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.

I think it will all depend on the phone call. If it can be proved he didn’t make that call at that time, he’s innocent.

Yes I think I agree with this

Do we think he will be free at some point?

I don’t think so. I agree that Sheila’s clean hands and lack of strength to overpower her dad are more of an issue than the silencer question

It will depend on the phone call and if there was a second silencer. More the phone call.

Jeremy could have called?

Yes this - it just couldn’t be her

the fact that you can find strength goes both ways for the victims too

I don’t think it’s completely impossible but I would bet against it.
It would take some really eye catching bit of new evidence, not just one policeman’s recollections of a detail (which can always be written off as misremembering).

Am I remembering correctly- was it a case that the twins were shot first as it prevented any inheritance coming from their mother? IIRC, when there is a mass death, like a plane crash/ mass murder there's a legal framework where inheritance of an estate is deemed to go in age order, from oldest to youngest, so if the youngest (the twins) died first, they wouldn't be entitled to anything from Nevill, June or Sheila, so the whole estate would revert to Jeremy. Wasn't that something brought up by the prosecution?

It's been years since I read that so I could be wrong.

I don’t think the order is known for sure. It’s theorised Neville was shot first but not killed, then June died, but it’s all conjecture.

Yes, the one tiny saving grace was that the boys died while asleep. If Neville and June were shot first with no silencer surely they would have woken up?

I dont know if the actual order would have made a difference but had they lived they would have shared the inheritance and he wanted the lot.

Hes a strange one for sure, stories of serial killers like Bundy, the Yorkshire Ripper, Brady and Hindley etc killed again and again. He did it once for money and complicated family reasons. Which in some ways is harder to comprehend.

Apparently hes been assessed and shows no signs of psychopathy.

It is a huge detail in the case. He told Heidi Blake last year he took a 999 call from someone inside the farmhouse when Bamber was standing outside the building and had been for more than two hours.

Yes, but the police have already managed to blur the picture a bit with all those signed/unsigned alternative statements and now the man in question has very sadly died he won’t be able to stand up in court and say he is absolutely sure. So people who want to write it off will have a pretext for doing so.

Is that policeman still alive? Didn’t he tell someone that once and then deny it? I seem to remember a load of chopping and changing???

I suppose it’s theoretically possible that Sheila attacks her dad in a rage and overpower him and shoots him with the silencer on downstairs. June hears the struggle and is getting up and is shot in her bedroom doorway with the silencer on. Sheila then kills the sleeping boys. Takes the silencer off and puts it away. Washes herself up and then shoots herself.

so how would her blood get in the silencer? Either she had a small cut somewhere or a nosebleed and blood got in it as she put it away. Or she’s handled the silencer on a previous occasion and the blood was there from that.

Or the more distant relatives were keen to pin it on Jeremy so they got the inheritance and put Sheila’s blood in the silencer. When they had access to the farmhouse they admit they found some of Sheila’s period bloodstained knickers soaking in a bucket and took the underwear home.

now my Dd has heavy periods and I soak her knickers and it would be perfectly possible to take heavily blood stained water from such an item and drop it into a gun barrel.

so theoretically I guess it’s possible.

I do think it’s unlikely that she would have sat still in a position for JB to have shot her where the entry wounds were. But maybe. Maybe he said sit like this and that he’d spare the boys. But then he killed the boys after all the adults.

The other possibility is that it wasn’t her blood in the silencer. At the time it was done based on blood group and one of the cousins had the same blood group as her; subsequently DNA has been looked for and hers wasn’t found.

Just looked it up and it comes under "simultaneous death", where if it can't be proved who died first it's taken that the oldest died first and so on down the line, so as long as the youngest (the twins) could be proved to have been killed first, or before their mum, then the estate would have passed in it's entirety to Jeremy.

The now deceased policeman mysteriously retracted what he told Heidi Blake. There’s a recording of what he told her and the CCRC are reviewing Bamber’s application.

The call in question was from inside the house. JB had been outside with police for two hours by then.

Ah ok..strange

wonder why they were outside for two hours

i think it would have been one of the nearly dead

Don’t you have to survive by 30 days or something to inherit so it wouldn’t matter who died first??

if they said that people died in age order, it would be their parents who died first. And Jeremy and Sheila would have inherited equally at that point (if no will). So he’d have got half. But yes, I suppose Sheila’s half would go to her kids and then to their dad???

what did happen to the money in the end? I assume Jeremy wasn’t allowed to gain anything from his crime. So how come his cousins and aunt/uncle seem to have everything including the family business? Because shouldn’t half of it all have been inherited by the twins father?

He’s a different by kind of killer with a purpose that isn’t depravity

No not at all - he’s no NOK

if no will goes to kids - Shelia may have got more as she was dependent on them
but if she’s dead Jeremy would get the lot

I think he spent a fair bit before he was caught

All the people inside were found with gunshot wounds that would have been immediately fatal. If someone was ‘nearly dead’ when they made the call, then JB wasn’t the one who killed them, because he was outside. Nevill Bamber was nearest the phone that was found off the cradle, and had facial gunshot injuries that would have made it impossible for him to talk. Ultimately he was killed by shots to the head. It’s possible, in my view, that the shooter thought he was dead, went to shoot the others and returned to find he wasn’t and shot him again. In that time he could have made the 999 call. Potentially he also knocked things off the table and crashed around in fear and agony, causing the other injuries that have been described as him being beaten.

And when this miraculous killer left why didn’t the police see them leaving the scene

nobody spoke on the phone call

shelia had two shots so first one couldn’t have been fatal - she would have been too impaired to do the second shot

also Jeremy said his father had said Shelia was going mad so 🤷‍♀️ that’s it