeanour over the whole of that last year,his precipitance in considering the monetary consequences of the crimes coupled with his lavish spending after the murders.
In this context it would not seem shocking that Jeremy blamed the murders on his mentally unstable sister. We have Freddi Emani’s evidence which vouches for her instability,yet still even in psychosis she beats her own hands against the wall and never harms others. We have the former boyfriend’s evidence to DC Barlow that Sheila was uncoordinated those last days,so much so that she couldn’t pour a drink without having to use both hands to steady the glass. So much for the theory that Sheila discharged a gun and reloaded twice. We have the two shot theory with half Sheila’s jaw blown off by the first shot, when Dr. Vanezis explains that it is unlikely she could move up and downstairs as a result of it. We have Dr. Herbert MacDonell’s evidence years later,the Isaac Newton of ballistics and blood spatter stating that Sheila was murdered,promoting the ludicrous riposte that Sheila must then have been shot by Police.
Of course the Jeremy supporters remain loyal to him as the years pass,though it is striking that the people who knew him best have all deserted him: his former friends at the Frog and Beans in Colchester,Suzette Ford who had a relationship with him lasting three years yet who went back to her husband, and Julie Mugford,who experienced the real delayed grief as she witnessed the impact of the crime on Colin and the immediate relatives. It was Jeremy who was a different person to the man she fell in love with,Jeremy who had changed so markedly after the murders,as the interminable mental efforts and strains in attuning himself to his adoptive family’s ways coupled with the hard physical labour which was expected of him finally took their toll and snapped something in him,culminating in the cataclysmic events of midweek,yet this had only unleashed a newer and even more unattractive personage,which far from unshackling him from his yoke gave vent to an even more unattractive side of Jeremy,the Jeremy who having committed five murders yearned for respect and attention as he scoured the nation’s newspapers,whilst continuing the pathological lies at every turn,and it is this Jeremy,rejected by his blood relations, that Julie finally saw,as she turned her back and determined on redress.
