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 agree. She knew very well what she was doing. It was very clear how she played whatever role she thought would land best with each potential interviewee, some more successfully than others.
At this stage ‘Jeremy Bamber innocent’ is a far better news story than ‘Jeremy Bamber still guilty.’ She’s an intelligent journalist on the make, not a hapless naive lonely woman who’s been taken in by him.
Which is good because nothing’s quite so car crashy as the women who fall for imprisoned killers. These two are using each other.

@Allisnotlost1

www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/jeremy-bambers-final-act-evil-21284544

That’s from a tabloid newspaper whose only source is a TV drama. As mentioned above, the writers have been ‘creative’ about Bamber putting the dog down and - possibly - a conversation between him and Colin Caffell.

From Colin Caffels book, on being a witness at the trial and listening to actual evidence:-

" The mechanism of the rifle found on Bambs (as he called her) was found to be very stiff, and the gentleman testing it broke a nail trying to reload it.

It was necessary for Sheila to reload it twice. There was no trace of gunshot residue anywhere on her person and her nails were freshly manicured. "

In all the redirection and confusion about times of calls and the balls up by the police which turned this into a soap opera, this simple piece of evidence in court really does it for me. Because of his phone call it was either him or her. She'd been nowhere near a gun.

Yes, back then the phone had to be hung up to ring. Otherwise the caller just got an engaged signal, which was just constant short beeps.

Well juries are just made up of everyday people. Lol

That's such an interesting post. When I ventured into websleuths as I said before, there were women in there who didnt realise it but were in a fan club. It must give him a kick in prison with them fawning over him

Oscar Pistorious had the same phenomenon, even though hed brutally murdered his girlfriend there was a group defending every piece of evidence and saying he thought she was a burgler!

Of course there are genuine groups of people who wish to see justice done, but theres a definite "thing" with murderers in prison and sone women.

Interesting about the rifle being stiff. I know nothing about guns but from what I have read Anschutz rifles are meant to be exceptionally quiet and easy to load, which of course has a bearing on silencer and loading claims. But if this particular one was stiff that makes it harder to accept it being her.
Bamber has said she had been on shooting parties and iirc one person has backed that up, but even he hasn’t claimed she was a rifle loading whizz.

Like you i know zilch about guns, this discussion made me revisit Colins book.

He was at the trial, and recorded the above. He also recorded the defence evidence regarding the mess up by the police and Sheila being paid by the News of the World etc, but I think that one piece swung the jury. How could you shoot five people, fight with a 6ft farmer and have no matks or residue on you

Urgh too late to change, i obviously meant Julie not Sheila being paid

Yes I always find it weird people don't understand this and use the "if he was so clever/organised/evil then surely he wouldnt have xyz..." argument.

For one, being able to commit a crime doesn't make you cleverer or more capable than anyone else- lots of criminals are pretty stupid and commit crimes mainly because they can't get or hold down a well paying job.

But even beyond that - think of anything you've done - whether baking a cake or riding a bike or starting a sport - did you do it perfectly the first time? Obviously not! People make mistakes, that's just common sense, not a "gotcha!"

Jeremy was never examined for anyone else’s DNA and gun residue on him, I understand?

YANBU, but at the same time there’s the danger of going to the other extreme particularly in cases like this where there is a shortage of direct evidence of what has happened and the police are having to reconstruct/make up the killer’s plan from a few clues. Anything that doesn’t fit or is illogical can be written off as the killer making mistakes. Then you get defendants who on the one hand are being claimed to be criminal geniuses successfully manipulating everyone around them while at the same time they are making unbelievably stupid mistakes.

You can see it more clearly in the Lucy Letby case imo, on the one hand she is deviously coming up with undetectable means of killing while on the other she’s apparently writing confessions on post it notes and leaving them in her house for anyone to find.

Then things that would be really, implausibly stupid mistakes that you or I can’t imagine ever making (leaving the bloody silencer in the cupboard rather than taking it away? Really?) get explained away as the defendant being arrogant and thereby the bit of evidence that doesn’t actually fit the story gets neatly turned into more proof that the defendant is a bad person and therefore more likely to be guilty.
It’s a potentially dangerous route for the investigator to take because it makes them more likely to ignore the bits where the reconstruction doesn’t actually work and lead them down the wrong path.

I thought Dr Dennis Eady’s discussion of ‘Agatha Christie syndrome’ in the podcast was interesting, it’s a reason why this case still niggles at me despite the many many things that point to Bamber’s guilt.

I don’t know the answer to this but I have been thinking how the police’s failure to secure the crime scene and collect evidence really worked in Jeremy’s favour. Otherwise, he could have had so much more evidence against him and we wouldn’t have to listen to his cries of innocence forever.

He also boxed himself into a corner by framing Sheila as he made himself the only other suspect. He’d have been better off making it look like a botched robbery.

Glad the discussion livened up again!

I read recently she did have GSR on her hands - traces

for me he is guilty btw

I don’t know how much dna they would have gotten off him then, it was early days.
I wonder if he had been checked over he would have had any bruising/injuries.

I am also wary of the Agatha Christie effect - that woman who drowned was a prime example of that. I don’t know about Lucy Letby, I assume there just have been enough evidence.
With this though it always comes down to if Shelia did it. And I just don’t see how she could. Someone in a psychotic state with no injury, blood, clean hands/feet. I just also can’t see her shooting those poor boys so many times.
If she didn’t do it, rben it’s Jeremy.

Unless someone else confesses, I imagine we shall never know.

It is astonishing to me that, as someone lined up to inherit a huge fortune, that if he did kill his family, he tried to frame Sheila, thus making yet another mistake in that he boxed himself into a corner.

This is on top of apparently telling Julie before the murders he was going to kill his family, then after the murders she said he had told her what he’s done, then spending money soon after the murders, dumping Julie, selling off family valuables, and the phone calls.

It does remind me of the Menendez brothers, they planned to go to the movies after the murders to provide an alibi but were so late they couldn’t get in. Then went on to buy sports cars and Rolex watches, one of them then admitted it to their psychiatrist. No wonder they were suspects.

It’s just a combination of being very entitled, immature and greedy.

Yes he reminds me of them a lot

Similar sort of vibes as Jeremy. They weren't clever though either, entitled arrogant twenty years olds also.

Although it doesn't seem that long ago, forensics were so much simpler, DNA in its infancy compared to what they can do now.

He probably thought by using gloves and covering himself up, getting to the scene without being seen etc he'd done enough.

He had to go one step further to make it seem like Sheila. Although im convinced of his guilt I can't get my head round him telling Julie. But just because theres a few WTF issues, I still feel the case is strong enough to stand.

@dayswithaY @Maddyisqueen yes certainly a ‘type’ along with the stable of faithful female followers whilst incarcerated

Chris Watts gets a lot of female ‘Fan Mail’ too, same ‘type’ of person

I’ve nearly finished watching the Sky documentary about him. His way of speaking sounded…slightly contrived. Like John Cannan (the prime suspect in the Suzy Lamplugh disappearance), but more subtle. Hard to fully explain and of course conclusive of nothing.

The fangirl featured in this annoys me because she’s not telling the viewer anything new or insightful.

@berlinbaby2025
Not fun fact - I used to work with Sandra Court, they never found her murderer but John Canaan was a prime suspect in her murder in Bournemouth, he was in the area the weekend it happened

I know exactly what you mean about his contrived way of speaking. One would need to hear more of what he was like 40 years ago to know how much is the effect of prison; when I first saw footage of him after a few decades inside it was striking how much his body language had diminished from arrogant public schoolboy to something more ingratiating.