Jeremy Bamber’s 39-year campaign to prove he is innocent of the White Farm murders has received a boost from an investigation that raises serious questions about his conviction.
He is serving a whole-life tariff for the murders of his adoptive parents Nevill and June Bamber, both 61, his adoptive sister Sheila Caffell, 28, and her six-year-old twins Daniel and Nicholas. All were shot at the Essex farmhouse on August 7, 1985.
Bamber has always said he is innocent and that Sheila, a paranoid schizophrenic, carried out the murders before shooting herself. He is the only whole-life prisoner in the British prison system to maintain his innocence.
Now a 17,000-word investigation by The New Yorker, being published tomorrow, is understood to have highlighted more than a dozen apparent discrepancies in the prosecution’s case.
The magazine tracked down officers who were present in the aftermath of the murders and who are believed to have substantiated Bamber’s claim that police tampered with the crime scene to effectively frame him.
The investigation is also understood to raise questions about the beleaguered Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which Bamber’s legal team says has failed to act on submissions that would exonerate him.
Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has called for the resignation of Helen Pitcher, chairman of the CCRC, over the case of Andrew Malkinson, who spent 17 years in jail for a rape he did not commit.
An investigation into the CCRC’s role by Chris Henley KC found it had missed several opportunities to refer the case to appeal. Malkinson, who was released only as a result of forensic tests by campaigners, said on proving his innocence: ‘I’m not the only one.’
The New Yorker, which has also raised questions about the safety of nurse Lucy Letby’s conviction for murdering seven babies, has been investigating the Bamber case since last October.
It has focused on claims that Essex Police lied about evidence, altered witness statements, passed evidence to a third party, withheld and concealed evidence and tampered with a crime scene after the murders at the family’s farm near Maldon, Essex.
Bamber says his sister Sheila, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, feared having her children taken into care, suffered a psychotic episode and carried out the murders before turning the gun on herself.
The police argued that Bamber must have carried out the murders because the gun had been fitted with a silencer, which made it too long for her to be physically able to shoot herself, but ballistics experts have subsequently cast doubt on whether the rifle was fitted with a silencer.
Police also said if she had gone on a rampage her feet would have been covered in blood and that this was not the case. But a picture of her feet obtained by Bamber’s lawyers shows bloodstains.
Police had initially worked on the theory that Sheila, a model known as Bambi, had been responsible.
They put Bamber at the centre of the probe after his girlfriend Julie Mugford – whom he had two-timed – claimed he had confessed to her his plans to hire a hitman to kill the family. The hitman she named had a cast-iron alibi and was released.
Bamber’s lawyers also unearthed a police phone log of a call on the night of the killings from Nevill. The log, entitled ‘daughter gone berserk’, noted Mr Bamber had said his daughter had stolen one of his guns and gone ‘berserk’.
A bloodstained Bible, found by Sheila’s side and open at pages containing Psalms 51-55 – on the struggle between good and evil – was never forensically examined or produced at trial, despite requests from Bamber’s solicitor.
Last night, Bamber said: ‘If restaging of the crime scene is a major new point in The New Yorker story, that will enable us to go directly back to the Court of Appeal, which I hope will be within a few days of us having the fresh evidence in our hands.
‘The Court of Appeal have already said restaging the crime scene would be a moral sin, so we’ll be straight back to the Court of Appeal ASAP, asking for bail pending a full appeal.’
A spokesman for Bamber’s campaign said the New Yorker investigation highlighted a key issue raised in the report on CCRC failings in the Malkinson case – ‘a refusal to carry out any investigations into submissions that are presented to them’.
They added: ‘The CCRC have had Jeremy Bamber’s latest submissions since March 2021 and… they have not investigated any of the key exculpatory issues they contain, which demonstrate Jeremy Bamber’s innocence.’
The CCRC said it ‘makes impartial, evidence-based decisions’. Essex Police have long cited Bamber’s failed appeals when asked about the safety of the conviction.
Additional reporting: Scott Jones