Pro-Guilt Response to a Steeple Times article dated 29th. May 2021

[Erik Narramore]

Here I provide a possible pro-guilt response to a Steeple Times article on the case dated 29th. May 2021. A link to the article:

https://www.thesteepletimes.com/the-fog/outside-jeremy-bamber/

The reason I am doing this is because I think the article shows poor case knowledge.

Jeremy's supporters won't like what I have to say, but it does appear from the Steeple Times article that the pleas being put to the CCRC are just a re-hash of old appeal points.  If that is the case, I don't rate Jeremy's chances.

The article in my view is weak and having watched Matthew Steeples on a podcast with Shaun Attwood, he seems to have a poor grasp of the case - for a journalist.

He asks a number of questions that are easily answered:
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Fresh hope for Jeremy Bamber 2021 – Some questions Essex Police plainly need to answer...

What happened to a suicide note allegedly left by Sheila Caffell that was initially referenced by police and then disappeared?

Unless there is new evidence to the contrary, no suicide note was initially found or referred to by police.  In a 1991 COLP interview, Stan Jones makes off-hand reference to a suicide note, but it is not clear if this is because he had knowledge of an actual suicide note or he was just referring to the assumption at play during the initial stage of the investigation that Sheila had committed suicide.

Why did Sheila Caffell not have rigor mortis when officers discovered her body?

This is a reference to the fact that the SOC officer, D.I. Cook, was able to move Sheila's hand, but the onset and duration of rigor mortis is variable, so while the apparent absence of rigor mortis is a relevant consideration, it is not in itself determinative of anything.

Why was blood still gaping from Miss Caffell's body when it was found?

Was it?  The police say it was dried blood and that any photographs that show otherwise are manipulations or fakes.  The only way to gainsay this would be for a pathologist to examine the original crime scene photographs.  The real question is:

Are the defence team basing this assertion on a fresh expert re-interpretation of the crime scene photographs or is this a re-submission of the di Stefano-era arguments?

Why are there different accounts about how many bodies were discovered on the ground floor of the farmhouse?

This, I still think, is a stronger point for the defence than is often acknowledged, as it is difficult to understand how such a mistake could have occurred; but the problem is that the police can easily put it down to human error.

It's the early hours of the morning.  You're tired.  You are about to raid a strange building with an armed nut inside.  You're nervous, on edge.  You are reporting things back to a distant HQ by radio.  There will be mistakes, mix-ups, misunderstandings.

You look through the window of the building.  You only look very briefly and quickly because you have to be careful.  You are purposefully looking for an armed individual and possible signs of movement, maybe hostages and so on.  If you are purposefully looking for something, you will often 'see' it, even if it's not actually there.  It's a trick of the brain in which you are looking for a certain thing so something you see is interpreted as that thing even though it isn't.

How could Jeremy Bamber be the killer if police officers repeatedly detected movement inside White House Farmhouse whilst he was stood with them outside?

They didn't detect movement.  The report of somebody talking with the police from inside the farmhouse is just the radio operator's misinterpretation of police attempts to engage with anybody who might hear them.

In truth, Jeremy has no alibi.

Why was the silencer supposedly used in the shootings not discovered immediately when police entered the residence?

This is a poorly-phrased question, even if the point it is getting at is very apt.

The priority for the police on entry to the residence was to check for signs of life, safe the weapon and secure the scene.  What the questioner means to ask is why the silencer was not recovered by investigators on a subsequent search of the residence.  It is, perhaps, also reasonable to ask why none of the firearms officers who were immediately on the scene did not alert CID officers to the possibility that a silencer might be paired with the weapon, but it was not necessarily their responsibility to conduct a search for it there and then.

During the investigation, all firearms and paraphernalia should have been seized and logged, and anything associated with the presumed murder-suicide weapon should have been submitted for forensic testing immediately.  Why that did not happen remains an open question given that several police officers looked in the gun cupboard and the crime scene photographer captured the outside of the cupboard on his film roll.

Why did scratch marks supposedly made in the kitchen of the house by that silencer not appear in the first photographs taken at the crime scene? How were they actually made in order that they appeared in later imagery?

Again, Steeples is asking the wrong questions.  The scratch marks were on the underside of the aga mantel, so if they did not appear in the first photographs, then they did not appear.  There isn't necessarily a 'why' about it because, in fairness to the police, the presence of the marks would not have been obvious to anyone and five of the six people who would possibly know about them were dead.

The question of how they were made is apt, but for the reasons just given, it is not a matter of whether or not they appeared in later imagery, it is whether the silencer could have made them at all while attached to the weapon and pivoted around.

How could Jeremy Bamber be the killer if he made a phone call from his Goldhanger home 3.5 miles away moments after his father had called police from White House Farmhouse to say that his daughter had "gone berserk" with a gun?

This is a rhetorical question.  Clearly if Jeremy and his father made those phone calls, then Jeremy is not the killer, but the question depends on assuming that there is a record of such a call from Nevill, when the police dispute this and say that the log produced is of two police operators recording only one call from Jeremy.