Author Topic: Jeremy Bamber - Case Synopsis By Scott Lomax  (Read 3636 times)

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Offline John

Jeremy Bamber - Case Synopsis By Scott Lomax
« on: February 26, 2013, 02:59:35 PM »
Case Synopsis by Scott Lomax

In October 1986 Jeremy Bamber was convicted by a majority of ten to two of the murders of five members of his family. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with the recommendation that he should serve a minimum of twenty-five years behind bars. Despite two failed appeals Jeremy maintains he is innocent and the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
In the early hours of 7 August 1985 the police were called to White House Farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy, Essex, having been told by Jeremy Bamber that his adopted father, Ralph, had telephoned him to say that Bamber’s sister (a paranoid schizophrenic named Sheila Caffell) had “gone crazy” and had got a gun. At 07:30, after having been at the farm for a number of hours, members of the Tactical Firearms Unit stormed the building and found five dead bodies. Ralph had been shot eight times and was found in the kitchen. Sheila Caffell’s twin sons were found in their room with one having been shot three times in the head and the other five times in the head. Ralph’s wife, June, was found in the main bedroom where she had been shot seven times. Beside June’s bed lay Sheila Caffell, who had been shot twice in the throat and who held an Anschutz rifle in her hands. It appeared she had committed suicide, with the post mortem examination showing that she could have survived for a few minutes after sustaining the first wound but would have died immediately upon sustaining the second. Sheila was known to have considered ending her life, expressed an intention to kill her sons and felt the need to cleanse her mother’s ‘evil’ mind. It was therefore not surprising that the police believed she killed her family before ending her own life. However, in September 1985 Jeremy was arrested twice and charged with five murders.
Sheila could not have committed the murders, the court heard, because she was inexperienced with guns. What the jury never heard was that she had gone on shooting holidays with a cousin. It is true that twenty five or twenty six rounds had been fired and that all or all but one had hit their target but most shots had been fired from a few inches away and so, from such a short range, how could she be expected to miss?
Three days after the shootings one of Jeremy’s cousins found a sound moderator (silencer) in a downstairs gun cupboard. Upon close examination later that evening it was noticed that a small amount of blood was present inside the tube. Tests on the blood appeared to show that it originated from Sheila Caffell. It was claimed at trial that there was a “remote possibility”, however, that the blood could have been a mixture from Ralph and June Bamber. If the blood was Sheila’s then this meant she could not have committed suicide, the prosecution argued, because if she did kill herself how did the sound moderator find its way downstairs? Recent tests show the blood was not Sheila’s; none of her DNA was found, yet DNA from June Bamber and a male, possibly Ralph Bamber, was found.
It was alleged Jeremy entered the farmhouse via the window for the downstairs toilet and that he climbed out of a window in the kitchen after having killed his family. It was argued at trial that both of these windows had been found insecure, but numerous documents unavailable at the trial show that when the police entered the building all of the windows were closed and locked. If they were locked, and all of the doors were locked, then how did Jeremy get into the house to carry out the murders?
The main evidence against Jeremy came from Julie Mugford who, at the time of the deaths, was his girlfriend. She told the court that Jeremy had plotted to kill his family for many months before their deaths. On the eve of the shootings Jeremy told Mugford, “Tonight’s the night”, the jury were led to believe. He later phoned to tell her that everything was going well. Jeremy’s defence team argued Mugford could not be treated with credibility because she approached the police almost immediately upon being dumped by Jeremy. It was shown Mugford had become incredibly hurt and upset and at one point in time she had tried to smother Jeremy with a pillow, by her own admissions stating “If I can’t have you, nobody can”
If Jeremy was the murderer he must have committed his crimes between midnight and 03:00 on the morning of 7 August 1985. This is a fact. From 03:15 onwards Jeremy was speaking to the police on his phone at his cottage in Goldhanger (three and a half miles from White House Farm), driving to White House Farm and then he was in the company of police officers until long after the bodies were discovered. The many bullets fired at each of his alleged victims would have meant that they died within moments of being shot. How, therefore, could the police have seen someone moving within the farmhouse at 03:45 and later, at 05:25, could they have been conversing with someone inside the building? Whilst he was outside White House Farm with two police officers a figure was seen moving in the main bedroom. At trial the figure was dismissed as a shadow or trick of light, but now documentary evidence shows the officer who made the sighting recorded seeing ‘an unidentified male.’ A log of radio communications shows that at 05:25 the tactical firearms officers were ‘in conversation’ with a person inside White House Farm. How could this be if everyone inside was dead? It is known, from studying photographs never shown to the jury, that Sheila Caffell was still bleeding after 09:00 when photographs of the scene of the crime were taken. How could this be if she had been shot at least six hours earlier? People stop bleeding shortly after death. Their blood would not stay red and running as can clearly be seen in the previously unseen photographs.
The sighting of what was believed to be a male at 03:45 introduces the possibility that someone other than Sheila or Jeremy carried out this terrible crime. It was said at trial that only Jeremy or Sheila could have been responsible and so if it could be shown Sheila was not a murderer then Jeremy had to be guilty, the jury were led to believe. Therefore the possibility that some unknown man along with the radio log evidence and now the photographic evidence was the killer raises serious questions over the safety of Jeremy’s conviction.
Whether it was Sheila Caffell or some other individual who was seen moving within the building, and who later spoke to the police, remains unknown but what is certain is that Sheila was alive long after 03:00 and therefore Bamber could not have been responsible for her death or the deaths of anyone else inside the building and that is a fact. On the basis of this highly significant new evidence Jeremy Bamber’s case is being reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, who it is hoped will refer it to the Court of Appeal in the near future.

Article courtesy
JeremyBamber.com
« Last Edit: February 26, 2013, 03:05:19 PM by John »
A malicious prosecution for a crime which never existed. An exposé of egregious malfeasance by public officials.
Indeed, the truth never changes with the passage of time.