the finding of a hacksaw in the garden, because Jeremy had entered the house via the windows many times, before the killings and since. The defence argued that Sheila was the killer and that she did know how to handle guns, having been raised on a farm and had attended shoots when she was younger. She had a very serious mental illness, had told a psychiatrist she felt capable of killing her children, and the loaded rifle and cartridges had been left on the kitchen table by Jeremy. There had been a recent family argument about placing her children in foster care. A former boyfriend of Sheila's gave a written statement to the court that she had had some kind of breakdown in March 1985, in his presence, when she began beating the wall with her fists because the telephone line had gone dead during a call; she had said the phone was bugged and talked about God and the devil, and how the latter loved her. This former boyfriend said he had feared for the safety of people around Sheila, who had a "deep and intense dislike" of June, her adoptive mother. The defence argued that people who have carried out so-called "altruistic" killings have been known to engage in ritualistic behaviour before killing themselves, and that Sheila might have placed the silencer in the cupboard, changed her clothes and washed herself, which would explain why there was little lead on her hands, or why sugar from the floor was not found on her feet. There was also a possibility that the blood in the silencer was not hers, but was a mixture of Nevill's and June's. Summing up, verdict The judge told the jury that there were three crucial points, in no particular order. Did they believe Mugford or Jeremy? Were they sure that Sheila was not the killer who then committed suicide? He said this question involved another: was the second, fatal, shot fired at Sheila with the silencer on? If yes, she could not have fired it. Finally, did Nevill call Jeremy in the middle of the night? If there was no such call, it undermined the entirety of Jeremy's story; the only reason he would have had to invent the phone call was that he was responsible for the murders. On 28 October, after deliberating more than nine hours, the jury found Jeremy guilty by