Serial killer Jeremy Bamber has made a bid for his life sentence to be overturned as he hopes ‘new evidence’ will set him free.
Bamber – whose case was featured in the 2020 ITV crime drama ‘White House Farm’ – is serving a whole-life tariff for killing his adoptive parents Nevill and June Bamber, both 61, his adoptive sister Sheila Caffell, 28, and her twins Daniel and Nicholas, six.
The 64-year-old has always said he is innocent and that Sheila, a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, feared having her children taken into care, suffered a psychotic episode and carried out the murders before turning the gun on herself.
He is the only whole-life prisoner in the British prison system to maintain his innocence.
Now, ahead of the 40th anniversary of the killings, Bamber’s lawyers say they have photographic proof that could prove his innocence.
Police argued that Bamber must have carried out the murders because the gun had been fitted with a silencer, which made it too long for his sister to physically be able to shoot herself.
However, according to the Mirror, his lawyers claim there was a second silencer that was seized by police on the day of the killings at White House Farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy, Essex, which was examined by investigators and never disclosed to the defence.
Lawyer Mark Newby says he hopes the new evidence can be taken to the Court of Appeal.
Jeremy Bamber has made a bid for his life sentence to be overturned as he hopes ‘new evidence’ will set him free
Bamber was convicted of murdering his adoptive sister Sheila Caffell, 28, and her six-year-old twins Daniel and Nicholas (all pictured)
The Bamber farmhouse, White House Farm, at Tolleshunt D’Arcy near Maldon in Essex
He told the publication: ‘The whole tenet of the case run by the Crown in the original trial was that there was one silencer.
‘The whole basis of the case was to link it to one and to argue the only possible explanation for that was that Jeremy had staged the scene, which was then linked to blood on that one silencer.
‘It’s all interlinked and so if there were two it undermines potentially all the evidence the Crown linked to this silencer. So it’s really important if there were two.’
Bamber previously spoke to the New York Times about his fear of dying in prison, saying: ‘I hope I get out, and maybe I can have a little life outside. But sometimes I don’t think that I ever will. They’ll just find ways to obstruct.
‘That doesn’t change my innocence. Just because you kept me in jail for 40 years, it doesn’t make me guilty.’
Bamber also said: ‘I’ve been awake in jail a billion seconds. I didn’t murder my family. I promise you.’
Police had initially worked on the theory that Sheila, a model known as Bambi, had been responsible.
They put Bamber at the centre of the probe after his girlfriend Julie Mugford – whom he had two-timed – claimed he had confessed to her his plans to hire a hitman to kill the family. The hitman she named had a cast-iron alibi and was released.
Bamber’s lawyers also unearthed a police phone log of a call on the night of the killings from Nevill.
Bamber was also convicted of murdering his adoptive parents Nevill and June Bamber, both 61
Mark Addy, Freddie Fox and Stephen Graham starred in the 2020 ITV drama White House Farm
Jeremy Bamber, who has always said he is innocent, in a police van during his trial in 1986
Jeremy Bamber at the Court of Appeal in October 2002 to appeal against his conviction
Jeremy Bamber is pictured in 2002 while appealing against his convictions in the 1980s
Jeremy Bamber is pictured in 1986 following the White House Farm shootings in August 1985
The log, entitled ‘daughter gone berserk’, noted Mr Bamber had said his daughter had stolen one of his guns and gone ‘berserk’.
A bloodstained Bible, found by Sheila’s side and open at pages containing Psalms 51-55 – on the struggle between good and evil – was never forensically examined or produced at trial, despite requests from Bamber’s solicitor.
Among the claims examined by the New Yorker was evidence of police interfering with the crime scene when the case went to appeal.
The crime scene photographs are said to have shown ‘Sheila lying with her head at an awkward angle against a bedside table, the Bible open against her right shoulder’.
The prosecution had argued Bamber put it there, and the Court of Appeal said in 2002 that it appeared to have been shut and then ‘reopened by someone to lie beside the body’, based on smudged bloodstains on its pages.
But Detective Sergeant Neil Davidson, the deputy of the lead crime scene officer Detective Inspector Ron Cook, claimed Cook had ‘lifted the Bible up and had a look at it’.
Cook then allegedly stood ‘fumbling’ with the Bible, before asking which page it had been on, and putting it back by Sheila’s body before the crime scene photos were taken to ‘re-create what we just screwed up’, Davidson said.
The investigation also looked into evidence relating to Sheila handling guns, after the judge told the jury trial there was ‘no evidence at all’ that she ‘was used to loading and firing guns.’
However, Sheila had previously been on a three-day shooting trip and fired a gun, as well as going on at least one shooting party, according to the magazine. It also cited a firearms expert who had produced reports for Bamber’s lawyers, saying there was no doubt Sheila could have fired the murder weapon.
