Who Killed Sheila Caffell?
Part Two: Jeremy's Plan
1. Why Another Thread?I have been thinking some more about that photograph of Sheila's body, and I think it may hold the key to resolving Jeremy Bamber's legal dilemma one way or the other, even cracking the case.
I have a few more observations and more questions. As my previous questions have gone unanswered, I will also repeat those below.
2. Please Read This All The Way Through Before CommentingI appreciate that not everybody will have time to read my long posts. That's fine, but that being the case, I would prefer that you don't reply on this thread as it is necessary to read this right the way through to understand my thinking and how I have logically come to my conclusions.
3. Key AssumptionsIn what follows, I am making two important assumptions:
3.1. That the provenance of the crime scene photograph has been established to the reasonable satisfaction of all concerned.
3.2. That Sheila's body was found as it is in the photograph and was not moved.
These assumptions underpin everything. I don't need to tell you why the provenance of the photograph matters. It is admitted that the camera can lie, but if the
cameraman is lying then all hope is lost for the evidence under examination. As for the body, to be clear, I am of the view that if Sheila's body was moved and if that fact was not disclosed to the jury before their verdict, then Jeremy Bamber's conviction is immediately and manifestly unsafe and he must be released forthwith. I am sure I don't need to explain to present company why that is.
4. Criminal IndicatorsIn my view, what the photograph of Sheila's body tells us is that any scenario in which Jeremy Bamber is the killer is rather improbable (though not impossible). This can be demonstrated through a process of modal logic in which we adopt as our starting assumption that Jeremy is the killer and then try to fit this assumption to the apparent evidence in the crime scene.
Consider:
4.1. If Jeremy is the killer, then his plan was to stage a murder-suicide scene.
4.2. In order to stage a murder-suicide, he needed to convince the police that Sheila had committed suicide.
4.3. To do this, he needed to ensure both that he killed Sheila and that the gunshot wounds to Sheila would, on close examination, suggest suicide.
4.4. He therefore needed to shoot Sheila in the head/neck area, ideally under the chin, as those are the wounds that would achieve his twin objectives of ensuring Sheila's death and staging Sheila's suicide.
4.5. We can assume that, while not exactly an expert in guns and ballistics, Jeremy had sufficient working knowledge to realise all this, even intuitively.
4.6. In a Jeremy-as-killer scenario, Jeremy duly shoots Sheila twice in the head/neck zone, specifically under the chin and in the throat.
4.7. In order to achieve this, Jeremy would have had to have caught Sheila lying down, preferably flat, or if not flat, then at least only sitting up very slightly. If Sheila was standing or even sat down, he would not have been able to easily, if at all, inflict the gunshot wounds in the right places.
4.8. As noted on the previous thread [see
Who Killed Sheila Caffell? Part One http://jeremybamberforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,9351.0.html], the blood splatter on the nightdress seems consistent with this.
4.9. We can infer from this three key modalities:
- first, that Jeremy needed to kill Sheila first before anybody else; and,
- second, and following from the first modality, that Jeremy must have used the moderator to kill Sheila. His actions would not have made any logical sense otherwise. He would hardly have killed Sheila without the moderator, then taken the trouble to screw on the moderator after potentially waking everybody up; and,
- third, that Sheila must have been lying down or, at most, sitting up only slightly at the time she was shot. It will be noted also that the autopsy report supports that tentative conclusion.
4.10. We note that Sheila has no marks on her nightdress other than the post-injury and post-mortem blood splatter, suggesting that she was not in a struggle. (Thus, in a great twist of irony, an evidence point that has been used against Jeremy now potentially works in his favour).
4.11. We can therefore further infer that Sheila must have been in her bedroom, in bed, perhaps even asleep, at the time she was shot. This is highly significant, circumstantially and forensically, because it means that if Jeremy is the killer, Sheila's body must have been moved to the master bedroom, an act that would lead to forensic traces in and between Sheila's bedroom and the master bedroom.
5. Flaws in the Crown's ballistical and pathological evidence5.1. I briefly critiqued Malcolm Fletcher's report in my comment #393 on Mike Tesko's sound moderator thread [goto:
http://jeremybamberforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,9307.390.html].
5.2. For the purposes of this thread, the main points are that:
5.2.1. Fletcher does not establish ballistically that Sheila's wounds were not self-inflicted. Instead, Fletcher relies on the inference to be drawn from the supposition that Sheila would not have been able to shoot herself with a moderated rifle. Thus, his findings are incomplete and eminently assailable. All that is needed is for the defence to show that Sheila was more probably shot with a unmoderated rifle and Fletcher's evidence is discredited.
5.2.2. Fletcher is also reliant on the blood evidence in the sound moderator in concluding that Sheila was shot with a moderated rifle. That weak conclusion can be disregarded completely if the defence can satisfy the court on 5.2.1 above.
5.3. As stated on the previous thread in this series, [see
Who Killed Sheila Caffell? Part One http://jeremybamberforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,9351.0.html ], the gunshot wounds do not appear to have come from a moderated rifle. They don’t look at all consistent with the use of a moderator. This is for two reasons:
5.3.1. First, the ring of bruising around the wounds. Unlike the muzzle end of the rifle itself, the end of the moderator is knurled and could not produce bruising.
5.3.2. Second, the wound pattern in each case looks nothing at all like what would be expected for a contact wound or near-contact wound from a moderator, but is consistent with an unmoderated rifle.
5.4. The pathologist's evidence must be considered incomplete due to the absence of tests of the blood found on Sheila. Of course, we may take at face value Venezis' evidence that there were no other significant external wounds on Sheila, but we cannot assume it was just her blood.
6. Two possible solutionsIn view of the above, I believe we are faced with a stark dichotomy:
If Sheila was shot with a moderator, then Jeremy's culpability is affirmed, and he is almost-certainly guilty in actuality, having shot Sheila first, followed by the twins in their sleep, then June in the main bedroom, then Nevill following a struggle in the kitchen. He then moved Sheila's body to the master bedroom as part of the murder-suicide staging scheme.
If Sheila was shot without a moderator, then Jeremy's conviction is unsafe, and though that does not exonerate him, it is likely that Sheila killed herself after killing her parents and twin sons.
I would welcome informed opinions on the above, constructive criticism, and if possible, answers to my questions below.
7. Questions7.1. What was the expert view on the trajectory of the bullets into Sheila? Was suicide ballistically possible?
7.2. Do we have a photo of the master bedroom showing the location of the two bodies, the loci of gunshot wounds to the two victims and the location of bullet fragments found?
7.3. Was expert evidence presented on blood splatter patterns?
7.4. Given that Sheila was found in the master bedroom, where is the record of blood traces in Sheila's bedroom and that show her body was moved from her bedroom to the master bedroom?
7.5. If no such blood evidence was recorded, then how was Sheila shot with such precision? She can't have been sleeping on the floor. Was she sleeping in the bed? If so, why was June found in that bedroom?
