Problems With The Silencer Evidence: "It Was Sticky..."

[Erik Narramore]

David Boutflour described the silencer as 'sticky' to the touch.  He gave this description in a TV documentary but there appears to be nothing about it in his police statements.  We don't have his trial evidence (though a Hibbit & Sanders transcript exists somewhere), so we don't at the moment know whether he disclosed this elaboration at trial.

The point intrigues me, first because I can't imagine why he would not bring the observation up in his statements to the police, who would certainly be sure to note it due to its significance; second, because the silencer was steel housed and blood is not sticky on such a surface (or really any surface) in the way that say molasses or treacle is, which is what comes to mind from the description.

I may be mistaken, but I don't think of blood as sticky or producing that effect.  To me, blood just dries.  At any rate, that is my experience.

Thus, the description he gives in the documentary doesn't seem to cohere.

Furthermore, I note the behavioural 'tell' as he gives the description to the interviewer, in that he uses an overly-affirmative gesture of the hands to signify what he means, miming a visual pun to signify 'sticky' as if he is having a game of charades with the relatives on Boxing Day.  That's interesting.  Why would he need to do that?

Could something else explain David Boutflour's strange comment about the silencer being 'sticky'?  I'm thinking in particular of the possibility that the police treated the silencer chemically during examination with, say, superglue residue.

Could it be that he had handled a silencer after police examination of it because the police had rejected that silencer and handed it back?

[Erik Narramore]

I'd like to try to get to the truth about what David Boutflour was referring to in a documentary interview when he said the silencer was sticky to touch.

Do we have a full version of David Boutflour's trial evidence, please?  At the moment, the archive only has part of his cross-examination by Rivlin and we're missing the whole of his evidence-in-chief.

I'd like to know if he mentioned about the silencer being 'sticky' at trial.  He doesn't mention it in his police statements, from what I can see.

[Erik Narramore]

In the documentary, he said the whole silencer was sticky, not just that it had something sticky on it.  I wonder why he never mentioned this to the police at the time, or if he did, why the police didn't include it in his statements?  It seems like a funny thing to leave out because you would think it incriminates Jeremy further, as it suggests the silencer was recently used.

[Erik Narramore]

I have now had the benefit of reading through David Boutflour's evidence at trial.  Nowhere does Mr Boutflour mention the silencer being 'sticky', or provide a similar description, despite having an opportunity to do so.

His evidence about the discovery of the silencer contradicts his statement in the later documentary, in several ways actually, and leaves me confused.

[Leslie Aalders]

What if Sheila attached the silencer a little bit too tightly and couldn't unscrew it again?
Might she have used a cloth or something as you would with a jar lid,and might that cloth have had some sort of sticky substance on it?

[Rob Garland]

I believe Millar in a TV interview I saw also said the silencer was sticky, would super glue fuming testing for fingerprints make the silencer sticky?

DB seems to contradict himself a lot, in one statement he saw the paint / blood when the silencer was found at WHF then in another it was latter at Ann's house I believe.

[Leslie Aalders]

I believe Millar in a TV interview I saw also said the silencer was sticky, would super glue fuming testing for fingerprints make the silencer sticky?

DB seems to contradict himself a lot, in one statement he saw the paint / blood when the silencer was found at WHF then in another it was latter at Ann's house I believe.

Yes,Erik also mentions the superglue in the first post Rob.