Iike most people who are interested in this case I have doubts either way. One of those doubts is this. Why would anyone anyone interested in a rifle for sports remove the sights? The silencer I can accept that under certain circumstances it could be more of a hindrance than a help. But why remove the sights which apparently take a bit of setting up? Did Bamber want to be like a cowboy gallopping around on his bike shooting into the air as he rode into town?
What possible reason would he have to remove the sights of a rifle unless it was for overhauling or cleaning the weapon?
The sights didn't even need to be removed in order to clean the weapon. It disassembled into 2 halves and that could be done with the sights still attached. The only reason to remove the sights would be because one wanted to use it at close quarters and the sight would inhibit accurate shooting at close quarters.
According to witnesses the weapon was not stored with the moderator and scope removed. Thus Jeremy's claim he found it with the scope and moderator removed is not particularly believable. To make matters worse, Jeremy initially told DCI Jones during his September interrogation that he last used the weapon a week to fortnight before the murders.
When Stan Jones took over the interrogation he said that the last known user of the weapon was AP and that AP had told police he found the gun with the moderator and scope attached and that he put it away in the same manner. That resulted in Jeremy changing his story to prevent AP from being the last known user. He didn't change his story though to forgetting that he used it once after Ap used it. Rather he changed it to repeatedly using it the week before the murders and Neville repeatedly using it as well. He claimed that during the week before the murders both mend used it repeatedly and sometimes it had the moderator and scope attached when he fetched it from the closet but other times it didn't. He claimed the week prior to the murders Neville was repeatedly removing the accessories and sometimes put the gun away with them attached but other times he put it away with them removed. The fact he changed his story from not using it to repeatedly using it is bad enough but worse he presented a tale of Neville and himself using the gun constantly and both Neville no removing the scope and moderator a single time but repeatedly removing them.
The kicker is that Neville used a 410 to shoot vermin, the rifle was purchased for Jeremy. His father wasn't into competitive shooting anymore so not even interested in target shooting. If the gun had been used constantly as Jeremy claims then the gun should not have looked brand new and removing the scope constantly would result in scratches as the screwdriver slipped, which invariably happens because the screws are small.
Perhaps worst of all, Jeremy staged bullets to support his tale of taking the gun out to shoot rabbits. The bullets were next to the telephone (that June used to speak to her sister). He staged too many bullets though. He either did not keep track of how many shots he fired total or didn't even think about trying to match up the bullets missing to the number fired. He staged 5 bullets more than would have been left if his claims were true. That is evidence he lied and staged the bullets. The only way for his claims to be true is if the killer used 20 bullets from that supply and decided to not continue to use it but instead to go to the closet for 5 more rounds. Why would any killer do that? It makes no sense whatsoever.
These are big problems for Jeremy's lawyers because how do you mitigate the above? They didn't have any witnesses (apart from Jeremy) who said Neville routinely used the rifle or even any that said they saw him use it ever. So that rules out having an independent witness who could testify that he removed the sights after use and stored the gun without the accessories attached.
Jeremy changing his story to using the gun repeatedly the week before the murders and the whole tale about the rabbit and leaving the gun out are all not very believable. Saying he was nervous and thus initially forgot he used it repeatedly and only remembered he used it repeatedly after he found out AP was the last known user doesn't sound very convincing it sounds like he changed his story because he needed to prevent AP from being the last known user because that would mean he had to find the gun with the moderator and scope attached.
When you take this and add it to the other evidence it is very troublesome. Evidence compounds and when it does you have a hard time explaining it away.
