Phone Calls - Do The Timings Work?

[Erik Narramore]

Stating the obvious, but worth emphasising:

According to Jeremy, he was able to make calls from Bourtree Cottage.

[Erik Narramore]

Maybe Jeremy stages a call using the answering machine by ringing it, allowing it to answer, then hanging up?

If he is going to stage the call in a way that is sensitive to timings (which is the only reason he would do it), then he must terminate the call at the farm end, leave the handset off the hook, and he absolutely must return to Bourtree Cottage by push bike (whatever the practicalities of this method of conveyance, another issue).

I had understood that an answerphone at Bourtree Cottage was examined by the police, but I don't recall where that is confirmed.  Assuming that is the case, then it must be that Jeremy had a second answerphone, which he rigged up on the night and then hid.

Another issue here is, if Jeremy did have an answerphone at the cottage that was seized by the police, how did Jeremy take the call from Nevill in the first place?  Surely if Nevill had first started speaking into the answerphone, that evidence would have been retained by police?  Is Jeremy saying that he just didn't connect the answerphone that evening (they did have an on-off switch in those days, I seem to recall)?

[Erik Narramore]

I've just realised that the answerphone theory doesn't stand up. One thing that is overlooked is that if Jeremy is guilty, he has obtained a second answerphone and rigged that up and switched it on prior to leaving for White House Farm.  On the other hand, if Jeremy is innocent, the answer function on the phone has simply been switched off, meaning that the phone would ring on in the normal manner without the interruption of an automated message.

Now I will explain why the answerphone theory doesn't hold together.  The reason is that in order for it to work, Jeremy would need to obtain a second phone that would be used that night then hid from the police, but as I have already explained, Jeremy could not have planned to stage a call as he had no way of knowing that Nevill would be in the kitchen and there was no phone in the bedroom, so he had no means to explain how Nevill could reach a phone.

A pro-guilt person could reply to this by saying that Jeremy could have planned to stage a pre-incident call from Nevill as part of an alibi, but if you think about this within the parameters of a prosecution scenario, that can't work and this would be intuitive and obvious to Jeremy, if he were guilty.  The bottom line is, he has to kill Nevill in bed or wherever Nevill is sleeping.  Anything else represents the plan going awry.

I am swinging back and forth on this case, but I am very doubtful that Jeremy could have carried out this plan.  If he did, then I'm still struggling to see how he did it.

[Erik Narramore]

Jeremy says he received the call from Nevill at roughly 3.10 a.m.

Susan Battersby claims it was 3.12 a.m. when Julie came into her room after the brief call from Jeremy.

If Jeremy is guilty:

(i). at what time do we say he called the answering machine at Bourtree Cottage from the farmhouse?
and,
(ii). at what time does he call Julie from Bourtree Cottage?

[Erik Narramore]

It would have to be the one answering machine.  The reason I am getting confused is because I have been looping together all the logical deductions and it gets convoluted and confusing.

I now realise that he can't have planned the phone calls.  It follows that he had just the one answering machine and if he is guilty, that must have been switched on.  He has then opportunistically come up with the idea of the call on the hoof, then it goes as the guilt camp say - he rings his own number, presses the hook switch down, leaves the handset off the hook, then takes the ladies push bike back.  He then unravels things at the other end by disposing of the answerphone tape or deleting the record on the phone digitally (hoping that there is no way for it to be recovered by forensic examination).  He rings Julie, then the police, etc., etc.

I accept all this is possible, but in order for it to be plausible I need a solution to the problem of timings.  Remember, he is making three calls:

- one to himself;
- one to Julie;
- one to the police.

How does he manage to keep the timings consistent, bearing in mind he is staging this on the assumption that there could be a traceable record at the telephone exchange of what he is doing?

[Erik Narramore]

Or do we say that he doesn't care about the timings of calls, he even invents the call from Nevill?  If so, what does he need the bike for?

[Erik Narramore]

Model and type of machine used.  Do we know?

[Erik Narramore]

The answering machine would have come on before Bamber woke.

That is a valid prosecution point, subject to the other points raised.

[Erik Narramore]

At what time does he ring himself from the farm?

Susan Battersby seems very sure that Julie came into her room at 3.12 a.m. immediately after her call from Jeremy.

[Erik Narramore]

If you accept Susan Battersby's evidence, then you have a 10-minute or so delay which I assume is needed by the guilt camp so that Jeremy can hurriedly cycle back.  But I think they forget that he is cycling back in the dark and being careful not to be seen around Goldhanger and the cottage.

I'm still doubtful that this adds up.  It does look like he winged it and invented the call from Nevill, if he is a guilty.

[Erik Narramore]

We do have a definite book-end, because PC West must have taken Jeremy's call no later than 3.25 a.m., probably 3.24 a.m.

Let's see:

He phones himself at 3 a.m.

We're now disregarding Susan Battersby's evidence.  She must have been lying.

We'll err on the side of the prosecution and say he cycled back to the cottage in reasonably quick order.  DI Wilson managed it in 16 minutes during daylight.  How about 25 minutes?

He then composes himself, but wait, he needs to ring the police.

It's now 3.27 a.m.  He should been speaking with PC West three minutes ago, and he first has to ring two other police numbers and he also needs to ring Julie.

Oh dear.

OK.  Let's say he cycles there in 20 minutes.  Then it becomes just about possible, but it means he only has minutes to make multiple phone calls and compose and collect himself, etc., etc.

To me, this doesn't add up.  Or rather, it only adds up if you shave more time off his cycle journey between the crime scene and the cottage.  Shall we say 17 minutes?  But it took DI Wilkinson 16 minutes in daylight.

It remains doubtful he could have done this. 

[Erik Narramore]

It is Susan Battersby who was encouraged by the police to give a precise time, and she obliged them.  Interestingly, this was not the time of Jeremy's call, rather it was the time that Julie came into Susan Battersby room after Jeremy's call - though Jeremy's call was brief, hence the significance of the time given.  I wonder why Julie did that?  Perhaps we should pass over that question in silence, as a famous philosopher once said.

As is rightly observed, the flatmates were all over the place with times, even suggesting it could have been any time between 2.00 and 3.30 a.m.!  But that doesn't help the prosecution case, does it.  It means Jeremy could be as right as the flatmates about when he rang Julie, and in that regard, the prosecution have not a leg to stand on.

Anyway, whichever way you look at it, if we are saying Jeremy has staged the call, then it doesn't add up.

If the guilt camp want to change their story and say that Jeremy just made up the call from Nevill out of thin air, fine.  In that case, they don't need June's bike, Jeremy can just go back on foot.

[Erik Narramore]

Let's be generous and say that Jeremy phoned himself at 2.50 a.m.

We'll err on the side of the prosecution and say he has nothing else to do in the farmhouse at this point and can leave quickly.  So he makes off from the farm reasonably smartly at 2.55 a.m.

Let's be slightly generous to Jeremy now and say he rings Julie from the cottage at 3.15 a.m.  You'll see immediately that the timings are still tight.  He has to be very careful not to be seen around Goldhanger and the cottage especially.

For this to work, he needs to be at the cottage by 3.10 a.m. and then ring Julie quickly and only be on the phone with her briefly.

He speaks with PC West at 3.24 a.m., so he has a 10-minute window after his call to Julie to shower, change and compose himself.

All the time he is doing this, it will be on his mind that the police may ask him why it took him almost 35 minutes to get through to the police.  This must be why he lied in his statement and said 3.10 a.m. for Nevill's call.  He then suggests to the police in an interview that they should check on the call times with British Telecom.

Of course, all of this is possible, but the issue here is plausibility: it doesn't sound convincing to me.

[Erik Narramore]

If Jeremy did this, he must have invented the call from Nevill, but he then tells the police to check with BT.  It's now suggested he was just being cocky.  I note that whenever a stumbling block arises in this case, it's always put down to Jeremy being arrogant or cocky.  That's the go-to explanation.

Ok, let's say he was being cocky, we're still left with doubt about the safety of the conviction because we have a story that doesn't add up.

Someone else says Jeremy must have established the position with BT as part of his planning.  So he rang up BT and asked them?  I can only assume he must have done so under a false name.  Who did he speak to?  I doubt an ordinary BT operator would know this information.  The police looked into this and needed a witness statement from an engineer and even his evidence is inconclusive.

[Erik Narramore]

Jeremy needed to be sure.  That means he needed to speak to somebody with knowledge of analogue telephony engineering.  He needed to conduct this conversation in such a way that the expert does not know who he is and cannot alert the police at a later point - even months down the line.  It's the sort of thing the person asked would remember.

I will accept that it is possible that he could have convinced himself of the point on some level, perhaps through something as trivial as a TV documentary or engineering magazine article or whatever.

However, there is doubt here.