Interesting article on another site.
I do not believe Bamber phoned the police pretending to be Neville. He would have made a fuss at the time and got his defence to use it However if he did then it might explain him not ringing 999.
It should be clear to all that much of Jeremy Bamber's defence is based on the phone call from "Neville Bamber" to thepolice. If "Neville Bamber" did make such a call then it is clear that Jeremy Bamber is innocent.
However......
Unlike modern day telephone exchanges which automatically record the number from which a 999 call is dialed from, the BT exchanges in 1985 did not have that level of sophistication. There was a simple meter attached to your phone line @ your local exchange. All it recorded was the number of minutes your phone had used. at a given tariff.
Therefore it would have been perfectly possible for Jeremy Bamber to dial 999 from his own house phone, claim to be his father Neville and to say "my daughter has gone beserk with a gun". Leaving the phone off the hook in the farm after committing the murders would have helped reinforce the idea that Neville had indeed made the calls.
What is rather daming for Jeremy's case is that, by his own admission, rather than dial 999 for his own call to the police (which any normal person would have done). he looked up his local police stationn in the phone book and called them. Why?
Well, if you believe that he is guilty, then the reason is quite straight-forward. A 999 call would have been put through to the Divisonal HQ by the BT Operator (which is what happened with the "Neville" call).
If Jeremy Bamber had made that call then he risked being caught out if, minutes later, he then made a similar 999 call, this time posing as the worried son. The chances are that he would have gone via the same BT Operator and been connected to the same duty officer at the Divisional HQ. Either one of them might have suspected that the same caller was making both calls..
They only way to avoid this was to phone his local police station directly.
In this way he was guarenteed to speak to a different duty officer (which is what happened). Like the Divisional HQ officer that duty officer also dispatched a patrol car, hence the reason for 2 cars being dispatched. CA7 was dispatched by the Divisional HQ officer (and arrived first), whislt CA5 was dispatched by the local station.
Think about it - if your sister was going crazy with a gun, would you waste time looking up the number of your local police station in the phone book or would you simply dial 999 ?
There were 3 telephone calls in question:
1. Neville Bamber's 999 call to the police
A phone call was made by a person claiming to be "Neville Bamber". However, the prosecution dispute that Neville actually made the call since he was shot in the Larynx which would have made speach very difficult, if not impossible. However, the defence could have argued that he may have been shot in the larynx after making the calls.
2. Neville Bamber to Jeremy Bamber
The prosecution have always maintained that no call was ever made by Neville to Jeremy, since the latter was the killer. The defence has always argued that the call was made and that Jeremy is innocent. Sadly there is no way that we can ever know which version is correc t.
3. Jeremy Bamber to the police station
The call from Jeremy was made to his local poice station. The prosecution would have asked why, when his sister was going crazy with a gun did he waste time looking up his local police station's phone number in the phone book? Why did he also phone his girlfriend before calling the police, despite the seriousness of the situation?
It is possible that Jeremy, being unfamiliar with the workings of a BT exchange, may have incorrectly thought that he needed to make another call to prevent the 999 call being traced back to his phone. Maybe he thought that the exchange held the last number he dialled (a bit like the modern 1471 feature), hence his reason for phoning his girlfriend. Perhaps he needed to catch his breathe or collect his thought before making his next call to the police. Maybe he thought that his original 999 call under the guise of being his father went to his local police station and was scared that he would be put through to the same duty officer again, and so wanted to wait a few minutes just in case.
Whatever the reason, he briefly phoned his girlfriend, then looked up his local police station's number before finally calling them.
I don't know whether Jeremy Bamber is guilty or innocent, but the above is a feasible method by which he could have faked the calls. Impossible to do these days with the modern exchanges since the 999 caller id is automatically recorded, but was possible in 1985 when the murders were committed.
