The Police Timeline

[Erik Narramore]

CA7 came from Witham. 

CA5 came from Chelmsford and those officers were presumably in the same room as West or close by, so it is assumed that he did send CA5.

From refreshing my memory about this, it appears that there is some debate about whether it was West or Bonnett who sent CA7.  Bonnett in his statement says he sent CA7.

As for the driving times, I agree that Witham to Pages Lane at normal speed in 13 minutes would be next-to-impossible, but a police car going fast could do it.  I do accept though that it's a tall order, but my conclusion from that is, again, probable human error.  They've just recorded the times incorrectly, due to lack of carefulness in synchronising watches and clocks and so forth.

[Erik Narramore]

I think guilters may wish to ponder this issue further.  If Jeremy planned this, then did he invent the call from Nevill out of thin air or did he stage it?

If he invented the call, that means he is taking a huge risk in assuming that the police won't be able to log calls.  How will he know this one way or the other?  It is said that he asked the police to check with the phone company that certain calls were made.  Was that a bluff?

If, on the other hand, he did stage the call from Nevill, this seems to accord much more with some of the known facts, such as his slowness in notifying the authorities - including messing around looking through the phone book and ringing two different police stations - and later asking that the police check with the phone company.

If we are saying that the call was staged, this means that, from the point he ended this staged call, Jeremy had a maximum 30 minute window to make it back to Bourtree Cottage and notify the police.

During this 30 minutes, he had to:

(i). Wait for the answering machine at the outside end to beep, so that the call lasted a decent period.
(ii). Terminate the call.
(iii). Clean the phone.
(iv). Change into fresh clothes.
(v). Leave the farmhouse through the window (or howsoever he made his exit).
(vi). Return to Goldhanger, on foot.  This is roughly 2.5 miles as the crow flies, but he will need to negotiate and circumvent obstacles along the way, such as fences and ditches and what not.
(vii). At the outskirts of Goldhanger, hide his incriminating clothes and change footwear, for retrieval later on the night of the 7th./8th.  This was necessary because he doesn't want to be seen near his house with a rucksack.
(viii). Sneak back into Bourtree Cottage, or if seen, make an excuse such as having received an emergency call or heard an intruder, or whatever.
(ix). Shower and change again into fresh clothes.
(x). Make the brief phone call to Julie.
(xi). Call Witham Police Station and let this ring out.
(xii). Dial the number for Chelmsford Police Station for P.C. West to answer.

Even if it can manage all this in 30 minutes, it still looks suspicious, but not as suspicious as 35 minutes or 40 minutes.

Could Jeremy have carried out (i) to (xii) above in 30 minutes?

Now let us consider some timings.

If I understand correctly, Jeremy claims the call was from his father at roughly 3.10 a.m.  Obviously we must be reasonable and allow that Jeremy's timing may be considerably out.  It could have been 3.00 a.m., but equally it could also have been later than 3.10 a.m. - several minutes later even.  Essex Police also inadvertently assisted Jeremy by getting their timings wrong, but it does seem likely that the explanation for the time discrepancy at Chelmsford HQ is simple: West accidentally recorded the start time of the call as its end time, 3.36 a.m., thus Bonnett was correct that his phone or radio call with West commenced at 3.26 a.m.  This allows for Jeremy to call West at, say, 3.24 a.m.  That makes sense.

Having established this, the timings look very tight for Jeremy to be guilty and the whole thing doesn't look very plausible.  To make the pro-guilt position seem more plausible, we'd have to suppose that Jeremy is wildly out on his own time for Nevill's call.  This is possible, of course, because Jeremy has a vested interest in pushing forward the time of Nevill's call, and even if Jeremy assumes that calls are somehow logged, he may be counting on 'winging it' by pretending there is some sort of mix-up or he was confused or tired.  But the problem with this is that we can only stretch the timings so far.  It looks suspicious enough as it is.  At some point it will simply be rejected as not credible.

I selected 30 minutes for Jeremy's time window arbitrarily because, psychologically, that seems to be the maximum outside parameter for Jeremy to 'dilly-dally', but if Jeremy is telling the police he got the call at 3.10 a.m., would it not seem strange and suspicious if it turned out from the examination of call logs at the exchange that he had in fact received the call at, say, 2.54 a.m.?  And even if we assume that he could brazen it out and get away with it, could he really have made the call from White House Farm at 2.54 a.m., perhaps waiting a minute or so, then terminate the call, and carry out all the other steps (i) to (xii) above and manage to dial the number for Chelmsford Police Station by, say, 3.24 a.m.?  Does this not stretch credulity?

Where does this leave guilters?

The options:

1. The first option is to say he returned to Goldhanger by some quicker method, such as a push bike.  I view this as extremely unlikely on basic common sense grounds and would dismiss it.  It's too complicated and risky.  Lots of things can go wrong with the bike, it means he has to use footpaths and bridleways, he is more likely to be seen or heard by somebody, and he will need to use lights; he is also more likely to run into somebody on one of the footpaths if he is on a bike, he won't want to carry the bike if something goes wrong, and if he decides to leave the bike or abandon it somewhere then that entails the risk of it being found and reported to the police.  When you put it all together, it looks like a total non-starter.  But the bike idea, while immensely risky, does have one advantage: it allows him to return quickly, which means that the phone calls side of the plan knits together much better because he can more plausibly stage a call from Nevill and then call the police from Goldhanger within the 30 minute window.

2. The second option is to abandon the idea of a staged call and rely on the supposition that Jeremy just invented the call out of thin air.  This would grant considerable latitude in the timings and avoids the problem of Jeremy having a narrow time window to return to Bourtree Cottage and make his calls, and do everything else he has to do in the process.  However, this raises a new problem: How does Jeremy know that the police can't retrieve call information from British Telecom? How does he explain himself if they do or if they come back and claim that there is no record of any such call from White House Farm to Goldhanger?  Can he wing it?  What does he say?  Or do you think he researched the point?  If he did research it, how does he go about that without leaving a paper trail and/or witnesses?  Or do you think he relied simple-mindedly on the bills not being itemised, assuming that meant no calls would be recorded or pinpointed?  That would make him perhaps a bit dense, but as it turned out, it was the right calculation, at least as far as this matter is concerned.

3.  The third option is to accept there is reasonable doubt on the basis that there are difficulties with his moving between the farmhouse and Goldhanger and making the calls, meaning that there is a reasonable possibility that in fact the call from Nevill really happened and was not staged or made-up.

These options are not mutually-exclusive, especially 2 and 3.  You could accept them in some combination, depending on how convinced you are that Jeremy could and would pull this off without staging a call from Nevill.

I think the explanation for the inconsistent log times is simple human error: Bonnett was correct in recording the start of the calls at 3.26 a.m., whereas West mistakenly recorded the end time as the start time.

I think it is just about possible that Bonnett received a call from Nevill and has cleanly forgotten it.  It seems bizarre, but you would be surprised, or perhaps not, at the mistakes people can make.  That mistake seems improbable, but there is a possible explanation that brings an element of plausibility into it.

If Nevill was shot in the mouth at this point, he would not have been able to speak into the phone, yet Nevill would not necessarily be aware that he had been shot in the mouth and might have attempted instinctively to make a call, which he could not then complete due to his injuries.  We can imagine that call would be received at the other end, let's say by Bonnett, who is then confused.  However, if the logs are of value in recording a call from Nevill, we have to believe that Nevill has been able to speak down the phone despite being shot in the mouth or Nevill could not speak but Bonnett somehow identifies the source of the call, and in either case, we also have to believe that Bonnett then forgets the call or has wilfully covered it up.

The official explanation that the log produced covers communications between West and Bonnett does seem much more plausible due to the incident chronology.  It is claimed by the innocent camp that the full log was not disclosed at trial, but there seems to be some dispute about this.  It could be that it was disclosed, but just wasn't adduced as evidence at trial - an issue that is down to the defence, not the Crown.  What is the position?

My view at the moment is that I am keeping an open mind about the whole thing.  I believe the phone logs need to be considered in conjunction with everything else, rather than in isolation.  It's especially related to Jeremy's supposed movements that night between the two locations and his own call from Nevill and (abortive) call back to the farmhouse.

The point is that, in my view (I'm not a lawyer, so it's only an opinion), non-disclosure can be prejudicial to the defendant in and of itself.  This is because non-disclosure prevents the defence testing the evidence and also prevents the defence raising questions that arise from the evidence, such as whether the Crown's extrapolations are consistent with the Crown's own case.  This is because all bits of evidence have to fit the narrative or be consistent with the 'story' or case theory.

In this instance, the Crown extract from the logs that Nevill never made a 999 call.  Yet, if I understand things correctly (you seem to be saying differently, it doesn't matter either way really for the moment) the Crown didn't disclose the full log at trial.  This means the defence were prevented from considering whether this bit of the Crown's theory made sense in view of the adduced facts.

And in that same vein, we still have the problem that Nevill doesn't call 999.

I believe the allegation of the Campaign Team is, or was, that Bonnett may have taken two calls and merged his record of them together on a single call log, the idea being that a telephone log is just a running record and if you have a single incident in which, coincidentally, the same call operator is involved, then it's an easy to make the mistake of converging the details and perhaps forgetting an earlier call.  Did Bonnett actually receive direct 999 calls?  I've never seen that question resolved.  The other possibility, which I mooted on the other thread, is that Nevill made an abortive call, and due to his injuries, he couldn't speak down the line so it was terminated.

The irony of all this is that the lack of a 999 call could have undermined the prosecution more than the defence.

Regarding the timings, actually in the end West never admitted that he had got it wrong.  It remained in dispute and the judge - supposedly - decided to err on the side of Jeremy Bamber on that point.  However the times in West's two statements are in conflict.  One has it at 3.26 a.m, the other at 3.36 a.m, and in his evidence at trial it's left open.  It's altogether very unsatisfactory.  I simply don't understand how somebody can say that West didn't change his evidence or suggest that it is not of significance.

[Erik Narramore]

A mix up over the times doesn't seem that strange to me.  Even today, with the worldwide web and the technology available for clock synchronisation, timekeeping errors are still quite likely due to different individuals using different devices and watches.

How did West know the time?  Did he have his own watch?  Was it digital or analogue?  The cross-examination refers to a clock on the wall of the 'Control Room' at the police station (West in his statements refers to it as 'the Control desk').  Was this clock digital or analogue?

I know the clock available to Bonnett in the Information Room was digital and his VDU also displayed the time digitally, but that does not necessarily imply it was more accurate as there was no technology to synchronise clocks back then, so the digital clock was presumably set and re-set manually, which leaves it open to error.

I still believe the most likely explanation is that the time in West's first statement was correct and in his call log he has accidentally recorded the end time as the start time.

[Erik Narramore]

The police don't know if it's a hoax or not.  Unless it's obvious from the call, or the incident can be resolved by phone, they have to despatch. 

They despatched a response car rather than an armed unit.

[Erik Narramore]

West's call order was:

Receive call from Bamber
Then call Bonnett
Then Whitham, at the suggestion of Bonnett
Then back to Bamber, who was holding
Then call Tadgrass
Then check line
Then call GPO and ask them to check line
Then commence incident log

If the call commenced at 3.36 a.m, then this is consistent with his second statement.  If the call commenced at 3.26 a.m., then this means his logged time was wrong but his original statement was right.  In either case, he has made a mistake, but it doesn't follow that he or anybody else is lying.

[Erik Narramore]

There does seem to be a mix-up in that West has Saxby dispatching CA5 but Saxby in his own statement dispatches himself, Myall and Bews in CA7 and mentions nothing of CA5.  Meanwhile, Bonnett in his statement claims to dispatch CA7.

Bonnett dispatched CA7 centrally, while Saxby dispatched a local response car, CA5, from Chelmsford, following a radio call from West.  I haven't seen any evidence to counter this.

CA7 came from Witham.  According to Bonnett's statement, CA7 was recorded as 'sent' (which I assume means notified) at 3.35 a.m. 

CA5 came from Chelmsford and those officers were presumably in the same room as West or close by, so it is assumed that he did send CA5.

From refreshing my memory about this, it appears that there is some debate about whether it was West or Bonnett who sent CA7.  Bonnett in his statement says he sent CA7.

As for the driving times, I agree that Witham to Pages Lane at normal speed in 13 minutes would be next-to-impossible, but a police car going fast could do it.  I do accept though that it's a tall order, but my conclusion from that is, again, probable human error.  They've just recorded the times incorrectly, due to lack of carefulness in synchronising watches and clocks and so forth.