All no doubt true if we were in a court of law but as we're on a message board where people share their opinions. So it is essential if members are of the opinion that it is. Those who don't think so, don't have yo take part in said thread!
No we are not in a court of law but the law as it exists, exists for a rational reason. How do you determine for sure the motivation of those who committed a crime without first knowing who they are?
Even in crimes like a bank robbery where the motive seems intrinsic to the crime itself there could be some ulterior motive.
Just looking at what occurred the murders look like an assassination. It looks like someone decided to kill everyone in the house. The fact that a majority of the victims were in bed at the time suggests the goal was to kill them at 3AM precisely because they would be sleeping at that time so everyone would be home to be killed and it is far easier to kill a number of people in their sleep than if all are in the same room or walking around the house. Not only could some leave the house before you could stop them, they could jump you by surprise and a number of other things. 5 in the same room could be too many to successfully kill with 1 ammunition load and the need to reload is another consideration why you would want to kill them in bed. Also you would want to prevent them from using the phone. The touchtone kitchen phone which was working perfectly was unplugged, hidden and replaced by the bedroom phone so that there would be no phone in the bedroom to use to call to request help and in the process ID the killer. These are all signs the murders were planned and thought out not something spontaneous. Indeed the killer actually took the effort to load 11 rounds in the gun before going into the master bedroom. Instead of just loading the magazine to capacity the killer chambered a round, released the magazine, loaded another round into the magazine and reinsterted the magazine. In this manner the gun was able to hold 11 rounds the maximum instead of just 10.
In addition, 3Am was chosen because the killer would not nomally be there at that hour so not suspected, visitors would not be likely to interrupt, and there woudl be few witnesses on the street to see the killer going to and from the location or to be able to say the killer had been awake and out instead of asleep.
Likewise the complete lack of an evidence that Sheila carried out any of the murders or was engaged in a struggle in the kitchen with Nevill yet that murderer decided not to kill her in her bedroom but instead taking her to the master bedroom to shoot her and leaving the gun there and playing around with the bible after she was dead and removing the suppressor and placing it in the closet is a sign of advanced planning that she did not take an active part in carrying out any of the murders but was an effort to frame her for the deaths.
Normally at this point we would be left to try to figure out who would have a motive for the deaths and in the framing and what such motive was. Jeremy tipped his hand though that he had to be the framer because he is the one who alerted everyone to the crimes and the only way he could know about them was if he is the one who did the framing.
We know he lied to police in an active effort to get police to believe that Sheila did it. The pohone call from Nevill was a lie. Nevill would neither have the ability nor any rational reason to call Jeremy to ask him to help. 1) Jeremy would be unlikely to answer or get the message from his answering machine until the morning after it was too late 2) even if Jeremy my some miracle had his answering machine off there is no guarantee he would hear the phone ringing and wake up since the phone was on the first floor and thus no where near his bedroom 3) even if Jeremy woke up it would take him a couple of minutes to go downstairs to answer and then time to dress, drive there and find a way in so all told at least 15-20 minutes before he could be in a position to even try to help.
Jeremy and Sheila did not get along well, while Nevill had a calming effect on her Jeremy had the opposite effect. So why would Nevill call Jeremy to come make matters worse? Nevill was taller and stronger than Jeremy so why would he decide to wait 20 minutes for Jeremy to come try to disarm her instead of doing it himself as soon as the chance presented itself? In fact, why would he go make a telephone call and risk not only angering Sheila into firing but presenting a perfect target instead of using the time to grab a gun, knife or other weapon to use to challenge her? If he was so fearful of her that he would want help then surely a man who was into shooting as much as he was would go for a gun. What was Sheila doing that he would have time to dial, the time to wait a couple of minutes for Jeremy to answer and then time to pass the message to Jeremy? It doesn't make sense that he would have such a large amount of time and she would come in just in time to push the button down to disconnect the call. If that did happen she would be in prime position to diarm because she would only have one hand on the gun and be too close to shoot it at him. The shooting started in the bedroom. There is no evidence that Nevill was outside of his bedroom prior to the shooting started. No rational reason has been set forth as to why he would make the call let alone why he have had the opportunity to make the call and the killer would not shoot him while he was on the phone but rather would intentionally march him to the bedroom to shoot him with June. But if that was done it again fits the intentional assassination pattern not a claim of someone going crazy. Further evidence that this call never happened is that none of Jeremy's actions after allegedly receiving it match the behavior of someone who received such a call. Jeremy's actions were all contrived down to making sure police saw him arrive after them so that they could say he was not there.
Jeremy not only lied about the call he also told various other lies including claiming that he had taken Sheila shooting and that she had fired every weapon in the house so knew how to use them all. He also falsely claimed he left a gun on the table with ammunition nearby. No one would have bought that she would go get a gun from the closet. This was an attempt to suggest she had no need to do so, that she could have got into an argument with Nevill, grabbed the gun off the kitchen table loaded it rapidly before he could react (if she had to load the clip he would have had more than enough time to react) and then after his call she shot him and killed him. Then she went upstairs to kill everyone else. Jeremy didn't take into account the shell casings, bullet that had only partially entered his body so the rest ended up in the bed or fact the wounds delivered in the bedroom had been to the left side so could not have been delivered as he was slumped in the kitchen. He expected police to just declare that Nevill had been shot and killed in the kitchen. He thus contrived his story around that.
In furtherance of this story he didn't just lie he actually placed a box of bullets in the kitchen and told police exactly where he left it so they could see it had not moved and would assume the gun and bullets he claimed he left out after dinner were still there when the killings occurred. He claimed this box had been bull or only missing a couple of rounds at the time he left it there. He figured they would assume it had been used because in reality is wasn't near full. He neve rbothered to count how many shots he had used though or how many were in the box. Even a full box would have only 25 left but there were 30 (29 plus 1 that he left on the counter next to it for good measure to make it look like someone had used the box). So for his story to be true Sheila would have to have used 18-20 bullets from this box and then suddenly stopped loaidng the magazine walked to the closet and loaded the magazine the rest of the way with 5-7 rounds from the closet. Why would she do that?
He also told other known lies in an effort to get police to believe she did it. All of this evidence proves he is the one who attempted to frame her.
Does this give us the motive? Well it tells us that she was being framed but not why. SHe wa snot being framed just for the sake of framing her. The murders were the object of the crime but not the ultimate motive the murders had a purpose.
What was the purpose? that is where Julie comes in she provides not only more evidence that Jeremy planned it all but the motive- money.
So the ultimate motive was not the crime itself.
There is no way though to determine what the main cause behind the shootings would be without detemrining who committed the acts or identifying a potentional actor(s) and then assessing why the actor(s) would do it.
I get criticized for long posts so I cut to the chase and said greed but this is the porcess which resulted in arriving at the conclusion.
