Mugford spills the beans!
In her second statement to police, Julie Mugford said Jeremy had talked disparagingly about his "old" father, his "mad" mother, his sister who he said had nothing to live for, and the twins who he said were disturbed. Bamber denied this, saying she was making the allegations only because he jilted her.
Mugford's mother also said Bamber had told her he "hated" his adoptive mother and described her as mad. A friend of Mugford's testified that Bamber had said around February 1985 that his parents kept him short of money, his mother was a religious freak, and "I fucking hate my parents." A farm worker testified that he seemed not to get on with Sheila and had once said: "I'm not going to share my money with my sister".
In discussions Mugford said she had dismissed his rants as fantasies, he said he wanted to sedate his parents and set fire to the farmhouse. He reportedly said Sheila would make a good scapegoat. Mugford alleged he had discussed entering the house through the kitchen window because the catch was broken, and leaving it via a different window that latched when it was shut from the outside. She said she spent the weekend before the murders with him in his cottage in Goldhanger, where he dyed his hair black, and that she saw his mother's bicycle there. This was significant because the prosecution later alleged he had used the bicycle to cycle between his cottage and the farmhouse on the night of the murders.
She told police Bamber had telephoned her on at 9.50pm on 6 August to say he had been thinking about the crime all day, was pissed off, and that it was "tonight or never." A few hours later, between 3.00–3.30am, she said he phoned her again to say: "Everything is going well. Something is wrong at the farm. I haven't had any sleep all night … bye honey and I love you lots". Her flatmates' evidence suggested that call came through closer to 3.00am.
He called her later during the morning of 7 August 1985 to tell her that Sheila had gone mad and that a police car was coming to pick her up and bring her to the farmhouse. When she arrived there, she said he pulled her to one side and said: "I should have been an actor!".
Later that evening she asked whether he had done it. He said no, but that a friend of his had, whom he named; the man was a plumber the family had used in the past. He said he had told this friend how he could enter and leave the farmhouse undetected, and that one of his instructions had been for the friend to telephone him from the farm on one of the phones in the house that had a memory redial facility, so that if the police checked it, it would give him an alibi. Everything had gone as planned, he said, except that Nevill had put up a fight, and the friend had become angry and shot him seven times.
He had told Sheila to lie down and shoot herself last, Bamber said. He then placed the Bible on her chest so she appeared to have killed herself in a religious frenzy. The children were shot in their sleep, he said. Mugford said Bamber claimed to have paid the friend £2,000.
Seems extremely plausible to me especially since Julie didn't know much of this for fact anyway. There is far too much factual detail in this for it to be made up.
Jeremy took the cowards way out and got some mug to do the dirty work for him.
