This could have been discussed here at some point, but I haven´t seen it.
My question is this, when Jeremy had to use two shots to kill Sheila, why did he stage her death as a suicide? It could have been his plan originally, but why didn´t he abandon that plan when he had shot her twice? What killer would shoot their victim more than once, then expect that, yeah, I´ll make it look like she killed herself!
Why stage the Bible, why hide the silencer, why fake the phonecall from Nevill, thereby narrowing the possible culprits down to Sheila and himself? Why not keep it open to more than those two by NOT staging a suicide?
All this comes across as impossibly stupid!
First of all, you assume he knew a lot about staging suicides but obviously he didn't. Neither did the police though. The lab figured out the main problems not police.
After the first shot failed to kill her he had a choice, hope she would eventually die without police being able to speak to her first and/or her still being able to wake up and interfere in his plans in some other manner (other than her phoning police or speaking to them upon being found) or to shoot again and make sure she was dead. Obviously if she walked to a different room than the gun was located or worse picked up the gun to shoot him that would not be good.
Second, Vanezis was concerned that there were 2 shots and even though he thought she likely passed out from the first shot that alone was not enough for him to feel that it meant she could not have committed suicide. In combination with everything else though he decided she didn't commit suicide.
Just leaving a gun near a victim is not enough to indicate suicide. Her body was clean and wound free, her clothes were free of GSR and blood. It would simply look like the gun was dumped on her after killing her if workers found the family and summoned police to investigate. So it would look like an execution of the entire family. Who would have a motive to execute the family and not take anything?
Aside from Jeremy no one would have a motive. Nevill handled cases where the maximum punishment was less than a year in prison so the hope of saying some criminal with a major beef would go to kill his whole family is not very credible and worse such a person would bring their own gun not search the closets at WHF to find a weapon to use.
Someone who broke in woudl also likely have their own weapon not go to the closet and happen upon the murder weapon and if caught they usually at most kill the people who catch them then flee they don't kill non-witnesses who are in bed sleeping. Staging a breakin requires doing something dangerous- making all the victims wake up and killing most of them out of bed. The only way to hide it was an execution is to make it appear the victims caught you so had to be killed as witnesses.
It was clearly carried out as an execution. He was stuck by the time he was killing Sheila. He could not afford for her to wake up and rat him out to police by phoning them or talking to them upon them being called by someone else. He needed her dead. He also wanted to have her near the gun so it would look like a suicide. But he needed a lot more. The phonecall and claims of leaving the gun out were the more. These were the things that were meant to compensate for the lack of forensic evidence tying her to the murder. Equally as important the call was his alibi. He thought it would look much better to say Nevill called and he was home to establish an alibi for himself than to let the bodies be found naturally and to say he was home alone asleep with no one to verify it. He propped up his alibi by calling Julie so he could say that phoning her to tell her Nevill phoned is proof Nevill phoned.
He didn't know police would even find the moderator let alone be able to establish it was attached when Sheila was killed. Had he known such were possible obviously he would not have simply put it away but would have disposed of it though that could in itself have been suspicious and odd. Nor did he realize they would be able to tell that she had been seated propped up against something then moved flat. He moved her flat so he could lay the gun on top of her.
He wanted to make it look like she did it for some religious craze so left th ebible though unsre where exactly to leave it and how.
Criminals get caught because they are unaware of what they should or should not do to get away with a crime. Ignorance helps catch them and it paid off bigtime in catching Jeremy. Had it been carried out better he could have gotten away with it. He never thought to wear her gown over his clothes to get some evidence on it that is something that people do to frame others.
Think about if Sheila had survived. It would be Sheila fingering Jeremy and Jeremy fingering her. There would be no physical evidence to support Jeremy's claims that she did anything, not even any to establish she loaded a gun let alone fired one. Jeremy needed her dead and his word to be the only word. Since Julie talked his word wasn't the only word and that could have sunk him no matter what. But her claims were helped out by the evidence that Sheila can't have killed herself and didn't kill anyone else. Either alone is enough to sink Jeremy but in combination they are particularly potent.
Other things like hiding a perfectly working phone to replace it with the bedroom phone, the bogus stoy about taking the gun and ammo he staged out to shoot rabbits and leaving them out just added to his problems.
Something else to rememebr is that he didn't think police would know that it was possible to leave through a window and everything to seem locked up. He felt that alone would result in never being charged or convicted. He overplayed his hand tremendously when he let eveyrone know that he routinely entered by the window. He assumed they would still not blame him because they would not know any could be locked from the outside.
