Julie Mugford, (girlfriend) whom (Jeremy) had two-timed, claimed he had confessed to her his plans to hire a hit-man to murder the family and that hours before the shooting he had told her: "Tonight's the night." The man named was a local plumber, who was arrested with Bamber. The plumber had a cast-iron alibi for that night and both were released……………………………………….
A month after the killings, Bamber's cousins (Eatons, Boutflours) found a silencer with flecks of blood on it in a cupboard in the farmhouse – this would have ruled out Sheila being the killer because, with the silencer on the rifle, her arms would not have been long enough to reach the trigger to kill herself, and it left Bamber as the only suspect. Bamber was charged and the prosecution argued he was a greedy schemer who, motivated by the prospect of inheriting the £436,000 family fortune and considerable land, had killed all five then placed the rifle in his sister's hands to make it look like a murder-suicide. He was found guilty in a 10-2 majority verdict and given five life sentences, upgraded to whole life in
1994………………………………………………….
And gradually it emerged that the investigation had been, at best, flawed: the police had not searched the farmhouse properly; a call from Bamber's father to the police, saying his daughter had gone "berserk", had not been disclosed to the jury; officers had said they had seen somebody moving inside the house before they entered while Bamber was standing next to them. How had the police failed to find a silencer in the cupboard? Why was it not revealed that the people who did find it – the cousins – stood to benefit from Bamber going to jail by inheriting the property. Why had so many people been allowed to trudge through the crime scene, contaminating so much of the evidence? Why did scratch marks on the kitchen mantelpiece that suggested a struggle not exist in the original scene-of- crime photos?.............................
The new evidence on the marks is perhaps the most compelling. The trial judge, in his summing up, told the jury: "On the evidence of the scratch marks alone you may find Mr Bamber guilty." But the photographs they were shown were taken after the silencer was discovered. Photographs taken on the day of the shootings and not disclosed at trial have emerged showing there were no scratch marks, which contradicts the evidence of a struggle – a completely different picture to the one presented to the jury……………………
Bamber appealed for the first time in 1989 on the grounds that the judge had summed the case up unfairly. He was finally granted a second appeal in 2002. Bamber's team argued that vital evidence had not been disclosed or had been fabricated, most of it relating to the silencer and the blood testing. The silencer was found to contain blood, but it could not be established if it was human or animal. But in a 522-point judgment, the three judges concluded that no conduct on behalf of the police or the prosecution would have adversely affected the jury, and that the more they examined the details, the more they thought the jury had reached the right conclusion……………………………
Sheila Caffell's Bible was found by her side, open at pages containing Psalms 51-55. Eminent theologian Susan Gillingham has prepared a report on the significance of these psalms, in relation to Sheila's mental state and religious mania. She says anyone who knew the psalms well would turn to them as a means of "expressing their own penitence at the evil within themselves and outrage at the evil words and actions performed against them by others". Astonishingly, the bloodstained Bible was never forensically examined, nor produced at trial, despite repeated requests from Bamber's solicitor. So the jury was not aware of the significance of the psalms. Photographs also showed a handwritten note sticking up from between the pages of the Bible. The words at the top of the note are "love one another" – the same words were written on a banner on a wall in a room in Jonestown, Guyana, where 909 people died in 1978 in a mass murder-suicide. But the evidential value of what was inside the Bible cannot now be gauged; Essex police have informed Bamber's lawyers that the note has been destroyed………………………………..
Photographs which Jeremy Bamber's lawyers allege show that the gun was moved
• One police officer described having no memory of the gun being at the crime scene
• Inconsistencies in the blood-spatter evidence
• X-rays revealing bullets which were presented whole at trial had broken up on impact
Bamber's legal team claim that photos of Sheila, known as Bambi - which show the murder weapon, a rifle, positioned in different places on her body - point to evidence-tampering and are therefore incompatible with the prosecution's case. They add that the inconsistencies the photographs depict appear to be supported by the records of police officers who attended the scene of the crime. One detective raised concerns after seeing the pictures, describing having no recollection of seeing the rifle at all when he was at the scene.
Hugh Ferguson, Sheila's psychiatrist, gave evidence at the trial. In a statement made in 2002, he says he was unaware that the Bible was open at the psalms at the time he gave evidence. Having read them, he says, "they contain in them the themes which, over time, I knew were exercising Sheila Caffell. In short form, the struggle between good and evil, or God and the Devil."…………………….
Nor was Ferguson, or the jury, aware of another factor that may have influenced Sheila to carry out the killings. At the trial, Bamber said his sister was upset at the prospect of losing her children, but the prosecution accused him of making this up……………………………..
The Guardian was passed a letter, written by Sheila's ex-husband, Colin Caffell, to Nevill Bamber. In it, Caffell expresses deep concern about Sheila's mental state and asks his father-in law-to "try and convince Sheila that it would be better for her and the boys if they stayed with me most of the time". Ferguson says if Nevill had pleaded Caffell's case to Sheila, it could have had a "potentially catastrophic effect on her". As a result, he says, "she may have projected on to her father a concept of evil"…………………….
How does Bamber feel about his sister today? "I don't blame her, and I still love her." For somebody who protests his innocence so vehemently, he shows a remarkable lack of bitterness. "Oh, I have been terrible, but I don't feel it now. That just eats you up, fills you full of hate, gives you ulcers and lines around your eyes and you look horrible. I have resented Sheila and hated her over the years, but I don't any more. I understand……………………….
Refs: Guardian Media, Mirror, Channel 4 News,
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