Jeremy Bamber Discussion Forum

OK,we will look at a possible scenario that has Sheila using the silencer and then returning it to the gun cupboard.Bear in mind that we will be assuming that Philip Boyce is correct about the Aga burning Nevills back.So if you agree with Boyce,please read on.

Right,here we go.
Nevill has put the rifle and magazine back in the gun cupboard after JB left for home.Sheila goes down stairs and gets the rifle,silencer, and magazine after everyone is in bed,she also takes five bullets from the gun cupboard thinking one bullet will be enough for each victim including herself.She goes through to the kitchen to load the magazine but realizes it is already fully loaded,she notices the box of ammo on the worktop that JB left so puts the five bullets she has taken from the den down beside them.Hence five extra bullets.
Nevill has heard Sheila and goes down to the kitchen to investigate,whatever is said,Sheila eventually hits Nevill over the head with the rifle and sends him to the floor in front of the Aga,he tries to get up but Sheila hits him again,breaking the lamp shade.Sheila is round by the cooker by this time and raises the rifle once more,the end of the silencer hits the underside of the mantel shelf which deflects the rifle causing the stock to hit the top of the cooker,the stock is split and a piece splinters off with the force.

Nevill lies motionless with his back against the Aga so Sheila stops the beating and heads off up stairs.
Now you may be thinking,why didn't Sheila just shoot Nevill? Well who knows,we know she was close to her dad and may have just hesitated and bashed him instead,or the safety catch may have been on at that time.
No matter what,we know that Nevill must have been alive while he lay against the Aga because he got up again and was shot on the chair/scuttle,So he couldn't have been shot at that time as he only received the four FATAL head shots in the kitchen,no others.

So,Sheila proceeds up stairs and shoots June in her bed,but finds out that shots to the body dont kill her,in fact June manages to get out of bed and attack Sheila.They struggle for the rifle as they go round about the bed and back,both receiving cuts and bruises,possibly sheila had a nose bleed.Some of Sheilas blood may have got into the silencer at this time.Anyway,Sheila manages to push an exhausted badly wounded June to the floor and realizes that the only way to kill her is with a shot to the head.
Sheila re-loads and the twins are dispatched next only receiving head shots,Sheila has learned her lesson,only head shots will do.Besides,she doesn't want the boys to suffer or maybe run away if they are only wounded.

Sheila re-loads the rifle a second time in the kitchen,and it may have been at this time that she unscrewed the silencer and put it back in the gun cupboard.Why you may ask? Well everyone was incapacitated by that stage and besides it made little difference to the sound of the shots anyway,as she would have found out.And of course Sheila would have realized by then that the only way to kill herself with the rifle was through the mouth or under the chin and no doubt worked out it would be easier to achieve this without the silencer attached.There is no reason to assume that Sheila was sat down in the bedroom about to shoot herself before she realized the gun was too long with the silencer on it,no reason at all.

So,for whatever reason Sheila removes the silencer and puts it back in the gun cupboard,by this time she has the cut between her thumb and forefinger ,the cut made by the rifle mechanism that Bill Robertson pointed out.If Sheila unscrewed the silencer from the top,this could also have been when her blood got into the silencer and smudged the outside of it,the cut would be directly in line with the end of the silencer as she unscrewed it like a bottle top.As for fingerprints,Sheila may have noticed the blood and gave the silencer a wipe as she put it back in its box.

At this stage,Sheila has a clear path from the kitchen to the den too,no chairs or bodies in the way till later.
Whatever else Sheila does while Nevill is unconcious is anyones guess,maybe she wrote the alleged suicide note which she placed in the Bible,washed her blood stained clothes and put on a clean nightie,and gave herself a wash and tidy up.

Anyway,Nevill slowly comes to,but is seriously hurt and can barely get to his feet.He stumbles over to the phone and sits down on a chair where it gradually comes back to him what happened,he makes a quick call to JB to summon help, cutting it short as he is eager to get up stairs and see what has taken place.
Nevill pushes himself to his feet and staggers along the hall towards the stair,he shouts out,hoping for a response and alerts Sheila who grabs the rifle and meets him as he turns the corner of the stair case.Two shots are fired into Nevills face as he comes into view around the corner of the stairway and he is forced to retreat,he stumbles and sways from side to side as he makes his way back to the kitchen.
Sheila manages to hit him two more times before he staggers into the kitchen and slumps into a chair all but dead.

Sheila enters the kitchen and aims the rifle at Nevills head but he manages to hold up his right arm to shield it.Sheila hits Nevill with the flat of the rifle barrel and pokes his arm,Nevill grabs the end of the rifle but Sheila pulls it away slashing his hand with the foreward sight and pulling off his wrist watch.
Nevill succumbs to his wounds and topples off the chair landing on the back of it with his head in the coal scuttle.Sheila is now free to put four more shots into Nevills head who may already have been dead,so very little blood spray may have occurred.

Sheila goes up stairs and gets hold of the Bible before shooting herself.

A few points.
People often say that Sheila had no time to wash and change then write a suicide note etc.,after Nevill was shot,but with this scenario all those things were done BEFORE Nevill was shot.All Sheila needed to do after Nevill was dead was go up stairs and shoot herself.So everything can be fitted in quite nicely IF you believe the Aga made the marks to Nevills back.

If Nevill wasn't still alive when he was lying against the Aga,how did he end uo on the chair scuttle?
Would the police have moved him? Why??
Sheila had all the time in the world to replace the silencer to the gun cupboard while Nevill was unconcious,and a clear path to do so.

If you accept this scenario,then no cover up or framing took place and no one deliberately contaminated the silencer.The police simply got things wrong believing that the only way Sheilas blood could have got into the silencer was from her shots to the head,but with the introduction of the Aga burns I believe Sheila may have had the opportunity to get her blood in the silencer and replace it after June and the twins were shot and Nevill lay unconcious.

One thing is for sure,Jeremy Bamber would not have left Nevill lying against the Aga while alive for any length of time.
Well thats about it,bye for now!

Quote from: Leslie Aalders on October 13, 2023, 11:28:06 PMOf course,there is the possibility that Sheila DID attach the silencer before the shooting,also hoping for a silent massacre,before returning it mid way through the shooting to the gun cupboard.This may not be as far fetched as we think now that the Aga burns have been introduced.
I will try and come up with a reasonably plausible scenario to suit this.

The silencer from a human ears point of view makes little difference when using low velocity ammunition Leslie.

Of course,there is the possibility that Sheila DID attach the silencer before the shooting,also hoping for a silent massacre,before returning it mid way through the shooting to the gun cupboard.This may not be as far fetched as we think now that the Aga burns have been introduced.
I will try and come up with a reasonably plausible scenario to suit this.

So,let us see what happened with Jeremy Bamber concerning the silencer.
Now,I have tried to argue that the police may have had a silencer in their possession before the relatives found the one in the gun cupboard,but is this logical? Wouldn't the police have told JB that they had taken sights and a silencer from the White House while questioning him? The thing is,we know for sure the police didn't tell JB about removing the sights/silencer or he would have had proof of two silencers after the relatives handed one in too.

And Bamber has never questioned the fact that the relatives found a silencer in the gun cupboard,this can only mean that either Bamber put the silencer back in the cupboard after the murders or he had no idea where Nevill put it after removing it from the Anschutz and therefore could not challenge what the relatives claimed about where they found it.After all,where else would you put a silencer if not in a gun cupboard?
So,as odd as it may seem,it looks like the police did not have a silencer in their possession before the relatives handed one in,or if they did it was not disclosed to JB.It would be interesting to hear what Jeremy Bamber has to say regarding his understanding of the whereabouts of the silencer and sights for the Anschutz in the first few days after the murders.
You would think if he was guilty and put the silencer back in the gun cupboard after the shooting,that he would be eager to find out if it had been seized by the police or not,yet we know he did not enquire about it.
But I still think its very odd that the police didn't go and get the sights and silencer from WHF once they knew of their existence,very odd!
Anyway,Erik has already pointed out the problems that JB would have faced putting the silencer back in the cupboard without leaving any blood evidence as well as squeezing past Nevills body and chairs.
And of course we have to ask again why JB let the relatives into WHF first,before he had found out if the silencer was still in the gun cupboard?And when he did go to the WHF on 12th Aug,which was incidentally the same day as Stan Jones picked up the silencer,Bamber was only interested in his Dads wallet.
Anyway,we still have to explain just how human blood got into the silencer,and as if that isn't hard enough we have to explain paint on it as well as scratches,so there can only really be two possibilities,either Bamber is guilty or the silencer was deliberatelly contaminated.

So,this is when you have to weigh up Bambers actions post murders and decide if they point to guilt or innocence.
Now personally,for me,it is what JB didn't know about the crime scene that makes me doubt his guilt.
I mean, if Bamber is guilty he knew exactly what happened in WHF on the night of the murders and how he staged things.HE,must have placed the Bible beside Sheila and opened it at a certain page,he may also have placed a suicide note inside it as an alibi,yet when he was told before the trial that there was no photos of the bible and that it had been destroyed he made no song and dance about this.Now this for me could mean that Bamber simply did not know the significance of the Bible or its contents.His alibi apparently up in smoke,yet no record of him making a fuss about this.

Next we have two overlapping issues involving Philip Boyce,firstly Boyce trying to prove that the rifle minus silencer made the marks to Nevills back,and then recently trying to prove that the Aga handles actually made the burns instead.Now,lets say Bamber is guilty,then it follows that he must know what made the marks to Nevills back.So if it is proven that the Aga made the marks,why did Bamber waste time and money trying to prove the rifle made them? Surely a pointless hiding to nothing?
On the other hand,if he had pointed out that the Aga might be responsible and got confirmation of this before his trial,he could have used this to his advantage.
Besides,I find it hard to fit the Aga burns into a guilty Bamber scenario anyway,and if they are accepted definately work in JBs favour in my opinion no matter how you look at it.Either Nevill lay beside the Aga for a considerable amount of time as the burns formed before getting up and being killed on the scuttle,which must point to Sheila as the killer,or Nevill died against the Aga and the police moved him to the scuttle. Now,the fact that Bamber did not point out that the police moved Nevill by proving that the Aga made the burns must obviously point to his innocence too.

So,for me,as I have said many times,Bambers obvious ignorance of what took place on the night of the murders by not using certain things to his advantage,for me points to innocence.And if this is the case then it follows that the silencer evidence must have been fabricated.
Oh well,we will just have to wait and see what the CCRC makes of the current submission.

Sorry to mislead,but it appears the TV show was fiction regarding Taff being handed the silencer,it was Bob Miller who took the silencer from Stan and sent it to Huntingdon for testing.Not sure when Taff found out about the relatives discovery.
Anyway,what Bob Miller says in an interview doesn't seem right,he more or less says that the police didn't know there was a silencer for the Anschutz until it was found,yet we know the silencer was well discussed between JB,the police and the relatives days before it was found in the gun cupboard.

It just doesn't make much sense.As soon as the police were aware that there was a silencer and sights for the murder weapon why didn't they just ask JB where they would be in the White House and have the SOCO team retrieve them as crime scene exhibits?
OK,if Bamber had tried to hide the existence of the silencer from the police,but he didn't,he even spoke about it in front of AE while giving his statement,then AP got involved saying it was not the done thing to rempve sights once they are fitted.Yet when the silencer was 'found' as it were by the relatives,it seems this was a big surprise.But if the police didn't have the sights and silencer in their possesion,just where did they think they were? Of course they had to be somewhere at WHF for heavens sake.
One tv programme said the 'FIND' turned the case upside down,yet EVERYONE involved knew a silencer existed by then.
So does this suggest the police had already seized a silencer on the morning of the shooting? If not,why didn't they just go to the White House and pick it up once they knew of its existence? Seems to me  the only way to make sense of what the statements say is to assume the police already had a silencer before the relatives found one.

So,let us see if the official story about the silencer adds up then.
It isn't clear who first mentioned the silencer after the murders or why,but things happened pretty fast,by her own addmission Anne Eaton didn't even know that Nevill/JB had bought an Anschutz rifle let alone a silencer or sights for it.Yet by the time Anthony Pargetter arrived on the scene on 8th Aug the day after the shooting, she was able to tell him what gun was used for the shooting and that it was minus the sights and silencer at the time.
Now,AP had seen the Anschutz with the sights and silencer attached at WHF the previous weekend while on a visit,and after hearing they were not on the rifle when it was found on Sheila's body immediately phoned Taff,what was said I do not know.
So, right away after the shooting the sights and silencer are THE main items of interest fer the relatives,they cannot accept JBs story about removing them to fit in the gun cupboard.Although,I believe JB said the sights were removed to allow the rifle to fit in its case,which makes sense If its not being used regularly I suppose.
Now the family were so convinced that JB was the killer that they went to see Taff and Stan on 9th Aug too,they spoke again about the absense of the sights/silencer and proclaimed that there was no way that Sheila could have re-loaded the rifle after being told that 24 shots had been fired.
Taff and Stan went to see JB that same evening and asked about the sights/silencer and the extra five bullets on the kitchen worktop.

OK enough scene setting,point is that by 9th Aug JB must have been aware that there was great interest in the silencer by the police,even though he may not have been aware that it was the relatives who were fuelling the police interest in it.But one thing is certain,the police and all the relatives knew that there was a silencer and sights for the Anschutz rifle.
So,the first question is,where did everyone think the silencer and sights were located at this point?
Taff must have checked and  known that they were not crime scene exhibits surely? And what about the relatives,didn't they enquire of their whereabouts to Taff?
Next point,in the TV series,after the silencer had been found by the relatives and handed in,Taff says to Stan'you have to be joking!'.But why was Taff surprised that the relatives had found a silencer at the WHF? After all,Taff had been discussing the silencer with JB and the relatives for days,he knew of its existence for heavens sake,so why any surprise when it was found and handed in? And after all,the police didn't have any sights or silencers as exhibits up until then did they?
Well,as Erik has pointed out,there seems to be documentation showing that two silencers were examined,so the police may have indeed found a silencer on the day of the shooting.This would explain Taffs reaction when the relatives handed in a silencer,and if you think about it,it would explain why the police or relatives for that matter did not show any interest in the whereabouts of the sights/silencer in the days following the shooting even though there was an intense interest growing about their significance.
Anyway,some claim the relatives did not hand in a silencer until september,and indeed Anne Eaton was asked why she didn't mention Dave finding the silencer  in her 14th Aug statement by the city of London police investigation,or COLP for short.She certainly mentioned it in her statements after JB was arrested,but then again she mentioned many more things against JB that was not in her first statement.
But it is odd how everything apparently came together so quickly after the murders,Anne and Dave apparently found out about Junes bike by their aunt Connie Lugg the morning after the shooting and Anne went on a crusade to find it for some reason,eventually tying it to the crime.

Anyway,I think the relatives probably did find the silencer in the gun cupboard on 10th Aug,it would have been too risky to say they found it there if they didn't,they couldn't have known how thoroughly the police checked the cupboard,but they would have been aware that the silencer had not been taken as an exhibit and tested,therefore they could contaminate it in any way they saw fit ,IF they wanted to.
Another point,it would have been risky for the relatives to hand in a silencer on a later date in September after JB had been clearing out the house and having probably checked out the gun cupboard.
But there can be no doubt that the relatives did have the opportunity to contaminate the silencer,and why didn't they hand in the sights at the same time? How did they know that they hadn't been on for the shooting and sprayed by a mist of blood unseen by the naked eye?

Oh well,I dont suppose I have said much of any evidential value,however on the next post we will look at JBs reaction to the silencer.

So,lets take another look at the official series of events regarding the silencer and the possibility that it was planted Rob.Although by planted,do you mean the silencer its self Rob or just the blood and paint.
In other words,do you think the silencer was taken out of the gun cupboard then contaminated and replaced,or simply planted there once the police had left White House Farm?

Anyway,if Jeremy Bamber is guilty he shot his family with the silencer attached then unscrewed it and put it in the gun cupboard.Erik has extensively pointed out the problems JB would have had returning the silencer to the den in the previous posts.Ok,the police search the house including the gun cupboard but do not find the silencer or sights.When JB is giving his statement to the police on 7th-8th Aug,Anne Eaton or her brother Dave or maybe both, hear JB tell the police that the silencer and sights were not attached to the rifle when he took it out to shoot rabbits on the evening before the shooting.

Anne Eaton and Dave then discuss the abscence of the sights and silencer with Anthony Pargetter and Annes husband Peter and they decide it is suspicious to remove  them,especially the sights,also, Anthony P had noticed the sights and silencer were attached the weekend before the murders when he visited WHF.

So,along with other things that JB told the police,ie,the phone call from Nevill, the relatives quickly concluded that JB was the killer and not Sheila,so much so that they went to the police on the afternoon of 9th Aug with their concerns.In fact Anthony had already phoned Taff on the 8th about the sights and silencer.So,in the days after the shooting,half the relatives time was taken up comforting Jeremy and helping arrange the funerals and the other half trying to prove Jeremy was the killer of his family and convince the police of this.
Anyway,due to the relatives going to the police,Taff and Stan Jones go back to question JB in the evening of the 9th.Taff asks about the sights and silencer,to which JB replies that his father must have removed them.Jb signed a form that same night giving the police permission to hand the keys of WHF to Anne Eaton.

So,at this stage,the police are quizzing JB about the sights and silencer for the Anschutz,while at the same time asking his permission to give AE the keys to WHF to clean up.Anne Eaton and other relatives enter WHF the very next day,10th Aug,along with Basil Cock the executer,and while looking for firearms Dave Boutflour finds the sights and bloodied silencer in the gun cupboard,it also has scratch marks on it and red paint.The relatives take the sights and silencer as well as boxes of bullets and cartridges home and hand the silencer to the police a few days later.
About this time,the 12th Aug,AE phones Jeremy and asks him to meet her at WHF along with Julie for coffee.JB and Julie go to WHF but there is no mention of him looking in the gun cupboard at any time,the only thing he looked for was Nevills wallet.
JB subsequently goes through WHF and sells off some items,the silencer however is never mentioned as being missing by himself or in any of Julie's statements,and there is no record of JB asking the police if they had the sights and silencer for the Anschutz in their possesion.If JB looked for the silencer or enquired about it to the relatives or the police there is no record of this,in fact the first he heard about the silencer after the murders was when he was arrested and told that Sheila's blood had been found in it.Whether he was told at that stage that the relatives had actually found the silencer and handed it in I do not know.
So,thats more or less what happened apparently,in the next post we will look at the problems with the official scenario,although most of them have already been pointed out by Erik in the previous posts on this thread.

Quote from: Erik Narramore on January 29, 2022, 01:00:02 AMBut surely Sheila could have used the silencer and then taken it off to shoot herself, leaving the silencer by her body.  That, to me, seems the more likely method for staging her suicide.

Taking a step back, we know that the rifle did not fit in the gun cupboard with the silencer on.  It follows that anybody returning the rifle to the house would unscrew the silencer, but we also know that Jeremy says he went out to shoot rabbits.  One argument is that Jeremy would keep the silencer on in that situation in order to be able to kill as many rabbits as possible.  The other argument is that he would take it off so that the audible crack of the rifle would scare them away.  It's also the case that the silencer could plausibly be off the rifle because, if it had to be unscrewed to fit it in the gun cupboard, somebody could absent-mindedly leave the silencer behind.  So we're left with uncertainty.

I would normally go with the prosecution argument because the 'silent massacre' theory makes sense, and Jeremy could have miscalculated the staging and then panicked and returned the silencer to the gun cupboard, thinking it would then be out of the way but at the same time could be accounted-for, thus averting suspicion.  It would have been simpler and better to leave the silencer by her body, but the simpler solutions aren't always apparent in a situation like that.

The difficulty is that to return the silencer to the gun cupboard, Jeremy needed to cross the back corridor and the floor of the den, and there is no blood there.  There is also no blood on the door of the gun cupboard or inside the gun cupboard (other than in and on the silencer itself).  How can that be?

The police also checked the gun cupboard and did not find the silencer in there.

Jeremy also allowed the relatives free access to the farmhouse, and must have known they would seize this evidence.

It doesn't add up.  The evidence points away from the gun cupboard, not to it.  It's at least a basis for reasonable doubt, in my view.

This seems to be a suitable place to discuss the silencer.

Quote from: Erik Narramore on October 10, 2023, 08:12:53 PM

Quote from: Leslie Aalders on October 09, 2023, 11:05:07 PMAfter reading the above post,I realize its a bit of a ramble.But it can basically be summed up with one question,if guilty,just when did JB realize that the silencer was missing from the gun cupboard?
Think about it,just when did he look in the cupboard after the murders?
Or did he just intend to vacate the WHF at some stage and leave the silencer in situ for the next accupants to find?

Please don't say such things, Leslie.  All your posts are interesting and important and I have learned from you by reading them.  This year has been pretty much a write-off for me in the Jeremy Bamber case, but I want to get back to it and I intend to reply to all your messages on here.

Thanks Erik,will eagerly await your replies,you're the guvnor on the Bamber case.

Quote from: Leslie Aalders on October 09, 2023, 11:05:07 PMAfter reading the above post,I realize its a bit of a ramble.But it can basically be summed up with one question,if guilty,just when did JB realize that the silencer was missing from the gun cupboard?
Think about it,just when did he look in the cupboard after the murders?
Or did he just intend to vacate the WHF at some stage and leave the silencer in situ for the next accupants to find?

Please don't say such things, Leslie.  All your posts are interesting and important and I have learned from you by reading them.  This year has been pretty much a write-off for me in the Jeremy Bamber case, but I want to get back to it and I intend to reply to all your messages on here.