http://crimeheartsandcoronets.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/jeremy-bamber-guilty-as-charged.htmlA chair was on its side to the left of an Aga oven, and Nevill’s corpse was sat awkwardly on one edge of the backrest. He was slumped forward with arms at his side and his head fully inside a silver-topped bucket – in fact a coal scuttle. Blood had run thickly down the sides of this hod. The body was facing the window Collins had looked through, and all that was visible of Nevill’s head was a dishevelled shock of grey hair. This was why Collins had mistaken farmer Bamber for an old woman.
Here’s a problem which is overlooked by the guilters. Assuming it is acknowledged by everybody that Nevill’s body was already in a state of advanced rigor mortis when it was put in the toppled position with his head in the coal bucket, that would imply that if Jeremy were the killer he must have carried out the murders several hours before he left the scene, unless you were to maintain that Nevill’s body went into such a condition immediately after death, in stark contrast with Sheila’s body which still showed no signs of rigor seven hours or so later than the prosecution’s alleged time of death.
If Jeremy had committed the murders, it must have been long enough before 03:00am for Nevill’s body to have become rigid. That would suggest a time of death no later than midnight.
If anyone says “Well maybe it wasn’t completely rigid by then…” that really doesn’t help, insofar as Bamber (or his paid accomplice) is supposed to have left the scene immediately after the job was done, not to have hung around for a few hours.
If you say the body might have been put into that position while still soft, then why on earth did it not just flop down. A simple experiment could prove the point. If a person of similar age and build to Nevill were asked to position himself thus, it would be immediately apparent if he could remain in that position when he just relaxed and let himself go limp. But why bother dropping an apple to prove the law of gravity or go doing yourself an injury for that matter.
But if Nevill’s body is already in rigor mortis before 03:00am, why is Sheila’s body still obviously not in that condition at 10:00am which would be ten hours or more after she was killed if Jeremy were responsible. Why was Sheila’s body not just as rigid as Nevill’s instead of still being flexible even
ten hours after she died.
These considerations make it hard to believe in the truthfulness of PC Collins’s statement. Collins had originally said that he had seen through the window a dead female in the kitchen, but later said that he had mistaken Nevill’s body in the toppled position with his hair hanging down for a woman’s body. Consider this in relation to the known truth that the body must have already been in rigor when put into that position. Nobody thinks that Jeremy had remained at the scene of the murders for several hours, so whoever it was who had put Nevill’s body into that position, it could not have been Jeremy.
If Sheila were responsible for the act, then Bamber must be innocent. On the other hand, if as Mike Tesko maintains, the police had performed that action after they forced their way into the kitchen, that clearly implies that PC Collins is lying in his explanation of why he mistook Nevill’s body for that of a female. The point is that
Nevill’s body could not have been in that position when PC Collins saw a body through the window if it had been the police who had later put it like that.Interpretation
The police are covering up the fact that they did, in truth, find two bodies in the kitchen. The logs clearly record this with several mutually corroborative statements, including a reference to a female, but not to a male body, in the first sighting through the window by PC Collins. In their effort to explain the log entries as mistakes, they thought of saying that Nevill’s body being in the tipped forward position with his head in the coal bucket had caused PC Collins to mistake it for a female.
I would like to see that statement of PC Collins because it would appear to rule out Jeremy Bamber as a suspect. The basic point is simply that
if police deny putting Nevill’s body in the position with his head in the coal bucket they are stating that whoever did it was the killer. But we know that Jeremy could not have been responsible for that, so the killer must have been someone else. Here’s a strange paradox.
If the police are telling the truth about how they found Nevill‘s body, Jeremy can’t be guilty (because it can’t, for the reasons given, have been him who thus positioned Nevill’s body) An alternative is that Sheila did the latter which would imply that she was the killer.
If Jeremy is guilty the police must be lying (meaning that, although Jeremy was the killer, it was the police who positioned Nevill’s body as seen in photographs but who, for some reason, deny doing so).
So either Jeremy is innocent or the police are lying and possibly both are true.
