Cops knew, just like the ballistic expert, Fletcher must have also known, that a presence of Sheila Caffells blood on the outside of a silencer, could have got there by innocent or accidental contamination, at the time of it's collection, removal, transportation, and storage by the relatives!
Of course by and after the 11th September 1985, and the hand over by Ann Eaton of the 2nd silencer (AE/1, CAE/1, DRB/1), cops had an even bigger headache to try to deal with!
The following, is a list of all the problems the cops were faced with from that time (11th to 19th September 1985) onwards:-
(1) - they knew that David Boutflour had interfered with one of the two silencers, (a) by trying to unscrew the top off one of them, to look inside, and (b) that he had removed key blood evidence from the outside of one of the silencers by scraping it off with a razor blade, (c) but during this period the cops didn't know which of the two silencers Boutflour Jnr had tampered with.
(2) - there was no silencer at the Lab' between 13th August 1985 and 20th September 1985, which David Boutflour had recovered from the scene on 10th August 1985, (police had both silencers in their possession and at their disposal between 11th to the 20th September 1985), this became problematic because even when the testing of the flake of dried blood (DB/1) 23 produced corresponding blood group activity, no court in the Land would entertain it being admissible in evidence because of The alleged manner with which David Boutflour had come upon it.
(3) - it was then decided to pretend that one of the silencers had been sent along to the Lab' on 30th August 1985, in the 'guise of exhibit DB/1 (23), and that the flake of blood which produced the blood group activity belonging to Sheila Caffell had been discovered by the ballistic expert, Malcolm Fletcher, when he dismantled it at the Lab' on the 12th September 1985, and (a) how he had transferred the flake that same day to the blood expert, John Hayward. But, even this tactic was problematic, because the second silencer at the centre of this plot, did not get handed over to the police by Ann Eaton, until long after, it was supposed to have already been submitted to the Lab' on 30th August 1985, in the 'guise of exhibit DB/1 (23) effectively with Sheila Caffell's blood already inside it, (b) but, how could 'the' same silencer in whatever 'guise they would say it had been submitted to the Lab' on the 30th August 1985, be submitted to the Lab' on that date, when Ann Eaton had not yet even got around to handing over the second silencer to DC Oakey, and moreover she would not do so until almost two weeks afterwards!
(4) - additionally, as if the cops thought they could simply bluff their way out of the trench they had dug for themselves surrounding their direct involvement in the death of Sheila Caffell ( including the staging of her death scene there on the bedroom floor, presented by them to look like she had committed suicide by shooting herself), Cook himself, had dismantled one of the silencers, an exercise which he captured in photographs that he took, showing all the baffle plates removed, and gaps between the first 5 or 6 baffle plates, only to find that there was no blood at all inside that silencer! If there had been some blood in there, Cook would have found it, and he wouldn't have rebuilt the silencer again, and then screwed it directly onto the barrel of the anshuzt rifle like he did, and then supposedly submit the silencer ( SJ/1) (22) to the Lab' on the following day (30th August) only for the ballistic expert, to repeat the dismantling exercise which Cook had already done, only as if by magic, Fletcher supposedly found the blood which Cook hadn't seen, there in-between the first couple of baffle plates, which Cook himself had separated almost two weeks previously! Worse still, when Cook dismantled the silencer it had the exhibit reference SJ/1(22) associated with it, yet in the blinking of an eye, by the time it was whisked off to the Lab' for the attention of Fletcher, it was now supposedly sent and recieved there in the 'guise of exhibit DB/1(23)...
(5) - of course, by the time the matter came to trial the cops, the experts from the Lab' and the relatives, were all singing from the same hymn sheet, the silencer had been found by the relatives, police had submitted it to the Lab' for the experts to look at, and they found Sheila's blood inside it, and here it was being produced at court during the trial, passed around amongst everybody who testified about it, and even the jury members got to touch it, making them believe that it was a real piece of evidence, and that the silencer had been exhibit DRB/1 (22) on all the occasions mentioned during the proceedings, no mystery there then, just a good piece of detective work by the relatives, and the experts at the Lab' did the rest, but (a) the cops then had to set about altering all the documents which gave any mention of the silencer, all these different exhibit references, and changing the Lab' item numbers to try and make out a false case that there had only been just the one silencer, a silencer which on the face of it, was submitted to the Lab' on 30th August 1985, almost two weeks before Ann Eaton had even given that all oh so key silencer (AE/1, CAE/1, DRB)1) to the police on the 11th September 1985...
(6) - It remains to be seen, how Essex police and the relatives are going to have to try and explain how Sheila Caffell's unique blood could have been found inside a silencer at the Lab' on the 12th September 1985, when the silencer in question, (DRB/1) wasn't even present at the Lab' and would not arrive there until some 8 days after Sheila's blood had already supposedly been found inside 'it'...
