Here we go again, it must be getting near to Christmas?
Jeremy Bamber's 'new evidence' that could free him after 33 years behind bars
EXCLUSIVE The mass killer was jailed for shooting parents Nevill and June, model sister Sheila “Bambi” Caffell, and her six-year-old twin sons Daniel and Nicholas at White House Farm, Essex, in August 1985.
By Matthew Young
Published 18 October 2019
Mass murderer Jeremy Bamber claims he has unearthed phone call evidence that could set him free, 33 years after he was jailed for slaughtering his family.
Bamber, 58, has found a phone log he says proves he did not shoot parents Nevill and June, model sister Sheila “Bambi” Caffell, and her six-year-old twin sons Daniel and Nicholas in August 1985.
Bamber is serving a full life tariff for the massacre at White House Farm in Essex.
His legal team say a police record referring to a call made by Bamber on the night of the White House Farm massacre in 1985 proves he was not there at the time and could form the basis of an appeal.
They say it backs up the theory that Bamber’s sister Sheila Caffell, 26, murdered their parents Nevill and June, both 61, then shot her own sons, twins Nicholas and Daniel, six, before killing herself.
Bamber’s lawyer Mark Newby said: “The evidence strongly suggests the chain of events could not have been what the prosecution alleged.”
The phone call evidence forms one element of a huge bundle Bamber’s team will soon submit to the Criminal Case Review Commission.
The previously unseen police document appears to back up Bamber’s story that two calls were made to police on the night of the murders, one from his father and one from him after Nevill rang saying Sheila had “gone crazy”.
At his trial, the prosecution said only one call was made to police – from Jeremy Bamber at 3.26am from the crime scene, White House Farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy, Essex. But the new document describes a call to police from Jeremy Bamber timed at “approx 3.37am”.
His legal team argue it shows Bamber could not have made the 3.26am call from the farm and returned to his home 3.5 miles away in Goldhanger to make the second call.
The “3.37am” note came from an interview with a PC Myall, of Essex Police, during the Dickinson Inquiry into the force’s handling of the case after Bamber’s conviction in November 1986.
The note was found by Bamber among thousands of police documents released to him in 2011.
PC Myall is noted as telling Dickinson: “We received a telephone call at the P.Stn (Police Station, Witham).
"The officer (PC West) at CD Control (Chelmsford) was on the phone and told us that he was relating information to us and still had the informant (Jeremy Bamber) on the other telephone.”
The trial judge had instructed the jury to disregard Bamber’s claims that he had called police from his home at 3.36am.
And prosecutors told the trial Bamber had invented the call from Nevill to lay the blame on schizophrenic Sheila, known as Bambi when she worked as a model.
Bamber was convicted by a 10-2 majority of murdering his family to claim a £436,000 inheritance.
He was initially sentenced to five life sentences, to serve a minimum 25 years, but that was increased to a whole life tariff in 1994.
The Mirror revealed in 2010 how lost phone logs showed it was Nevill who called police at 3.26am.
A further record submitted to the Criminal Case Review Commission in 2010 showed a 3.36am call to police from Jeremy Bamber.
But the CCRC ruled the 3.36am call was noted in error and that there was just one call, from Jeremy not Nevill, made at 3.26am from White House Farm scene.
The new “3.37am” note is said to prove the existence of the second call.
ITV last week announced a drama about the murders next year, with Freddie Fox as Bamber, who is in Wakefield jail, West Yorkshire.
Bamber was famously pictured with girlfriend Julie Mugford, 21, struggling to contain his grief walking behind his parents’ coffins at their funeral.
After Julie found he had cheated on her, she told police Bamber had talked of hiring a hitman to kill his parents.
A blood-stained silencer was also found at the farm by Bamber’s cousin.
Bamber’s team say they now have evidence of two silencers examined by police, both believed to contain blood that could belong to Sheila or now-deceased cousin Robert Boutflour.
They say a forensic report has been given to the CPS about this evidence. Bamber believes police always had evidence that would have cleared him, but failed to disclose it at his trial, his first appeal in 1989 or second in 2002.
Between 2004 and 2011, Bamber made three CCRC submissions in a failed attempt to get his case back to the Court of Appeal. He has also made appeals against his whole life tariff.
Essex Police said: “There has never been anything to suggest that he was wrongly convicted.” But Bamber’s lawyer is now hopeful of a new appeal.
Mr Newby said: “The phone call information is consistent with what Jeremy Bamber always said. It is part of a package of evidence that should lead to a positive review for Jeremy.
“It’s fair to say when we go back to the CCRC we will have a pretty strong package which we hope they will refer to the Court of Appeal. We hope we will get it across the line.
“If we do, it is probably this country’s greatest ever miscarriage of justice.”
The case against
The prosecution said Bamber, then 24, had cycled to White House Farm and got in via an insecure window before murdering his family.
Girlfriend Julie Mugford said Bamber had planned the killings and had phoned her, saying: “Tonight’s the night.”
A silencer found three days later had Sheila’s blood inside. Prosecutors said she could hardly have put it back in the cupboard if she had lready killed herself with it.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-bambers-new-evidence-could-20651305
Jeremy Bamber: Missing police phone log could clear Bambi killer - Exclusive
By Jon Clements 5th Aug 2010 “Lawyers are examining a “lost” police phone log which they claim proves he was innocent of shooting dead five relatives.
The document backs his story that the 1985 Essex massacre was carried out by his “crazed” sister Sheila, known as Bambi.
Now Bamber, 49, is set to launch a fresh appeal against his life sentence.
One of the logs, previously unseen, suggests Bamber’s father Nevill called police on the night of the massacre at White House Farm in Essex.
The note written on August 7, 1985, is titled “daughter gone berserk” and timed at 3.26am – 10 minutes BEFORE a second note records Bamber’s own distress call.
It states: “Mr Bamber, White House Farm, Tolleshunt d’Arcy – daughter Sheila Bamber, aged 26 years, has got hold of one of my guns.” The message adds that “Mr Bamber has a collection of shotguns and .410s” and includes the correct phone number for White House Farm.
It also records that patrol car CA7 was despatched to the scene at 3.35am, one minute before Bamber rang from his cottage in nearby Goldhanger village.
The message is strikingly similar to the scenario Bamber has consistently claimed his 61-year-old father described to him.
Bamber rang Chelmsford police station at 3.36am, according to a second log also obtained by the Mirror. He told an officer: “You’ve got to help me. My father’s just phoned me, he said, ‘Please come over, your sister has gone crazy and has got the gun’.” The log has small but significant differences to the other note, indicating it relates to a different call.
It refers to Sheila as a “sister” who had gone “crazy” with a gun. And it records that another car, CA5, was separately sent to the farmhouse – again indicating the logs refer to different calls.
The documents are among 100,000 pieces of paper Bamber has sifted through in his prison cell at Full Sutton with the help of his lawyers and supporters.
Prosecutors told Bamber’s trial he invented the call from his father to lay the blame on his schizophrenic sister Sheila, a former model known as Bambi. The judge told jurors – never shown the earlier log – that the existence or not of 61-year-old Nevill’s call was crucial in determining the former public schoolboy’s guilt.
They found Bamber guilty of murdering Nevill, mum June, Sheila, and her twin six-year-old sons Nicholas and Daniel to claim a £436,000 inheritance.
He is currently serving a whole life tariff after being branded “evil almost beyond belief”.
The new evidence is being examined by the Criminal Cases Review Commission which will announce within weeks if Bamber is to have a third appeal. Senior figures at the CCRC are understood to harbour long-term doubts about the safety of his conviction which they have referred to appeal judges once before. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jeremy-bamber-missing-police-phone-239793A Bill Robertson left a customer review for Carol Ann Lee’s book here https://www.amazon.co.uk/review/RAIT0ALLFNUB9 in October 2015
Excerpt:
“One more example; how can you claim to write the definitive investigation without even mentioning that PC's Cracknell and Norcup were the first police officers to be sent to White House Farm by PC West at Chelmsford police station, five minutes before Jeremy telephoned the police. How can you not speculate why they drove there so slowly, taking 50 minutes to arrive? Perhaps they drove so slowly because they were responding to the call to PC West from Nevill Bamber and he did not convey any urgency in his phone call?
How about mentioning that there is unambiguous evidence that there are two different versions of PC West's incident recording message log; one clearly a forgery? Why not speculate on the reasons for needing to forge police documentation?
24. In the early hours of Wednesday, 7 August the appellant telephoned Chelmsford Police Station on a direct line number as opposed to the 999 emergency call system and spoke to PC West. He said, "You've got to help me. My father has just rung me and said, "Please come over. Your sister has gone crazy and has got the gun." Then the line went dead". He explained that he had tried to ring his father back at White House Farm but he could not get a reply.
25. Using a radio link PC West contacted Malcolm Bonnet at the Chelmsford H/Q Information Room. PC West then spoke to the appellant again, who complained at the time the officer was taking. He said, "When my father rang he sounded terrified". The appellant was told to go to the farm and to wait there for the police. PC West described the appellant as sounding "very laconic" and calm during the first part of their conversation and said that there was no sense of urgency. When he spoke to him again the appellant appeared "more urgent and distressed in his manner".
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.
The arrival of the police at White House Farm 28. PS Bews, PC Myall and PC Saxby drove from Witham Police Station passing the appellant in his car on their way to the farm. He was travelling at a speed very much slower than their vehicle. Ann Eaton's evidence was that the appellant was normally "a very, very fast driver". The appellant's car arrived at the farmhouse 1-2 minutes after the police vehicle.
29. The appellant told the officers about the telephone call from his father, adding that it sounded as though someone had cut him off. When asked if it was possible that his sister was inside with a gun he said yes. He told the police that he did not get on with her. He was asked if it was likely that his sister had gone berserk with a gun and he replied, "I don't really know. She is a nutter. She's been having treatment."
When asked why his father had called him and not the police, he said that his father was not the sort of person to get "organisations" involved, preferring to keep things within the family. When asked why he had not dialled 999, the appellant said he did not think it would make any difference to the time it would have taken for the police to arrive.
http://www.homepage-link.to/justice/judgements/Bamber/index.html
