Who delayed? The police or Jeremy?

[Erik Narramore]

Jeremy did do as his father requested.  He did go.  With the police.

Jeremy is saying he wasn't sure what to do because his father had mentioned a gun, that Sheila had gone crazy, and he knew his sister was mentally-ill.  He didn't like his sister, perhaps didn't like any of them.  He may have been circumspect about arriving alone at the farmhouse in the dark to confront such a situation without support.

That was after he had tried to call his father back, which suggests that he had not received full information from his father.  Maybe he wasn't sure if his father had called the police and was also ringing him?  For all Jeremy knew, the police might have been there already.

How does the prosecution know that Jeremy did not call the police immediately?  They are relying on assumptions about times.  He does say in his statement that he "immediately" phoned the police, but he has to find the number for the police first.  Maybe he should have immediately dialled 999, but he will say that he was in a state of uncertainty as to what to do.  Maybe he forgot all that when he gave his statement to the police and just said "immediately" because no-one had reminded him about what actually transpired?  Maybe, as suggested above, he was thinking for a minute or two about what to do, given the uncertainty of his father's call.

Does Jeremy's story depend on him speaking to the police within 60 seconds of his father's call, or within three minutes, or five minutes? I suppose the reason people who think Jeremy is guilty mention this is because if he delayed, that might be a hint that it was all contrived, but if it was all contrived, wouldn't he have just rung 999?  Why does it make a difference to Jeremy's plan?  Why bring suspicion down on himself by ringing the local police instead of 999, assuming the guilt camp are right and it would have seemed obvious to anybody at the time?

Bear in mind anyway that we don't know for sure what was said in the alleged call from Nevill.  It was the early hours of the morning and Jeremy would have been half-asleep.  Probably what he reported is a gist of it.

[Erik Narramore]

I'm trying to look at it all in the round.

The prosecution ask why Jeremy disobeyed his father, but he didn't.  He went to the house, with the police.

The prosecution ask why Jeremy didn't call immediately, but:

(i). we don't know that he didn't (allowing that the word 'immediately' can't be taken too literally because he was fumbling about with a phone book);

(ii). in arguing that he didn't, you rely on received information about the time of the call from Nevill that, as far as I can tell, is essentially guesswork and open to variation.  You admit this yourself in your posts (which I have read carefully!);

(iii). Jeremy would argue that even if he didn't call the police instantly, he did call the police quickly, and if he was going to create a contrived situation with a fake or fictitious phone call from his father, he would have dialled 999 and made sure his 'alibi' (I would call it a quasi-alibi) was 'on the record' with him making a traceable call from Bourtree Cottage to the emergency services.

Another way of looking at it is that Jeremy only said he called 'immediately' in statements soon after, and at that point he may just have forgotten what transpired as it was the early hours of the morning and nobody had really prompted him to recall details.  In other words, you may be right to say he didn't call 'immediately', but that, and Jeremy's failure to recall that, may be for innocent reasons.

Don't misunderstand - I do see the prosecution point, and in some respects I am merely playing Devil's advocate, 'testing' the evidence against what you say.

It does occur to me that maybe one reason a guilty Jeremy wouldn't call 999 is that he may have actually been ringing from the farm itself and assumed the call was traceable and/or the police could be in the area and catch him out.  But I discount the possibility on the ground that he would surely make himself seen (or potentially) seen around Bourtree Cottage with his car.

[Erik Narramore]

The other thing to mention is that, back in the 1980s, it was common for people to ring police stations rather than dial 999.  I remember this myself.  Each police station had a phone number and there would be a desk sergeant or a constable who would answer.  I imagine that, depending on the phone system, they would either re-route you to the emergency control centre (as happened here) or more rarely, make a note of the call and tell you to dial 999.

I'm not saying I believe Jeremy, but his account is not implausible.

Remember that Jeremy did not know at this point that there was any emergency.  Putting myself in his shoes, and assuming the phone call from Nevill was real, and knowing how rash I can be, I imagine I would have been rushing out of the house and driving like a mad man, and only halfway along Tollesbury Road would I have paused in my head and thought: "Hang on, what's going on here?  Should I ring the police?  Did Nevill ring the police?  Is it safe for me to turn up alone?"

Jeremy, if he is telling the truth, had the foresight to think of all that before he even left the house.

[Erik Narramore]

I'm not convinced by the prosecution argument on this point.  If Jeremy says he thought it would make no difference, that suggests he thought about it.  If he thought about it for any period of time, that could be because he is guilty and the whole scenario was a pretence, or it could be because he was left uncertain as to what to do due to the ambiguity of what his father had told him.

Allowing that Jeremy's account of what was said is inherently uncertain as it was the early hours of the morning, if Nevill told him, "Your sister's gone crazy and she's got the gun", that could mean there is danger, and in fact Jeremy should not obey his father until there is support available from the police; or, it could mean that there is no danger, but Nevill needs a hand.  Or it could be something in-between those polarities.  Jeremy is uncertain about what to do, so his actions fall into a grey area.

[Erik Narramore]

A reply to the prosecution argument that Jeremy engineered a delay:

Time of death - If Jeremy was waiting for enough time to explain dried blood, how does that tie in with his attempted alibi, in which he tried to persuade the police that Sheila is still alive?  The two things stand in contradiction.

To compose himself: I thought he'd planned the whole thing?  What do you suggest was the length of the delay he needed to compose himself?

Distance himself from the crime scene - He achieves this by putting himself at the crime scene?  How does that make sense?

I'm afraid that, on closer scrutiny, the prosecution position on this point is empty.

The case against Jeremy Bamber is a bit like noticing an attractive woman at a distance, only to find on closer view she is not what you initially thought.  In other words, the case looks convincing from a distance, but starts to fall apart when you pull at the threads. 

[Erik Narramore]

I don't see the specific link between the need for a delay and a siege situation.  It seems to me that guilters have cornered themselves into this idea that Jeremy was trying to delay everybody, but if Jeremy is the killer and he wanted to be outside the farmhouse with the police, it was enough for Jeremy to give them the desired backstory and then let the police make their own decisions.

In the event, any delay on Jeremy's part was a matter of minutes.  He turns up and gives the police his story.  The police then draw their own conclusions.  From there, Jeremy couldn't know that the police would wait until dawn before raiding the house and he had no say or influence in the decision-making.

[Erik Narramore]

The only aspect of this where Jeremy (if guilty) may have had a reason to delay is the drive there, as he might have wanted to make sure the police see him arrive.  However, wouldn't the police surely assume that Jeremy would not risk making a call from anywhere other than Bourtree Cottage?

[Erik Narramore]

Did the police delay?

Wasn't Jeremy telling the police that this was a dangerous situation and filling them in with background about the phone call and what not? If Sheila was armed and inside the house, there would be a risk that she could fire from a window or through a door, and anybody attempting an unarmed entry would be at a disadvantage and vulnerable.  I have never been a police officer, you have, but would you accept all this?

[Erik Narramore]

Police practices are different today.  If this happened in 2021, armed police would respond immediately, whereas back in 1985, Bews could not rely on an immediate armed response and was expected to act more on his own initiative.

Bews did not know that Sheila was inside with a gun because (from Bews' viewpoint at that moment in time) Jeremy did not know this.  All he had to go on was Jeremy's report of a call from his father, and when they arrived at the farmhouse, there was no noise and no sign of activity.

Thus, there was nothing to report back to HQ that could justify an armed response.  Yes, today in 2021, it would be totally different.  Today, most British police forces are ultra-precautionary in their approach to such incidents, even when the facts are misty and unclear, and armed response officers are mobilised for a man carrying a water pistol (that has literally happened).  It's a totally different culture, due to a much more safety-conscious society.

Let's say Bews, or his colleague, reports back to HQ and says: "Right, I'm here.  Just walked back from the farmhouse.  Had a scout round outside.  Nothing happening, no activity, no sign of anybody.  The son is with me and says he had the phone call, which you already know about.  Says his sister is a nutter.  What shall we do?"

Would armed police have come in at that point?  Maybe, but I'm not convinced it's a certainty.  I acknowledge that we're guessing about a hypothesis, but consider it logically.

Now let's imagine a different conversation between Bews (or whoever) and HQ:

"Yeah, we've just jogged back from the farmhouse pretty sharpish as we think we saw movement in the upstairs window.  Not absolutely sure about that and no activity around the house, but the son is with me and says he had the phone call, which you already know about.  Says his sister is a nutter.  What shall we do?"

Remember also that Bews was himself a trained authorised firearms officer, albeit he was no longer serving in that specialism and not armed for his ordinary response duties that night.  I accept that fact could be read either way.  You could argue this made Bews more 'jumpy' than a more naive officer would have been and perhaps influenced his thoughts, observations and impressions.  On the other hand, we could give Bews credit as a highly-professional officer who saw all the signs of a dangerous situation and wasted no time getting back to the radio so he could alert HQ and set the wheels in motion.

[Erik Narramore]

A valid point is that Jeremy warned the response officers that there were guns in the house.  This has to be taken into account.

I recognise the point being made by the innocent camp that without seeing movement in the window, there was little to go on.  Just because there are guns in the house and she is mentally-ill, it doesn't follow that armed police should be mobilised.  The 1980s was not a foreign country, but it was a different time and gun ownership was common-place in rural areas and it would be pretty unremarkable for rural police to hear about guns being left around.

But, at the same time, can the innocent camp recognise that if Jeremy is telling the police that Nevill has told him that Sheila has gone crazy with the gun, or whatever, in that situation Bews might hurry back to the car in the belief that an armed response is needed (assuming that is what he asked Control for)?

For Control, the situation then defaults to:

- tell the officers to go inside and take a risk that they meet an armed woman who could shoot them;
- err on the side of caution and call in armed back-up.

The second option seems plausible even if nobody saw movement at the window or reported such.

But was movement at the window reported in any police radio log between the response officers and Control?

[Erik Narramore]

There is a nuance to this that comes out of real-world experience and is being missed here.  Even with all the information available, the officers had little to go on that would justify bringing in armed police, especially in the context of 1985.  Thus, Bill asks why the officers did not investigate further themselves.

I think the real counter-argument to this is that there was every incentive for the officers in that situation to, in effect, transfer risk to armed officers, so they passed the initiative to HQ.  HQ then had the dilemma of either telling the officers to take their own initiative and undertake risks or err on the side of caution and bring in firearms officers.

If you then consider that the firearms officers were outside for several more hours, the whole thing has the feel of nobody wanting to grasp the nettle, perhaps because it was believed that somebody was still alive in there, or maybe because they didn't know if there was anybody alive in there.

We are still left, however, with the question of why the officers hurried back to the car.  If they wanted to act quickly to save lives, then what did they see to make them think that was possible?  And shouldn't they have gone in themselves?  I don't believe there is any final answer to that, as it appears Bews himself is unable to tell the truth about the situation, and we have not heard from the other officers, so we're left with Jeremy versus a retired police officer who has sided with his former employer, perhaps out of fear of the consequences of his 'uncertainty and confusion' (or lies?) about what he did or did not see.

[Erik Narramore]

Anyway, I've never understood why Jeremy would want to delay the arrival of the police at the scene, even if he did it.  They try to say that he would have been worried about the bodies looking like they had been shot much earlier that morning, but I'm really not sure he would have appreciated that, assuming it would have made any difference at all.

An additional complication is the need to factor in the staging or fabrication of a call from Nevill, which makes it even more of a stretch.

[Erik Narramore]

I believe the onus is on guilters to explain why Jeremy would want to delay the police.  I have never seen a plausible explanation and I can only think of one: which is that Sheila was the killer, not Jeremy, but Jeremy would be happy to see all the family dead, so delayed the police as much as he could for that reason.

I have also never seen any guilter explain how Jeremy could have impeded police at the scene.  Was Bews taking orders from Jeremy?

[Erik Narramore]

If Jeremy's so-called alibi rests on convincing the police that Sheila is still alive and moving around the farmhouse.  This in turn depends on Jeremy being present while the police are there, so the question still stands: how and why would his delay in mobilising the police and arriving at the farmhouse improve his situation?

Surely, if this was his plan, his interest is in making sure he is at the farmhouse before the police arrive, so that he can be certain they don't just barge into the main kitchen?  How could he be sure the police wouldn't just do that?

People also say that he drove slowly to the farmhouse because he needed time to think, but I thought he'd already planned the whole thing?  And anyway, it depends on what he needed time to think about.

And if he planned all this, why didn't he ring 999?  If asked why his father hadn't done so, he could always explain that his father would want to keep the authorities away from the incident.

[Erik Narramore]

We're talking about somebody who has - supposedly - carried out the planned killing of his entire family in cold blood, including two young boys.  This isn't naughtiness.  This is, I keep being assured, a premeditated act.

The delay Jeremy talks about is entirely contrived by Jeremy's accusers.  We don't know when exactly he received the call and then made outward calls.  I once considered this in detail and concluded it was something like ten or so minutes.  Given that the call from his father was not an emergency call, as such, and it was unclear to him what was actually happening, he may well have dithered, called his girlfriend, etc.