Jeremy Not Dialling 999 Is An Indicator of His Guilt

[Erik Narramore]

If Jeremy is guilty and wanted to mess around staging phone calls, it seems much more likely he would have dialled 999, maybe even rang 999 from the farmhouse and left the line open.

[Erik Narramore]

The 3.10 a.m. time arose after the incident when the police took Jeremy's first statement.  That may have been a simple blunder on Jeremy's part.  As you rightly imply, when asked for the time that Nevill rang, Jeremy could have easily just said: "How can I know?  It was the early hours of the morning and the phone woke me up.  It must have been shortly before I rang the police."  If he'd left it at that, there would be no 'time gap' to speculate about.

You could read the needless specification of a time for Nevill's call as an indication of Jeremy's guilt.  Or you could read it as an innocent Jeremy trying to fill in the gaps.  Personally, I can't place any stall in it.  A perfectly innocent person might tell the police things that aren't true in a genuine effort to be helpful.

The conversation could have gone like this:

"What time was that call from your father, then?"

"Oh...errr...."

"I need it for me statement, see...."

"Well, it can't have been much before I rang you lot."

"Shall we say 3.10, 3.15, something like that?"

"Well, yes, I suppose it must have been around 3.10."

Or, the conversation could have gone like this:

"What time was that call from your father, then?"

"3.10."

"How do you remember that, then?"

"I looked at the clock."

If the conversation went something like the first example, I would say that's an indicator of innocence.  If the conversation went something like the second example, I would be suspicious.

Compare and contrast this also with the confusion about the time of Jeremy's call to Julie.

On a related note, personally, I don't find the time gap suspicious on its own terms.  If you look at what supposedly occurred within Jeremy's narrative, it would not necessarily have been clear to Jeremy that there was an emergency at the White House, only that his father needed him there because Sheila was waving the gun around.  There is a distinction to be made and Jeremy could well argue that he was confused and did not know what to do.

We must also bear in mind that Jeremy always has the excuse that, in his own narrative, he has been woken in the early hours of the morning.  It's not as if he can provide precise timings and to expect as much is ambitious, to say the least.  Relativity applies.  Time passes quickly in the early hours.  3.15 a.m. can quickly become 3.20 a.m.

[Erik Narramore]

What the prosecution are (variously) saying/implying/insinuating is:

(i). Jeremy committed the massacre, then returned home (or somebody committed the massacre on his behalf).  He then dallied on purpose while he collected his thoughts.

(ii). Jeremy rang local police stations instead of 999 for two reasons.  First, Jeremy wants to engineer an incipient stand-off mentality in the police and he assumes that an emergency response would involve breaking into the White House pretty much immediately, which (in Jeremy's mind) might reveal that the shootings had taken place about an hour before rather than, let's say, five minutes before; second, Jeremy wanted the police to see him arrive at the scene.

(iii). Jeremy deliberately drove slowly along Tollesbury Road to catch the eye of the arriving police.

(iv). Jeremy deliberately arrived at the White House complex after the police, so they can see him arrive.

(v). Jeremy then relates his story to the response officers and encourages them to enter the White House.

(vi). Jeremy keeps up his story when the officers refuse to enter and instead call in armed officers.

(vii). All of this furnishes Jeremy with a quasi-alibi.  It's not a pure alibi.  It cannot be, because there is always the possibility that he invented the call from Nevill and/or that Sheila is still alive and walking around because Jeremy failed to kill her and/or even that Sheila was his accomplice, or some variation thereof.  But it does make it harder to implicate Jeremy because he is seen arriving at the White House and is with the police.

Maybe you can see the problem for the prosecution here.  When you look at the bare bones of it like this, a Jeremy scenario requires highly convoluted reasoning and second-guessing, with lots of strange and odd behaviour from Jeremy that seems designed to draw attention to himself.  If Jeremy is guilty, why didn't he just raise the alarm the following morning or let one of the farm workers notice something amiss?  Or if he really had to invent that call from Nevill because of what happened in the kitchen, why didn't he ring 999?  Or even stage a 999 call from the White House itself and leave the line open without speaking?  That way, the police would arrive quickly, and presumably Jeremy would be long gone.  I am sure I could think of other simple and obvious alternatives, including not killing anybody and just enjoying his life as a free man.  Every Jeremy scenario requires us to negotiate huge complexity.  It's simpler just to say that all the doors and windows were found secure, thus the person found dead with the rifle killed the other four before shooting herself.