Arlidge summing up for the prosecution:
"Once the jury returned to court, Arlidge began his closing speech. The murders, he said, could only have been committed by Jeremy or his sister Sheila. Jeremy himself had made it a ‘two-horse race’ by telling police that his father had telephoned him for help, saying Sheila had gone berserk with a gun. The phone call, said Arlidge, was Jeremy's ‘fatal mistake.’
‘… If Jeremy Bamber did not get that telephone call, (there is no evidence that he didn’t) if that is a lie - and I am going to suggest it is - there can only be one reason for his lying and that is it was he, Jeremy Bamber, who had done it and was trying to cover it up…’
Arlidge accepted that Sheila was mentally ill and obsessed with religion, but he suggested that the Bible found by her side was part of the attempt by Jeremy Bamber to fake her suicide. (There is no evidence Jeremy touched the bible.)
Arlidge said that Sheila ‘may have decided to offer no resistance’ to Jeremy and simply allowed him to pump two bullets into her throat. (Ridiculous).
Throughout the trial Arlidge had stressed that Sheila had no knowledge or experience with firearms. Ann Eaton said that as soon as she heard the killing weapon had been reloaded, she realized Sheila could not possibly have done it. ‘She would not know one end of the barrel of a gun to another,’ Ann said. Peter Eaton told the police: ‘Sheila, I would have said, was definitely frightened of guns. I had never seen Sheila hold a gun…’ David Boutflour said: ‘I do not … recall seeing her with a gun.’ (The truth is that Sheila had been taught how to fire guns, including shotguns, while on a shooting holiday in Scotland. Unearthed photographs show Sheila holding guns in all manner of poses. Sheila had participated in target shooting. She had observed the Anschutz having been reloaded. Indeed, she had watched Jeremy load the rifle on the eve of her death. As one witness pointed out at a later date: ‘She’d been on farms and around shoots all her life - twenty-seven years. She couldn’t have done that without knowing something about guns.’ Not generally known is that Sheila’s fingerprints were recovered from at least two guns inside the house. There were other weapons inside the farmhouse that the police never saw fit to test for fingerprints, so it’s possible Sheila touched these as well. Five years after Jeremy was sent to prison for life, Robert Boutflour was interviewed by the City of London police. An extract from his witness statement reads: ‘I also still have a vision of June sitting with Pam, at a garden table and June asking: ‘What would you think if you saw Jeremy showing Sheila how to load bullets into a rifle?... June had made Jeremy clear the table…’ It must be remembered that the killer at White House Farm didn’t need to be any type of expert with guns to carry out the killings. Jeremy never suggested that Sheila had asked him about a gun, or shown particular interest in guns, or that he had seen her practising. One would think that if he was trying to palm the crime onto her shoulders he would have done so.)
Arlidge admitted that Essex police should have handled the initial stages of the investigation more efficiently. With generous spirit, he added: ‘It’s not for me to praise or to defend the police.’ (Another questionable statement, considering Arlidge was using the very evidence the police accumulated to make his case against Jeremy Bamber; the Crown therefore relied upon the efficiency, consistency and integrity of that evidence.)
Arlidge mocked Jeremy’s reasons for not dialling 999 after receiving his father’s telephone call for help. ‘What reaction would anybody have receiving that telephone call?’ he asked the jury. ‘Most people would think: Emergency! Danger!’ (He did not tell the jury that ‘most people’ didn’t know just what sort of person Sheila was or would know of her recent history and state of mind. ‘Most people’ would not be aware of the Bamber family’s - and Sheila’s own - concerted efforts to keep the situation under wraps. ‘Most people’ would not know that Sheila had had such incidents in the past and Nevill had always been able to get her under control.) But not Jeremy Bamber, insisted Arlidge, who had not instinctively dialled 999. Instead, he had telephoned Chelmsford Police Station. ‘This is an explanation that can’t stand up in a month of Sundays.’
Arlidge added that Jeremy had been determined that the police should come and pick him up, so it would be ‘absolutely apparent’ he wasn’t at the farm. (Another misrepresentation. The police log indicates that when Jeremy first reported the incident he asked PC West what he should do. After inquiring as to whether Jeremy had tried ringing his father back, West said: ‘Will you go to the house and wait for the police officers and liaise with them there…’ Jeremy had asked ‘Shall I go now?’ PC West had given the instruction: ‘Yes, the car from Witham won’t take long.’)
Arlidge maintained that for members of the extended family to have lied or to have given evidence they were unsure of would be ‘pretty incredible.’ (Mr Arlidge hadn’t done his homework.) ‘Can it be,’ he asked the jury, ‘they all got it wrong?’ (The answer is yes; and these people all benefited by Jeremy’s demise.)
And so ended the prosecution case."
