Thanks scipio. Could u give me a brief timeline line of how u see the calls taking place as im awfully confused
Jeremy's call to Julie around 3AM
Jeremy's call to Witham around 3:20
Jeremy's call to Chelmsford (call to West) around 3:22
West's call to HQ Information Room 3:26
By the time Jeremy gave his statement many hours passed so he wasn't exactly sure of the time he called police.
He thought it was around 3:15 that he called West so he claimed he received Nevill's call at 3:10. He figured his call to police lasted ten minutes so then placed his call to Julie 10 minutes after that at 3:25.
In his statement he was lying about 3 things:
1) made up a call from Nevill
2) made up that he called Julie after police instead of before
3) eliminated his call to Witham
His call to Witham is a double edged sword. On one hand it helps because it actually helps eat up some of the time between when he claimed Nevill phoned him and when he called Chelmsford. But it hurts because logically he should have called 999 after not getting an answer at Witham. To look up more numbers to stations that might be unmanned denotes a complete lack of any sense of urgency. So he dropped it in his statement and still dropped it during the trial. It was the prosecution tha tbrought up his call to Witham.
If he had remembered that his call to police was around 3:22 then in his statement he would have claimed Nevill phoned a little after 3:15 and that he called Julie around 3:32. But he incorrectly thought he called police around 3:15 hence in his statement he moved up everything earlier than he should have.
At his trial he said he was not positive of the exact times of everything but stood by his order of fielding the call from Nevill, next calling police and finally calling Julie after getting off the phone with police.
He did change something at trial though. He told police he immediately called police after being unable to call Nevill back. At trial he acknowledged some time passed. He said at first he didn't appreciate the seriousness of the situation. He said after he woke up fully and it sunk in then he appreciated the threat level and decided to call police. This was his way of explaining away whatever the gap in time was between the time he supposedly received the call from Nevill and phoning police.
The prosecution said that gap was 26 minutes- that he called police at 3:36 based on West's account. The prosecution effectively got West to narrow it to 16 minutes but could and should have narrowed it further.
I would have gotten West to admit that 3:26 was most likely the time of his call to Bonnett not the time of Jeremy's call to him and that means Jeremy's call had to have come earlier than 3:26. Getting West to admit this would have narrowed to time to less than 16 minutes. Next you get Jeremy to say on the stand that he was simply estimating the call at 3:10 and all he knew was it was prior to 3:20 it could have been 3:15. That helps narrow the call down to less than 10 minutes between when he spoke to police and Nevill called. This is much more manageable from a defense perspective. They did this in theory but not in as clear or effective a fashion as I would have done.
Fast forward to 2005. Someone looking over the evidence says you know what- if only Jeremy had called police at 3:36 this would have allowed us to argue that someone alerted police prior to Jeremy because records reflect a call being received at 3:26 and police being dispatched prior to 3:36. We could allege this proves Nevill called police himself prior to Jeremy or that Nevill called someone else and that person called police before Jeremy. Whoever thought of it then decided the heck with "if only" I will pretend that Jeremy did call at 3:36 even though Jeremy says it was earlier and even though the trial defense effectively refuted this suggestion at trial. Since it is ignoring the evidence adduced at trial and is not supported by any credible evidence at most this allegation has propaganda value to try to get members of the public to believe Jeremy is innocent.
There is a group of people who for whatever reason are more interested in propaganda than in things that Jeremy could actually use in court to be freed.