Robert Sugden

[lizann]

I hope they're going to show what Lachlan threw away. He threw something in the bushes (I think) when Lawrence was trying to make him get in the car to go to the hospital.

did lachlan throw away the gun that he had found from ross, what gun has aaron the one from robert shooting paddy, how many guns around?

[uberfan]

Paddy shot Robert, Aaron saw it, which is why he got rid of the weapon. IMHO.

[Telly Watcher]

did lachlan throw away the gun that he had found from ross, what gun has aaron the one from robert shooting paddy, how many guns around?

This has really bothered me too this past week = is Aaron's gun the same one as Lachlan found in the stream after being dumped there by Ross?

During the 23/09/15 episode, Lachlan was shown in a scene on his own, in the lounge at Home Farm, with a gun (so just like Cluedo!), when Lachlan's script was as follows:

(Lachlan is standing in front of the mirror and talking to his reflection)

"What? What did you say to me. Say it again. Go on."


Lachlan aims gun at mirror in lounge at Home Farm

"Say it again. Say it to my face. Huh. You're full of it, Robert. Got your attention now, haven't I? Haven't I? "


Close up photo of Lachlan's gun at Home Farm on 23/09/15

He then seems to put the gun into his back pocket?

Source:
(268) Aaron & Robert 23rd September 2015 Part 2 of 6 (see from 3m 8s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h2XD7QToMg

Later the same day, Robert and Andy are arguing at Andy's house when Robert keeps telling Andy that Katie's death was an accident. Andy keeps saying that Robert pushed her and he's lying. Andy then beats up Robert as Sarah comes to the front door, she sees the fight and runs out and kneels outside. Andy then drives off in his Land Rover, Robert tries to call him back and Sarah goes to kneel by the side of the phone box and looks at Andy outside Robert's house. Lachlan is inside the bus shelter as he takes the gun out of his rucksack and puts it into his left pocket (I think it's the back trouser pocket for now). Lachlan then walks out of the bus shelter and is run into by Rakesh out jogging. The gun falls out and onto the floor. The gun looks as if it is matt black but this may have been just because it is reflecting a grey cloud or background, because when Lachlan reaches down to pick it up, there is a clear reflection on it showing that it can appear to be shiny black under the right lighting conditions.


Lachlan reaches down to pick up the gun and shows how the gun can appear to be shiny

(269) Aaron & Robert 23rd September 2015 Part 3 of 6 see from 4m 14s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LmQfX1RnYQ

Rakesh sees the gun on the floor and does nothing. Presumably Sarah sees it too as she is kneeling by the phone box. This means that Sarah is another witness that Lachlan had a gun in the village that afternoon. (Could Sarah be an important witness one day?)

Here are side-by-side photos of Aaron's gun and Lachlan's gun.


Aaron's gun in the pub on 01/10/15 / Lachlan's gun at Home Farm on 23/09/15


Lachlan's gun on the road at the bus stop on 23/09/15 / Lachlan's gun as he picks it up on 23/09/15

The photos suggest that Aaron's black gun under the pub's lighting is shinier but similar in shape and detail to the one that Lachlan had at Home Farm on September 23rd. But is the shine on Aaron's gun too shiny and is it a different gun after all?

The big question is "how did Aaron get Aaron's gun?". Did Aaron steal Lachlan's gun from the Home Farm safe? Did Aaron find it, if so where? Did he get given it, if so who from and where and when? Just why has Aaron kept the gun for so long and has he kept the gun for so long for his own future reasons for using it himself, or is he covering for someone else? I am sure that this issue will be answered in the forthcoming "rewind" Emmerdale episode, due to aired during the week starting October 19th, if not in an earlier episode.

We now know, from the Emmerdale episode aired on Thursday October 1st, that Chrissie's bracelet was found near to where Robert was shot. Chrissie was around the village during the afternoon on Friday September 25th but she seemed surprised about the bracelet and gun being missing from the open safe at Home Farm during the Monday 28th episode episode when Lawrence checked it. If she had been wearing the bracelet that afternoon, presumably she would have been wearing it on her wrist at the time and it looks expensive and so it is very unlikely to have dropped off without considerable force. Much more likely, I reckon, is that the same person who had the gun from the Home Farm safe also had Chrissie's bracelet in a loose pocket and just somehow, for whatever reason, carelessly/accidentally dropped it near the scene of the shooting at the back of the Woolpack pub before leaving there. Maybe the bracelet and the gun were in the same pocket and the bracelet dropped out unnoticed in the dark when the gun was taken from the pocket?

As the bracelet was found near the pub, what object did Lachlan throw away soon after into the field outside Emmerdale after Robert's shooting on September 25th? Was this object the gun from the Home Farm safe? If Lachlan robbed the Home Farm safe, took the gun and the bracelet and was Robert's shooter, did he initially plan to give the bracelet earlier to Belle as some sort of odd teenager show of affection but he found Kirin was with Belle in the house, so Lachlan kept the bracelet but later dropped this accidentally (being the careless teenager that he seems to be) by the bush behind the Woolpack during the time he was there waiting to shoot Robert?

As the bracelet has now been found as part of police evidence, the bracelet will presumably now be tested for DNA residues? Most of these are likely to be Chrissie's but will DNA testing show someone else has handled the bracelet and left his/her bodily fluids on the bracelet too (blood/saliva/other). If the DNA tests show that residues other than Chrissie's, but similar to hers, are found, will the police suspect a close family member such as Lachlan? (But these are Emmerdale PC Plod soap police, though!)

The 8pm Emmerdale episode for September 25th shows Lachlan walking home in the lane outside Emmerdale when he reaches (with difficulty) into his left trouser pocket, take an object out, then throw this with his left hand into the field to his left. Clearly, this was not a small very light item (such as a bracelet) or smooth item (such as a beer bottle) but something awkwardly-shaped. We know from previous Emmerdale footage (September 23rd) that Lachlan is left-handed and that he has previous history from then of storing his gun in his left pockets. Did Lachlan learn from experience that his left back trouser pocket wasn't too good an idea for storing a gun whereas his left trouser pocket was? The TV episode shown for the evening of September 25th does suggest that Lachlan threw Ross' ex-gun into the field during the evening on September 25th, however.

Let's assume that what Lachlan threw into the field was Ross' ex-gun.

1) Did Lachlan go back to the field the next day, find it, then bury the gun somewhere or dispose of it in a general household waste bin bag for the binmen to collect? Or did Lachlan just forget about the gun in the field and it was either never found for a long while/or never. If any of these things happened, it means that Aaron's gun was a different gun. (Seems possible but is not impossible.)

2) Through sheer luck, Aaron incredibly gets the gun from the field/back of his scrapyard and wondered where it came from, thinking that maybe Chas or Andy or Paddy could have had anything to do with it? (This idea seems to need an unlikely amount of good luck but this isn't an impossible storyline really. Maybe someone like Sarah was playing in the field or someone was walking a dog there one day soon after Robert's shooting, found the gun and gave it to Aaron for scrap value, not even thinking that it was a real and working gun? You know how young kids (like Sarah) get everywhere and know more than anyone else about the local people and what's going on in their local environment, so could Sarah help solve the mystery of the Robert shooter in due course during the 'rewind' episode or even earlier?)

3) Lachlan found his gun in the field and gave it to Aaron to dispose of as a favour through the scrapyard waste? (But why would Aaron want to help Lachlan over this, Lachlan isn't really Aaron's friend so why would Aaron get involved with being an accomplice in an attempted murder plot with Lachlan? This seems unlikely to happen.)

4) Maybe the gun Aaron had in the pub during the October 1st episode is an entirely different gun to Lachlan's gun and that Aaron's gun is either a distraction red herring and unused here for Robert or it was really the gun used to shoot Robert with? (But did Aaron pull the trigger, or did Ross do it and then leave the gun for Aaron to dispose of as part of a joint "All of us in the village really hate Robert" venture?)

5) If Lachlan wasn't the shooter and it wasn't his gun used to shoot Robert, why did Lachlan throw his gun away into the field later? Did he just see Robert being shot, panic and didn't want trouble over having his gun found on him later by Lawrence or Chrissie? Did Lawrence see Lachlan throw the gun away when he was approaching Lachlan in his car in the lane to Home Farm, and does Chrissie know more than she's telling as she's suggested to Lawrence that she's sure that the shooter wasn't Lawrence? Lawrence might have 'confessed' to shooting Robert by believing/knowing/reasoning that Chrissie or Lachlan could have/did shoot Robert?

Mention has been made of the storyline twist for the reveal of who shot Robert. I do wonder if this is just that the storywriters only set up scenes for Aaron to make viewers come to believe that Aaron is the shooter, whereas a big surprise reveal will show that the shooter was really someone else as a single-shooter, such as Lachlan? If not, then Robert's shooting could be a far more dark and complex storyline, such as a joint venture assassination plan involving several well-known Emmerdale characters? Emmerdale is a long-running soap, so I really don't think that long-term characters will have any major part to play in the Who Shot Robert storyline. I suppose we should expect that this is a fairly simple "Scooby-Doo" whodunnit rather than a "Mastermind of the Universe" plot, and so, as usual, the simplest explanation for competing theories for anything is more likely to be the right one ("Occam's Razor" Principle). So, a single-shooter storyline would be more likely than a joint venture storyline, but a joint venture could still happen, of course, if this is what the Emmerdale storyliners decided quite some time ago.

For now, we TV viewers do not know if Robert's shooting crime will be solved by Emmerdale PC Plod soap police. All we know for now is that we will be shown who the shooter is and how the shooting happened by watching the Emmerdale 'rewind' episode, due around week beginning 19th October. It could be that there may not be big consequences for the shooter, however, as the villagers may either never know who Robert's shooter was, or some do find out but then cling together as a close community and don't tell any outsiders (including the police) what these villagers know? Time will tell.

Source:
Occam's Razor Principle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

[alan45]

Could "Aarons"" gun be the same one that Robert shot Paddy with

[Telly Watcher]

Could \\"Aarons\\"\\" gun be the same one that Robert shot Paddy with

Here are photos of the guns used at the woodland lodge (where Robert was going to kill Aaron) and the gun Aaron had at home on 29/09/15.


Woodland lodge gun / Aaron's gun at home on 29/09/15

The woodland lodge gun is totally different from the Lachlan and Aaron guns, so Aaron's gun is definitely not the woodland lodge gun.

Source:
http://www.soapboards.co.uk/forums/s...777#post831777

[Telly Watcher]

Kate Oates said in a recent interview for Digital Spy:

"You can pick a timeframe I guess, and I like stories that go along with quite a pace. I felt with a storyline like this, where you've got five or six potential suspects, it's nice to pick them all off at a bit of a lick and keep the audience engaged over that period of time. It's just a judgement call and that's the way we chose to do it."

Read more at: http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/soaps/s1...d-stories.html

So who shot Robert?

I suppose we have to assume that the police eventually find the shooter and charge him for attempting to kill Robert. As the the 'reveal' is around the time of the 43rd anniversary of Emmerdale being first aired on ITV then I suppose that this is a reasonable assumption.

The spoilers for Christmas/New Year mean that somehow Aaron soon gets out of jail.

Based on the Christmas/New Year spoilers of characters who have known Emmerdale storylines then, it means that
Robert's shooter wasn't Aaron/Andy/Cain/Chas/Lawrence/Pete/Ross, unless the police don't conclude the case during October 2015.

So for now, we should maybe be looking at the Emmerdale characters who have recently joined the soap, in particular, Lachlan and Chrissie. There could be an outsider involved in Robert's shooting, of course (for example, Chas' stalker) but this idea seems too complex and a simpler Scooby-doo whodunnit seems more likely. Whatever happens, it would seem that none of the long-term characters are Robert's shooter, as they all appear on Emmerdale with significant storylines after the Emmerdale reveal episode on October 22nd.

Chrissie might yet have an upcoming storyline about a relationship with Rakesh? She has already been arrested by Emmerdale PC Plod soap police, so maybe we can safely assume that they got it wrong yet again and that
maybe Chrissie isn't Robert's shooter?

Lawrence has 'confessed' to Robert's shooting but does he and/or Chrissie really think that Lachlan shot at Robert and Lawrence is just trying to protect young Lachlan or Chrissie from any prison horrors in the future? Maybe Chrissie and Lachlan really planned to shoot Robert dead as a joint venture? Time will tell.

It seems as if Lachlan's (Thomas Atkinson's) actor contract with Emmerdale may soon end/have already ended by now. There also seems to be no spoilers yet for any future storylines involving Lachlan. So does Lachlan eventually get arrested by the Emmerdale PC Plod soap police and charged with wanting to kill Robert, with enough evidence to make Lachlan go to prison for a long stretch and to leave Emmerdale for a really long time? Time will tell.

I asked myself a big question today:

Just how does Aaron get out of jail? We know from Christmas/New Year spoilers that he does.

The simplest explanation for this would be that Aaron's shiny gun is a different one to the one Lachlan got from the stream (Ross' ex-gun).

What if Aaron's gun is not the shooter's gun?

The Soaplife spoilers for 10th-23rd October say that when Aaron is in jail, he tells Cain he wants to kill himself. Maybe Aaron got his gun from someone somewhere (earlier than when we first see him with it in the pub on 1st October) with the intention of using it to kill himself? His behaviour since Robert's shooting has been odd anyway, maybe this has been because of an underlying depression or similar illness he developed after or even had before Robert was shot? The spoilers for 15th October suggest the police might find and seize Aaron's gun when they visit the scrapyard then but they also have video evidence of Aaron putting his gun inside the engine compartment of the scrapped car previously. Whichever way Aaron got his gun, the video evidence still means he should be in big trouble with the police for gun possession, but it's soapland so maybe it's Aaron's gun and he somehow has a licence for it (unlikely?) or it's just a gun enthusiast's replica and doesn't even fire bullets, or the police don't find the gun and have no physical evidence against Aaron?

I think the object that Lachlan threw into the field after Robert had been shot on the night of September 25th was Lachlan's gun. If so, maybe this gun doesn't get found for quite a while? I do wonder if someone like Sarah finds it eventually whilst out playing in the field one day (we all know what young kids are like, go everywhere, know everything!). Sarah would recognise it as being like the one she saw Lachlan drop outside the bus shelter on 23rd September when Rakesh ran into him. (BTW, why doesn't Rakesh mention Lachlan had Lachlan's own gun when he reports Aaron to the police on 14th/15th October? Is Rakesh shielding Chrissie and Lachlan for his own agenda?). Sarah gives the gun to Andy/Debbie/other adult, tells what she knows about Lachlan, and the gun ends up with the police with Lachlan being the suspected gun user. As Lachlan threw the object into the field without wearing any gloves, it will be covered in his fingerprints/DNA. If it is his gun which was used to shoot Robert then Lachlan will be found out to be the shooter by forensics. So, Sarah saves the day for Aaron and he gets off the hook for shooting Robert (but maybe not off for the gun possession?) and Lachlan gets convicted of attempting to murder Robert, with Lachlan maybe later saying something like "And I would have got away with it if it hadn't been for that pesky kid! (as in Scooby-doo)

What if Aaron's gun is the shooter's gun?

If the police find Aaron's gun at the scrapyard and forensics prove that it is the one which shot Robert then Aaron is in even more trouble and he'll need a really good explanation of when and where he got his gun from. To get out of jail for trying to kill Robert, he must tell that he either found it somewhere (and so makes someone else a suspect) or was given it by someone who found it (like Sarah?). If Aaron cleaned the gun of any DNA and fingerprints before putting it inside the car engine compartment then it will make it more difficult to prove who else held the gun. I am really expecting that how, where and when Aaron gets Aaron's gun gets revealed during the 'reveal' episode or even earlier when he talks to Chas when he is in jail/on remand.

Of course, Rakesh might be Aaron's lawyer later and so Rakesh just tells the police he witnessed that Lachlan previously had a gun in the village on a day before Robert was shot. Chrissie and Lawrence also know that Lachlan found the gun in the stream. Maybe under family and police pressure, Lachlan then simply confesses and tells the police that he threw the gun into the field. The police will by then have character statements, the gun and any DNA and fingerprint evidence(?) and it's case closed for Lachlan, who gets a lighter sentence than otherwise maybe because he co-operated with the police? I think I'd prefer the more challenging Sarah Scooby-doo ending though!

Final outcomes

Whichever way the storyline eventually goes, we already know that Aaron soon gets out of jail and that Aaron is not proved to be Robert's shooter, for now anyway.

Based on the Christmas/New Year spoilers of characters who have known Emmerdale storylines then, it means that
Robert's shooter wasn't Aaron/Andy/Cain/Chas/Lawrence/Pete/Ross, unless the police don't conclude the case during October 2015.

[Kim]

I'm still going with the theory that Lachlan did it. The gun came from Chrissie's safe and only Chrissie and Lawrence knew the code. However, there was a scene where Lachlan seemed to see one of them entering the code. I'm going with him therefore, as the safe didn't show any signs of being forced so it must have been one of the three. Chrissie and Lawrence have become too obvious, I think.

I also have a feeling that Lachlan has told Lawrence that he did it, hence sticking to his (I think) false confession. I don't think they want to hurt Chrissie any more by telling her, as she feels guilty over the helicopter crash as it is.

I think Aaron will be one of the two other revelations in the flashback. I don't think he'd have done it as because Chas was there, he'd have been risking it going wrong and the bullet getting his mother instead.

[Serena Williams]

I'm still going with the theory that Lachlan did it. The gun came from Chrissie's safe and only Chrissie and Lawrence knew the code. However, there was a scene where Lachlan seemed to see one of them entering the code. I'm going with him therefore, as the safe didn't show any signs of being forced so it must have been one of the three. Chrissie and Lawrence have become too obvious, I think.

I also have a feeling that Lachlan has told Lawrence that he did it, hence sticking to his (I think) false confession. I don't think they want to hurt Chrissie any more by telling her, as she feels guilty over the helicopter crash as it is.

I think Aaron will be one of the two other revelations in the flashback. I don't think he'd have done it as because Chas was there, he'd have been risking it going wrong and the bullet getting his mother instead.

But if it is Lachlan why would Aaron protect him? Aaron does not even known lachlan they have never spoken to each other. Aaron is covering for someone but the question is who?

[Serena Williams]

I'm still going with the theory that Lachlan did it. The gun came from Chrissie's safe and only Chrissie and Lawrence knew the code. However, there was a scene where Lachlan seemed to see one of them entering the code. I'm going with him therefore, as the safe didn't show any signs of being forced so it must have been one of the three. Chrissie and Lawrence have become too obvious, I think.

I also have a feeling that Lachlan has told Lawrence that he did it, hence sticking to his (I think) false confession. I don't think they want to hurt Chrissie any more by telling her, as she feels guilty over the helicopter crash as it is.

I think Aaron will be one of the two other revelations in the flashback. I don't think he'd have done it as because Chas was there, he'd have been risking it going wrong and the bullet getting his mother instead.

But if it is Lachlan why would Aaron protect him? Aaron does not even known lachlan they have never spoken to each other. Aaron is covering for someone but the question is who?

[Perdita]

I think it was Cheryl edged on by Eric to revenge her mum´s death!