Update on the telephone engineers testimony

[scipio_usmc]

There is NO POSSIBLE WAY to confirm who (if anyone) hung up the phone. The small exchanges didn't collect information of that nature. This was the UK back in 1985 - a system of buzzes, bells and flashing lights - no memory and the small exchanges (such as Maldon) weren't even manned!

The exchanges were automated.  When a phone is hung up it sends out a signal. Only an engineer could say whether they could tell if such signal had been sent.  He said they coudl tell it wasn't and thus the phone was neve rhung up at WHF and hence why the ONLY way Jeremy could have dialed out would be if he left the phone hung up continuously for 1-2 minutes first. 

The defense had the opportunity to try to refute this evidence but failed to do so.  Nor did they find anyone on appeal to do so.

[Caroline]

The exchanges were automated.  When a phone is hung up it sends out a signal. Only an engineer could say whether they could tell if such signal had been sent.  He said they coudl tell it wasn't and thus the phone was neve rhung up at WHF and hence why the ONLY way Jeremy could have dialed out would be if he left the phone hung up continuously for 1-2 minutes first. 

The defense had the opportunity to try to refute this evidence but failed to do so.  Nor did they find anyone on appeal to do so.

Which engineer? The exchange in question wasn't manned! There was NO WAY to tell FACT!

[scipio_usmc]

Which engineer? The exchange in question wasn't manned! There was NO WAY to tell FACT!

Since it wasn't manned how can they tell a call was made at all?  The equipment does have some way of recording data or they would not be able to tell a call was even made.  The engineer says they could determine the call was made and not ended at WHF it remained off the hook because no signal was sent to end the call.

If you want to argue they had no ability to tell anything be my guest because that means they would not be able to tell the call was made either. 

[maggie]

Your quotes didn't prove that! Adam's proved what he's said.

Adam has proved nothing.

[mike tesko]

Telephone was subject of a warrant in force at the time of the shootings involving special branch officers, this is how police know that Ralph called Jeremy from the scene, and that Ralph then called the police before activating the panic alarm at 3.29am sharp...

[Adam]

From the 2002 appeal:


vii) The appellant's account of the telephone call from his father could be proved to be false for the following reasons:

a) His father was too badly injured to have spoken to anybody;

b) The telephone in the kitchen was not obviously blood stained;

c) As a matter of common sense, Nevill Bamber would have called the police before the appellant;

d) Had the appellant really received such a call, he would have immediately made a 999 call, alerted the farm workers who lived close to the farmhouse and then driven at speed to his parents home; and

e) Instead he had spoken to Julie Mugford before calling the police. When he subsequently contacted the Police, it was not by way of the emergency system.

[Adam]

From the 2002 appeal. There is no claim that Jeremy picked up his own call. He may have, he may not have. He may have left his answering machine to answer it. Either way, it would have made no difference to the verdict.

149. The appellant returned the moderator to the gun cupboard and before leaving the address called his home at Goldhanger, leaving the receiver off the hook, thus lending support to the alibi he would later rely upon. He then left the premises, one available route being to climb out of the kitchen window, banging it from the outside to drop the catch back into position and then cycled home.

[grahameb]

You never went through it ever. Your claim you did is false.  This is the classic dishonest response from someone unable to refute evidence. The bogus claim you already did.

Which is exactly what you did with my post of course.

[Jan]

Your quotes didn't prove that! Adam's proved what he's said.

actually Mat - Maggie is correct. The relatives said it could happen and so did Julie - but even in the appeal I can see no evidence that the police in their tests PROVED that the windows at the time of the murders  could lock from the outside . I am willing to be proved wrong but all I can find are relatives saying it was possible.

That is not what Maggie said

[Jan]

Thank you Mat.

Yes - Julies statement.

          AE's statement.

         The 2002 appeal.

         Wilkes's book.

exactly - we can go round and round as much as you want - if it was that simple why did the police testify at the trial they could not get the windows to shut from the outside - its not rocket science is it.

[Adam]

Police testified at trial. Source please.

[grahameb]

Actually the ride on a bike could be done in 12-15 minutes.

But you need evidence that a phone call in those days would cut off after 6 minutes of ringing.  If your claim had any merit the defense would have elicited such from the phone representative at trial. 

Since the defense could nto find any such evidence and I have been unable to find any objective sources claiming a phone would cut off after 6 minutes this appears to be something you simply made up.

But by all means post reliable evidence to back up your claim (and no claiming someone told you such isn't reliable evidence).



Saying you spoke to people means the testimony at trial was wrong is not solid evidence.

I found a book on telephone operation that clearly states that each side of a call in that era had an end office monitor the loop currents during the entire call to determine if the party on their side hangs up. 
When someone hangs up the end office signals the other office.

So there was in fact  abasis to say that they could figure out who hung up first regardless of what your friends claim.

At any rate even if we completely ignore any evidence of who hung up first and pretend they could not tell this still doesn't help you at all.  All the other evidence that speaks against the call is overwhelming.

Someone claiming to you they should have been able to tell the exact time the call was dialed or alternatively answered would be of little use.  It neither proves they could in fact determine the precise time it was dialed/answered or more more importantly establishes what that precise time was. 

The main value of the precise time would be to see just how long Jeremy waited before calling police.  For that matter though they would have been able to determine the exact time he called Julie and not have needed to rely on testimony.

 

 

First of all I'd like to meet that person who claims to be able to make a bike ride along the country paths and along the sea wall in 12 to 15 minutes the time for a car to go along the proper road would take at least 9 minutes. The sea wall route is considerable longer. You claim is false because I live here mate and you don't. So scotch that theory for a start.
Also these who you call "friends" are no such thing. But qualified engineers they are and what each of them said was that no one could tell in those days who hung up on who Except if the had specialist equipment such as used in surveilance. There would be absolutely no reason to have such specialist equipment on the WHF line as calls were only measured in units. The reason for such simple mechanical equipment was so they could send you an accurate bill at the end of the month. You're talking absolute bollocks mate and furthermore I think you are deliberately making all this up as you go along. There is no such book that you alone seem to possess suddenly with all the answers to all my questions.
Lastly I thin you are a fraud planted here just to wind us all up. You've had you dubious fun now piss off with all your lies and false scenarios.

[grahameb]

this was written in 2011 .

With regard to the sequence and timings of the telephone calls on the morning of Wednesday 7th August 1985, according to the “Blood Relations” book the following is detailed on pages 290 and 291.

….. “In the spring of 1991, Jeremy Bamber listed a dozen points from the crown case that he contested or rejected outright. He supplied comments on each of them:

1 The phone call to the police.

The prosecution fixed the time that Jeremy Bamber called the police at 3.26 a.m. on the morning of the massacre. Jeremy says this timing is wrong. At 3.26, PC Michael West (who took his call at Chelmsford police control room) telephoned Malcolm Bonnet in the information room. Bonnet’s (undated) statement: ‘At 03.26 a.m. on Wednesday 7 August 1985, I received a telephone call on the internal line.” Jeremy says West made this call to Bonner after his own call reporting trouble at the farm, so this call ‘must have been between 3.15 and 3.20.’

The question of timing here is further muddled because PC West originally logged Bamber’s call at 3.36 a.m. Either the clock was wrong, or West misread it, or he simply made a slip when entering the time on the telephone log. Certainly, the log clearly shows the call timed at 0336. Jeremy suggests two possible answers: Either West received another call from someone else (‘such as my Dad alerting the police to his situation’) or West has ‘intentionally manipulated the timing of my call to Chelmsford in an attempt to undermine my evidence, knowing as we do that PC West did not write up this account until 13 September’ – 5 days after Jeremy’s arrest at Maida Vale, and more than five weeks after the killings.

2 The phone call from Nevill Bamber.

Some accounts of the case have embroidered Jeremy’s account of the phone call he claimed to have received from his father in the middle of the night. Jeremy never claimed in the course of this call, he heard a shot and the line went dead.

Jeremy says: ‘The phone conversation with my Dad did end abruptly and when I phoned him back the line was engaged. It’s hard to guess what happened with his phone. Either the socket was disconnected from the wall, or the handset replaced. I don’t specifically recall hearing a dial tone, but there could have been one, though when I phone back it was definitely an engaged signal which could have been Dad phoning for help elsewhere.’ We do know when the police entered the house, the telephone receiver was off the hook.

3 The call back.

Jeremy told PC West that after receiving the worried call from his father, the line had gone dead and he had tried to call back, only to hear the engaged tone. It’s clear that had Nevill Bamber dropped the received under attack from Sheila, the line would have stayed open. Jeremy could not have obtained a fresh dialling tone until either the receiver at the farm had been replaced, or two units of phone time had been automatically metered. At that time of night, this would have taken ten minutes.

Jeremy says: ‘No one suggests that Dad was attacked while he was speaking to me. The phone may have been replaced in the usual way or the plug disconnected from the wall. This would have cut the connection, thereby allowing me to phone from my house. I recall distinctly getting the engaged tone when I rang Dad back, which indicates that he was either making another call or his handset was off the hook. Even if it is correct that Dad just dropped the phone during his call to me, it is not true that I would have had to wait until two units of phone time had elapsed before getting a fresh dialling tone.’

Jeremy cites the statement of an engineer called Robert Cox, who tested this point on behalf of the police. They wanted to know if Caller A from Tollesbury [Nevill Bamber] had phoned Caller B at Goldhanger [Jeremy] and during the course of the call, Caller A had placed the received down but not on the hook, would caller B be able to dial out again? The answer to this question appears to be: Yes. Caller B [Jeremy] could have dialled out again provided he had replaced his receiver on the hook for a continuous period of between one and two minutes. Engineer Cox stressed that the period MUST be continuous. If Jeremy had picked his receiver even for a moment before the ‘Force Release’ period had expired, this period would begin all over again. The ‘Force Release’ period can be as long as two minutes.

Jeremy says that although he replaced his handset after the call from his father, ‘I don’t believe that two minutes elapsed before I tried phoning him back. My return call was probably inside a minute although I am guessing. I know I rang back almost straight away. Of course it’s all irrelevant if Dad replaced his handset or pressed the cut-off button.’……..

Good bit of investigation Jan.

[Adam]

Hercule Poirot, whether Jeremy picked up his own call is neither here or there. The prosecution never claimed he did. See 2002 appeal transcript.

My view is he may well have picked up his own call. Or let his answering machine take the call. Deleting the silent message upon his return.

Anyway. Give up and move on.

[Jane]

Hercule Poirot, whether Jeremy picked up his own call is neither here or there. The prosecution never claimed he did. See 2002 appeal transcript.

My view is he may well have picked up his own call. Or let his answering machine take the call. Deleting the silent message upon his return.

Anyway. Give up and move on.

You, too, have that choice.