Applying Occam's Razor

[Erik Narramore]

Occam's razor is a philosophical razor attributed to William of Ockam (https://infogalactic.com/info/William_of_Ockham).

One way of defining this razor is that when deciding between competing explanations involving the same facts, Occam's razor says that the simpler explanation is more likely to be correct.  Ideally, Occam's razor relies on a complete view of the facts, which I do not believe we have, and I certainly do not pretend that what follows is an accurate solution of the case, far from it; it is merely an attempt to apply Occam's razor to the case.

Taff Jones applied Occam's razor.  I am not suggesting he did so purposefully, but then, Occam's razor as a principle is just the expression of a common thinking process we all use in our everyday lives to some extent or other.  Placing Sheila as the killer at the scene is simple as chips.  Almost-all the evidence is there and it's easy.  It is the Jeremy scenario that is the more complex and difficult to imagine.  In the hands of a skilled barrister, the Jeremy scenario could be made to appear laughable.

That does not make Jeremy innocent, but it does raise worrying questions for me.  I am still inclined to the view that he did it, somehow.  I'm just not sure how he managed it and I think, on due consideration, my verdict would have to be Not Guilty in law.

Let's start with some facts, that are common ground:

(i). Sheila is found with the weapon.

(ii). Sheila was violent (though there is dispute about in what sense).

(iii). Sheila was mentally-ill.

(iv). Her periodic psychotropic dosage had been abruptly reduced by half.

(v). All the victims have multiple gun shot wounds, except Sheila.

(vi). Suiciders can and do shoot themselves more than once.

(vii). Sheila was a recreational drug-user.

(viii). It seemed that all doors and windows were secured from the inside.

(ix). There is no proof Sheila was sedated at all, and in itself, this would not prevent her carrying out the massacre anyway.  Sedated does not mean asleep.

(x). The claimed phone call from Nevill must have taken place prior to the shootings, if it happened at all.

I would also advance the following interpretations:

(xi). In the opinion of pathologists for both the prosecution and defence, it was possible for Sheila to move and re-fire after the first shot, so the difference in angles of the shots can be reasonably explained.

(xii). Jeremy's phone calls could be seen as suspicious, but he would have been confused by the early morning call from his father, he would have been tired himself and probably not thinking straight, and he was a young man and may not have understood what to do.

(xiii). In regard to (viii) above, evidence to the contrary was not found by the police, but was found by relatives who had a vested interest in pursuing Jeremy.

A major plank of the prosecution case against Jeremy is that Sheila was found forensically clean.  But is this claim really true?

Consider:

(a). Her hands were swabbed, but the results are not reliable.  There is also a serious question mark over the custody of those swabs.

(b). Gun shot residues can deteriorate within hours in any case.

(c). There is confusion on the pathologist's part about the cleanliness of Sheila's hands.

(d). There was blood on Sheila's feet.

(e). Sheila was not carefully examined by the police surgeon, and the pathologist was not present at the crime scene.  Admittedly, it was not the police surgeon's strict duty to count gun shot wounds and identify injuries, but his lack of thoroughness and his observational error, together with the absence of the pathologist, lends itself to a view that minor but significant injuries to Sheila that would not show up under flash photography could have easily been missed by in-situ observers, and may not have been identified by the pathologist, as the autopsy was later.

(f). Consider also that even if she was found clean, this can be attributed to ritual washing – not a wild theory at all, but a recorded phenomenon in murder-suicide incidents involving psychotics.  The only missing piece of evidence for that theory is that, to my knowledge, no blooded clothing was found other than blooded knickers in the buckets downstairs.

Consider further that if Sheila really was clean, we then have to explain two things:

1. how Jeremy has managed to position her in the master bedroom; and,
2. what she was doing while Jeremy was downstairs struggling with Nevill.

We have no proof she was sedated, so how can these things be explained?  Pro-guilt people say Sheila was asleep throughout, but is that realistic?  Wouldn't she have woken at some point?  If you accept she was not shot in her sleep, then you have to ask when did she wake and what happened?

The prosecution enjoy saying that Nevill was big and strong, and Sheila was short and slight, therefore Sheila could not have struggled with Nevill.  I completely disagree.  As I never tire of repeating – because it's a point everybody overlooks - the physical difference between Nevill and Sheila if anything makes a struggle more not less likely.  But most people, even some of Jeremy's supporters, ignore this, thinking along very simplistic lines that big must prevail over small in a physical struggle.  In reality, it's not that simple!  There is another way of looking at it, which is just as simple and also obvious, but only if you have had relevant life experience.  I rather suspect that most of the people who come out with this stuff have never been in fights or violent melees themselves.  One thing most people aren't aware of is that shorter and weaker people, if they are quick on their feet, are often at an advantage in a violent situation.  Shorter men inclined to violence learn this from experience.  In fist fights and amateur boxing, for instance, a short man has some disadvantages, but he also has one or two crucial edges that he can capitalise on against tall men.

In the incident under discussion, Sheila would have had certain physical and psychological advantages over Nevill.  She's female and his daughter, so he wouldn't want to hit her or hurt her – a big edge for a psychotic Sheila. She's short and light on her feet, which could make it difficult for Nevill to catch her.  She's holding the gun, which can be used to threaten Nevill and even bludgeon him.  If Nevill goes for the phone, he can't then chase Sheila around as he's tied to the call and waiting for Jeremy. Sheila may then have stood there with Nevill in the kitchen shouting and screaming until Jeremy finally answers the phone.  Sheila then suddenly goes quiet, and angrily she then runs for the main stairs.  Nevill follows her.  Really, it's not a difficult scenario to imagine.  And that's before we get into the simple fact that Nevill is 61 and Sheila is 28, a violent psychotic, and waving a loaded gun around that she could easily use at any moment.  Nevill may have assumed she wouldn't actually use it, but at the same time, he calls on Jeremy for help in either calming her down or he may just have wanted Jeremy over there to help sort things out generally while he looked after Sheila.  He may not even have given the call to Jeremy much thought at all.  It could be that he instinctively recognised he needed to bring somebody in and thought it best that it was his son rather than an outsider who might go to the authorities and get Sheila locked up.

Julie Mugford was a major prosecution witness, perhaps the pre-eminent witness for the Crown.  Yet, what does her evidence actually prove?  She never actually says that Jeremy admitted the murders in so many words.  The closest we come to that is a pseudo-confession from Jeremy in which he relates the adventures of Matthew Macdonald, who he supposedly contracted to carry out the killing, but it turns out that Macdonald has an alibi.  The prosecution allege that by eliminating Macdonald, the burden of the confession shifts to Jeremy by default, but that is supposition that turns on whether Julie (or indeed Jeremy himself) is telling the truth at all.  All the facts she relates could have been obtained secondhand, even from an entirely innocent Jeremy.  Where, then, is the corroboration for anything she says?  Why should we accept this evidence? We must ask: If Jeremy is lying about Macdonald, then why should we not conclude that the whole thing was made up, either by Julie or even Jeremy himself?  But aside from those questions, if we apply Occam's razor, we can dismiss everything she says, not on the basis that it is untrue, but because even if true, it proves nothing of value to us.

Overall, the ballistic and blood evidence is just not consistent with Jeremy as the killer.  Nevill's movements in that scenario make little sense.  Pro-guilt people have Nevill being shot in his sleep and waking up.  Why doesn't Jeremy just kill him there and then?  Why does Jeremy need to struggle with Nevill at all?  Why does Jeremy shoot June five times in the first fusillade?  How does Nevill get all the way downstairs leaving only two noticeable spots of blood on the way and no blood in the bedroom?  Where is the evidence of a struggle with Sheila, and why is she so clean?

It is said that the silencer pins the shootings to Jeremy, but the silencer is not forensically conclusive and the chain of custody of the silencer renders it unreliable as evidence.  There is also no other conclusive surrounding evidence that the silencer was used.  Can we really believe, for instance, that Nevill would have been shot in his sleep yet survived to be shot three more times before running down the stairs?  If Jeremy was using a silencer, then why kill the twins first?  Why not attack Nevill first anyway, as he is the primary threat?  Julie Mugford, the star witness, never mentions the silencer – which is an odd omission considering how central to the mechanics of the shooting the silencer became.  Wouldn't this be the first thing 'Matthew' brings up?  Wouldn't Jeremy brag to Julie that the silencer had not been found?  And why didn't Jeremy clean the silencer properly?  It is said the glass kitchen light shade was smashed during a struggle and this could only have happened with the silencer on the rifle, yet no glass fragments were found in or on the silencer or the rifle barrel and the glass could easily have been shattered by some other means. There is a belief that Sheila could not have used the silenced rifle on herself, but even if true, that can only be considered evidence if we can pin the silencer to the crime in the first place, otherwise it's circular.  Similarly, relying on a piece of evidence produced by witnesses with a vested financial interest (and possibly a 'vital interest', the criterion I have proposed on another thread) seems dubious, and is also circular because it involves identifying a suspect and then finding evidence to fit.

There is also evidence of negligent or intentional pollution or contamination of the evidence.  The blood stain pattern inside the silencer would be consistent with intentional/designed contamination.  The relatives need not have known conceptually about the blowback form of backspatter to do this, they need only have some empirical knowledge that blood can somehow get inside weapons and silencers, which any gun owner would surmise from mundane experience. In this regard, the fact no blood or other biological traces were found inside the rifle barrel ironically may assist the defence: how is it there is no blood in the rifle barrel if the silencer was attached the rifle barrel?  The prosecution pose that question in reverse, assuming that the absence of blood in the barrel settles their case, but the question should actually be the other way round, since the blood would have to passively drip into the rifle barrel from the silencer.  Furthermore, the scratch marks on the aga surround do not match the silencer itself, yet paint matching the aga surround was found on the silencer.  How can that be explained?  One way of resolving the apparent paradox would be to say that somebody has come along and scratched the silencer with a different implement (perhaps the Pargeter gun, which was then hastily removed) and the paint was intentionally put on the silencer.  As with the blood staining on the baffles, this would be consistent with the known evidence.

Are theories of corrupt practices susceptible to Occam's razor?  Actually, we need not necessarily go down that controversial road and make such allegations.  We could simply point to the chain of custody, the dismantling of the silencer by D.I. Cook under non-controlled and non-sterilised conditions, the flaws in the pull-through test and the forensic flaws in Fletcher's controlled firing (which could have evacuated blowbacked biologic material from the interior of the barrell), and the flaws in Howard's blood retrieval methodology (Glynis Howard probably inadvertently re-contaminated the silencer!).

This is before we get into the whole problem of placing Jeremy at the scene.  A guilty Jeremy must have returned to his cottage in Goldhanger as he would not risk witnesses saying his car was not there.  How, then, does Jeremy return to White House Farm without being seen?  How does he enter and leave without leaving forensic traces?  How does he return without being seen?

We also have great difficulty with Jeremy as the killer.  There is the lack of a compelling motive.  People think it's simple: he killed for money.  But let us just stop to consider that for a moment: would he really kill five people, his own family, including two children, and with all the risks this entails, just for money?  It's a bit of a stretch.  And what would he actually inherit?  If, as those who hate Jeremy claim, he wasn't keen on farming, then how does he keep the farm running?  Would Peter Eaton have willingly toiled under his superintendence?  Perhaps Jeremy killed five of his family, including two children, so he could take control of a caravan site?  When you look into it more carefully, it starts to look slightly fat-fetched, even ridiculous.

Now consider that we do not have all these difficulties with Sheila as the killer.  It is very easy to place her at the crime scene.  She is already there, which saves us a whole host of difficulties.  Ironically, the cleanliness of Sheila arguably points to her culpability.

Using the rifle would be easy.  A child could do it, the only requirement being to have seen somebody else operate it, and we know Jeremy did tutor Sheila with the rifle on at least one occasion.  Sheila had also expressed an interest in guns on one of the shooting trips to Scotland and had fired a shotgun at least once.  Nobody is suggesting Sheila was expert or comfortable with guns, but then, she needn't have been.  The victims were shot at close range and many bullets were wasted.

Sheila need not leave prints or marks anywhere, as she is holding the rifle throughout.  This may also help explain why she has little in the way of marks on her from struggle, since she could easily have used the rifle butt against Nevill (though as I explain above, due to flaws in the investigation, we can't know that Sheila was free of injury).

Sheila need not have broken her nails when re-loading the magazine.  She just needed to take her time, which she could, as her adult victims were already shot in the first fusillade.

Sheila could make reassuring noises to the twins, telling them to stay in bed, or she could have shouted and scolded them to make them obey.  They may also have remained in bed simply out of fear.  She then kills them.

Five rapid shots into June is consistent with Sheila as the killer.

A struggle between Nevill and the assailant is consistent with Sheila as the killer.  Nevill would struggle with his daughter because he would want to try and seize the gun off her.

Jeremy's claim of a pre-shooting phone call also fits with Sheila as the killer.

Some conclusions:

The Jeremy scenario is not well-suited to Occam's razor.  It is complex and meandered.  There are fundamental things left unexplained.  In my view (for what that's worth), the conviction and continued blackening of Jeremy Bamber is not entirely rational-scientific.  It is an article of faith, based on insubstantial suspicion, rumour and naked hatred and dislike for the individual.

The Sheila scenario is, on the other hand, eminently suitable for Occam's razor and can be explained rationally.

Now let's consider why there is this difference.  I would submit it is down to underlying patterns of thinking: specifically, a dichotomy between objective and subjective thought.

Most of the points favouring Sheila's culpability and Jeremy's innocence are objective and testable scientifically.

In contrast, almost-all of the points favouring Jeremy's guilt are entirely subjective, the exception being the silencer evidence.  Yet even the silencer is what I would describe as subjective-objective. It was introduced into evidence by people with vested interests who harboured bad feelings against Jeremy.  With that starting point noted, it is interesting that the probative value of the silencer fell apart under scientific examination (the objective stage), in that the forensic findings were inconclusive, a grey hair attached to the silencer was lost and the chain-of-custody compromised its reliability as evidence.  Tellingly, the police dismissed the silencer evidence for months, regarding it as inconclusive, and at the trial, the jury only found Jeremy guilty after being misdirected about the blood evidence by a hostile and biased trial judge.  To round-off the condemnation of this evidence, we should note that the blood evidence adduced is in itself subjective as blood grouping involves an element of professional opinion and is not as black-and-white as the average person (i.e. a juror) would assume.

[Erik Narramore]

Some people posit a Jeremy and Sheila scenario.

I have thought along those same lines myself.  He schemes up a Machiavellian plan to create a rift between Sheila and her parents over the children.  He may even have been the one who introduced the idea of fostering into the conversation he claims took place at the kitchen table.  He then loads the rifle on the pretext of looking for rabbits.  He then returns and ostentatiously leaves the rifle out in a place that Sheila would surmise, believing she may go mad with it later.

It would explain why he calls the police rather than obeying Nevill, it explains his strange calls to Julie, and it also explains his anxiety with the police on reaching the farm.  Of course, another explanation for those things is simply that he is guilty, the calls were staged, and his behaviour in the presence of Bews and Myall is down to him knowing what has happened because he did it and he proceeds to manipulate those officers to firm up what he thinks is his alibi.

Thinking about the incident in reverse: If Nevill has told him that Sheila has got the gun and he needs to come over right away, why didn't he just go straight to the farm?  People complain that he didn't ring 999, but surely that puts the cart before the horse due to the benefit of hindsight.  If you stop and think about it, why ring the police at all?  Of course, you could argue it's because he's a bit of a Nervous Nelly or he knew in his gut that something was wrong, but it could also be that he just knew.

[Erik Narramore]

A point to be addressed is the absence of blooded clothing that would support the ritual washing theory.

It seems to me there are three major possible explanations that could assist the defence:

1. Sheila obsessively proceeded to wash her blooded clothes as well.  She may have taken her time over this and replaced the clean clothes in her dresser in the second bedroom.  This may also explain why the second bedroom looks so neat.  She may at this stage also have left her knickers in the bucket (having worn two pairs at once due to hygiene issues caused by menstruation).

2. Sheila did not wash the blooded clothes, she left them out somewhere - maybe in the lounge, scullery or washroom - and they were burned or otherwise disposed of by Essex Police during the initial inquiry, or they were removed by Ann Eaton.

3. Sheila carried out the massacre in minimal clothing - knickers/bra - or even naked.  She then seeks purity by washing herself and putting on a clean nightie.  I note that when found, she was not wearing underwear beneath the nightie.

Personally I find 1 above the most likely of the three.

[Erik Narramore]

Jeremy knew about Sheila's problems.  He didn't need to have any academic or specialist knowledge or a good understanding of these things.  I also imagine Jeremy to be a regular TV watcher, and he could have got a vague idea from films and TV news and what not.  He could have just intuited that a mother in that situation might kill her children and the rest of the family.  It could even be that Sheila had told him that she would like to kill the family or had revealed violent ideations to him.  This may have then led him to a murder plot of his own in which he stages Sheila's suicide, or to leaving the gun out in the hope Sheila would go on a rampage.  It could also be that he had left the gun out over several evenings and the 6th. was the night when it happened.  But what did he mean when he told Julie 'tonight's the night'?  Maybe Julie just made that up?

[Erik Narramore]

You don't need to be a psychiatrist or psychologist, or knowledgeable about medicine or abnormal psychology, to add up the following:

1. My sister is "mad" and says strange things, including statements or intimations of violence.

2. My sister says strange things about her twins.

3. My sister has tantrums.

4. I could leave a loaded rifle out in such a way that she surmises that I have done this and knows roughly where the rifle is.

5. My sister kills everybody in the house, then kills herself.

It sounds incredible when put that starkly, but remember, that's exactly what you're saying happened and it's also what the police initially concluded.  The average Essex CID officer isn't boning up on psychology.

Jeremy didn't need to have thought things through very much for it to work.  He may have just had a vague notion of leaving the rifle by Sheila's body, with a Bible close by (or, as I suspect actually happened, Sheila on the bed holding the Bible and rifle).  He doesn't even need to be very sophisticated about it - and maybe that's why he was caught and is in prison?

Unlike Forsyth's fictional Jackal, real-life murderers - as a rule - don't pore over academic monographs and medical papers when planning their lurid exploits.

[Erik Narramore]

Based on what I have been reading, Sheila was a pretty normal girl and young woman up to the point that she met Colin Caffell.  (I'm not necessarily implying anything about Colin in that respect, let me emphasise).  I know she had problems with June and there was an incident as a teenager when June caught her with a boy, but I'm not sure if that was in fact Colin or a local (there seems to be some confusion about that).

My point is that I wonder if the difficulties in the relationship with June have been overly-focalised and exaggerated within the corpus of 'true crime' literature on the case, when in reality the relationship was fairly normal, and even June's mental health issues weren't necessarily very impactful.

[Erik Narramore]

Some points I'd like to make (assuming I am right on some or all of this, it may need to also go in the Colin Caffell thread):

1. It appears that prior to 1982, June had never been mentally-ill.  She did have mental health issues that dated back to the late 1950s, but if I understand correctly, that was more along the lines of severe depression.  June's psychosis started after Sheila's marriage to Colin.

2. Sheila was a normal girl/woman up to her marriage to Colin.  There is simply nothing I can see in her history that is the remotest bit unusual.  Indifference to academics.  Trouble with June.  Minor experimentation with drugs.  June catches her with a local boy (or Colin or whatever).  Boredom and dropping out of finishing school.  Not sure what to do.  Can't hold down a job.  This is all normal to a degree and none of it is cause for undue alarm in relation to a young person.  Furthermore, her relationship with Nevill was said to be good.

3. I accept that June calling her the Devil's child (assuming that happened) is a bit much and would have distanced her from June.  The tension in the relationship is apparent in the painfully-awkward photograph taken in the garden.  But really, schizophrenia...??

4. In Dr. Ferguson's statement, he says that June responded to treatment for her psychosis.  Yet Colin makes great play of problems he says were caused by June.  Unless I'm mistaken, the marriage was ended before the onset of June's psychosis.  I wonder how much of the focus on June's supposed 'religious mania' is Colin exaggerating in order to downplay problems that could be traced back to him?

5. Assuming Dr. Ferguson's diagnosis of Sheila was correct (it may well not have been), this schizophrenia may have been a result of a confluence of causes and factors: a bit of genetics, distant relationship with June, and drug-taking.  But I wonder how much of a factor her relationship and marriage to Colin was?  It seems to me that Colin has a vested interest in allowing us to focus on June's religious zeal and the simple notion that she was a 'religious nut' while taking our eye off on his own role in all this.

Question:

(i). How do we know about the 'Devil's child' incident in which June caught her with somebody?  Who is the source for this?

(ii). There is a letter from Colin to Nevill in which he complains about June.  Am I right in saying that this letter was unsent?  In other words, is it right that the source for the letter is entirely Colin himself, the letter having not been received prior to the incident?

[Erik Narramore]

DCI Jones was the Senior Investigating Officer.  A little-known fact about the initial investigation is that CS Harris had an influence on Taff's decision to accept the scene as a murder-suicide, and it may be that he reported it officially as such; nevertheless, Taff was the SIO, therefore while he was junior in rank to CS Harris, he was still in charge of the investigation (Harris only had oversight) and it was absolutely Taff's call. Thus, I emphasise Taff!

[Erik Narramore]

To be fair, Taff Jones went for the obvious on the morning of the 7th. and got quite agitated at the more complex suspicions of his colleagues.  I would say Taff was the one applying Occam's razor in this case.  Sheila is found with the weapon and the house is secured from the inside.  Case closed.