Some Reasons I Think He Did It & Grounds For Reasonable Doubt

[Erik Narramore]

I don't know he did it, but I lean in that direction.

The below 'pro-guilt' points are not exhaustive.  This is a small selection taken from a longer list of about 10 or so reasons.

None of these points quite prove it.  In my view, the prosecution case never quite met the bar of proof required in an English criminal court.  Had I sat on the jury, my decision would more than likely have been Not Guilty. There has always been reasonable doubt, in my opinion.

Nevertheless, I lean towards Jeremy probably being factually guilty.

I will now list some (not all) of the reasons I think Jeremy did it.  Before pro-Bamber people get upset, I would add that I do also have some potential answers to these points, which I may add as the thread develops:

1. Sheila is shot at two significantly different angles.  If she killed herself, it's likely in my view that the triangulation of the two shots would be much smaller, with the angles much closer.  (The fact she is shot twice is not necessarily in itself very suspicious, but is obviously of related interest - if she shot herself twice, surely the shots would show a smaller triangulation with similar angles of fire?).

2. Sheila is shot in the neck/throat region.  If she killed herself, the shots are more likely to have been intra-oral.

3. The broad time bracket of Jeremy's calls.  I'm not concerned here with the exact timing of the calls or who he called first or whatever.  It's not very reasonable to take issue over that.  The point is more that Jeremy is alerting the authorities at roughly between 3.00 a.m. to 3.40 a.m., which ties in with Jeremy as the killer rather than Sheila.  For various reasons I won't labour here, a murderer would kill the family between roughly 1.30 a.m. to 2.30 a.m., and if the plan is to stage a call from Nevill and ring the police, he would need to be done by about 2.45 a.m. so as to return to Goldhanger.  I think Sheila would have acted earlier, probably before everybody was in bed, and even if we allow for some overlap in hypothetical timings, the calls from Nevill to Jeremy and thence from Jeremy to the police should have been earlier than the rough 3.00 a.m. to 3.40 a.m. window if Sheila really did this.

4. The 3 a.m./3.15 a.m./3.30 a.m. call to Julie.  Whatever precise time the call was made, the point is this: I simply refuse to believe that this call was not pre-arranged with Julie.  I cannot prove it, but it is just unbelievable to me.  Sorry Julie, but I don't buy the Little Red Riding act.  I think you are inextricably tied to Jeremy in this.  Furthermore, any doubt about the circumstances of that call leads us back to doubt about Jeremy's claim of a call from Nevill.

Now let me add some points in the opposite direction, which help support a finding of 'reasonable doubt', albeit Jeremy looks guilty:

(A). With the caveat of point 4 above, I take the view that Julie Mugford's evidence should be disregarded.  For me, the issue isn't whether Julie Mugford was lying, it's who she was lying for.  I rather suspect she was lying for Jeremy all along and deliberately gave the police a fantastic story, but the plan went awry.  In any event, her evidence self-negates.  I am also of the view that critical aspects of her evidence were inadmissible anyway and other aspects were prejudicial to the defence.  She should have been excluded from the trial.

(B). I disregard the silencer, for the following inter-related reasons:

(i). The scratch marks could only have been made intentionally, which means that either the silencer was used by Jeremy or Sheila to vandalise the aga surround or the marks were put there by one of the relatives.  We can disregard an accident or pre-incident vandalism because the marks would have been noticed by June and reported later by Jeremy, as that would assist the defence.  That leaves us with either the killer unscrewing the silencer and scratching the aga surround or the relatives doing this.  Why would the killer do this?  And if Jeremy did this in an effort to implicate Sheila, why did he leave paint visible on the silencer?  Furthermore, the location of the paint traces on the silencer does not accord with the scratch marks, which is odd and suggests the paint has been put there.

I am sorry, but the evidence points to the relatives putting the scratches there and adding paint to the silencer - and if so, that was very stupid thing to do - however let me stress I am not formally alleging it.  In any event, none of it can be relied on.

(ii). The blood findings of the silencer were inconclusive and the silencer yielded no DNA findings that we can rely on judicially.

(iii). There is a 5% possibility that the blood found in the silencer was animal blood.  Sorry, but 5% is too much doubt for an English criminal case.  It must be 99%, or failing that, the other evidence must be impeccable to give us a total picture of incrimination and guilt, and it isn't.  It's not good enough.

(iv). The chain of custody for the silencer was wholly unsatisfactory, with several opportunities for accidental contamination.  Moreover, there are indications - I won't put it stronger than that - suggesting that the blood findings are consistent with intentional contamination.

(C). It is virtually certain that the police did re-position Sheila's body.  The evidence for it does not quite rise to legal proof, but it is compelling.  It includes the raid group officers' own statements and notes, the mistake by Dr. Craig (which I believe was because some of Sheila's blood was still running from one of the wounds), the position of her body in the photographs (which resembles somebody moved out of the recovery position), the appearance of her body in the photographs (it suggests recent death), and the pattern of blood stains on her arms.  They have lied and perjured themselves in order to prop up the conviction.  My own suspicion is that the re-positioning of the body was for innocent reasons - probably they (rightly or wrongly) thought she was still conscious or still breathing and tried to administer CPR.  This fact has then been accidentally missed out of the raid group officers' various statements, and they've then found themselves backed in a corner and a fear has developed about giving a open goal to the defence.

(D). Contrary to what is being claimed, there is actually no evidence that Sheila was sedated.  Given that I am dismissing the silencer (and even with the silencer), I am left having to reconcile the assault on Nevill and June and the melee in the kitchen with Sheila remaining in bed asleep.  I do not believe it is likely Sheila would have remained asleep, and so there is reasonable doubt on this basis alone.  Sheila can't be found with clean hands and feet under those circumstances, so there is a critical missing element to the prosecution case.  A more minor point, but similar to this one, concerns Nevill.  Again, it seems that the prosecution are relying on Nevill being asleep, only he is woken up by being shot.  He is then shot a further three times in the bedroom.  I find that simply unbelievable (though this point does not amount to reasonable doubt as we can re-position him on the stairs).

(E). The withholding of evidence, the destruction of evidence, and lies told by Essex Police about it.  In my view, this conduct has in itself prejudiced the defence, at the 1986 trial, at the first appeal and then at the 2002 appeal, and makes the convictions legally unsatisfactory.

(F). I believe Jeremy was ineffectively represented at trial, but I won't go further into that here because it's a very complex and sensitive point.

In conclusion - In effect, I suppose what I am saying here is that the police unfortunately compromised the crime scene and, in the wake of this, unsafe evidence was introduced (see A and B above) in an effort to convict the 'right' person.

I do not believe that the police and relatives have acted to incarcerate and convict an innocent man.  Rather, I believe they have pursued a case against a man they believed to be guilty, and in this belief, they cut corners and acted recklessly - and very possibly also criminally - to get the 'right result'.

This was very common back then.  It will still go on today, but less so.

It's an unsafe conviction and he should be released.

[Erik Narramore]

I do have a Sheila scenario. 

I have to say, I do find it much easier to put Sheila in the crime scene than Jeremy - and that is quite worrying.

This is why we have these fail-safes in the system, which are summarised in the closing speech of Sir Frederick Geoffrey Lawrence, Q.C., defence counsel in R v Adams: http://jeremybamberforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,10311.0.html

Those among the dogmatic guilt camp who sneer at the 'reasonable doubt' approach should reflect on which of the following two dilemmas they would prefer:

(i). a probable mass murderer walks free because the case against him cannot be proved to the necessary standard;
OR
(ii). having to live with the small but reasonable possibility, constantly nagging at the honest part of your conscience, that an innocent man has spent the last 35 years in prison.

I know my answer.  For me, it's Blackstone's ratio every time.  You don't lock people up without proof.  Due process is a necessary fire wall.

If a guilty Jeremy had been acquitted in 1986, Fate or karma (or whatever you call it) would have caught up with him sooner or later.  Probably he would have squandered away the estates or lost it all in litigation with the family.  He may well have been caught out by the law due to his involvement in drugs.  He would always have been looking over his shoulder.  Protections against double jeopardy were also weakened due to the Stephen Lawrence case, and if Essex Police had retained all the evidence and had it DNA-tested during the 1990s, an acquitted Jeremy might well have faced a re-trial.