Sheila did not have the requisite skill or experience with guns

[Erik Narramore]

The problem is that everybody approaches this stuff in a biased way and facts are being muddied by different authors and witnesses giving their own slanted take on things.

It's said that Sheila did not know one end of a rifle from another, which is a way of saying that she would not have known how to use the supposed murder weapon competently.  However, I have read things that indicate otherwise:

(i). Ann stated to the police that Jeremy said that Sheila had been out shooting rabbits with Nevill and Anthony.

(ii). According to Robert Boutflour's statement (or was it his diary?), Jeremy had once shown Sheila how to handle the rifle.  June and Pamela had witnessed the incident and June asked Robert why Jeremy might do this.

(iii). Sheila tried a shotgun at least once on a shooting trip in Scotland.  She asked to 'have a go' and fired it in the air.

In regard to (i), I don't know off-hand if Jeremy backs this up.  I would assume he does.  What does Mr Pargeter say?

In regard to (ii), oddly Jeremy flatly denies this, which I don't understand.  What is Jeremy suggesting happened instead?  Or is he saying Robert Boutflour made the whole thing up out of thin air?

In regard to (iii), I picked this anecdote up somewhere in one of the books and I don't know if it is reliable.

It does seem that this is one of those instances where the truth is 'somewhere in the middle'.  Sheila had some familiarity with firearms, she witnessed their use and she probably handled them herself on occasions, but not very much, and certainly not regularly.  None of this is surprising.  She grew up on a farm in a gun-owning family, but she was not interested in guns.

I repeat that nobody is suggesting Sheila was comfortable or expert with guns.  She needn't have been to carry out the massacre.  The only question to consider is whether she had the minimal competence to mechanically operate the rifle, including unsetting the safety, charging and discharging the magazine and breeching the rifle.  I do not know if she did and nobody else here knows, but it is not difficult to do, and I believe that on the evidence available to us, it is reasonable to take the view that she would have done.  In any event, it does appear that members of the family may have misled the authorities in the matter in that they gave the impression to the police and later the trial, maybe also stated outright, that Sheila had never used guns.

[Erik Narramore]

Was Ann Eaton lying when she said that Jeremy had stated that Sheila went shooting rabbits with Nevill and Anthony?  If she was lying, why did she lie to the police about this?  What could she possibly gain, given that she was only relaying what Jeremy had told the police?

Was Robert Boutflour lying when he said that June had asked him why Jeremy had shown Sheila how to use the rifle in front of June and Pamela?  Why would Robert Boutflour lie about this?  It doesn't prove anything anyway, but it does at least suggest that Sheila was familiar with the rifle, which goes against Mr Boutflour's cause.  So why lie?

[Erik Narramore]

Sheila didn't need to have any interest in or confidence with guns in order to carry out the massacre.

Jeremy would not know what had happened when Sheila went out shooting with her father.  I find it hard to believe Nevill didn't show her how to use a shotgun, and I think it is canon that she fired a shotgun at least once in Scotland.

Jeremy does say that Sheila had never fired the rifle to his knowledge, but according to you he's staged her suicide with the rifle.  If he's guilty, wouldn't he want to say that Sheila had fired the rifle many times and knew exactly what she was doing with it?  Or is Jeremy stupid?

Robert Boutflour's claim does help Jeremy, so why is Jeremy refuting it?

There are two possibilities:

(i). Robert Boutflour is lying, but why would be make it up when it helps Jeremy?

(ii). Jeremy is lying, but why would Jeremy lie hen the claim helps him?

Let's weigh it up.

There is no reason for Robert Boutflour to lie in those circumstances, but it is possible he did on the basis that anything to do with guns and Jeremy would be seen as damaging.

There is, however, a reason for Jeremy to lie, which is that he is innocent.  An innocent man in those circumstances would regard Robert Boutflour as his persecutor and may decide to lie.

Innocent people do lie.

What I will say is: Either way, the anecdote assists Jeremy, even if his denial is dishonest.

[Erik Narramore]

Colin divorced her and only met her when she was 19.  How would he know what she did before he met her or what she was doing when she stopped living with him?  Did Colin accompany her on the shooting trips with Nevill?  No.  So how does he know?  He doesn't know.

Where does Jeremy say she knew how to use all the guns?  That's quite a bold claim.  I expect next it will be claimed that Jeremy said Sheila was an Olympic bowman.

The Boutflour anecdote, having just checked it, says that June reported that Sheila wasn't interested.  I still think it helps him because it shows that Sheila was close up to guns, and it can't have been the only occasion when Jeremy tried to press the matter on her.

But the point is that Jeremy is denying it happened and I wonder why he would do that?  Surely if Jeremy is guilty, he would say that the incident happened but differently to how Robert Boutflour reports it, or that some similar incident occurred involving him and Sheila or Sheila with Nevill?  He would not deny that it had happened.  Otherwise, on what basis can he claim that Sheila would know how to shoot herself with the rifle?

[Erik Narramore]

I am a little bit puzzled by Jeremy's representations to the police on this issue. 

Why doesn't Jeremy say something like this?  Obviously he needs to keep it plausible, so he would still play down her experience with guns and maybe even observe that she wasn't very confident and it was all a bit of a lark, while at the same time being careful to convey the key point that she was competent.

Instead, Evil Jeremy, in so many words, virtually tells us that Sheila could not have used the rifle.

I must be overlooking something, because it appears the possibilities are that Jeremy is guilty and stupid or Jeremy is innocent.

[Erik Narramore]

A semiautomatic would be an apt selection for the murders.

Again, let's pretend we're Jeremy's defence team.  What we can say is that Jeremy denies that he ever tried to, or did, show Sheila how to load the rifle, but that's because Sheila knew anyway.  Maybe Nevill showed her?

[Erik Narramore]

"All the guns in the house" is just an expression, isn't it.  It is not necessarily meant to be taken literally.  Maybe she had used all the guns in the house and gone target shooting?  We just don't know.  We also don't know if Bews captured accurately what Jeremy told him.

[Erik Narramore]

Jeremy had no reason to stall the police outside the house.  They're all dead.

Also, I'm not sure Jeremy ever denied that Sheila had used firearms.  He merely said that, to his knowledge, Sheila has not used the rifle.  On reviewing the anecdote from Robert Boutflour, it turns out that could be truth (though it doesn't follow that Sheila had never used the rifle).

So we can reconcile it all.  Jeremy's statement to Bews does not seem to be inconsistent with the rest of his statements, as long as you allow that Jeremy made a mistake in saying 'all the guns'.

[Erik Narramore]

I'm not suggesting Bews has made it all up.  I'm just making the basic observation that Bews is relating a conversation that took place in the heat of an incident and it's possible he may have got the wording of what Jeremy said slightly wrong.  It's also possible (I think more likely) that Jeremy did say exactly what Bews reports, but Jeremy didn't mean for it to be taken literally.

[Erik Narramore]

There is a difference between 'target shooting' and 'shooting at targets', though to be fair, that part of what Bews reports comes immediately after Jeremy said she has used all the guns.  (Though if Jeremy is innocent, then I think the 'all' part was not meant to be taken literally).

[Erik Narramore]

It's the early hours of the morning.  To be fair, can we rely on what anybody says about detailed matters at that time for the purposes of a murder conviction?  Don't misunderstand: I'm not making excuses for him, I'm just trying to be fair.

And to be fair to Jeremy, he is erring on the side of caution in a situation in which he thinks Sheila, a schizophrenic, has a gun and his father ended the call abruptly having given minimal information.  He's alerted the police.  What else do you want him to do?

[Erik Narramore]

I think simplistic assumptions are being about the experience of schizophrenia.  Schizophrenics under periodic medication are perfectly capable of ordinary mechanical tasks, as we know Sheila was.  Indeed, that is the whole point of the medication.  When the guilt camp say she was "pumped full of antipsychotics", they are using exaggerated glibness to pull the wool over our eyes, but it won't work.  She could have operated the rifle.  The issue for me here is whether she ever had the opportunity to see it being operated, and ideally actually use it herself, but observation would be enough.

[Erik Narramore]

I wouldn't want to face anybody armed with a rifle.  Irrespective of the competence of the operator or whether the rifle itself is charged, it is still a weapon - but I would say a rifle is of middling risk.

The worst situation to face is somebody armed with a knife or similar.  You simply cannot defend yourself against a knife attack.  All the books and films that suggest otherwise are wrong, let me assure you.  One reason for this is that a knife does not require much in the way of purchase or physicality to wield effectively.  The best advice when faced with a knife or similar weapon is to flee or retreat to a place of safety (unless of course it is a situation in which you have a moral obligation to shield others, such as women and children present).

The next worst thing is a pistol or other small arm - with the caveat that small arms are normally no use as bludgeons, so their efficacy depends on the competence of the operator and the specific context in which used.

You can defend yourself against somebody armed with a rifle quite easily due to its cumbersomeness, and unless the operator is skilled, you can flee without much risk of being shot from a distance.  However, the White House Farm shootings are a special case in which the general view does not necessarily apply.  The factors to consider are that:

(i). Sheila, as a seriously ill young woman, could have been motivated to run amok;
(ii). the rifle itself was fairly intuitive to use and Sheila had observed its use, and even been shown by Jeremy;
(iii). Sheila would have attacked her targets at close range, and all (except, I think, Nevill) while they were subdued, negating the need for marksmanship ability;
(iv). Nevill may have been distracted in an effort to get hold of Jeremy, allowing Sheila an opportunity to begin an assault upstairs;
(v). once Nevill was weakened by bullet injuries, Sheila could have used the rifle stock as a bludgeon on him.

On the subject of the rifle, an expert (or a pro-guilt person drawing on experts) will say:

1. Sheila lacked the technical knowledge and competence to operate the rifle in even the most basic fashion; and,

2. even if we disregard 1, Sheila lacked the necessary training, experience and motivation to kill five of her own family, including her own natural children, within the tight confines of the White House in the early hours of the morning.  Even an average combat soldier would struggle with this.

On one level, these are true objections, but they also serve to demonstrate one of the problems with experts.  They often become narrow-minded or blinded due to their subject-matter expertise and cannot understand how an untutored person could grasp something that they consider to be forbiddingly skilled or technical.  They forget the age-old problem of the Unknown Quantity and the puzzling but very real fact that ordinary people can do extraordinary things that defy ready explanations.

Back to Nevill.  Obviously anybody can understand why Nevill might flee when caught by Jeremy.  It's an instinctive thing to do and may also have been intended to draw Jeremy's fire away from the family.  We must accept that this is possible.  However, one problem is that Jeremy was in his path, so in order to do so, he had to get past Jeremy - assuming Nevill was in the main bedroom.  Maybe the cumbersomeness of the rifle was a factor in this?  And also a factor in how Nevill was able to flee so far ahead of Jeremy, despite being shot?