Why did Jeremy Bamber call the police?

[Joanne]

Why did Jeremy Bamber call the police from his house to say that mr Bamber had called him to say Sheila had gone wild?
Why didn't he just leave it until the worker turned up the following day?
Or did he think his story was 'good enough' for the police to believe the phone call tale?
Jeremy had already made the mistake of shooting Sheila with the silencer on, so why draw attention to the scene?
Or again is it that he thought he'd done enough to blame Sheila?

[John]

He was attempting to create an alibi by placing himself in Goldhanger at a certain time.  If he left it until morning he would have been the one to have made the discovery.

In inventing the telephone call from Nevill he was putting Sheila in the frame from the very start. The Essex cops fell for it didn't they?

[Joanne]

I wonder how may of the police, CID, fire arms team et al that attended thought Jeremy Bamber was guilty or not?
I don't really buy this "Some one was moving about in the house" bit because during the night there is a tendancy to hear and see things that aren't there and you try to justify it to yourself, it's the first thing they told us when we did guard duty in the TA and I don't believe Sheila was running amock while the police et al were outside to be honest and there were two bodies in the kitchen, then one.

[Holly Goodhead]

I wonder how may of the police, CID, fire arms team et al that attended thought Jeremy Bamber was guilty or not?
I don't really buy this "Some one was moving about in the house" bit because during the night there is a tendancy to hear and see things that aren't there and you try to justify it to yourself, it's the first thing they told us when we did guard duty in the TA and I don't believe Sheila was running amock while the police et al were outside to be honest and there were two bodies in the kitchen, then one.

Joanne although I believe JB innocent I tend to agree with you insofar as I'm not convinced about: movement at a window, anyone alive when police first arrived on scene, two bodies in kitchen or that Nevill made a phone call to police/two logs.  It seems clear to me that with a case of this magnitude, length and breadth, innocent mistakes will be made. 

[Holly Goodhead]

Why did Jeremy Bamber call the police from his house to say that mr Bamber had called him to say Sheila had gone wild?
Why didn't he just leave it until the worker turned up the following day?
Or did he think his story was 'good enough' for the police to believe the phone call tale?
Jeremy had already made the mistake of shooting Sheila with the silencer on, so why draw attention to the scene?
Or again is it that he thought he'd done enough to blame Sheila?

If you believe JB guilty then I guess the phone call, in JB's mind anyway, provides some sort of alibi.  His work routine of arriving early in the morning at WHF meant that he would have found the victims in the morning.

If you believe JB innocent, as I do, then the phone call to the police was a natural reaction to the distressed call received from Nevill and the fact JB was cut off and unable to call back.

According to Robert Boutflour, Nevill is on record as saying that EP were no more good than Dad's Army.  Furthermore Colin Caffell states in his book that on the day of Sheila's funeral he was amazed to discover that the relatives had no understanding at all of the severity of Sheila's mental illness.  This leads me to believe that Nevill and June preferred to keep Sheila's illness private and I think the last thing Nevill would have wanted would have been 'Dad's Army' turning up getting involved in what Nevill might have considered was a domestic private matter that could be contained within the immediate family.

[goatboy]

Holly, don't you find it a bit odd that Jeremy didn't call 999?

[ActualMat]

Create a story, an alibi. Alert the police to the crime from a distance.

[Holly Goodhead]

Holly, don't you find it a bit odd that Jeremy didn't call 999?

When I first started looking at the case Goatboy I did think it a bit odd but Its clear from RB's wit stats that NB had a low opinion of EP.  This may have been as a result of his magistrates work.  If NB made his views known to JB and/or overhead NB discuss with others he may well have resisted calling 999 for this reason.  JB does say in his wit stats that NB was not the type to get the authorities involved or words to this effect and this seems to stack up.

We also know that Nevill and June were intensely private people so much that even the relatives had no idea how seriously ill Sheila was.  If JB was aware that Sheila's illness was to be kept hushed up this may have been another reason for not calling 999.  Mental illness was quite taboo back in the mid 80's.  If JB was telling the truth and had things not have escalated but emergency services arrived on the scene to find Sheila just threatening with a gun, it's likely she would have been sectioned and unable to have any access to the twins unsupervised.  Plus word would soon have gone round in the local community.