Problems With The Silencer Evidence: Crime Scene Choreography & Utility

[Erik Narramore]

The problems with the silencer as part of the murder weapon start with crime scene choreography.

Where is Jeremy stood when he removes the silencer from the rifle?

How does he manage to cross through the crime scene, including the kitchen, without leaving any traces of blood transfers in Nevill's den?

[Erik Narramore]

Still on the choreography of the scene, within any Jeremy scenario, is there a need for the silencer at all?  I think there is a case to be made for it.

Jeremy can incapacitate his parents at the outset.  However, there may have been a risk of alerting Sheila to his presence. 

He really has a choice:

Subdue Sheila first or incapacitate his parents first.  Which? 

Either way, you could argue that the silencer assisted him.  The massacre could be executed pretty quickly, and if Sheila is - as the prosecution claim - sedated and drowsy, etc., then why worry about her?  If Jeremy gets into a bit of a struggle with Sheila and she ends up with marks on her, that can be explained away, but there is also the risk of Sheila marking Jeremy or leaving forensic traces on Jeremy that he then has to explain to investigators.

[Erik Narramore]

Another point to consider is the twins. All that needs to happen is one of the twins to wake up and start making noise, and then his precise plan as you have laid out is potentially thrown into disarray.  What if one of the twins decides to run away and hide somewhere?

[Erik Narramore]

I return to my original point, however.

I'm referring to blood prints from Jeremy.  How can it be that Jeremy has crossed the floor of the den and put his hand and arm in the gun cupboard without leaving any trace of blood?  Did he wash himself and change his boots before entering the back corridor?

Paw prints from Crispy isn't such a strange notion either.

If Sheila's feet were, as you claim, perfectly clean, then she must have been carried by Jeremy to the master bedroom and she can't have struggled or moved around, yet you have Jeremy ungagging and untying her before shooting her.  She must have offered up no resistance, perhaps not realising what had just happened.

[Erik Narramore]

My pet theory about the silencer is, briefly, that at least two of them were examined by the FSS, and one was returned to the Eatons after undergoing chemical treatment for fingerprinting purposes.  David Boutflour has then handled this, or seen it, and confused one with the other in his own mind.  On the other hand, I accept that it is possible a guilty Jeremy would miss the 'stickiness', etc., of the silencer if he was wearing gloves, and he could also miss a hair.

Yet then you have to ask yourself this: How and in what way and to what extent did he clean the silencer, if at all?  If we're saying he didn't clean it because all he was doing was moving it out of the way so that it would not be found, you then have to ask:

(i). Would Jeremy be that stupid in assuming that the police would not search the place in the house dedicated to the storage of firearms and paraphernalia?  He is supposed to have planned this.

(ii). Why wouldn't Jeremy just take the silencer away with him?  Even if it's absence would be noticed and seen as suspicious, he would never have been convicted on that basis.

(iii). Why didn't Jeremy return to clean the silencer properly?  Why did he allow the relatives keys to the house instead?

(iv). If Jeremy took himself and the silencer to the gun cupboard, why wasn't blood found on the floor of the back corridor, Nevill's den and in the gun cupboard itself?

I could go on with the problems.  Really, Jeremy's actions don't make a lot of sense if we accept the official narrative.  It's a bit of paradox to say that Jeremy is cold and calculating enough to stage a phone call and put on an act with the police, relatives and at the funeral and in other respects, but at the same time, he would not take care of incriminating evidence.  Maybe he was just reckless and arrogant and thought he had got away with it?  But this is looking at things backwards.  At the point he could have disposed of the silencer, he did not know that he had got away with it.  I also have issues with the blood patterning found within the silencer.  There's also the problem with the drawback theory that the silencer evidence depends on.  And there's the questions about the chain-of-custody of the silencer.

[Erik Narramore]

Jeremy, it is alleged, left the silencer in situ after shooting his family.  I suppose the official theory is that he did this because he had not expected to have to remove the silencer from the rifle, so he had to think quickly and decided it would be better to return the silencer to the gun cupboard rather than take it with him, so that it would not be missed.

I accept that this is plausible, but I personally would have thought the more natural thing to do would be to simply leave the silencer by Sheila's body.  That way, the police find it immediately and the explanation is obvious, and then it's much harder to incriminate Jeremy.

Why didn't he do that (assuming he is guilty)?  If I were a convinced guilter, I would need to satisfy myself on that point.  There must be a reason.  Maybe he just panicked?

The alternatives are you either clean the silencer there and then and return it to the gun cupboard, or you take the silencer with you.

The last of those three options is adequate but risks suspicion being cast on him due to somebody noticing the silencer is missing.  But then you have to ask: How would the police know the silencer is missing?  Does the firearms certificate held by Nevill record it?  I'll have to check, but would the police be that thorough or make the connection?  Really?  It would be a bit of a stretch.  All Jeremy would need to do in this situation is ensure he took custody of the farmhouse after the police left.

Instead, he leaves the family to take custody of the farmhouse and the crucial evidence he has left there - part of the murder weapon.

[Erik Narramore]

I find it hard to believe.  The gun cupboard is in Nevill's den.  If you look at photographs of the den, you'll see the carpet is a cream or cork colour and immaculate.  How did Jeremy manage to negotiate that carpet without leaving blood?  And there was no blood in the gun cupboard except on the silencer itself.

[Erik Narramore]

Some further issues:

First, if Sheila had already started shooting and/or wounded somebody and Nevill had managed to seize the rifle from her, the police would have been called and the incident would have ended there and then, so the issue of blood traces would have been moot.  If Sheila was the killer, then she must have caught Nevill off-guard somehow or escaped from him.

Second, Nevill (and/or June) would not have just moved the silencer.  They would have moved the rifle.  Furthermore, if we imagine a scenario in which, after Jeremy leaves, Nevill has returned the rifle to the gun cupboard, then a factor to consider is that the gun cupboard was supposed to be locked and secured per the conditions of Nevill's firearms certificate but wasn't.  It wasn't even lockable, despite Nevill's arangements having been inspected by an Essex police officer a few months before.  This can clearly be seen in the photographs.  This means there was no way for Nevill (or Jeremy himself) to secure the firearms against Sheila or a third party intruder.

I believe it follows from all this that:

(i). in an alternate scenario in which Sheila is the killer, there cannot have been any immediate prior incident in which Sheila used or threatened to use the rifle, which means that Sheila did not enter the den that night, and Sheila must have gone downstairs and into the back corridor alone. Sheila would not then detach the silencer prior to shooting the family.  She would simply pick up and use the rifle with it left on.  This, I believe, explains Rivlin's defence strategy; and,

(ii). logically, only two people could have detached the silencer and replaced it in the gun cupboard prior to the incident: Jeremy or Sheila.  If the killer was Sheila, that means either there was a long pause before her suicide, or an innocent Jeremy had detached the silencer at some prior point.  Conversely, if the killer was Jeremy, then he has somehow managed to leave the silencer in the cupboard without leaving any transferred blood traces anywhere.

With the luxury of hindsight we can see that a different conclusion is possible to that of Rivlin, which is that the silencer was taken off the rifle by Jeremy before he even returned to the farmhouse and witnessed the family meeting in the kitchen.  He did not take the silencer off the rifle only at that point, but some time before then, maybe days before, maybe earlier that day, who knows?  He probably can't remember himself.  The significance of the point is that it allows the possibility of the silencer being found by somebody after the shootings and maliciously or mistakenly entering it into evidence against Jeremy.

To my mind, Jeremy's story of him shooting [at] rabbits just prior to leaving for home supports his claim that the rifle did not already have the silencer on it, implying that the silencer has been removed at some undetermined point prior to that.  He would not have gone out and started shooting [at] rabbits with the silencer on, as this would not have scared off the rabbits.  I do think he was shooting at the rabbits more than shooting the rabbits - if you see the distinction.  You don't use a rifle like that just to shoot one rabbit after another.  It's not possible.  Anybody familiar with these firearms will, I hope, concur with me on that point.

[Erik Narramore]

Let's think about this further:

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]

But surely Sheila could have used the silencer and then taken it off to shoot herself, leaving the silencer by her body.  That, to me, seems the more likely method for staging her suicide.

Taking a step back, we know that the rifle did not fit in the gun cupboard with the silencer on.  It follows that anybody returning the rifle to the house would unscrew the silencer, but we also know that Jeremy says he went out to shoot rabbits.  One argument is that Jeremy would keep the silencer on in that situation in order to be able to kill as many rabbits as possible.  The other argument is that he would take it off so that the audible crack of the rifle would scare them away.  It's also the case that the silencer could plausibly be off the rifle because, if it had to be unscrewed to fit it in the gun cupboard, somebody could absent-mindedly leave the silencer behind.  So we're left with uncertainty.

I would normally go with the prosecution argument because the 'silent massacre' theory makes sense, and Jeremy could have miscalculated the staging and then panicked and returned the silencer to the gun cupboard, thinking it would then be out of the way but at the same time could be accounted-for, thus averting suspicion.  It would have been simpler and better to leave the silencer by her body, but the simpler solutions aren't always apparent in a situation like that.

The difficulty is that to return the silencer to the gun cupboard, Jeremy needed to cross the back corridor and the floor of the den, and there is no blood there.  There is also no blood on the door of the gun cupboard or inside the gun cupboard (other than in and on the silencer itself).  How can that be?

The police also checked the gun cupboard and did not find the silencer in there.

Jeremy also allowed the relatives free access to the farmhouse, and must have known they would seize this evidence.

It doesn't add up.  The evidence points away from the gun cupboard, not to it.  It's at least a basis for reasonable doubt, in my view.

[Leslie Aalders]

But surely Sheila could have used the silencer and then taken it off to shoot herself, leaving the silencer by her body.  That, to me, seems the more likely method for staging her suicide.

Taking a step back, we know that the rifle did not fit in the gun cupboard with the silencer on.  It follows that anybody returning the rifle to the house would unscrew the silencer, but we also know that Jeremy says he went out to shoot rabbits.  One argument is that Jeremy would keep the silencer on in that situation in order to be able to kill as many rabbits as possible.  The other argument is that he would take it off so that the audible crack of the rifle would scare them away.  It's also the case that the silencer could plausibly be off the rifle because, if it had to be unscrewed to fit it in the gun cupboard, somebody could absent-mindedly leave the silencer behind.  So we're left with uncertainty.

I would normally go with the prosecution argument because the 'silent massacre' theory makes sense, and Jeremy could have miscalculated the staging and then panicked and returned the silencer to the gun cupboard, thinking it would then be out of the way but at the same time could be accounted-for, thus averting suspicion.  It would have been simpler and better to leave the silencer by her body, but the simpler solutions aren't always apparent in a situation like that.

The difficulty is that to return the silencer to the gun cupboard, Jeremy needed to cross the back corridor and the floor of the den, and there is no blood there.  There is also no blood on the door of the gun cupboard or inside the gun cupboard (other than in and on the silencer itself).  How can that be?

The police also checked the gun cupboard and did not find the silencer in there.

Jeremy also allowed the relatives free access to the farmhouse, and must have known they would seize this evidence.

It doesn't add up.  The evidence points away from the gun cupboard, not to it.  It's at least a basis for reasonable doubt, in my view.

This seems to be a suitable place to discuss the silencer.

[Leslie Aalders]

So,lets take another look at the official series of events regarding the silencer and the possibility that it was planted Rob.Although by planted,do you mean the silencer its self Rob or just the blood and paint.
In other words,do you think the silencer was taken out of the gun cupboard then contaminated and replaced,or simply planted there once the police had left White House Farm?

Anyway,if Jeremy Bamber is guilty he shot his family with the silencer attached then unscrewed it and put it in the gun cupboard.Erik has extensively pointed out the problems JB would have had returning the silencer to the den in the previous posts.Ok,the police search the house including the gun cupboard but do not find the silencer or sights.When JB is giving his statement to the police on 7th-8th Aug,Anne Eaton or her brother Dave or maybe both, hear JB tell the police that the silencer and sights were not attached to the rifle when he took it out to shoot rabbits on the evening before the shooting.

Anne Eaton and Dave then discuss the abscence of the sights and silencer with Anthony Pargetter and Annes husband Peter and they decide it is suspicious to remove  them,especially the sights,also, Anthony P had noticed the sights and silencer were attached the weekend before the murders when he visited WHF.

So,along with other things that JB told the police,ie,the phone call from Nevill, the relatives quickly concluded that JB was the killer and not Sheila,so much so that they went to the police on the afternoon of 9th Aug with their concerns.In fact Anthony had already phoned Taff on the 8th about the sights and silencer.So,in the days after the shooting,half the relatives time was taken up comforting Jeremy and helping arrange the funerals and the other half trying to prove Jeremy was the killer of his family and convince the police of this.
Anyway,due to the relatives going to the police,Taff and Stan Jones go back to question JB in the evening of the 9th.Taff asks about the sights and silencer,to which JB replies that his father must have removed them.Jb signed a form that same night giving the police permission to hand the keys of WHF to Anne Eaton.

So,at this stage,the police are quizzing JB about the sights and silencer for the Anschutz,while at the same time asking his permission to give AE the keys to WHF to clean up.Anne Eaton and other relatives enter WHF the very next day,10th Aug,along with Basil Cock the executer,and while looking for firearms Dave Boutflour finds the sights and bloodied silencer in the gun cupboard,it also has scratch marks on it and red paint.The relatives take the sights and silencer as well as boxes of bullets and cartridges home and hand the silencer to the police a few days later.
About this time,the 12th Aug,AE phones Jeremy and asks him to meet her at WHF along with Julie for coffee.JB and Julie go to WHF but there is no mention of him looking in the gun cupboard at any time,the only thing he looked for was Nevills wallet.
JB subsequently goes through WHF and sells off some items,the silencer however is never mentioned as being missing by himself or in any of Julie's statements,and there is no record of JB asking the police if they had the sights and silencer for the Anschutz in their possesion.If JB looked for the silencer or enquired about it to the relatives or the police there is no record of this,in fact the first he heard about the silencer after the murders was when he was arrested and told that Sheila's blood had been found in it.Whether he was told at that stage that the relatives had actually found the silencer and handed it in I do not know.
So,thats more or less what happened apparently,in the next post we will look at the problems with the official scenario,although most of them have already been pointed out by Erik in the previous posts on this thread.

[Leslie Aalders]

So,let us see if the official story about the silencer adds up then.
It isn't clear who first mentioned the silencer after the murders or why,but things happened pretty fast,by her own addmission Anne Eaton didn't even know that Nevill/JB had bought an Anschutz rifle let alone a silencer or sights for it.Yet by the time Anthony Pargetter arrived on the scene on 8th Aug the day after the shooting, she was able to tell him what gun was used for the shooting and that it was minus the sights and silencer at the time.
Now,AP had seen the Anschutz with the sights and silencer attached at WHF the previous weekend while on a visit,and after hearing they were not on the rifle when it was found on Sheila's body immediately phoned Taff,what was said I do not know.
So, right away after the shooting the sights and silencer are THE main items of interest fer the relatives,they cannot accept JBs story about removing them to fit in the gun cupboard.Although,I believe JB said the sights were removed to allow the rifle to fit in its case,which makes sense If its not being used regularly I suppose.
Now the family were so convinced that JB was the killer that they went to see Taff and Stan on 9th Aug too,they spoke again about the absense of the sights/silencer and proclaimed that there was no way that Sheila could have re-loaded the rifle after being told that 24 shots had been fired.
Taff and Stan went to see JB that same evening and asked about the sights/silencer and the extra five bullets on the kitchen worktop.

OK enough scene setting,point is that by 9th Aug JB must have been aware that there was great interest in the silencer by the police,even though he may not have been aware that it was the relatives who were fuelling the police interest in it.But one thing is certain,the police and all the relatives knew that there was a silencer and sights for the Anschutz rifle.
So,the first question is,where did everyone think the silencer and sights were located at this point?
Taff must have checked and  known that they were not crime scene exhibits surely? And what about the relatives,didn't they enquire of their whereabouts to Taff?
Next point,in the TV series,after the silencer had been found by the relatives and handed in,Taff says to Stan'you have to be joking!'.But why was Taff surprised that the relatives had found a silencer at the WHF? After all,Taff had been discussing the silencer with JB and the relatives for days,he knew of its existence for heavens sake,so why any surprise when it was found and handed in? And after all,the police didn't have any sights or silencers as exhibits up until then did they?
Well,as Erik has pointed out,there seems to be documentation showing that two silencers were examined,so the police may have indeed found a silencer on the day of the shooting.This would explain Taffs reaction when the relatives handed in a silencer,and if you think about it,it would explain why the police or relatives for that matter did not show any interest in the whereabouts of the sights/silencer in the days following the shooting even though there was an intense interest growing about their significance.
Anyway,some claim the relatives did not hand in a silencer until september,and indeed Anne Eaton was asked why she didn't mention Dave finding the silencer  in her 14th Aug statement by the city of London police investigation,or COLP for short.She certainly mentioned it in her statements after JB was arrested,but then again she mentioned many more things against JB that was not in her first statement.
But it is odd how everything apparently came together so quickly after the murders,Anne and Dave apparently found out about Junes bike by their aunt Connie Lugg the morning after the shooting and Anne went on a crusade to find it for some reason,eventually tying it to the crime.

Anyway,I think the relatives probably did find the silencer in the gun cupboard on 10th Aug,it would have been too risky to say they found it there if they didn't,they couldn't have known how thoroughly the police checked the cupboard,but they would have been aware that the silencer had not been taken as an exhibit and tested,therefore they could contaminate it in any way they saw fit ,IF they wanted to.
Another point,it would have been risky for the relatives to hand in a silencer on a later date in September after JB had been clearing out the house and having probably checked out the gun cupboard.
But there can be no doubt that the relatives did have the opportunity to contaminate the silencer,and why didn't they hand in the sights at the same time? How did they know that they hadn't been on for the shooting and sprayed by a mist of blood unseen by the naked eye?

Oh well,I dont suppose I have said much of any evidential value,however on the next post we will look at JBs reaction to the silencer.

[Leslie Aalders]

Sorry to mislead,but it appears the TV show was fiction regarding Taff being handed the silencer,it was Bob Miller who took the silencer from Stan and sent it to Huntingdon for testing.Not sure when Taff found out about the relatives discovery.
Anyway,what Bob Miller says in an interview doesn't seem right,he more or less says that the police didn't know there was a silencer for the Anschutz until it was found,yet we know the silencer was well discussed between JB,the police and the relatives days before it was found in the gun cupboard.

It just doesn't make much sense.As soon as the police were aware that there was a silencer and sights for the murder weapon why didn't they just ask JB where they would be in the White House and have the SOCO team retrieve them as crime scene exhibits?
OK,if Bamber had tried to hide the existence of the silencer from the police,but he didn't,he even spoke about it in front of AE while giving his statement,then AP got involved saying it was not the done thing to rempve sights once they are fitted.Yet when the silencer was 'found' as it were by the relatives,it seems this was a big surprise.But if the police didn't have the sights and silencer in their possesion,just where did they think they were? Of course they had to be somewhere at WHF for heavens sake.
One tv programme said the 'FIND' turned the case upside down,yet EVERYONE involved knew a silencer existed by then.
So does this suggest the police had already seized a silencer on the morning of the shooting? If not,why didn't they just go to the White House and pick it up once they knew of its existence? Seems to me  the only way to make sense of what the statements say is to assume the police already had a silencer before the relatives found one.

[Leslie Aalders]

So,let us see what happened with Jeremy Bamber concerning the silencer.
Now,I have tried to argue that the police may have had a silencer in their possession before the relatives found the one in the gun cupboard,but is this logical? Wouldn't the police have told JB that they had taken sights and a silencer from the White House while questioning him? The thing is,we know for sure the police didn't tell JB about removing the sights/silencer or he would have had proof of two silencers after the relatives handed one in too.

And Bamber has never questioned the fact that the relatives found a silencer in the gun cupboard,this can only mean that either Bamber put the silencer back in the cupboard after the murders or he had no idea where Nevill put it after removing it from the Anschutz and therefore could not challenge what the relatives claimed about where they found it.After all,where else would you put a silencer if not in a gun cupboard?
So,as odd as it may seem,it looks like the police did not have a silencer in their possession before the relatives handed one in,or if they did it was not disclosed to JB.It would be interesting to hear what Jeremy Bamber has to say regarding his understanding of the whereabouts of the silencer and sights for the Anschutz in the first few days after the murders.
You would think if he was guilty and put the silencer back in the gun cupboard after the shooting,that he would be eager to find out if it had been seized by the police or not,yet we know he did not enquire about it.
But I still think its very odd that the police didn't go and get the sights and silencer from WHF once they knew of their existence,very odd!
Anyway,Erik has already pointed out the problems that JB would have faced putting the silencer back in the cupboard without leaving any blood evidence as well as squeezing past Nevills body and chairs.
And of course we have to ask again why JB let the relatives into WHF first,before he had found out if the silencer was still in the gun cupboard?And when he did go to the WHF on 12th Aug,which was incidentally the same day as Stan Jones picked up the silencer,Bamber was only interested in his Dads wallet.
Anyway,we still have to explain just how human blood got into the silencer,and as if that isn't hard enough we have to explain paint on it as well as scratches,so there can only really be two possibilities,either Bamber is guilty or the silencer was deliberatelly contaminated.

So,this is when you have to weigh up Bambers actions post murders and decide if they point to guilt or innocence.
Now personally,for me,it is what JB didn't know about the crime scene that makes me doubt his guilt.
I mean, if Bamber is guilty he knew exactly what happened in WHF on the night of the murders and how he staged things.HE,must have placed the Bible beside Sheila and opened it at a certain page,he may also have placed a suicide note inside it as an alibi,yet when he was told before the trial that there was no photos of the bible and that it had been destroyed he made no song and dance about this.Now this for me could mean that Bamber simply did not know the significance of the Bible or its contents.His alibi apparently up in smoke,yet no record of him making a fuss about this.

Next we have two overlapping issues involving Philip Boyce,firstly Boyce trying to prove that the rifle minus silencer made the marks to Nevills back,and then recently trying to prove that the Aga handles actually made the burns instead.Now,lets say Bamber is guilty,then it follows that he must know what made the marks to Nevills back.So if it is proven that the Aga made the marks,why did Bamber waste time and money trying to prove the rifle made them? Surely a pointless hiding to nothing?
On the other hand,if he had pointed out that the Aga might be responsible and got confirmation of this before his trial,he could have used this to his advantage.
Besides,I find it hard to fit the Aga burns into a guilty Bamber scenario anyway,and if they are accepted definately work in JBs favour in my opinion no matter how you look at it.Either Nevill lay beside the Aga for a considerable amount of time as the burns formed before getting up and being killed on the scuttle,which must point to Sheila as the killer,or Nevill died against the Aga and the police moved him to the scuttle. Now,the fact that Bamber did not point out that the police moved Nevill by proving that the Aga made the burns must obviously point to his innocence too.

So,for me,as I have said many times,Bambers obvious ignorance of what took place on the night of the murders by not using certain things to his advantage,for me points to innocence.And if this is the case then it follows that the silencer evidence must have been fabricated.
Oh well,we will just have to wait and see what the CCRC makes of the current submission.