White House Farm Murders - The Murder Weapon

The Murder Weapon

Nevill kept several guns at the farm. He was reportedly careful with them, cleaning them after use, and made sure not to leave them lying around. The murder weapon was a .22 Anschütz semi-automatic rifle, model 525, which Nevill purchased on 30 November 1984, along with a Parker Hale sound moderator (a "silencer"), telescopic sights, and 500 rounds of ammunition. The rifle used cartridges, which were loaded into a magazine that held ten cartridges. Twenty-five shots were fired during the killing, so if it was fully loaded to begin with it would have been reloaded at least twice. The court heard that it became progressively harder to load as the number of cartridges increases; loading the tenth was described as exceptionally hard.

The rifle was used to shoot rabbits with the silencer and telescopic sights attached. The court heard that a screwdriver was needed to remove the sights, but they were normally left in place because it was time-consuming to realign them. Nevill's nephew, Anthony Pargeter, visited the farmhouse around 26 July 1985, and told the court he had seen the rifle, with the sights and silencer attached, in the gun cupboard in the ground floor office. Bamber testified that he visited the farmhouse on the evening of 6 August, and loaded the gun, thinking he heard rabbits outside, then left it with a full magazine and a box of ammunition on the kitchen table.