Fact No 2 Nevill Bamber never phoned the police that morning
Nevill Bamber did not telephone anyone on the morning he was murdered. He couldn't have as the bedroom telephone had earlier been removed to the kitchen and the kitchen telephone hidden under some magazines. Nevill Bamber was shot three times in his bedroom before he managed to get downstairs only to be beaten and shot several more times. No blood was ever found on or around the kitchen telephone.
It was son Jeremy Bamber who telephoned the police around 3.30am and set the scene when he told them that his father had phoned him to say that Sheila had a gun and had gone berserk. Records show that only one telephone call was ever received by Essex Police and that was from Jeremy Bamber. Not only did Jeremy Bamber not dial 999 for emergency assistance but he took time to telephone his girlfriend in London and tell her that it had kicked off at the farmhouse. Interestingly, the evidence shows that this call t the girlfriend was placed around 3am, some 20 minutes before the call to police.
Well most of this for a start.
Some people
think he didn't phone anyone but they don't
know so it is wrong to present this as fact. The house sounds and looks like it was chock full of clutter and they might well have put a load of it on the phone in the kitchen themselves at some time beforehand, so when the kitchen phone that was
actually in use, which I believe was a more practical cordless variety, was taken away for repair (I think the previous day?) after thunderstorm damage, the most 'normal' result is June deciding to move the little-used bedroom phone down to the most-used room in the house to replace it.
You also don't
know that Nevill was upstairs when the shooting began, you just suppose he was: whereas there's a lot of June's blood on her side of the bed from her initial shots, I understand there's no blood from Nevill in the room at all. Only someone who has made up their mind it was the murderer who moved the telephone would close their mind to the possibility Nevill was elsewhere and was shot through the bedroom doorway whilst rushing to help, then retreated back to the kitchen where he was attacked again. This would account for the casings, which ejected slightly forward and right, being by the bottom right corner of the bedroom, to the right of the door.
So if Nevill had been in the kitchen - possibly he had been talking to an upset Sheila, possibly he had heard a cow in distress giving birth in the shed next door, possibly he was getting a drink (there could be lots of perfectly normal reasons) it is perfectly possibly he heard the shots in the boys' room above, telephoned for help, heard June scream and dropped the phone to run to help her, leaving the line open.
Of course no blood would be found on the phone then. Notwithstanding the fact the police proceeded to use it when they arrived so the phone in the crime scene photo is not an accurate recording of how it was left.
So why would he phone Jeremy? Well first of all he was nearest; second he knew all about Sheila's mental health problems unlike
anyone else in the area so wouldn't need a lengthy explanation/be incredulous; thirdly at that point he may not have known/believed she would actually kill them all; fourthly, if he didn't also phone the police, it has to born in mind that calling the police would be hugely embassing in his role as a local magistrate and as judged from their war time history and the fact they had been secretive about both June's and Sheila's mental health it might just have been his hope to keep all the dirty laundry out if public view.
The call to the girlfriend: everyone else changed their statements to retro-fit the time of that call, didn't they? In 1985 clocks were mostly battery or clockwork powered and their accuracy relied on someone listening to the pips on Radio 4 to set the clock, and then the clock being a good time-keeper. We are dealing with multiple people, multiple clocks, multiple locations. Suddenly, with hindsight everyone realises they misremembered the times of the phonecalls: the policeman got all muddled up between a 2 and a 5, Mugford's housemate keeps her clock 10mins fast (which they know to be true because a month later,
after changing her mind they went to her house to check, and Lo and Behold it was 10 minutes fast. Who'da Thunk It. Whereas in his statements despite trying to persuade him otherwise JB remains clear he called the police first.
I use words like 'could', 'might', 'possibly', 'perhaps' etc because I cannot state anything as fact.
Much like everyone else.