After reading the above posts this morning I'm afraid many of you are still reminiscing and your flights of fancy are blinkering you from the harsh reality of this case.
The fact is that Jeremy Bamber expressed a sustained wish over a twelve month period to do away with all his family;these thoughts were voiced openly in front of Julie Mugford,the only confidante available to him at that time,although there are numerous witnesses to whom he voiced his loathing of his parents. What happened with Suzette Ford is immaterial and any testimony she had to offer the court would have been irrelevant at best. I have read that she and Jeremy did try for children but that she had three miscarriages-well that is tragic but all the more reason for Jeremy to be envious of Sheila and Colin's children who would only be future rivals and future co-inheritors as he saw it.
Statistically it is far more likely for quiet men with professional jobs to beat their wives or partners than the loutish yobs one hears singing at football matches. It is also statistically proven that schizophrenics are far more likely to harm themselves than they are to harm others. Yet we are led to believe that there were two serial killers at large in one family for a period of three days,that Sheila who had at most handled a gun six years previously yet who disliked them so much she would not even allow her children to own toy guns shot twenty five rounds of ammunition, was involved in a violent confrontation with Ralph(Nevill) in which his jaw was fractured amongst other horrific injuries,shot herself in the kitchen,proceeded upstairs to wash herself,wrote suicide notes without running the slightest sweat or exertion as far as I can tell in the first photograph,all this from a woman who was described by her aunt the previous evening on the telephone as being a "zombie",and who was so unaware of reality that past day that this former glamour model could not even remember to insert a tampon at the correct time of her period.
Let us just remind ourselves of Julie Mugford's testimony,since it appears to have slipped the memory of some members. Jeremy at first planned to burn the house down,making it look as if Nevill had carelessly spilt some alcohol which had caught aflame,yet rejected this plan when he realized the house was underinsured and therefore Jeremy would lose out financially. He then proceeded to put some of Julie's tranquillizers into the beverages of his parents to check if he could drug them,but this scheme also came to nothing as the barbiturates achieved too mild an effect. Jeremy then decided he would have to shoot them all,to which Julie inquired"What about the twins?" to which he answered "They are disturbed";he was also rumoured to have torn up their photograph at the Maida Vale flat in London,which due to Sheila's death he had also inherited.
It has been speculated as to why Julie stayed loyal to a man for so long when she suspected that Jeremy harboured ambitions to kill his family. Of course she was wrong in this regard,and I'm sure that the extensive charity work in which she now engages in her local community in Canada is testament to the distress she now feels about not having acted earlier. Of course there was a danger that Julie would be an accessory after the fact:this is what Jeremy was banking on when he telephoned her on the morning of the murders shortly after his call from Nevill(but before contacting the Police) and also from the call box after the Police had arrived. Jeremy gambled that Julie would say nothing and was trying to keep her on side,which did work for a period of a few weeks,after which he thought he could pay her off when he decided he did not want to marry her,possibly because that was what his mother had wanted and he was going to make a complete break at all costs from their influence under a previous existence.
Nobody is claiming that Julie comes out of this affair unblemished,but it is striking that not one of her friends has questioned the veracity of her account even after receiving a £25,000 payment from a newspaper for her story. It is a story she has stuck to for 27 years,and it is a true story.
