Problems With A Jeremy Scenario

[Erik Narramore]

Another point is that, actually, if you stop and think about it, the idea of a violent struggle between Jeremy and Nevill makes very little sense.  It's another thing that everybody accepts without thinking about whether it's logical. 

If Jeremy is armed, then he must shoot Nevill.  He isn't going to start getting artsy about it.  He wants Nevill dead or incapacitated and he doesn't want Nevill to get to a phone.

Trying to explain how Nevill makes it out of the bedroom, is squaring a circle.

Instead, it's better for the prosecution if Nevill is already on the stairs with Jeremy firing down at him.  It fits the ballistics and injuries.  But I think I have explained above why I would dismiss the whole background scenario due to the implausibility of Jeremy wanting to wake everybody up and having them run around the house.  Nevertheless, regardless of how Nevill gets there, we still have to explain how Nevill makes it to the kitchen without Jeremy stopping him.

Jeremy can just kill him on the stairs or in the corridor, can't he?

Why would Jeremy risk allowing Nevill to barricade himself in the kitchen and go for the phone?

Also, why would Nevill stop at the kitchen?  Why not barricade himself in the den and grab a gun? Or even go for the exit, and on finding it locked, leave blooded prints there?

Why not stop by the downstairs shower room and grab one of the guns stored there?

One explanation is that Jeremy must have struggled on those narrow stairs with a long-barrelled rifle, but honestly, given the injuries Nevill had suffered, surely Jeremy would have caught up with him?

The truth is that Jeremy, if he is the killer, messed up.  He needed to kill Nevill in bed and somehow and for some unknown reason, that didn't happen, and he was left with a mess, but we are still left with this inexplicable hole in the scenario.

Now let's move into the kitchen and assume both of them are there.  We don't know why Jeremy has been so slack and allowed Nevill to get that far, but putting that aside, why does Jeremy need to struggle with Nevill at all?  I really don't understand that.

Guilters struggle with this and, clutching at straws, they say that Jeremy ran out of ammunition.  OK.  Well let's say that happened.  We're still left with the hole in the scenario earlier mentioned because Jeremy could still have attacked Nevill before he reached the kitchen, but if we're in the kitchen, why doesn't Nevill make for the back corridor and either exit the farmhouse or retreat to the den?  Why isn't there blood on the door between the back corridor and the kitchen?

These problems also slightly apply to a Sheila scenario as well, but they are easier to reconcile with Sheila as the killer, in my view.

Why?

Because a fight between Nevill and Sheila is much more likely in that situation than a fight between Jeremy and Nevill.  Jeremy doesn't need to fight Nevill, but Sheila would have to struggle with him.  That's one of the reasons a Sheila scenario seems more logical.

[Erik Narramore]

The choreography of the shootings is, I believe, a serious problem if Jeremy is the killer.  It makes much more sense if Sheila did it.

If Nevill was in bed, then I don't understand how there was a struggle with Jeremy.  Surely Jeremy would make sure to kill Nevill, as he was the strongest (arguably stronger than Jeremy)?

If Nevill was not in bed, then how is it that June is shot in bed?  Wouldn't she wake up to the noise and investigate?

Some in the guilt camp try to explain this by saying that both parents were in bed and June was shot first, allowing Nevill to spring out of bed and tackle Jeremy.  But is this likely?  Would Nevill really try to escape rather than protect his wife, the twins and Sheila?  Why didn't Jeremy kill Nevill there and then with the rifle?  How is it that, if Nevill escapes from the bedroom but is already grievously injured, Jeremy does not manage to catch up with him until they reach the kitchen?  Nevill had sustained serious injuries already, including a shot to the face.  And where is all the blood on the landing, stairs and in the hallway?

And what is Sheila doing while all the noise and commotion is going on?  The prosecution rely on her being in a deep sleep due to the sedative effect of the psychotropics she was on, but there is nothing conclusive to say she was under such an effect.

It could be that, instead, Nevill was downstairs all along and the assault begins with a struggle between him and Jeremy which June and Sheila don't hear, but if that's the case, then how can the distribution of bullet cases be explained?  Why is there blood on the threshold between the kitchen and the main hallway?  It could be that Nevill was trying to escape, and a shot from Jeremy stopped him and Jeremy dragged him back in the kitchen.

If Jeremy kills Sheila first, then how come there is no evidence of this in Sheila's room?  If Sheila moves at any point during the assault, then this discounts the sedation theory and raises a need to explain the lack of physical evidence on Sheila of an assault.  Wouldn't she have bruising on her arms, at least, and blood on her feet?

The prosecution claim that Jeremy moved Sheila to the main bedroom, but why would Jeremy do this?

Clearly, Jeremy needs Sheila to be found outside her own room, but wouldn't he move her to the twins' bedroom?

If he planned this, wouldn't Jeremy shoot Sheila in her own room first, before anybody else, while she is asleep or half-awake, then in the following hours move her and stage her body and conceal the forensic evidence in her room?  If Jeremy didn't do it this way, then how did Jeremy position her for the shot?

[Erik Narramore]

June couldn't sleep through it.

One possibility I've noticed that guilters sometimes raise is that Nevill was elsewhere at the time Jeremy began the assault - usually it's either downstairs and he interrupts Jeremy on or soon after entry, or he's in the upstairs office.  Neither works in my opinion, simply because of how he is dressed when found.  An additional problem with having him already downstairs is that you then have to explain the cartridge cases found in a completely different part of the house, which can only work if Jeremy pursues him upstairs, but again, why is he barefoot and in pyjamas?   If he is going to confront a potential intruder (as opposed to Sheila having a tantrum) then he'd have footwear at the least.  And how does he then end up back downstairs, if Jeremy is pursuing him with a fully-loaded rifle? Remember also that, unlike Sheila, Jeremy would not run ahead of him up the stairs to get at June or the twins, instead Jeremy would deal with him first - surely.

I'm left with something I can't fully explain, and with an interesting dichotomy.  Worryingly, at least for me, the ballistics, blood evidence and the incident sequencing fits Sheila much more easily.

Thus, the 'big picture' points to Jeremy, yet the 'small picture' points to Sheila.  At least, that's where I am with it at the moment.

[Erik Narramore]

I mentioned above the possibility that Nevill was already alert as Jeremy enters the room, but there are problems with that, some of which have been touched on in this thread and elsewhere.  Some in the guilt camp have even proposed that Nevill was moved downstairs by Jeremy.  Did he coerce him downstairs or did he carry his body?  There are serious problems with either.  If the latter, how do you explain all the blood in the kitchen?  What about the scratch marks in the paint?  How do they get there?

[Erik Narramore]

There was clearly no blood on Nevill's side of the bed.  You can see it clearly in the photographs of the main bedroom.  It is true that Essex Police destroyed bedding and what not, and this is a point often raised by the innocent camp, and I agree this was not wise on the part of the police, but the criticism is not entirely fair: the police did take samples before earmarking things for destruction, and if Nevill's blood had been there, it would have been detected.  In fact, only June and Sheila's blood was found.

Nevill's blood should have been in the master bedroom but it seems it wasn't.  You can't circumvent this by pretending that the police somehow missed it.  They simply wouldn't have missed it.  You also can't circumvent this by pretending that the blood would only be on his clothes when he was in bed.  How did the blood not get on the bed clothes?  Was he shot when standing up?  Then how did he get past Jeremy?  Why not tackle Jeremy there and then for the gun?  And if he wasn't shot in bed, then why did Jeremy shoot June first?

The teddy bear - if this belonged to Nevill or June, I think Jeremy would have cleared that up.  To my knowledge, he has never mentioned it.  Probably somebody should ask him.  For now, I appreciate we don't know why the teddy was there, but since there are young children in the house, it wouldn't be odd to find that it had been left there by the twins.  I think it would be rather odd for grown adults to have a teddy bear.  I have never known it and June doesn't sound the type for that.  But Sheila might have wanted the teddy bear there and even put it in the middle of the bed purposefully, or it may have been playfully left there by the twins after a reading session.

[Erik Narramore]

Did Jeremy move Nevill's body?

Let's think about this:

My own view is that Jeremy would not have taken the rifle back downstairs at all.  He had no reason to, and he was also unlikely to, because remember that in order to figure out how to stage Sheila's suicide, he had to take the silencer off the rifle and then place the rifle on Sheila's body.  He would have just left the rifle on or by the body and put the silencer in the gun cupboard before leaving.

However, we can't rule out completely the idea that after placing the rifle on Sheila's body, he decided that he needed to check on Nevill by prodding him with the rifle, so returned downstairs with the rifle having the intention of putting it back on Sheila's body later.  So let's assume that Jeremy returns the silencer to the gun cupboard, and in doing so, he also checks Nevill's body with the rifle.

The immediate problem Jeremy would have is that Nevill's body blocks the way to the den.  How does he get to the gun cupboard if he can't get through the back door of the kitchen into the back corridor?

It must be that Jeremy moved the body either before or after leaving the silencer in the gun cupboard (and if before, that means he's moved it twice).  But why would Jeremy block the back door of the kitchen with Nevill's body?  One possibility is that Nevill was still alive and after killing Sheila, Jeremy heard Nevill downstairs or even when he was in Nevill's den, and that is when the struggle between them ensued in which Jeremy hits a dying Nevill with the rifle butt, etc.

The next problem is how Jeremy can go through the back corridor and across the floor of the den without leaving blood traces and blood prints (feet, hands, fingers) on the floor and walls and in the gun cupboard itself.  He is carrying a silencer that has blood in it and he must have blood on his shoes/boots and clothing as he has presumably struggled with Nevill.  This I can't explain.  Did Jeremy remove all his clothing and tip-toe across?

[Erik Narramore]

If we start from the hypothetical that Jeremy did this, then this is how I begin to reason it out:

(i). First, it is very unlikely that Jeremy planned for Nevill to be found in the kitchen.  This leaves open two possibilities:

(a). either Nevill escaped downstairs; or,
(b). Nevill confronted Jeremy in the kitchen.

We can rule out (b) because the Crown have ruled it out on their own evidence.  That leaves us with (a).

(ii). If Nevill escaped downstairs, then you have to explain the lack of blood.  There are other problems with this explanation, which I've gone through in some detail in other posts.  The noise is an issue.  The shooting order is a problem.  Nevill's motivation is an issue: why run from his family?  Why go downstairs at all?  Maybe it was an instinctive response and he was trying to draw Jeremy's fire, but there's a problem with the time-and-motion aspect and the ammunition count and firing order that myself and Adam discussed.  Adam ended up proposing that Jeremy must have run out of ammunition, but if so, why would Nevill run?  Why not struggle with Jeremy?  Why does Jeremy have no facial marks?  Was he wearing a mask?

I can't remember exactly what I said about it all, but I think I concluded that whoever did this could have shot Nevill while he was ascending the stairs rather than descending, the killer then following him back to the kitchen.  But if that's the case, surely the killer was Sheila?

If Jeremy shot Nevill while they are both descending the stairs, then why isn't there more blood on the stairs and why didn't Jeremy simply catch up with Nevill before they reached the kitchen?  I think Stan Jones recorded in his notebook the presence of blood spots on the stairs, but they can't have been very noticeable as nobody else found them and it seems convenient that Stan Jones would and nobody else.

If Nevill makes it to the kitchen, then why doesn't he make it to the phone or the back kitchen door and then his den where there are guns?  Why didn't he barricade himself in the kitchen itself or even in the den?

(ii). Regardless of what you conclude about the above, if we continue with the assumption it was Jeremy, then the next question is whether there was a pressing need for the presence of Nevill's body in the kitchen (however it got there) to be explained.

Jeremy may have decided to leave the phone off the hook for this reason, but if Jeremy did the killings, then why didn't he smear blood on the phone?  He surely must have thought about that?  Thus, why stage a call?  What purpose does that serve?

Also why isn't there blood on the kitchen door, or the back kitchen door, or in the back corridor, or Nevill's den, or the gun cupboard?

I could probably write a much better post about this by re-marshalling all the facts and my notes.  The above is just what occurs to me off-hand.  My overall conclusion when I looked into this in some depth before was that the whole thing doesn't hang together.  There isn't blood where there should be and Sheila makes more sense as the killer given all the hard evidence.  For instance, Nevill would not need to struggle with Jeremy: one or other of them would prevail quickly.  Sheila, on the other hand, could have been in a messy struggle with her father.  Clearly her father was stronger, but he may have been injured and weakened and also reluctant to harm Sheila, giving Sheila a crucial advantage (which women sometimes have in those situations).  Taking a loaded rifle off a shorter and weaker person is also not as simple as you may think.  First he has to catch her.  Chairs could be turned-over and lights damaged in the process.

That doesn't mean I think Sheila did it, but there you are.  It could have been Jeremy.  Ultimately, Nevill may have ended up in the kitchen and Jeremy may have made a miscalculation.

[Erik Narramore]

If we're saying he's guilty, then we have to explain how she has got to the master bedroom and found a dying June without getting any blood or dirt on her hands and feet.  One explanation is, as you say, Sheila never woke, but remember that the pharmacological/psychiatric evidence for this is ropey, and we also have to take into account what the pathologist says about the way Sheila was shot.  This is why I'm quite keen on my theory that Jeremy shot Sheila first before the others and he did this in the second bedroom, perhaps as she sat up in bed.

On the other hand, I'm sceptical about the idea that Jeremy planned all this out.  I think Jeremy in a psychotic rage is more likely, giving life to a kernel of ideas that have been floating around in his head for a while.  The rage is perhaps catalysed by a genuine phone call from Nevill that evening in which Nevill berates Jeremy, which in turn plants the seed in Jeremy's head for faking a call to establish an alibi.

This would help explain why Jeremy injured Nevill in the way that he does.  I think there may also be some sadistic element to the killing of June.

Sheila is a problem in all this because if you have her alert and you can't explain what she is doing while Nevill and Jeremy are downstairs, then there is reasonable doubt.

I think the police and the DPP realised this themselves and that's why in the Ainsley report to the DPP, it sets out a theory that Jeremy shot Sheila once in the master bedroom before tackling Nevill downstairs.  I think probably most people on this forum would discount that and I would too, simply because Jeremy would not risk allowing Nevill a head start downstairs.

I go back to my belief that Jeremy's actions were unplanned.  Probably what really happened is that Jeremy  formed a vague idea in his head of leaving a rifle on or by Sheila's body, maybe influenced by something he had seen in a film or on TV.  He doesn't think through how he will control Sheila simply because he over-estimated the lethality of the rifle and also under-estimates the noise disturbance of the rifle within the farmhouse, having never practised with it indoors - another reason why I think the silencer wasn't used.

As a result, mayhem ensues and Jeremy is fortunate in that Sheila 'froze' or is disoriented out of tiredness.  We have Jeremy downstairs, and having subdued and incapacitated Nevill, he realises he needs to go back upstairs quickly.  There he finds Sheila, who is stood in the master bedroom looking at June and not sure what is going on, and he manages to kill her in the right way, but blunders and shoots her twice.  The irony of it is that if Sheila had got June's blood on her, and even gone into the twins bedroom, Jeremy might have got away with it.  The possibility, mooted by Lookout on the other thread, that June may have been shot on the main stairs, adds an additional layer of complication but may explain why Sheila didn't get June's blood on her and had clean hands and feet.

[Erik Narramore]

If we're saying Jeremy is guilty, then we have to explain how she has got to the master bedroom and found a dying June without getting any blood or dirt on her hands and feet.  One explanation is, as you say, Sheila never woke, but remember that the pharmacological/psychiatric evidence for this is ropey, and we also have to take into account what the pathologist says about the way Sheila was shot.  This is why I'm quite keen on my theory that Jeremy shot Sheila first before the others and he did this in the second bedroom, perhaps as she sat up in bed.

On the other hand, I'm sceptical about the idea that Jeremy planned all this out.  I think Jeremy in a psychotic rage is more likely, giving life to a kernel of ideas that have been floating around in his head for a while.  The rage is perhaps catalysed by a genuine phone call from Nevill that evening in which Nevill berates Jeremy, which in turn plants the seed in Jeremy's head for faking a call to establish an alibi.

This would help explain why Jeremy injured Nevill in the way that he does.  I think there may also be some sadistic element to the killing of June.

Sheila is a problem in all this because if you have her alert and you can't explain what she is doing while Nevill and Jeremy are downstairs, then there is reasonable doubt.

I think the police and the DPP realised this themselves and that's why in the Ainsley report to the DPP, it sets out a theory that Jeremy shot Sheila once in the master bedroom before tackling Nevill downstairs.  I think probably most people on this forum would discount that and I would too, simply because Jeremy would not risk allowing Nevill a head start downstairs.

I go back to my belief that Jeremy's actions were unplanned.  Probably what really happened is that Jeremy  formed a vague idea in his head of leaving a rifle on or by Sheila's body, maybe influenced by something he had seen in a film or on TV.  He doesn't think through how he will control Sheila simply because he over-estimated the lethality of the rifle and also under-estimates the noise disturbance of the rifle within the farmhouse, having never practised with it indoors - another reason why I think the silencer wasn't used.

As a result, mayhem ensues and Jeremy is fortunate in that Sheila 'froze' or is disoriented out of tiredness.  We have Jeremy downstairs, and having subdued and incapacitated Nevill, he realises he needs to go back upstairs quickly.  There he finds Sheila, who is stood in the master bedroom looking at June and not sure what is going on, and he manages to kill her in the right way, but blunders and shoots her twice.  The irony of it is that if Sheila had got June's blood on her, and even gone into the twins bedroom, Jeremy might have got away with it.  The possibility, mooted by Lookout on the other thread, that June may have been shot on the main stairs, adds an additional layer of complication but may explain why Sheila didn't get June's blood on her and had clean hands and feet.

[Erik Narramore]

Not all doubt, even when significant, will develop into reasonable doubt because there may be explanations or resolutions that can override the benefit of the doubt that we are supposed to give to the accused.

However, in this case, we are left with a hole in the prosecution case - if we're saying Nevill was in the bedroom during the first fusilade.

Nevill can't have been in bed, because the blood evidence tells us he can't have been.

If we're saying Nevill was out of bed and stood up, why doesn't he just attack Jeremy?  If he flees instead, how does he know Jeremy will follow him?  If we're saying he attacks Jeremy, then why and how does he end up back in the kitchen?

On its face, the prosecution case does not add up in all sorts of ways, this being one of them.

[Erik Narramore]

My source is common sense and simple logic, which tell me that when somebody is shot while asleep with bed clothes over them, it is highly likely blood will end up on the bed clothes and highly unlikely that it won't, and if there is no blood on the bed clothes, that suggests the individual was not shot in bed.

[Erik Narramore]

Anybody who disagrees needs to answer this question:

Where exactly was Nevill when he was shot?  Am I to assume that you accept that he could not have been fast asleep in bed, or in bed at all?

If you say he was standing up, are you also saying that Nevill fled the scene without tackling Jeremy?

[Erik Narramore]

If Nevill was shot in bed, I maintain there is a high probability that there would be blood on the bed clothes on Nevill's side of the bed.  I rest on common sense and everyday cognisance for this argument.

Where was Nevill shot while he was in bed?

[Erik Narramore]

Possible way a Nevill upstairs scenario could work:

Nevill and June are in bed, asleep.

June hears something and wakes up Nevill.

Nevill goes to investigate and stands on the threshold or main landing.

Jeremy enters the master bedroom from the box room (nearest to Nevill's side of the bed).

Jeremy shoots June, maybe three times.

Jeremy then pursues Nevill downstairs, shooting him at least four times.