by Jeremy Bamber’s investigators may have lied about evidence that led to his conviction and put him behind bars for 39 years, an investigation is expected to reveal.
Bamber is serving life after being found guilty of murdering his adoptive parents, Nevill and June, both 61, his sister, Sheila Caffell, 26, and her six-year-old twins, Daniel and Nicholas, at White House Farm, near the village. of Tolleshunt D’Arcy in Essex, in August 1985.
He has always protested his innocence and claims that Caffell, who suffered from schizophrenia, shot her family before turning the gun on herself.
Now a 17,000-word investigation by The New Yorker, expected to be published Monday, is said to have highlighted more than a dozen apparent inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case.
The magazine, which also raised doubts about Lucy Letby’s conviction, spoke to officers who were present after the murders and who are believed to have substantiated Bamber’s claim that the police intervened at the crime scene.
The eight-month investigation focused on claims that Essex Police changed witness statements, lied about evidence and withheld and concealed evidence, The Mail on Sunday reported.
Bamber told the newspaper: “If the re-establishment of the crime scene is a major new point in The New Yorker story, that will enable us to go straight back to the Court of Appeal, which I hope will be within a few a day after we received the news. fresh evidence in our hands.
“The Court of Appeal has already said that it would be a mortal sin to reinstate the presence of the crime, so we will be going straight back to the Court of Appeal as soon as possible, asking for bail pending an appeal complete.”
The investigation is also said to have raised questions about the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which Bamber’s legal team say has not acted on submissions that would have excluded him.
Bamber claims that his sister Sheila, a model and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, suffered a psychotic episode and committed the murders before turning the gun on herself.
However, the prosecution argued that it would have been too far from Sheila’s fingers to reach the trigger and shoot herself with a silencer that was in short supply.
Another key question in the case is whether Bamber received a call from his father on the night of the murder telling him that Sheila had stolen one of his guns and gone “berserk”.
Police said Nevill made no such call but lawyers found a phone log of a call on the night of the killings from Nevill entitled “daughter gone berserk”.
Meanwhile, a blood-stained Bible, found by Sheila’s side, was not forensically examined or produced at his trial despite a request from Bamber’s attorney.
He was convicted in October 1986 by a 10–2 majority verdict and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years. In 1994, he was told he would never be released.
The Court of Appeal upheld the judgment in 2002.
In 2020, he lost an appeal to be downgraded from the maximum security prison.
Bamber sought permission for a High Court challenge to a decision taken by the director of the long-term and high-security estate – which is part of the Prison and Probation Service – not to downgrade him from a Category A prisoner in March, or not to order. there will be an oral hearing on the matter.
Category A prisoners are considered the most dangerous prisoners to the public and are held under maximum security conditions.
At a remote hearing in October of that year, Bamber’s lawyers asked Judge Julian Knowles to allow a full hearing of Bamber’s claim, arguing that the decision was “unreasonable”.
Mr Justice Knowles refused Bamber permission to make the challenge.
Bamber appealed the dismissal of his convictions at the Court of Appeal in 2002 and had a High Court challenge against the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referring his case for another appeal rejected in 2012.
A spokesman for Jeremy Bamber’s innocence campaign told the Mail on Sunday: “The CCRC has received Jeremy Bamber’s latest submissions from March 2021 and… they have not investigated any of the key exculpatory issues in them, which point to Jeremy Bamber’s innocence. “
An Essex Police spokesman said: “In August 1985 the lives of five people, including two children, were needlessly, tragically and callously taken when Jeremy Bamber murdered them in their own home.
“In the years that followed, this case was the subject of a number of appeals and reviews by the Court of Appeal and the Criminal Cases Review Commission – in all these processes nothing was found other than Bamber being the person responsible kill his adoptive parents. Nevill and June, sister Sheila Caffell and her two sons Nicholas and Daniel.
“Essex Police has continued to comply with all legal requirements in this case and will continue to assist the CCRC as required.”
