I wonder why Nevill would remove the sights from the gun?
Maybe he removed the telescopic site from the gun because he knew Sheila had been taught by David Boutflour and Jeremy on separate occasions how to load rounds into the gun, and because he knew Sheila was coming to stop for a few days he might have thought if she took a turn for the worse he didn't want her in possession of a loaded gun at distance from him where she might take aim and fire shots without him getting close enough to disarm her in time! With the telescopic site fitted to the gun it posed a potentially different threat, than with it removed! Since, as I have said, with the telescopic site fitted Sheila could be lurking in an outbuilding and take pot shots at targets! Neville Bamber was very alert to the potential of Sheila taking one of her funny turns and that's why he may have removed the silencer! Jeremy didn't take the telescopic site off, that's for sure, because he had no reason to as it wasn't fitted when he collected it and left the kitchen on a potential rabbit shoot that evening! Jones and Jones asked him about the state of the rifle when he had possession of it the evening before the tragedy and he told them there was no telescopic site on the gun, and no Parker Hale silencer fitted to the gun at that time either! They also asked him if there was any bullets already loaded into the rifle when he first picked it up and he told them (on 9th August 1985) 'yes', possibly a handful! This is all very interesting because cops knew a few facts of their own by that stage! For example, they knew that by the time they seized the anshuzt rifle from the box room window that morning, brought it into the main bedroom, had used it for gauging purposes against Sheila's body as part of an 'informatives' exercise, at a time when Sheila had only been shot once, that there was no telescopic site on the gun, but that the silencer was fitted because cops had removed it, and Stan Jones had seized it (SBJ/1) that morning along with three other SBJ exhibits he took from the scene on that occasion! Cops were anxious to know if there had already been live bullets (rounds) already loaded into the gun before Jeremy opened a fresh box of ammunition consisting of 50 live rounds which he proceeded to load the guns ammunition magazine up with until it was full!
After speaking with Jeremy about these matters by Jones and Jones on 9th August 1985, cops knew that Sheila must have obtained the silencer from somewhere and screwed it onto the barrel of the rifle after Jeremy had left the scene that evening, and that she must have loaded a further 14 bullets into the rifle magazine at some point thereafter, and fired almost all of them bar one (which I shall explain about in a moment), the fifteenth round was a police issue round, which had to be switched over with a test fired round fired post the shootings, so that the ballistic expert could present the misleading claim that the five victims had all been shot by bullets fired via the anshuzt rifle, when if the truth be known, only 24 of the 25 had been, and one of the 24 had not been fired by Sheila, or any would be as yet unknown killer, since that shot was inflicted during the aforementioned informative exercise!
Certainly, DCI 'Taff' Jones, and other top brass, along with the firearm officers all knew the true circumstances regarding Sheila Caffells demise! Of course, at the time she first got shot, this involved one of the firearm officers (PS Woodcock) entering the kitchen via an internal door which led from the back passage into the main kitchen, which was a door that was hinged on the left from Woodcocks vantage point, but was hinged on its right from Sheila's vantage point! The opening edge of that door had been problematic right from the word go, because it meant that as Woodcock attempted to enter the kitchen door the barrel of his weapon was always pointing away from any potential target on the opposite side of the door! The muzzle of his weapon was always pointing in the direction of the outside wall of the kitchen! The further he tried to come around the edge of that kitchen door, a larger and larger piece of his weapons barrel became visible to anyone on the other side of the door! That other person was Sheila Caffell! She grabbed at the barrel of Woodcocks rifle, at first grab Woodcock himself had not managed to come around the opening edge of the kitchen door, and this conflict caused the muzzle end of Woodcocks weapon to leave gouge and scour marks on the outer wall of the kitchen! These gouge and scratch marks are still visible in some of the photographs which police took later that morning! The real crux of the matter is that when Woodcock eventually did manage to free himself around the opening edge of that internal kitchen door, he found himself grappling with a deranged Sheila Caffell over the control of his own weapon! It was at this time that Sheila pulled the muzzle of Woodcocks weapon into the region of her own throat, and the force of her doing this caused the trigger mechanism of his weapon to activate! The angle at which Sheila dragged the barrel end of the rifle towards herself was responsible for the shot across her neck! Woodcock and the others who then followed him into the kitchen all thought that the shot had killed Sheila outright! The reason for this was because it was not possible to tell at which angle the shot had entered her neck or the direction it had penetrated!! They reported her as being dead in the kitchen along with and after having already reported the find of Neville Bambers body there also!
Cops spoke of her death as a suicide because Woodcock told how Sheila had appeared to drag the muzzle of his gun into her own neck, as if she intended for him to shoot her!!
