Sheila's 3.10 a.m. Scenario

[Erik Narramore]

We don't know that the relevant time was 3.10 a.m., but if we work on the assumption it was, then in my Sheila scenario, Nevill is calling Jeremy at 3.10 a.m. while Sheila is stood in front of him.  At this point, nobody is injured.  Sheila then runs upstairs, Nevill terminates the call, and the shootings begin.

Nevill is the first victim, because he then runs back to the kitchen after being shot by Sheila on the main stairs.  Since Sheila already has a loaded rifle, he is negated within a few minutes.  (Although he was the first victim, I believe Nevill was the last to die, and may have been alive right up until minutes before the raid group entered, due to the volume of blood in the kitchen).

Now let's say it is 3.20 a.m.  Sheila reloads.  This may take her a few minutes.  She can hear June on the main landing, shouting down, wondering what is going on.  Let's say Sheila returns upstairs at 3.30 a.m.  She shoots June but does not kill her.   

Let's be conservative with our timings and say it is now 3.50 a.m.  It has taken Sheila a long time to load the rifle again.  June is severely injured and crawling around the bedroom.  At this point, Jeremy and the police have arrived, but they are stood at least 50 yards away on Pages Lane.  The vantages from the front and rear kitchen windows are shielded by trees.  Sheila would have no awareness of them at all.

Over the next 20 to 30 minutes, Sheila kills June with one further shot, then kills the twins and herself.  During the final fusillade, two police officers and Jeremy are walking around the farmhouse from a distance of 30 yards, which is roughly 27 metres - a very great distance.  Sheila would not know they were there (even if she did appear in the front window) and they would know nothing of Sheila unless she spoke to the police - which I assume she didn't.

Incidentally, Sheila's supposed appearance in the front window interestingly coincides with her likely movements at that point.  It would have been around 4.20 a.m.

[Erik Narramore]

The arrival of Essex Police was not the cut-off point for Sheila.  The police didn't all arrive at once.  And it wasn't an hour, because Sheila already had a head start, which in fact was more like 50 minutes than 38 minutes.

The problem is that, like Wilkes, people are applying the facts in a naive way.  You are effectively saying to us that because the police arrived at Pages Lane at some arbitrary time (which is probably not the correct time anyway), that is the cut-off point for Sheila.  You don't seem to realise that the police were on Pages Lane, not at the farmhouse itself, and even when they started scouting around the outside of the farmhouse, that was from some 30 yards away.  That's why Wilkes' argument doesn't work, and if this is what the trial judge said in his summing-up, then we have another reason why the summing-up was flawed.

Where I do agree with you is that if Jeremy is innocent, it must be that no-one was seriously injured at the point Nevill called Jeremy.  This means that the point Jeremy says he received the call is the earliest Sheila could have embarked on the massacre. But my timeline says she could have completed the shootings and suicide in 75 minutes, which can be fitted to the known facts, as I have demonstrated in detail on the other thread.  Yet she had considerable leeway.  If she committed suicide later, it's even less than that, as she could have completed the shootings of everybody else by, say, 4 a.m., then waited quite a long time with the police outside. And that, I admit, is just guesswork on my part - as it is on yours!

[Erik Narramore]

It may well have taken Sheila longer than Jeremy, or it may have taken less time.  Who knows?  Somebody running amok and pumped up with adrenalin could commit such a massacre very quickly.  Sheila was a woman.  That doesn't mean she was a weakling.  Whether she struggled with lifting Nevill's head into the coal bucket depends on where Nevill's head was beforehand.  It's also possible that Nevill ended up in that position as a result of the raid group entry into the kitchen.

My 75 minutes was for Jeremy, because his actions are assumed to be more planned; but I have shown how it could also fit for Sheila.  Why not?  Alternatively, Sheila could have killed four people within 60 to 75 minutes, then waited with the police outside for any length of time, perhaps completing some of the tasks you mention, before finally killing herself.  Essex Police did not establish a Forward Control Point until after 5 a.m., did not approach the farmhouse itself until 7.10 a.m., and did not reach the back kitchen door until 7.30 a.m.  At no point would they have heard any goings-on upstairs until after entry at 7.45 a.m.