You can't have it both ways, the phone calls timed at 3.36 or 3.26am?

[scipio_usmc]

Phone going dead, then Jeremy and police getting an engaged tone, and later when the operator reported that the phone was off the hook, proves there was someone alive at the scene at a time when Jeremy was elsewhere...

1) It is merely Jeremy's claim that the phone went dead and he tried to call back and got the engaged tone.  The telephone company agent dsaid this claim did not match the phone reords which demonstrated the call was abandoned by the caller at Goldhanger not the caller at WHF.

2) There is no proof that anyone could have been alive at WHF.  Had Jeremy gone back to WHF and hung up the phone after answering at Goldhanger then in that case he could claim that is evidence someone was alive at GHF.  But he didn't so the phone could have been off the hook the entire time like the phone company claims.

Jeremy's attorneys had and still have absolutely no way to establish that the prosecution's claim is not true.

The prosecution's claim once again is that Jeremy disconnected his answering machine, dialed his house from WHF, went home, answered it, hung his phone up and lef tit hung up long enough to clear the line before calling Julie and the police.

Jeremy's own claims about waking up and answering the call requires the answering machine to not have been connected that night so either way that part would have to be true. Why would he disconnect it?  It alone is highly suspicious that he disconnected it on the very night of the murders.

His claim the line went dead so he immediately dialed back and got the engaged signal doesn't match the phone company evidence but worse makes no sense.  Why would Sheila do nothing as he dialed, dow nothing as he waited for Jeremy to pick up, do nothing as he spoke to Jeremy and to wait till he got his message out then to finally make him hang up the phone?  If she did nothing to him as he did all those things and instead waited for him to finish then marched him upstairs why would she even bother to take the phone off the hook after hanging it up?  Taking it off the hook would not prevent someone from hanging it up and dialing out.  All it would do is prevent the phone from ringing but if she was keeping everyone upstairs at gunpoint they could not go down and answer a phone anyway so why would she need to leave it off the hook?  Especially since he already got his message out. It was too late at tha tpoint.  There is no point in taking it off the hook.  Nor is there a point for Nevill to call Jeremy asking Jeremy to come disarm her since he was even taller and stronger than Jeremy and therefore as capable if not more capable of disarming Sheila himself.  Moreover, he had the motive and opportunity to disarm Sheila because he was there near her having a motive to try to disarm her and being in a position to do so.  It would take 15 minutes for Jeremy to answer, dress and arrive if he even answered.  Nevill had no way to know the answering machine was off or that Jeremy would actually wake up and answer.  He wa sin harms way the entire call. Why woudl he not try to disarm Sheila instead of daring her to shoot him as he sat on the phone to ask Jeremy to come disarm her?  It makes no sense.

The evidence is that the killer went in the master bedroom and shot both parents there. Nevill managed to escape to the kitchen and was killed there after a struggle.  It doesn't make sense that someone in a a crazy frenzy with a gun determined to commit murder suicide would wake up an intended victim, allow him to go downstairs to use the phone, allow the call to go through then take the phone off the hook and march him at gunpoint back to the master bedroom because of a plan to kill both parents in there. 

The evidence suggests that Nevill only went to the kitchen once not twice.  That he went to the kitchen after being shot in his bedroom and at that point he would have bee unable to speak if he even managed to call anyone.

As a whole all of this and the other evidence is sufficent to establish exactly what the prosecution contended and the jury found which is that Jeremy placed the call himself, answered it himself when he got home, hung it up on his end and that this eventually cleared his line. 

There is no evidence to prove that anyone was alive at WHF to hang up the phone.  The jury didn't buy it and the standard to get an appeal court to overturn such a finding is quite high.

Nothing short of someone at the telephone company claiming they concealed evidence of a subsequent call or a witness claiming to receive a subsequent call from someone at the house would suffice to get an appeal court to even consider taking action on this issue.

Unless Jeremy's lawyers can find either of those things he won't make any headway at all on this issue in court and the opinion of those who are convinced he made the call himself before leaving WHF will not change either.       

If someone did make such claims then credibility would become an issue.  Why didn't they come forward sooner and what evidence do they have to back up their claims... But without anyone to make such claims there is nothing at all that would warrant an appeals court to revisit the issue or people who believe he made the call to question their belief.

[scipio_usmc]

Jeremy has never claimed that anyone hung up the phone at whf, he said the line went dead...

The only way this could happen in the circumstances described by Jeremy is that someone at the scene depressed the cradle which in turn lowered the two plungers of the round finger dial phone model, which produces no dialling tone at all until the cradle is released and the two corresponding plungers come back up. At this stage you get a dialling tone - but Jeremy has never claimed he got a dialling tone despite trying to phone back to whf, all he kept getting was a constant engaged tone...

You just described someone hanging up the phone at WHF

What this tells us is that there was still someone alive at the scene so as to depress the cradle of the round finger dial phone in the kitchen, not only that but whoever had their fingers on the cradle of the phone waited awhile before allowing the cradle up again, which was what produced a dialling tone, and why Jeremy was possibly getting an engaged tone at that time, or as the case may be, when Ralph was making his call to police at 3.26am...

It is Jeremy's unsupported claim that the line went dead (which above you conceded would require someone at WHF to hang up for that to occur).  It is a claim he contradicted at various times.  A times he suggested the phone was simply put down and he heard scuffling and maybe even shots on the other end.  This claim was contradicted by the telephone agent who testified the call was ended at Goldhanger not WHF.  There is no evidence of any call made by Nevill subsequently.  No telephone records to support it (the telephone company says the phone was never even hung up let alone any subsequent calls made) and no witnesses who claim to have received a call from Nevill or anyone else in the house.

So there is no evidence of any subsequent call at all it is pure speculation which is not only not supported by any evidence but rather contradicted by evidence.

There are only 2 avenues by which this could ever be revisited by the court of appeals.

1) if someone came forward claiming to have received a call from someone in the house subsequent to the the call to Goldhanger

2) someone who worked at he telephone company at the time coming forward claiming that there was evidence of a subsequent call that was concealed

If either happened the court would revisit the issue and consider whether the claims were credible and could be corroborated by anything.

Absent 1 of these 2 things there is no hope of a court revisiting the issue.

[grahameb]

1) It is merely Jeremy's claim that the phone went dead and he tried to call back and got the engaged tone. The telephone company agent dsaid this claim did not match the phone reords which demonstrated the call was abandoned by the caller at Goldhanger not the caller at WHF.

2) There is no proof that anyone could have been alive at WHF.  Had Jeremy gone back to WHF and hung up the phone after answering at Goldhanger then in that case he could claim that is evidence someone was alive at GHF.  But he didn't so the phone could have been off the hook the entire time like the phone company claims.

Jeremy's attorneys had and still have absolutely no way to establish that the prosecution's claim is not true.

The prosecution's claim once again is that Jeremy disconnected his answering machine, dialed his house from WHF, went home, answered it, hung his phone up and lef tit hung up long enough to clear the line before calling Julie and the police.

Jeremy's own claims about waking up and answering the call requires the answering machine to not have been connected that night so either way that part would have to be true. Why would he disconnect it?  It alone is highly suspicious that he disconnected it on the very night of the murders.

His claim the line went dead so he immediately dialed back and got the engaged signal doesn't match the phone company evidence but worse makes no sense.  Why would Sheila do nothing as he dialed, dow nothing as he waited for Jeremy to pick up, do nothing as he spoke to Jeremy and to wait till he got his message out then to finally make him hang up the phone?  If she did nothing to him as he did all those things and instead waited for him to finish then marched him upstairs why would she even bother to take the phone off the hook after hanging it up?  Taking it off the hook would not prevent someone from hanging it up and dialing out.  All it would do is prevent the phone from ringing but if she was keeping everyone upstairs at gunpoint they could not go down and answer a phone anyway so why would she need to leave it off the hook?  Especially since he already got his message out. It was too late at tha tpoint.  There is no point in taking it off the hook.  Nor is there a point for Nevill to call Jeremy asking Jeremy to come disarm her since he was even taller and stronger than Jeremy and therefore as capable if not more capable of disarming Sheila himself.  Moreover, he had the motive and opportunity to disarm Sheila because he was there near her having a motive to try to disarm her and being in a position to do so.  It would take 15 minutes for Jeremy to answer, dress and arrive if he even answered.  Nevill had no way to know the answering machine was off or that Jeremy would actually wake up and answer.  He wa sin harms way the entire call. Why woudl he not try to disarm Sheila instead of daring her to shoot him as he sat on the phone to ask Jeremy to come disarm her?  It makes no sense.

The evidence is that the killer went in the master bedroom and shot both parents there. Nevill managed to escape to the kitchen and was killed there after a struggle.  It doesn't make sense that someone in a a crazy frenzy with a gun determined to commit murder suicide would wake up an intended victim, allow him to go downstairs to use the phone, allow the call to go through then take the phone off the hook and march him at gunpoint back to the master bedroom because of a plan to kill both parents in there. 

The evidence suggests that Nevill only went to the kitchen once not twice.  That he went to the kitchen after being shot in his bedroom and at that point he would have bee unable to speak if he even managed to call anyone.

As a whole all of this and the other evidence is sufficent to establish exactly what the prosecution contended and the jury found which is that Jeremy placed the call himself, answered it himself when he got home, hung it up on his end and that this eventually cleared his line. 

There is no evidence to prove that anyone was alive at WHF to hang up the phone.  The jury didn't buy it and the standard to get an appeal court to overturn such a finding is quite high.

Nothing short of someone at the telephone company claiming they concealed evidence of a subsequent call or a witness claiming to receive a subsequent call from someone at the house would suffice to get an appeal court to even consider taking action on this issue.

Unless Jeremy's lawyers can find either of those things he won't make any headway at all on this issue in court and the opinion of those who are convinced he made the call himself before leaving WHF will not change either.       

If someone did make such claims then credibility would become an issue.  Why didn't they come forward sooner and what evidence do they have to back up their claims... But without anyone to make such claims there is nothing at all that would warrant an appeals court to revisit the issue or people who believe he made the call to question their belief.

I can tell you that that is simply not true. I had one of those phones in the 80's and if the other person was on the phone the other end and if they were phoning them and hung up the phone your end, that would not disconnect the other end unless the phone was off the hook. I can tell you that as a fact, because it happened to me once. But if Jeremy had hung up the phone and the person depressed the cradle for a second that would have cut the phone off at that point and the phone would have appeared to have been cut off. Then if the receiver was left off the hook that would have prevented the caller to re-establish the call if he hung up the phone (that may have been interpreted by the engineer as having abandoning the call) he would not have been able to dial in again, but would have received what he said he received, an engaged tone.

[lookout]

I can tell you that that is simply not true. I had one of those phones in the 80's and if the other person was on the phone the other end and if they were phoning them and hung up the phone your end, that would not disconnect the other end unless the phone was off the hook. I can tell you that as a fact, because it happened to me once. But if Jeremy had hung up the phone and the person depressed the cradle for a second that would have cut the phone off at that point and the phone would have appeared to have been cut off. Then if the receiver was left off the hook that would have prevented the caller to re-establish the call if he hung up the phone (that may have been interpreted by the engineer as having abandoning the call) he would not have been able to dial in again, but would have received what he said he received, an engaged tone.

We had phones like that in the 80's too Grahame. They were just as you said.

[scipio_usmc]

I can tell you that that is simply not true. I had one of those phones in the 80's and if the other person was on the phone the other end and if they were phoning them and hung up the phone your end, that would not disconnect the other end unless the phone was off the hook. I can tell you that as a fact, because it happened to me once. But if Jeremy had hung up the phone and the person depressed the cradle for a second that would have cut the phone off at that point and the phone would have appeared to have been cut off. Then if the receiver was left off the hook that would have prevented the caller to re-establish the call if he hung up the phone (that may have been interpreted by the engineer as having abandoning the call) he would not have been able to dial in again, but would have received what he said he received, an engaged tone.

Even today a land line does not disconnect right away.  I will hang up on a recorded telemarketing call and pick up the phone 10 seconds later and the robocall is still sputtering away.  This weekend my niece answered my mother's kitchen phone and accidentally hung it up and the caller was still there when my mother picked up the phone

HOWEVER, this does not prove that the line would not clear if it had been hung up for longer period of time.  At some point the line does clear. The telephone company said it takes a period between 1 and 2 minutes for that to happen.

You left the phone hung up for several minutes and then picked it up again and the person was still there on the line?  I sincerely doubt that.

The telephone company is in a better position than you to assess what would happen under the circumstances.

[grahameb]

Even today a land line does not disconnect right away.  I will hang up on a recorded telemarketing call and pick up the phone 10 seconds later and the robocall is still sputtering away.  This weekend my niece answered my mother's kitchen phone and accidentally hung it up and the caller was still there when my mother picked up the phone

HOWEVER, this does not prove that the line would not clear if it had been hung up for longer period of time.  At some point the line does clear. The telephone company said it takes a period between 1 and 2 minutes for that to happen.

You left the phone hung up for several minutes and then picked it up again and the person was still there on the line?  I sincerely doubt that.

The telephone company is in a better position than you to assess what would happen under the circumstances.

scipio I don't think you grasped what I said? What I said was if the person who was phoning you put his finger on the receiver button for a moment this would give you the person being phoned the sense that the person who was phoning you had hung up. But what had actually happened was that he had momentarily depressed the receiver button this giving you the impression that he had hung up. Then after depressing the receiver button for a moment and then leaving the phone off the hook, you thinking the phone had gone dead would then put your receiver down. So that in effectually both phones were now free to make another call. This could have been why Jeremy got an engaged sound when he attempted to phone again.
Technically the engineer would be right in that whilst Ralph, or someone else there momentarily depressed the receiver button and Jeremy hanging up his receiver in order to attempt to phone back this would give the impression that the phone call was ended by Jeremy?

[guest154]

scipio I don't think you grasped what I said? What I said was if the person who was phoning you put his finger on the receiver button for a moment this would give you the person being phoned the sense that the person who was phoning you had hung up. But what had actually happened was that he had momentarily depressed the receiver button this giving you the impression that he had hung up. Then after depressing the receiver button for a moment and then leaving the phone off the hook, you thinking the phone had gone dead would then put your receiver down. So that in effectually both phones were now free to make another call. This could have been why Jeremy got an engaged sound when he attempted to phone again.
Technically the engineer would be right in that whilst Ralph, or someone else there momentarily depressed the receiver button and Jeremy hanging up his receiver in order to attempt to phone back this would give the impression that the phone call was ended by Jeremy?

Yup, makes sense to me.

[Caroline]

scipio I don't think you grasped what I said? What I said was if the person who was phoning you put his finger on the receiver button for a moment this would give you the person being phoned the sense that the person who was phoning you had hung up. But what had actually happened was that he had momentarily depressed the receiver button this giving you the impression that he had hung up. Then after depressing the receiver button for a moment and then leaving the phone off the hook, you thinking the phone had gone dead would then put your receiver down. So that in effectually both phones were now free to make another call. This could have been why Jeremy got an engaged sound when he attempted to phone again.
Technically the engineer would be right in that whilst Ralph, or someone else there momentarily depressed the receiver button and Jeremy hanging up his receiver in order to attempt to phone back this would give the impression that the phone call was ended by Jeremy?

Sorry Grahame, I don't understand? 

[mike tesko]

I can tell you that that is simply not true. I had one of those phones in the 80's and if the other person was on the phone the other end and if they were phoning them and hung up the phone your end, that would not disconnect the other end unless the phone was off the hook. I can tell you that as a fact, because it happened to me once. But if Jeremy had hung up the phone and the person depressed the cradle for a second that would have cut the phone off at that point and the phone would have appeared to have been cut off. Then if the receiver was left off the hook that would have prevented the caller to re-establish the call if he hung up the phone (that may have been interpreted by the engineer as having abandoning the call) he would not have been able to dial in again, but would have received what he said he received, an engaged tone.

Correct, Grahame...

[guest154]

Sorry Grahame, I don't understand? 

Bascially - phone wasn't hung up. But finger was pressed on the connector to dis-connect the call. Then finger was lifted.

Explaining how the call was disconnected without the handset being put back on the cradle.

Phew. 

[gringo]

scipio I don't think you grasped what I said? What I said was if the person who was phoning you put his finger on the receiver button for a moment this would give you the person being phoned the sense that the person who was phoning you had hung up. But what had actually happened was that he had momentarily depressed the receiver button this giving you the impression that he had hung up. Then after depressing the receiver button for a moment and then leaving the phone off the hook, you thinking the phone had gone dead would then put your receiver down. So that in effectually both phones were now free to make another call. This could have been why Jeremy got an engaged sound when he attempted to phone again.
Technically the engineer would be right in that whilst Ralph, or someone else there momentarily depressed the receiver button and Jeremy hanging up his receiver in order to attempt to phone back this would give the impression that the phone call was ended by Jeremy?

  I remember this too Grahame. I think a lot of posters who have no memory of telephone systems in the 80's simply do not understand how vastly different the old analogue systems were to the digital exchanges we have now.

[Jan]

  I remember this too Grahame. I think a lot of posters who have no memory of telephone systems in the 80's simply do not understand how vastly different the old analogue systems were to the digital exchanges we have now.

unfortunately I am old enough to remember that as well

[mike tesko]

Now, it appears that experts called to testify during the trial failed to identify for the possibility that someone who was very much alive at the scene depressed the receiver of the round finger dial phone which caused the connection between the scene and Jeremy's cottage to go dead. This state of the phone was created by someone at the scene depressing the phones receiver which effectively terminated the call in question. This state lasted as long as the receiver was depressed, until it was released...

Once the receiver was allowed to flip back up, and insofar as the person at the scene was concerned, this action produced a dialling tone. At this stage, anyone trying to contact the scene would be met by a constant engaged tone, in keeping with Jeremys testimony, and the testimony of the police. However, once police contacted the operator at 3.56am, the operator discovered the handset to be off the hook...

All of this would happen even without Ralph Bamber making his 3.26am call to police...

[grahameb]

Bascially - phone wasn't hung up. But finger was pressed on the connector to dis-connect the call. Then finger was lifted.

Explaining how the call was disconnected without the handset being put back on the cradle.

Phew. 

Yes correct. But after that the phone was not put back onto the cradle. But when Jeremy put his phone down that had the effect of cutting off the call, giving the engineer the impression that the call was ended by Jeremy. But because the phone was now off the hook at WHF Jeremy's phone was now able to make a call. He (according to him) called his father back, but because the phone was off the hook gave the impression that it was now engaged.

[mike tesko]

Now, it appears that experts called to testify during the trial failed to identify for the possibility that someone who was very much alive at the scene depressed the receiver of the round finger dial phone which caused the connection between the scene and Jeremy's cottage to go dead. This state of the phone was created by someone at the scene depressing the phones receiver which effectively terminated the call in question. This state lasted as long as the receiver was depressed, until it was released...

Once the receiver was allowed to flip back up, and insofar as the person at the scene was concerned, this action produced a dialling tone. At this stage, anyone trying to contact the scene would be met by a constant engaged tone, in keeping with Jeremys testimony, and the testimony of the police. However, once police contacted the operator at 3.56am, the operator discovered the handset to be off the hook...

All of this would happen even without Ralph Bamber making his 3.26am call to police...

This explanation was deliberately kept from the consideration of the jury, in faviur of the argument that Jeremy would not be able to dial out until 1 to 2 minutes had elapsed when the exchange mechanism would reset itself...

If Ralph depressed the receuver as he surely must have done, it would terminate any call previously in use, and it would not be possible for Ralph Bamber to make a separate call out from the scene until or unless Jeremy at the other end of the line had himself not depressed the receiver of his own phone. This is the correct interpretation of what took place, and it establishes that the call from the scene to Jeremy at his cottage was terminated at the whf end of the connection, thus establishing that someone must have still been alive inside  the farmhouse when Jeremy was elsewhere...