I still can't quite get my head around the whole phone fiasco. None of it makes any real sense and I think it was one of the things which sewed the first seeds of suspicion of Bamber for the police. It just didn't add up.
Jeremy Bamber isn’t bright — he’s demonstrated that spectacularly throughout.
I believe there one of two reasons he called the police; possibly a combination
He may have originally intended not to call the police until he arrived at WHF for work in the morning, but when his plan went awry and he didn’t shoot Nevill dead in bed, then Nevill made it downstairs where Jeremy had to kill him, he had no option but to unplug the bedroom phone and put it in the kitchen (hiding the kitchen one amongst the magazines) so police would assume Nevill had rushed downstairs to phone Jeremy. The police would have wondered why Nevill hadn’t called 999 from the bedroom phone when he hadn’t even been shot in the bedroom.
He had time to think as he was clearing up and showering in his wetsuit at WHF, and decided to dial Goldhanger hoping BT would be able to trace the call was made. He then cut it off when his answerphone “picked the call up”. Then left the receiver off the hook.
Once home he spent a good hour or so getting his story right, then steeled himself to phone the local police pretending Nevill had called him at home.
He may have thought that gave him even more of an alibi, especially saying Sheila had gone berserk.
But his reluctance to phone the police sooner suggests he was wondering if it was a good idea or not. It suggests he was scared and steeling himself to call them and sound convincingly worried.
There was a reason he didn’t call them sooner, that’s an absolute.
He could have been weighing it all up. Thinking “should I just turn up in the morning like normal”, or “I’ll call the police, sound as worried as possible, tell them Dad said Sheila’s gone nuts — that could be better!”
So that’s what he did.
And that’s how he came unstuck.
Remember, he called Julie FIRST. He didn’t sound worried, concerned...in fact, sounded upbeat. Told her he loved her.
Then 15 minutes later put on a worried sounding voice and called the police.
Of course, he may have planned to call the police in the early hours anyway, but I feel the fact Nevill made it downstairs put the idea into Jeremy’s head, and he probably thought it was a stroke of luck, being thick.
You can see by some of the implausible stories he comes out with that he can’t be intelligent