Jeremy Bamber
In October 1986 Jeremy Bamber was convicted, by a majority of
ten to two, of the murders of five members of his family. He was sentenced to
life imprisonment, with the recommendation that he should serve a minimum of
twenty-five years behind bars. Despite two failed appeals Bamber maintains he
is the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
In the early hours of 7 August
1985 the police were called to White House Farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy,
Essex, having been told by Jeremy Bamber that his adopted father,
Ralph, had telephoned him to say that Bamber’s sister (a paranoid schizophrenic named Sheila Caffell)
had “gone crazy” and had got a gun. At 07:30, after having been at the farm for a number of hours, members
of the Tactical Firearms Unit stormed the building and found five
dead bodies. Ralph had been shot eight times and was found in the kitchen.
Sheila Caffell’s twin sons were found in their room with one having been shot
three times in the head and the other five times in the head. Ralph’s
wife, June, was found in the main bedroom where she had been shot seven times.
Beside June’s bed lay Sheila
Caffell, who had been shot twice in the throat and who held an Anschutz rifle in her hands. It appeared she had
committed suicide, with the post mortem examination showing that she
could have survived for a few minutes after sustaining the first wound but
would have died immediately upon sustaining the second. Sheila was known to
have considered ending her life, expressed an intention to kill her sons and felt
the need to cleanse her mother’s
‘evil’ mind. It was therefore not surprising that the police believed she
killed her family before ending her own life. However, in September 1985
Bamber was arrested twice and charged with five murders.
If he had not been convicted Bamber would have inherited £438,000 from his
parents’ wills. This was the motive
that allegedly caused Bamber to commit such a horrific crime. This does not
prove he committed murders, however, because many people are beneficiaries
under a will but they do not turn to crime.
Sheila could not have committed the murders, the court heard, because she was
inexperienced with guns. What the jury never heard was that she had gone on
shooting holidays with a cousin. It is true that twenty five or twenty six
rounds had been fired and that all or all but one had hit their target but
most shots had been fired from a few inches away and so, from such a short
range, how could she be expected to miss?
Three days after the shootings one of Bamber’s cousins found a sound moderator (silencer) in a
downstairs gun cupboard. Upon close examination, later that evening, it was
noticed that a small amount of blood was present inside the tube. Tests on
the blood appeared to show that it originated from Sheila Caffell. It was
claimed at trial that there was a “remote
possibility”, however, that the blood could have bee a mixture from
Ralph and June Bamber. If the blood was Sheila’s then this meant she
could not have committed suicide, the prosecution argued, because if she did
kill
herself how did the sound moderator find its way downstairs? Recent tests
show the blood was not Sheila’s;
none of her DNA was found, yet DNA from June Bamber and a male, possibly
Ralph Bamber, was found.
It was alleged Bamber entered the farmhouse via the window for the downstairs
toilet and that he climbed out of a window in the kitchen after having killed
his family. It was argued at trial that both of these windows had been found
insecure, but numerous documents unavailable at the trial show that when the
police entered the building all of the windows were closed and locked. If
they were locked, and all of the doors were locked, then how did Bamber get
into the house to carry out the murders?
The main evidence against Bamber came from Julie Mugford
who, at the time of the deaths, was Bamber’s
girlfriend. She told the court that Bamber had plotted to kill his family
for many months before their deaths. On the eve of the shootings Bamber told Mugford, “Tonight’s
the night”, the jury were led to believe. He later phoned to tell
her that everything was going well. Bamber’s
defence team argued Mugford could not be treated
with credibility because she approached the police almost immediately upon
being dumped by Bamber. It was shown Mugford had
become incredibly hurt and upset and at one point in time she had tried
to smother Bamber with a pillow. “If
I can’t have you, nobody can”, she is believed to have told
Bamber.
If Bamber was the murderer he must have committed his crimes between midnight and 03:00 on the morning of 7 August 1985. This is a fact. From 03:15 onwards
Bamber was speaking to the police on his phone at his cottage in Goldhanger (three and a half miles from White House
Farm), driving to White House Farm and then he was in the company of police
officers until long after the bodies were discovered. The many bullets fired
at each of his alleged victims would have meant that they died within moments
of being shot. How, therefore, could the police have seen someone moving
within the farmhouse at 03:45 and later,
at 05:25, could they
have been conversing with someone inside the building? Whilst he was stood
outside White House Farm with two police officers a figure was seen moving in
the main bedroom. At trial the figure was dismissed as a shadow or trick of
light, but now documentary evidence shows the officer who made the sighting
recorded what he saw as an unidentified male. A log of radio communications
shows that at 05:25 the tactical
firearms officers were ‘in conversation’ with a
person inside White House Farm. How could this be if everyone inside was
dead? It is known, from studying photographs never shown to the jury, that Sheila Caffell was still bleeding at 08:00 when photographs of the scene of the
crime were taken. How could this be if she had been shot at least five hours
earlier? People stop bleeding shortly after death.
The sighting of what was believed to be a male at 03:45 introduces the possibility that
someone other than Sheila or Bamber carried out this terrible crime. It was
said at trial that only Bamber or Sheila could have been responsible and so
if it could be shown Sheila was not a murderer then Bamber had to be guilty,
the jury were led to believe. Therefore the possibility that some unknown man
was the killer raises serious questions over the safety of Bamber’s conviction.
Whether it was Sheila Caffell or some other individual who was seen moving
within the building, and who later spoke to the police, remains unknown but
what is certain is that Sheila was alive long after 03:00 and therefore
Bamber could not have been responsible for her death or the deaths of anyone
else inside the building and that is a fact. On the basis of this highly
significant new evidence Jeremy Bamber’s
case is being reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, who it is hoped
will refer it to the Court of Appeal in the near future.
Jeremy Bamber is the subject of my book Jeremy Bamber: Evil,
Almost Beyond Belief? For more details of this book please click
here
For more details about Jeremy Bamber visit www.jeremybamber.com
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