To think Jeremy Bamber might be innocent

[KimberleyClark]

Or that at the very least his conviction wasn’t safe and there needs to be a retrial? Ihe was convicted in 1985 of murdering his adoptive parents, sister and her twin sons at his parents’ farmhouse. It was at first deemed to be murder-suicide by the sister, Sheila Caffell, who was a diagnosed schizophrenic. Bamber had been on full life tarriff ever since and still protesting his innocence. I always assumed he was guilty until I listened to a podcast called Blood Family. There was a lot of evidence the jury didn’t hear, it seems the police mucked up the crime scene, his cousins had a financial motive for framing him and a police officer in the control room apparently took a 999 nonspeaking call from the farmhouse while Bamber was outside with the police, which would indicate someone was still alive at that point.

From the 2002 appeal judgment:

The higher of the two wounds would have killed her almost instantaneously. The lower of the two would have been a fatal injury but not one where death would have occurred immediately …. The lower of the two injuries must have been the first since it had led to haemorrhaging inside the neck and this would not have occurred to the same extent if the other wound, which would have been immediately fatal, had preceded it… From the pathological evidence alone, the pathologist could not say, one way or the other, whether Mrs Caffell had been murdered or had taken her own life.

https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Crim/2002/2912.html

No, we don’t know the facts - hence we’re all speculating! And yes I said the same about her hands.

Could well be that yes, although but it’s odd that she was treated differently.

Ah ok, see this is why I shouldn't be discussing this as I read it so long ago. But it's interesting to speculate.

Thanks for that

Julie Mugford fascinates me in all this. She said he talked about killing his family. He told her it was a hit man he'd hired. Yet she didn't speak up until hed broken up with her.

She may have thought it was all talk but surely when they were murdered she should have gone to the police

I’ve been reading it to try to get a picture of the facts, but there’s a lot of gaps and odd things.

What was Jeremy Bambers sentence?

Whichever way you slice it her behaviour was appalling. Either she lied to get a man put away for life for revenge, or she was willing to stay with someone and cover up for him despite knowing he had murdered his whole family including 2 small children. In either case, her only interest was in extracting as much money as possible from the situation.
If she was telling the truth, her initial covering for Bamber allowed the police to destroy crime scene evidence thus leading to the questions over the conviction never going away and the relatives never getting any peace.

Now its whole life. It was 25 years increased in 1988 to full life term.

Thanks.

I have listened to the rest of the podcast and I think the case really does need a retrial though I am not convinced of his innocence by any means.
There are just too many bits of evidence that were before the original jury and were wrong or things that have emerged since, and too many of the discrepancies are the result of shady behaviour by Essex police. The whole thing really needs to be properly, openly scrutinised and preferably by a jury if we are to have any faith that the justice system is working as it is supposed to.
There would remain the awful possibility of letting a guilty man out, but the criminal justice system isn’t MEANT to work by the police fabricating evidence to get a conviction even if they have got the right man.

I don’t know..sibling rivalry and all that or he may not have been so angry with her - or maybe he just bludgeoned the dad to make it look a particular way

But he said the dad phoned and said Shelia was going mad with shotgun - so it really was her (no gunshot residue on hands, fingernails etc) or it was him

it was him because this phone call he reported narrowed it down to them two

Maybe. I wonder if the father might actually have injured himself (the blunt force injuries mean) trying to get away. His blood was found in the hallway, and he had multiple wounds before the fatal ones. I think a pp said many things about the case defy logic and I guess that’s what sustains the interest.

Yes, it was either her or him (or just conceivably a hit man he organised though I don’t think anyone is arguing for that).
There were questions over the swabs from her hands, the lab initially rejected them as contaminated. As I understand it there was also a longer gap than ideal before they were taken. So they can’t be the clincher.

If your daughter was going mad with a shotgun you would phone 999 as death for you would be imminent, not your son which would delay help

what would be her motive?

I’ve always thought two things could have happened here - that Jeremy committed the murders but his personality is such that he has convinced himself he’s not guilty as the inheritance was rightfully his anyway, so that’s ok.

Or, he paid some two-bob local hitman to murder his family so again, as far as he’s concerned he’s not guilty.

I cannot believe that poor, mentally ill Sheila planned this execution, including wrestling her father to the ground and shooting her own children. Relatives have said she couldn’t even hold a gun. She was heavily medicated.

Police can bungle a crime scene and Jeremy can still be guilty. Ditto Mugford with her story - it could be true but her reason for telling it could be all wrong.

If I was serving a whole life tarriff for murder I might also spend my days researching the case and looking for a way out. What has he got to lose? Better than stitching mail bags or whatever they do inside. Plus, look how much attention it gets him. We’re all still talking about him 40 years later.

Most people would, yes. I certainly would. But I don’t think it’s an impossible stretch to think that an independently minded farmer in a culture where mental illness is still very taboo might try to keep it in the family.

There’s the related issue of why Jeremy Bamber called the local police station rather than 999, he said he was worried his father would think he had overreacted if he called 999 and then got there and everything was fine so calling the local number was a sort of compromise. Again, you can see the logic but it’s a bit of a stretch.

Sheila had previously said all kinds of stuff about thinking her boys were evil, being afraid she might harm them, and she does appear to have been at crisis point; the farm secretary is clear that contrary to what the jury heard, there was a discussion that day about her mother fostering the boys which might have sparked things off.

There’s still the question of how someone so slight managed to injure her father and how she could reload the shotgun several times without chipping her nail polish, despite having no or only a little familiarity with weapons and being in aforesaid mental state.

I don’t think the dad would have thought you can keep murder in the family!

if she was that ill I don’t think she could plan - the police also initially accepted it was her - why would they change their minds…the evidence

plus Jeremy bamber was doing fake crying at funerals, change his story many times blah blah

and so much more..

But at that point the dad wouldn’t have known there were going to be any murders, he would have hoped to be able to get the gun off Sheila or persuade her to put it down.

So this is what I think happened
Jeremy visits the night before. Shoots some rabbits and removes the sights and the silencer from the gun.
The following night he goes back and lets himself in. Puts a silencer THAT HE BROUGHT WITH HIM on the gun. Sheila hears an intruder down stairs and goes in to her parents room.
Neville goes down stairs confronts Jeremy. Fight ensues and Neville is shot.
Jeremy goes upstairs. Tells Sheila he will spare her and the children. He shoots his mother who tries to escape.
He then shoots Sheila (although I am hesitant about how he might have positioned her).
He then shoots the children.
he removes the very bloody silencer and goes home. On his way he discards the silencer, which is never found.
This is the twist. He knows the conviction is unsafe due to ghe handling of the silencer as evidence
from the cupboard because that was not the one he had used. There must have been a silencer involved as the children were not woken up.

if he was a very physically strong independent minded (your words) farming man of some stature - why did he need Jeremy to help?

if they were hushing it up (and that’s why he called J ) why did Jeremy then phone the police

also the others in the house could have got safe as they would have witnessed the struggle - especially if they’d allegedly discussed the need for fostering and Shelia’s state of mind

how could Sheila who was tiny beat up the dad? And not break a finger nail?

Yep

and she could have been in a sitting position cowering and crying no doubt

Yes, that also makes sense of the problem that going to all that trouble to plan the murder but leaving the bloody silencer in the cupboard to be found in a half competent search rather than taking it away and disposing of it seems illogical.

I recall that one used to keep the phone number of the local.police station by the phone. My grandparents were farmers. I was born on 1960. The local police station was the first port of call. When I bought my first flat in 1981, the number of the local police station was noted. I called that number when someone attempted to break in. Arm through the little window at the top of the picture windows. Police arrived in minutes.

Interesting discussion and youve now made me get Carol Ann Lees book out again, as I really need to go over it again.

Having said that it seems that there are still questions to answer!