Police Handling of the Bamber Arsenal

[Erik Narramore]

Something else that doesn't appear to make sense is the way that the police handled the various Bamber firearms other than the Anschutz.

If I was running that investigation, I would seize the lot and ask questions later, and maybe have all the guns tested, if only for control purposes.

But let's say that the police didn't do that because they were initially satisfied that this was murder-suicide and only one gun was used: the rifle found with Sheila.

Even there, questions have to be asked about what the police did next.

Here is what I would expect the police to do in that situation:

1. Inventory and secure the entire arsenal, including weapons, paraphernalia and ammunition.
2. Find out who the executor or administrator is.
3. Assuming it's not already obvious, establish with that person who will be the beneficiary.  If further enquiries are needed (for example, legal advice), then consider removing everything to police storage for safety reasons.
4. Once a likely beneficiary is identified, make enquiries of the beneficiary's intentions for the guns, etc., and enquire as to whether he or she is certified for owning and using firearms and verify in police records.
5. If the beneficiary wants to keep the guns and is certified, problem solved.  Consider extending the existing Firearms Certificate, subject to whatever procedures and safeguards apply.
6. If the beneficiary wants to keep the guns but isn't certified, then give the necessary advice and confiscate everything in the meantime pending an application.
7. If the beneficiary will be selling or giving away the firearms, then consider allowing a dispensation for this purpose on the condition that everything is secured and ammunition is confiscated.

Here's what, to my understanding, the police actually did:

1. All weapons, paraphernalia and ammunition left at the farmhouse, lying around all over the place, and some in a gun cupboard, which I am not sure was even locked.
2. Keys to the farmhouse offered to a man some of the police suspected of the murders, albeit he was the likely beneficiary.
3. Suspect mysteriously turns down this open goal - the offer of a lifetime to secure the crime scene of the murders he has just committed, in which is still stored part of the murder weapon undiscovered by the police.
4. Instead, police give the keys to other members of the family, who aren't executors and aren't even beneficiaries.  Suspect says 'Carry on'.
5. Family members search the house and discover guns all over the place and [an unlocked and unsecured?] gun cupboard with guns, silencer and ammunition in it, all obligingly left there by the police.
6. Just a reminder: the police are the primary regulatory authority for firearms and an important condition of a firearms certificate is to secure guns in one's own home.

Another thing: Are we quite sure that Jeremy Bamber had lawful dispensation to use those firearms in the first place?  I always thought you would need to be under the supervision of the certificated firearms owner.  What was the reason for him not being noted on Nevill's Firearms Certificate, assuming he wasn't?