If the police were responsible for this don’t you think the easiest and less risky course of action open to them would have been to go along with the murder suicide rather than try to frame an innocent man? that approach fell apart because on the first morning of the police investigation, there was a problem concerning the position of the bodies of June Bamber and Sheila Caffell laid up on the top of the bed in the main bedroom when viewed by two police officers who had then left the scene to go with Jeremy Bamber to his Cottage at Head Street, Goldhanger, in order to take a witness statement from him, and that unbeknown to senior officers who were still at the scene dealing with the matter, the aforementioned two police officers had divulged the fact that the two bodies were laid on top of the bed to relatives within an hour of them having been at the crime scene! Meanwhile, back at the Farmhouse senior officers were performing informatives, which included a training exercise where the bodies of victims, namely, and including, the bodies of June Bamber and Sheila Caffell, which had been subsequently moved into different positions on the main bedroom floor either side of the bed! Neither, the senior officers at the scene, nor the two police officers at Jeremy's Cottage, were aware of each other's actions. This only came to light match later on, for example, by the beginning of the following month by which time the relatives had discovered the conflicting accounts regarding the position of the body's of June Bamber and Sheila Caffell, in particular, their bodies having been found laid on top of the bed side by side of one another, at a time when the rifle was laid on the bed in between both bodies, and Sheila having a Bible upon her chest, and the contradictory position of their respective bodies said to have been found on the bedroom floor either side of the bed, and with Sheila in possession of the aforementioned rifle! These are the circumstances which caused the nature of the police investigation to alter course, a decision that came about because of pressure exerted by the relatives on the assistant Chief Constable, Peter Simpson! It seems quite obvious that by that stage not only did the relatives know that there was something suspicious going on regarding where the bodies June and Sheila had been found, but that Essex Police also knew that the relatives good cause The Force a great deal of trouble by virtue of what they knew!The inquest verdict was murder suicide they could have just ran with that and no one would have been any the wiser to their cover up surely ?
The relatives were adamant by the beginning of September 1985, to make a fist of trying to get to the bottom of why the bodies of June Bamber and Sheila Caffell, had both been purportedly found in two entirely different positions in the bedroom! Bear in mind, also that by this stage the relatives would have been unaware of the alternative version of events, concerning the fact that the body count of victims bodies had been reported differently, as recounted by reference to specifically timed police radio message log contents, which placed two bodies downstairs, and a further three bodies upstairs, versus, the witness statement accounts which placed only one body downstairs in the kitchen, with the other four bodies of victims upstairs in bedrooms! These highly significant discrepancies, could not be resolved without the need or the requirement to start a fresh investigation. This is why the original police investigation, 'four murders and a suicide', became shelved and the investigation took a change in direction, becoming one of 'five murders'...
The truth concerning what really did happen inside the farmhouse after firearms officers had entered the premises, was concealed in the change over, from one type of Investigation, to the other! For example, in the new investigation (five murders) the timed police radio message log content account became discarded altogether, with Essex Police proceeding by a reliance upon the witness statement Version Of Events, where only one body was found downstairs in the kitchen, and the other 4 bodies found upstairs!
Digging deeper, it became necessary as part of this deception, for the police to tamper with the batch of crime scene ammunition. In particular, one of the two bullets used in the shooting of Sheila Caffell, namely exhibit 'PV/20', had to be exchanged and replaced by another test fired round fired in the anschutz rifle later on, in order to present the shootings as a one gun crime!
There was obviously a significant link between the conflicting positions of the victims bodies, as reported during the first investigation (two bodies downstairs, three bodies upstairs), and the second investigation (one body downstairs, four bodies upstairs), and the need for a requirement to exchange one of the two bullets used in the shooting of Sheila Caffell (a small piece of a badly fragmented bullet, cannot grow back into a whole bullet, within the duration of one month which spanned the two police investigations)!
