Was Jeremy Bamber innocent?

[Yappy12]

Have been interested in this case for years and am uneasy about his 10-2 majority conviction of murdering his parents, sister and 2 nephews. ITV 6 part drama-doc starting 6th Jan. Lots of stuff doesn't add up. He and a cop supposedly saw someone moving about inside hours after everyone was supposedly dead. Was that the sister and did she go crazy and kill them all? Not saying he's innocent but just saying I don't think he was guilty beyond reasonable doubt. There's said to be proof now of the second phone call, from his home at 3.37am. First had been allegedly by his father to him at 3.26 saying the sister had a gun and was going mad. He couldn't have got home, 3.5 miles away, after killing them all in 11 minutes.

@Yappy12

74 current prisoners have whole life tariffs.

@BellaBraithwaite

Yes he's been found guilty three times on the evidence put to the court but what if that evidence was flawed? How do you explain the phone calls, movement in the house?

@Yappy12, do you remember this case and trial at the time?

I really don't know if he's guilty or innocent, but as others have said, there are sufficient open points to make the conviction unsafe in my eyes.

Yes, am almost 60 so remember it well.

But lots and lots of questions have been asked already. He didn’t just walk into court and get sentenced. He’s had trials, at which expert witnesses have considered the evidence.

I remember this case. I never thought he did it. Can’t tell you why, just something didn’t seem to add up or something was wrong with how it was presented.

I thought maybe because his sister was quite pretty that the idea that she was responsible seemed too easily dismissed and as a bit of a Play Boy he eased the morals of the mid 80s

I'm not saying he's innocent but just think there's enough reasonable doubt to get the conviction quashed. As someone said above, I hope he is guilty as it would have been a tragedy to spend 33 years and counting inside if innocent.

I've followed the twists & turns for years also and I totally believe he is guilty.

Did you believe him to be innocent at the time of the murders/trial?

For every piece of 'evidence' you have cited, you will find another piece of evidence, somewhere on the internet, which discredits it.

@JosephineDeBeauharnais

ITV describe it as a "docu-drama"

@SpiderCharlotte

Can't remember TBH.

Yes I know.

Movement in the house was discredited. It was Bamber stood outside who pointed it out to officers, trying to 'plant' it. Officer afterwards said that, on reflection, he wasn't sure

Look, I'm not trying to prove he was guilty or innocent. I believe in British justice on the whole. Yes there are cases where there's a wrong conviction but it veers dangerously into ' women writing to death row prisoners' territory to try and look for excuses for Bamber and his crimes

I was in Chelmsford Crown Court in the public gallery at the time of the trial. I saw him in the dock, the way he looked and reacted, and I heard the evidence (most of it). I was convinced of his guilt. It was all about money. The parents were quite wealthy and he stood to inherit it all. Money talks.

Money talks.

I believe he had already robbed the family business some time earlier too - I think you're absolutely right.

The silencer evidence was “found” by his cousins 3 days after the police had searched the house. The police took a further 3 days to pick it up from the cousins house. The same cousins who then inherited White House farm and all of the Bamber family assets. The phone logs by the police that were never admitted as evidence, the photos showing no evidence of damage to paint on fireplace on night of crime, later shown in photos taken after the silencer had been found. Paint from said fireplace found in silencer. The destruction of potential evidence on carpets and other materials. They didn’t take Jeremy’s clothes for a whole month to check for evidence.. and possibly the most damning of all THEY RELIED ON THE EVIDENCE OF A WOMAN BAMBER DUMPED. He’ll hath no fury and all that.

I'm not saying he's innocent but just think there's enough reasonable doubt to get the conviction quashed. As someone said above, I hope he is guilty as it would have been a tragedy to spend 33 years and counting inside if innocent.

Better than being hanged though.

And even if the conviction were to be quashed, it's unlikely he'd see a penny of compensation. We stopped that years ago as it was much cheaper than bothering to get it right every time.

I don't know enough about this case (although I can remember it as news) to have an opinion. But given the spectacular history of the UK when it comes to absolute top-notch miscarriages of justice (something we can be world leaders in) then merely parroting that courts have found someone guilty isn't an automatic rebuttal that there hasn't been a terrible mistake.

I know it's easy to try and pin this on a 7 stone mother in a psychotic rage which apparently made her powerful enough to beat and overcome her 6 foot 4 inch father and also kill her two boys but I'm not buying that.

It is amazing what people can do when they are under extreme stress. I have a friend in the fire service (retired now) and he says there is nothing stronger than a mother outside a burning building who believes her children are inside, they assign the two biggest strongest fire fighters to stop her.

Loving mothers do kill their children, Andrea Yates was a loving mother who killed her children because her mental health and religious views combined to make her think they couldn't get into heaven if they 'stumbled' so killed them to save their souls.

OK that doesn't make Bamber innocent.

The farm house wasn't preserved as a crime scene, in fact it was used for some sort of training so had numerous people traipsing through.

That must have had an impact on the evidence and its collection. I think it was weeks after the deaths when they did start to process it as a crime.

She could have snapped but I don't see how she could have overpowered her much bigger, much stronger father, without getting any injuries herself, and kill several people with a shotgun she wasn't experienced with using without getting any gun residue on herself or her clothes

See my point above for the strength, and it wasn't a shotgun. it was a gun used to shoot rabbits, a rifle.

As for Bamber's innocence or guilt, I don't know.

It's common knowledge that his girlfriend gave evidence, that's hardly unusual.

Have you a link to your evidence please @Morporkia? I'd be really interested to read it.

I just refuse to twist a narrative to pin it on a woman when he was found guilty by a court

Pin it on a woman? If it wasn’t Bamber, then it was Sheila. No one is casting around for a woman to pin it on 🙄

when he was found guilty by a court Again with this. It’s irrelevant. Courts get things wrong.

Movement in the house was discredited. It was Bamber stood outside who pointed it out to officers, trying to 'plant' it. Officer afterwards said that, on reflection, he wasn't sure Not sure you know what “discredited” means.

Yes there are cases where there's a wrong conviction but it veers dangerously into ' women writing to death row prisoners' territory to try and look for excuses for Bamber and his crimes

How offensive. You’re trying on the one hand to be all “feminist” by objecting to anyone ‘trying to pin it on a woman” and then writing off any woman who is unconvinced by the EVIDENCE as not worth listening to because they must fancy him.

Dear me.

I don’t know whether he did it or not, I wasn’t there, but there are definitely some strange aspects that have not been adequately answered. Perhaps they can be, but “he definitely did it because a court said so” is absurd. It should be about the evidence and nothing else.

However JB was found guilty in court and then guilty again on his 1st retrial and then guilty for a third time on his 2nd retrial

That doesn’t actually mean he is factually guilty

When no less than three juries who have heard and seen all the evidence, seen the witnesses being cross-examined and heard all the arguments decide someone is guilty beyond reasonable doubt, it makes it vanishingly unlikely that he isn't.

1. Jeremy saw the “movement in the house”. The police officer wasn’t sure.

1. No way could Sheila have overpowered her father, she was on strong medication which made her drowsy.

1. Jeremy repeatedly told people around him that he hated his family and wished they were dead.

1. He told his girlfriend that he was going to kill them. She thought it was all talk until it occurred. She thought initially he had paid someone to do the killing. She remained with him initially as she was terrified and then went to the police the moment they split ...probably because she feared he’d murder her too.

1. Sheila’s blood was found in the silencer and no way could she have shot herself with the silencer on. She was too small....and it’s a stet h to imagine her shooting her self dead or nearly dead and then popping the silencer away in the cupboard.

1. Neville Bamber feared Jeremy wished to harm them and spoke of it to the farm secretary.

1. The phone off the hook in the kitchen meant at that time Mr and Mrs Bamber would not be able to call police from the phone in their bedroom. Jeremy took the phone off the hook to build his story that Neville has phoned from there.

Jeremy Bamber is a psychopath who has told himself so often he is innocent I think he actually believes it. Useful if you take a lie detector test....and he doesn’t mention the others which he failed.

And in addition Essex Police made huge huge mistakes bu accepting Bamber’s version of events at the time. Although one or two officers were very clear that this was a mistake and suspected all was not as it seemed.

Sheila’s blood was apparently still wet when she was found

This is one of the many myths propagated by Bamber's supporters. There's a suggestion that it looks wet in one of the photos, which is due to the amounts involved and the use of flash photography.

When no less than three juries who have heard and seen all the evidence, seen the witnesses being cross-examined and heard all the arguments decide someone is guilty beyond reasonable doubt, it makes it vanishingly unlikely that he isn't

No, it doesn’t.

I think the court of appeal (the second or third time) felt that rather than Jeremy being the victim of some kind of miscarriage of justice the evidence pointed strongly to his guilt.