I have tried to break down Steve's post into parts to try to emphasise his main points and to facilitate analysis.
Julie Mugford was not out for all she could get. She first met Jeremy at a London bar in November 1983 where they were both working and they felt a mutual attraction. It wasn't until a few months later that she realized the farming connection, and at that time Jeremy didn't even have the cottage at Goldhanger. Here is Jeremy back from his working holiday in New Zealand, not wanting to enter the farming way of life, feeling his way around maybe at a bit of a loss, whereupon he meets Julie.
Julie would stay at the cottage in Goldhanger during the holidays and it was then that she would come to meet June Bamber. Again the atmosphere would have been tense whenever June called, sometimes with Sheila and the twins but mostly alone. Again Julie sensed June's disapproval of her relationship with Jeremy and June made it clear that biblically they were living in sin together and that Julie was a harlot. June's hypocrisy is manifested because Sheila is not good enough to marry her son, a view she would have imparted to Jeremy, but again Julie is not in this relationship for short-term gain as she rejects June's offer of buying them a flat if they would leave the village and thereby stop the rumours flowing at the Queen's Head, which were damaging to Ralph's status as the local magistrate.
Jeremy had a strange view of relationships which he had learnt from his parents having employed farm staff: people were used for what they could offer and in return they received payment. There was no emotion involved and Jeremy accepted this as normal; when he one time visited Julie's relations he couldn't understand the tactile nature and the feeling of benevolence in the family was quite alien to him. It was this feeling of warmth and loyalty which kept him in the relationship with an older woman, Suzette Ford for a number of years.
Julie was also learning fast in Thatcherite Britain, the lesson that money talks. Why, she inquired, did Jeremy not just cut loose, leave his family behind and move on? Because, retorted Jeremy, he had too much to lose. It was in this atmosphere that Julie became cocooned, and it is one explanation that inured her to Jeremy's unpleasant and cruel streak.
At the turn of the year 1985 Jeremy had been harbouring thoughts about harming his family.
The farming lifestyle didn't suit, Sheila was living it up in London whilst the agricultural life was hard physical labour, June was unreliable and might easily change her will and leave money to the Church.
Jeremy was a disappointment to Ralph who wanted an heir to take over the managerial responsibility the farm as a business entailed. Jeremy wasn't a natural leader, he didn't inspire confidence around him, and Jeremy was restless. If only his family would disappear Jeremy could receive his inheritance and move on.
Spurred by a chance conversation with Colin Caffell that the twins were "a millstone round my neck" Jeremy began to conceive ways that his family might disappear.
[b]He made hints to Julie,[/b] who busy with the fatigue of teaching practice and giving of herself in a way not demanded by other jobs, did not take him seriously and preoccupied herself with her immediate future gaining the necessary qualifications to make something of her life.
Jeremy himself had never looked far ahead in a constructive way, having failed his first attempt at gaining qualifications. As a product of a public school it was others who occupied themselves with the menial tasks and as long as Jeremy had a cheque book he felt security thereby.
It was this callous disregard for people over money which set Jeremy on his evil course. [/b]He at first borrowed some of Julie's sleeping pills and drugged his parents' bedtime drinks one night but upon inquiring the following morning as to their slumber realized that they had experienced no detrimental effects. Jeremy was becoming desperate, especially when he saw the bills for Sheila's psychiatric care in March 1985 which were running into thousands of pounds and cutting into his inheritance.
He discussed burning the house down with Julie but was talked out of this when he discovered the house was underinsured and many valuable heirlooms would be irreparably lost. It was then that he realized the solution that had been in the back of his mind all along, but even callous Jeremy had rejected it as an extreme solution for one so squeamish about guns. He would have to personally execute the family and make it look as if Sheila had killed them all.
Julie's primary school experience and training kicked in. How could he possibly kill the twins? And here,reader, how could a prospective teacher of small children who must have seen children like them on a regular basis in an educational setting sitting on those tiny plywood chairs with their uncorrupted faces not recoil at such a wicked scheme? Did Julie plead with Jeremy to save the twins, to spare them from this murder ritual, as frightening as any religious ritual that June had made her children and now her grandchildren endure at church and at the farm? No, replied Jeremy heartlessly, the twins would have to go, they were stopping Colin from obtaining regular employment and he would be able to move on with a life and make a fresh start, just as he, Jeremy was planning to do.
Is it this thought, the thought that she could have saved the family, the spectre of Sheila's boys which haunts Julie every day, the new day which dawns in the backdrop of that bleak Canadian landscape? Sheila's boys, Jeremy's future rivals in the profit-driven culture of the time, were not to be spared. Julie's way of making amends is to put her life and soul into her own boys, her immediate family, to please her husband and to provide enrichment for other people's children, thousands of miles away, the geographical distance numbing somewhat the ramifications of those events twenty seven years ago, though the universality of childhood [/b]must bring the tears flooding back on occasion after the school bell has rung.
The usual criticism of writers who produce this kind of bilge, is that they confuse together fact and supposition. But this author is so hopelessly inept that he appears be unaware of the distinction between the two. If I were to make an attempt at this I might write things like
"The air is still and the moon is shining into the room and evil Bamber thinks "Tonight's the night!"."
To be sure, some reputable writers sometimes use dramatic reconstruction to try to show what probably went through a person's mind at a certain time. But what Steve does, habitually, is to use that device to alter the narrative as he chooses, and to peddle fiction disguised as fact which is inexcusable. He also has a nasty habit of insulting people and then to express indignation, if somebody is bold enought to insult him back. I suppose it’s the company you keep!
He appears to be a big fan and imitator of starryian, who typically gives us this style of narrative. For example Starry tells us that Bamber frogmarched Nevill downstairs and much else besides.
Did Julie plead with Jeremy to save the twins? He strangely answers the question with Jeremy's alleged reply.
"No replied Jeremy heartlessly."
This is simply ridiculous. If you ask a question you admit that you don't know the answer. How can you know how somebody replied to a question if you don't even know if it was asked.
Moreover, we are meant to assume that Mugford is a reliable witness. We know that she definitely lied on several counts. Elsewhere, Steve tells us that Julie was not coached by Stan Jones and was a truthful witness-but that's just the story as he wants it to be.
I think Steve takes as his model of writing the historical novel where fiction is meant to be included along with basic historical facts, but then he goes a step further: he also invents the facts.
Please don’t anybody bother saying that it’s fact that the jury found Bamber guilty.
