telephone logs.

[mike tesko]

After events had unfolded, mertol, i think any call from Neville to the police would have been mentioned. They would have mentioned it to any doubters that didnt believe Sheila had comitted the murders.

On a similar note...

Now that it has been established beyond doubt that police had a means of checking to see if calls had been made from whf, and Jeremy's cottage, by reference to the metered call log system, namely, the police could tell and gather information about which calls (if any) were made from the scene between 6pm on Tuesday, 6th August 1985, and 8am, on Wednesday, 7th August 1985, if there was no corresponding metered call log record to confirm somebody at the scene had made a call to Jeremy's cottage in the middle of the night, do you not agree that the police would almost certainly have introduced that as part of the case against Jeremy to prove that no such call had been made from the scene by his father? Do you or anybody else think the police would not have used such information and evidence to show that Jeremy was / is a liar?

Of course they would...

But, they did not, and the reason they did not is because police were satisfied that somebody did make such a call from the scene to Jeremy's cottage in the middle of the night, and that a further call was made to the police from the scene, and then the attack alarm was activated...

[mike tesko]

If the Father had called, i'm sure it would have been mentioned by the Police to Jeremy on the night of the murders and in statements by the Police of on the events of the evening, because at that time Jeremy was not a suspect. But it was not and the caller on the log is the Police officre transfering Jeremys call, this has all been proved. This point should really be closed now!

The attack alarm was activated by somebody at the scene that night, yet the police did not tell Jeremy this, or his legal team, and the court which tried this matter was not told about this development, so where does that leave your scenario now?

Rather than the point be closed down now, I say it should be opened up and looked into more deeply and with enthusiasm, since a mans liberty is at stake...

[Steve_uk]

The attack alarm was activated by somebody at the scene that night, yet the police did not tell Jeremy this, or his legal team, and the court which tried this matter was not told about this development, so where does that leave your scenario now?

Rather than the point be closed down now, I say it should be opened up and looked into more deeply and with enthusiasm, since a mans liberty is at stake...

Mike the fact that the panic alarm was activated proves nothing as to the identity of the murderer. As for the telephone records one would have thought that any Home Secretary would have been able to access that evidence were it available. It's no use us here hypothesizing about them and then forming another hypothesis on the basis of information we don't have.

In any case had a call been made on the kitchen telephone at the time Jeremy Bamber claimed it still does not prove definitively that Ralph(Nevill) was at the other end of it. It could just as easily have been a hitman confirming to Jeremy that all had gone well,as was set out in Jeremy's plan mentioned to Julie.

[mike tesko]

Mike the fact that the panic alarm was activated proves nothing as to the identity of the murderer. As for the telephone records one would have thought that any Home Secretary would have been able to access that evidence were it available. It's no use us here hypothesizing about them and then forming another hypothesis on the basis of information we don't have.

In any case had a call been made on the kitchen telephone at the time Jeremy Bamber claimed it still does not prove definitively that Ralph(Nevill) was at the other end of it. It could just as easily have been a hitman confirming to Jeremy that all had gone well,as was set out in Jeremy's plan mentioned to Julie.

I think you are wrong about that / this...

I shall tell you for why?

First of all, when the attack alarm was activated from the scene, which must have been just before 3:35am (when the occupants of CA07 were deployed to the scene from Witham police station), within a minute or so, Jeremy was making his own call from his own cottage at 9 Head Street, Goldhanger, to the police (3:36am) - it was therefore not possible for Jeremy to be at whf one minute, and his own cottage the next. This is what proves beyond any shadow of doubt that Jeremy was not the killer as alleged during his trial by aspects and features of the prosecutions case. It was impossible for Jeremy to be at the scene to make the call to himself, then to call the police pretending to be Ralph, and then to activate the attack alarm in time to send the occupants of CA07 racing to the scene from Witham police station, and yet be home in time (3:36am) for him to make his own call to PC West...

Not to be forgotten, is that Jeremy also called his girlfriend Julie Mugford, in-between the call he received from his father, and himself calling the police at 3:36am, so I am afraid to say that any suggestion that Jeremy was at the scene at all, is just too preposterous to contemplate or imagine, or accept - logic dictates that Jeremy was never at the scene in any capacity when members of his family got shot and killed...

As for the hitman theory, well the police rejected that theory out of hand very quickly once Jeremy was initially arrested, and Mugfords story was discredited, and he was not convicted of hiring a hitman, so he doesn't have to prove there wasn't one, does he?

[Steve_uk]

As far as I am aware the Prosecution case was that Ralph(Nevill) would not have telephoned Jeremy first before calling the Police. If Sheila is roaming the house with a gun then why doesn't Nevill just dial 999 first and avail himself of a gun from the den?

When PC West receives Jeremy's call and puts him on hold Jeremy is quoted as saying:"When my father rang he sounded terrified". Why in this case when Jeremy himself imparts the need for speedy action onto others does he call Julie first,then flick through a Yellow Pages for ten minutes to find the Chelmsford Police Station number when any concerned individual would dial 999,then dawdles in his driving all the way to the farm? These actions are symbolic of someone who knows that the speed factor in arriving at the farm would make no difference to the outcome,as all occupants were already dead.

You are of course right that Jeremy himself was charged with murder and not of hiring a hitman. I can only surmise that the authorities think it probable that a retrial would produce the same result,with the evidence of secretary Barbara Wilson to whom Nevill foretold presciently his own death at the hand of a gun,and to whom he told "I must never turn my back on that young man".

This would be in addition to Julie Mugford's evidence,who would be sensationally brought into court from Canada to retell what I imagine would be the repeat of an unwavering story and those miffed about her £25,000 would face a similar state of affairs as newspapers clamoured to have exclusive rights for her life story once again.

[Caroline R]

You are of course right that Jeremy himself was charged with murder and not of hiring a hitman. I can only surmise that the authorities think it probable that a retrial would produce the same result,with the evidence of secretary Barbara Wilson to whom Nevill foretold presciently his own death at the hand of a gun,and to whom he told "I must never turn my back on that young man".

Is that the same Barbara Wilson who described Jeremy as 'a likeable young man' and how she probably got along better with him than her own son? The above premonition wasn't mentioned in her statement at the trial. It was something she said six years later in 1991and was never part of any official statement! IF Nevil had told her that she would have mentioned it at the trial!

[mike tesko]

As far as I am aware the Prosecution case was that Ralph(Nevill) would not have telephoned Jeremy first before calling the Police. If Sheila is roaming the house with a gun then why doesn't Nevill just dial 999 first and avail himself of a gun from the den?

Ralph doesn't need to dial 999, because he simply activates the attack alarm linked to Witham police station when the situation really starts to get out of hand - and that my friend is precisely what he did do, when the situation did get out of control. In the meantime, it was perfectly acceptable and reasonable that a father should make a call to his son, to inform him about the current state of play inside the farmhouse. There is no evidence that anyone had been shot at all by the time Ralph made that call to Jeremy, Ralph simply told Jeremy either that "Sheila has got the gun", or "she has got the gun", or whatever combination of words he used during the call, asking Jeremy to come quickly. In many ways I do not necessarily believe that the call got cut off in the way it has been suggested it was suddenly cut off, because Ralph got out the message he wanted to, which was to alert Jeremy to the fact that his sister had got the gun, and was going crazy, come to the farmhouse, quickly?

The fact that his sister was going crazy did not necessarily mean that she had shot anybody, because she had gone crazy before, and had to be admitted to hospital because she had mental health issues. So, going crazy could have been spoken by Ralph in that context, and received by Jeremy in that context with the added proviso that she was in possession of "the gun" on this occasion, something which had never cropped up in any of the other breakdowns?

[lebaleb]

As far as I am aware the Prosecution case was that Ralph(Nevill) would not have telephoned Jeremy first before calling the Police. If Sheila is roaming the house with a gun then why doesn't Nevill just dial 999 first and avail himself of a gun from the den?

When PC West receives Jeremy's call and puts him on hold Jeremy is quoted as saying:"When my father rang he sounded terrified". Why in this case when Jeremy himself imparts the need for speedy action onto others does he call Julie first,then flick through a Yellow Pages for ten minutes to find the Chelmsford Police Station number when any concerned individual would dial 999,then dawdles in his driving all the way to the farm? These actions are symbolic of someone who knows that the speed factor in arriving at the farm would make no difference to the outcome,as all occupants were already dead.

You are of course right that Jeremy himself was charged with murder and not of hiring a hitman. I can only surmise that the authorities think it probable that a retrial would produce the same result,with the evidence of secretary Barbara Wilson to whom Nevill foretold presciently his own death at the hand of a gun,and to whom he told "I must never turn my back on that young man".

This would be in addition to Julie Mugford's evidence,who would be sensationally brought into court from Canada to retell what I imagine would be the repeat of an unwavering story and those miffed about her £25,000 would face a similar state of affairs as newspapers clamoured to have exclusive rights for her life story once again.

Ralph didn't dial 999 because he thought with Jeremy's help, he could handle the situation. Sheila may have been shut in the bathroom [where a gun was kept] so Ralph couldn't disarm her.
When Jeremy called the police, at first they didn't take him seriously. He had to 'sex it up' a bit to justify having called them.
'I must never turn my back on that young man' could have meant 'I must never abandon that young man'.  It would be a bizarre situation for Ralph to have been working with Jeremy on a daily basis and not be able to turn his back to him for fear of his life. If that were true, why would he even allow such a person inside WHF?
Maybe after so many years JM could manage to get her story straight.

[mike tesko]

When PC West receives Jeremy's call and puts him on hold Jeremy is quoted as saying:"When my father rang he sounded terrified". Why in this case when Jeremy himself imparts the need for speedy action onto others does he call Julie first,then flick through a Yellow Pages for ten minutes to find the Chelmsford Police Station number when any concerned individual would dial 999,then dawdles in his driving all the way to the farm? These actions are symbolic of someone who knows that the speed factor in arriving at the farm would make no difference to the outcome,as all occupants were already dead.

If the content of the audio recording of the call Jeremy made to PC West (3:36am) was disclosed and available, we would see exactly what Jeremy said to PC West, and in what context he actually had said anything? There hasn't even been a transcript produced by the police of that first contact, its been left to PC West to make a witness statement about it, and to present the so called incident log describing what Jeremy actually said to him on that occasion. If you do not produce the audio recording, or a transcript of the conversation between Jeremy and PC West, on that occasion (3:36am) there is no way of actually checking the accuracy of what PC West purports to have recorded on the log, or later in his witness statement. I am prepared to accept, however, that Jeremy may have said something along the lines that when his father spoke to him he sounded frightened, but what prompted Jeremy to say such a thing? Did PC West ask him if he had heard anything else in the background when his father had called him? or if Ralph had said anything else other than what Jeremy had reported to PC West up to that stage / point? It is all very well, plucking the odd comment out of a conversation and declaring that it proves this or that, but without knowing the precise context in which those comments had been made, it becomes somewhat impossible and you are treading on dodgy ground to suggest it must have meant that Jeremy knew everyone was already dead by the time he made the call to the police (3:36am) because whilst Jeremy was making the call to the police at that time, the attack alarm had been activated back at whf moments or minutes before, and the occupants of CA07 had already been deployed to the scene? How could everybody already be dead inside whf if Jeremy made his call to the police from his cottage at 3:36am, and the occupants of CA07 had already been deployed to the scene a minute earlier, and someone inside whf had very recently activated the attack alarm? Does this not prove that Jeremy did not have a clue about anybody having been shot or killed inside whf by that stage, and that somebody inside the farmhouse must still have been alive at that time or by that stage?

So, with these things in mind, I think it unlikely that Jeremy already knew everybody was already dead by the time Jeremy spoke to PC West at 3:36am...

Then...

when he and the police met up at the scene, two police officers and Jeremy saw a figure inside the bedroom which sent them hurtling back to the patrol car so that PS Bews could pass a radio message to the control room requesting that the firearms team should be deployed to the scene because of what they had just seen and witnessed...

With this in mind, I do not think that anyone can deduce that when and if Jeremy did say to PC West that when his father phoned he had sounded frightened, that it means or meant that Jeremy already knew that everyone inside whf was already dead by that stage. If anything it could suggest the opposite...

[grahameb]

Andrea I think they spoke to different police stations didn't they and also there's the whole Mike thing and the panic alarm which again change sthe scenario, I think

All would be found in the Witham logs, which as yet have not been "found". Where is the log that contained the panic alarm activation?

[grahameb]

It's a silly idea which allegedly Jeremy had discussed with Julie-how else would Julie have known about it? Did Jeremy also suggest to Julie that she might want to borrow June's bicycle,therby giving Jeremy a pretext for having a woman's bicycle lying around his property?

That fact can be established. The bicycle was sent to Jeremy's house for Julie Mugford to use, There was nothing suspicious about it. It was RWB's silly suggestion that JB used it on the night of the murders. This same RWB who loved detective stories. The whole story of the silencer was probably based upon the Agatha Christie story of the gun and silencer leaning up against the wall. I would think it fair to say that Bamber was convicted on the strength of an Agatha Christie crime story.

[mike tesko]

You are of course right that Jeremy himself was charged with murder and not of hiring a hitman. I can only surmise that the authorities think it probable that a retrial would produce the same result,with the evidence of secretary Barbara Wilson to whom Nevill foretold presciently his own death at the hand of a gun,and to whom he told "I must never turn my back on that young man".

Well, actually forgive me for saying so, but it was part of the prosecutions case that Jeremy had entered the premises through a downstairs window that night, had killed his family, stage managed the scene to make it look like a suicide, and fled the farmhouse by exiting a different window, and riding away from the scene into the dead of night, on his mothers bicycle, or whatever? Now, if that was the prosecutions case at trial, I cannot see how another court can change the scenario, into Jeremy now having hired a hitman when that idea had already previously been investigated by the police and rejected,  just to keep someone locked up for not being responsible for committing the offences they were originally charged and convicted of, and for which they have been falsely in prison over?

Dealing with comments later attributed to Ralph by Barbara Wilson, if Ralph made such comments he could very well have been referring to the young man he had sent to prison, whose father had threatened to kill Ralph, and his family? It doesn't make sense for Ralph to have said those things and for him to be referring to Jeremy, because he had to work alongside or with Jeremy and there would obviously be many occasions when Ralph would have had his back to Jeremy from that point on. Furthermore, if Ralph intended Wilson to understand that he was frightened of being shot in the back by Jeremy, the very first thing Ralph would have done is to get rid of all the firearms kept at the farm? He would have cancelled his shotgun and firearms certificate and reported to the police his reasons for doing so - for Ralph not to have done this was or would have been negligent on his part? You do not think somebody is going to shoot you in the back and then keep firearms of many description and ammunition a plenty at the farm to allow the very son you are talking about to shoot you in the back - so to speak, do you?

Another thing...

So your suggestion is that Ralph told Wilson that Ralph made the comment about the likelihood of being shot in the back by Jeremy, with use of one of his own guns, and nothing at all was done to get rid of all the guns kept at whf? I doubt this very much for all the reasons I have given...

[grahameb]

Thats a fair point andrea thats ok, but given their slap happy dealing with the case , not wearing gloves on a crimescene to name  one, it often is the case of someone forgot to tell someone else something and the police today are still at it ,

Plus all these things may have been true.( Personally I have never been aware of the police telling other witnesses that someone else had phoned them as well) and notes made. But then alterered so as to fit into any senario that police want it to? This much is evidence. Because every police statement is exactly the same. This is because the police always meet for debriefing and in those debriefing meetings they do actially harmonise their notes.

[grahameb]

The attack alarm was activated by somebody at the scene that night, yet the police did not tell Jeremy this, or his legal team, and the court which tried this matter was not told about this development, so where does that leave your scenario now?

Rather than the point be closed down now, I say it should be opened up and looked into more deeply and with enthusiasm, since a mans liberty is at stake...

Also the point hasn't been proved. Far from it. There are far too many things that have not been explained as to how the police got certain information that Jeremy simply hadn't given them in his call that night.

[mike tesko]

This would be in addition to Julie Mugford's evidence,who would be sensationally brought into court from Canada to retell what I imagine would be the repeat of an unwavering story and those miffed about her £25,000 would face a similar state of affairs as newspapers clamoured to have exclusive rights for her life story once again.

So, here we are trying to portray Julie Mugford as some sort of angel of truth. What truth? How many different versions of the truth is she going to be allowed to give? I think it more likely that although she flew in from Canada (as you point out) to attend the appeal in 2002, she was not called to testify because to have done so, it would have become apparent that she was someone who would say anything to try and make herself look good, and she probably came back to London to try and get a further deal with a newspaper and the possibility of another giant payout, money in her handbag so to speak to help fund her lifestyle back home...