White House Farm - The Bamber Murders. Jan 8th ITV 9pm

[Dogleg]

Is anyone else planning to watch this six part series? I vaguely remembered the killings and on seeing this advertised have now lost hours to reading up about it online and have also downloaded a book about the case. I’m really looking forward to this one!

www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2019-12-25/itv-drama-white-house-farm/

In a Guardian article dated December 2019 it states:

'Lawyers representing Jeremy Bamber, who is serving a whole life sentence for killing his adoptive parents, sister and her six-year-old twin boys in 1985, have launched a high court challenge to the Crown Prosecution Service for its failure to disclose evidence they say would undermine the safety of his conviction.'

The problem is for most good, honest people is that they don't want to see a murderer walk free but they also want to make sure the legal system is fit for purpose!

I suppose there could be some moral argument to ask should a TV channel make a dramatisation while there is still an ongoing legal case?

But how would the family have gotten hold of the bloody silencer?

It's not disputed that the family gave the silencer to the police. They found it in the gun cupboard. I suppose the question is did the police not do their job properly or was it not there when they looked?

m.youtube.com/watch?v=bcTvqLk0MWU

This documentary is quite interesting. The police officer says that JB wasn't actually being sick, he was just retching.

Well that would mean either the family put it there - so one of them did it - which is impossible for different reasons.
Or JB put it there after the house had been searched? But why?

So I guess the police must have missed it?

I don't think it necessarily means the family were involved in the murders just because they found or even planted the silencer. But I'd be open to them being afraid that JB was going to get away with it and desperately looked for a solution. The police missing it is the most likely reason imo.

The executor was there when the family found the silencer. He had no reason to lie.

There was only one silencer. Its reference number changed in the paperwork.

It's odd Apple that you keep finding claims from JB (eg the two silencers claim) rather than documented facts from the police, when you're reading about the case. I wonder if JBs team are manipulating search algorithms through ads or if it's based on previous search history.

But it had blood in it belonging to sheila/the parents apple - where would they get that?

And Stan Jones contaminating the silencer when he goes to the house to see it. He doesn’t put it in an evidence bag.

The sound moderator had already been contaminated while at the Eaton’s house by David Boutflour and Peter Eaton. They had taken it apart to look inside.

LordOfTheWhys When I google, loads of newspaper articles come up with stuff. Tends to be the Guardian - are they more biased in support of JB?

I've just found a court document online from the 2002 Supreme Court Appeal. It's 50 pages long so I'll work my way through that. I can already see it has details in relation to BT monitoring the phoneline that says it was 4.30am so that clears that one up!

Can anyone remember if JB had the silencer on when he went to shoot rabbits that night?

There was a Guardian journalist who campaigned for JB. (Then changed his mind over the moving phones.) So they were very pro-JB.
The 4.30 am check wasn't the first phone line check. Iirc it was the third. A PP put the times up earlier.

ShesGotBetteDavisEyes I don't think they had dna testing back then to prove that conclusively - they went off blood types I think. Depending on how well the crime scene had been cleaned up it might not have been too difficult to obtain blood.

I'm not convinced it was planted but you'd make sure you had some credible witnesses with you when you 'found' it in that case.

AlexaAmbidextra did they admit to taking it apart?

Can anyone remember if JB had the silencer on when he went to shoot rabbits that night?

Did JB say in a statement that he often left it off because it wouldn't fit in the bag with it on?

Ah that makes sense re the Guardian journalist.

Court document laying out the facts:

26. PC West recorded the time of the appellant's call as 3.36 a.m. At trial it was accepted that the officer had misread a digital
    clock. The officer's contact with Mr Bonnett was recorded as being at 3.26 a.m. and it seems clear that the appellant's call
    must have been at 3.26 a.m. or very shortly before.

27. At 3.35 a.m., Mr Bonnet arranged for a police car to go to White House Farm. A check made by a British Telecom operator
    of the telephone line to the farm was made at 4.30 a.m. The receiver was off the hook and all the operator could hear was the
    sound of a dog barking.

No mention of any earlier checks?

AlexaAmbidextra. did they admit to taking it apart?

Yes, they did.

Well that's plain weird. Surely even in the 80's they would have recognised the importance of preserving evidence (unless they had to take it apart to get the 'evidence' in there!)

LordOfTheWhys, no, no silencer.

Well that's plain weird. Surely even in the 80's they would have recognised the importance of preserving evidence (unless they had to take it apart to get the 'evidence' in there!)

Indeed. Today, it would have been ruled as inadmissible due to the contamination. And even if it did need to be dismantled to obtain evidence, that should have been undertaken under controlled laboratory conditions and not at Ann Eaton’s kitchen table!

AppleJane, you seem very quick to presume there was a wide-reaching conspiracy against Jeremy Bamber. What do you think was the motivation behind that for the police?

Also, JB was what appears to be an intelligent guy. Why would he leave the silencer in the house? Why wouldn’t he have disposed of it somehow, he had lots of land to do this

Because he knew that would be even more incriminating? If it was known that the gun had a silencer, it's sudden disappearance would effectively exonerate Sheila, because why and how would she take all the trouble to get rid of it?

BitOfFun where have you got that from? I'm said numerous times I am not a supporter of JB and neither of conspiracies. I've also said that the simplest explanations are the most likely.

I think it's natural for people who make mistakes (the police) to want to protect themselves. I think it's natural for family members watching a murderer go free to want to find more evidence.

It's good to question the 'facts' being presented to us and throw ideas around. We are having a discussion here, not declaring an allegiance to the devil!

I've repeatedly said I am trying to find unbiased facts and that I'm sitting on the fence. I think your comment very unfair. Are you annoyed about the telephone line thing?

It would have to be a pretty big conspiracy in any case tbh.

I think the family were pretty much ground into the floor by Jeremy’s defence team at the trial. They didn’t come across well as we know so the whole issue of them being beneficiaries if Jeremy was convicted was well drummed home to the jury and rightly so when a man is on trial for murder.

The biggest bit of physical evidence is the silencer with the mixture of blood in it. Sheila has a specific marker in her blood which was present. Neither June nor Neville had this same marker. However even this blood evidence attracts a lot of debate on the Miscarriage of Justice forum. I’d definitely recommend that site rather than the official Jeremy Bamber forum. Mainly as the discussions are much more civil and respectful of opposing views. Most believe Jeremy guilty but a number of other regular posters there disagree. The good thing is that it never seems to descend to insults and name calling which occurs a lot on the Jeremy Bamber (the blue forum as it’s called).

I don't see why BitOfFun would be annoyed about the calls. The court document you're quoting doesn't provide a complete breakdown of everything that happened eg no-one disputes that the police checked the line when JB called but the court document doesn't mention it. Obviously they thought the 4.30am check was relevant because they heard the dog barking so mentioned it specifically.

As for contamination, they would have needed to have DNA from June, Nevill and Sheila. I don't think that's realistic.
DNA knowledge and testing wasn't the same in the 1980s as it is now. But both sides seem to agree the pull-through of the gun was clear but at least one victim had a contact wound that would cause blowback. If the silencer hadn't been on, that blowback would have been in the rifle. But the rifle was clear. If the silencer was on, the blowback would be in the silencer and that is where they found the DNA.

But, as I've said before, I think if we stick to the facts all sides agree on - JB call; Sheila not being an experienced shooter; JB admitting climbing in the bathroom window; etc - then they point to JB. All the 'issues' are attempts by JB to create noise and distraction. He's run a very impressive campaign of constant misinformation.

Sorry for being daft but I’m confused about the calls. JB claims his father rang him saying Sheila was going beserk. JB then rang the local police station ( weirdly not 999) who then sent a car to the farm. JB met the Police there.
What calls were proven? Was it proven that both calls were made, by BT? Would JB have made the call himself following shooting them? Then left out the broken window, thus making the house secure?
It’s terrible that if JB did it for his parent inheritance, that two innocent boys were also killed. Collateral damage maybe?

What does also puzzle me is why Colin Caffell in the beginning seemed to believe that his ex wife could be capable of the shootings. I know he was overwhelmed by grief but it seems that he also saw JB as a victim and seemed to go along with the suicide theory. Surely he knew his ex wife well enough? Wasn’t it Ann ( the cousin)who said that Sheila wouldn’t know one end of a shotgun from another, and had never fired a gun before, thus making it unlikely to be her.