The terms 'sound moderator', 'silencer' and 'suppressor' all mean the same thing:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silencer_(firearms)
Yes, but that wasn't my point. "Silencer" is just a colloquial expression. As I state above, there is strictly no such thing and the significance of that is fairly obvious and I need not spell it out to you.
According to AE's WS AP first raised the issue of the silencer on 7th Aug. AP had seen it at WHF when he visited last week-end of July. He raised it with EP on 8th Aug. JB was asked to complete a further WS about the silencer (and scope) on 8th Aug
To recap, Puglove's point was about the presumed mental process of a hypothetical 'guilty Bamber'. What Puglove is saying is that Bamber must have fathomed-out that the "silencer" would be missed and that that in itself would be a telling indicator of his culpability, therefore - the theory goes - he reasoned that he needed to leave the "silencer" there.
My response to Puglove on that is essentially that Bamber would not have reasoned things out that way, if at all. I don't believe Bamber would even need to have thought about this. If we assume the hypothesis that Bamber did it, then intuitively he would have decided to take the "silencer" with him, because (among other reasons):
(i). the moderator wasn't just a circumstantial 'jigsaw piece', it bore and represented forensic and ballistic evidence in its own right, and Bamber had sufficient common-sense and knew enough about guns to realise that not disposing of the "silencer" could, potentially, implicate him; and,
(ii). Bamber was obviously shooting all members of his family that knew about the "silencer". I accept your point above that members of the extended family might have been aware of it, but would Bamber have factored that in?; and,
(iii). removing the "silencer" was just the obvious reactive thing to do, whereas replacing the "silencer" in the gun case (or wherever it was) was more a proactive thing to do, and in that type of situation, the former is more probable than the latter; and,
(iv). Bamber's knowledge of guns, albeit only that of a 'gun user', would be sufficient for him to realise that ballistic evidence of a moderated firearm would be inconclusive and debatable. Bamber needed the police to see that everybody had been shot and that the shooter had done the killing and then killed herself (per Bamber's staging of it). There is an argument that Bamber should have left the moderator with Sheila's body, so as to imply that she had detached it before killing herself, but in that regard see (i) above: the moderator itself was evidence, not just a circumstantial 'piece' in a jigsaw. So intuitively (if not logically) Bamber has to take the moderator with him and dispose of it so that it is gone forever. "Buried moderators tell no tales". As such, my own hypothetical Bamber would subconsciously weigh up the risks of circumstantial evidence versus the risks of forensic evidence, and he would chose to accept the former and eliminate the latter;
(v). following on from (iv) above, Bamber must have realised that he could more easily avoid close questions about a "missing moderator" than he could forensic questions about blood, hairs and other human tissue and other traces on an in situ moderator.
"A missing moderator, officer? No, sorry, I know nothing about that. Sorry, must dash, meeting a new girlfriend you know. Oh, by the way, here's my solicitor's telephone number. You'll be putting questions to him now, in writing please."
Bottom line: no moderator, no forensic evidence, police are screwed. Perhaps they would have found some other forensic basis to charge him anyway, but at the very least in that scenario they have a greatly weaker case against Bamber (it's weak already).
It's for those reasons that I regard the presence of the "silencer" as more incongruous than not if we are working on the basis that Bamber did it. I acknowledge Puglove's rudimentary logic, and it's not a surprise to see it mentioned because, after all, it forms part of the Crown's case theory. But logic doesn't always render the correct conclusion and I believe the decision about the "silencer" would be more likely made by a hypothetical 'guilty Bamber' intuitively/sub-consciously.