Justice4JeremyBamber: Guardian.'New review of ballistics' evidence shakes safety of convictions in 1986 Essex killings..'

Gun experts raise doubts over Jeremy Bamber murder verdict

• Eric Allison and Mark Townsend
• guardian.co.uk, Saturday 4 February 2012 22.12 GMT
• Article history

Jeremy Bamber handcuffed to a police escort in 1988. Photograph: Today/Rex Features:

Some of the world's most eminent ballistics experts have uncovered "the first evidence directly pointing to the innocence of Jeremy Bamber", convicted of a notorious multiple murder 27 years ago.

Bamber was found guilty in October 1986 of shooting his adoptive parents, June and Nevill, his sister Sheila Caffell and her six-year-old twins, Daniel and Nicholas, at their Essex farmhouse. He has consistently maintained his innocence, although his last attempt to win freedom was rejected by the Criminal Cases Review Commission 12 months ago. However, a new legal team has submitted evidence to the commission, the authority that investigates miscarriages of justice, claiming to have unearthed evidence that "shakes the safety of Bamber's convictions to their core".

Detailed reports, compiled by British and US medical and ballistics analysts, corroborate the initial police view that Bamber's schizophrenic sister Sheila Caffell committed the White House Farm murders in 1985. During the immediate aftermath of the killings on 7 August, detectives and the pathologist thought Caffell, 28, had murdered her parents and sons before turning the gun on herself.

Yet the theory was cast into doubt when three days after the shootings a cousin of Bamber found a silencer in a cupboard at the farm, apparently with Caffell's blood on it. Central to the prosecution case in the Chelmsford crown court trial was evidence that Caffell's blood was on the silencer; if so, she could not have shot herself then placed it in a cupboard downstairs. Jurors heard how the silencer was responsible for scratch marks on a kitchen shelf, allegedly made in a struggle between Bamber and his 61-year-old adoptive father.

The trial was unusual in that the jury were told the killings could have been carried out only by Caffell or Bamber. The issue of the silencer was vital in persuading the jury, with the judge instructing them the silencer "could, on its own, lead them to believe that Bamber was guilty".

Now the conclusions of a peer-reviewed pathology assessment of the evidence relating to Caffell's death, obtained by the Observer, appear to demolish the case against Bamber. They suggest that a silencer – so pivotal to Bamber's conviction – was never used. One report by David Fowler, chief medical examiner of the US state of Maryland, who has reviewed the files of more than 3,000 shooting homicides, states: "In my professional opinion, the [burn marks] complex just described of the lower entrance and two abrasions is consistent with the rifle not having a silencer."

Fowler believes no silencer was involved. His conclusion is supported by Ljubisa Dragovic, chief medical examiner of Oakland county in Michigan, and Marcella Fierro, former chief medical examiner of Virginia.
Leeds-based Simon McKay, Bamber's new solicitor advocate, said: "The evidence of three senior and respected pathologists that the wounds to Sheila Caffell are consistent with the rifle having been fired without the silencer fitted shakes the safety of Jeremy Bamber's convictions to their core."

McKay added: "The fresh expert evidence aligns itself with what police officers found at the scene on the morning of the killings and the combined views of those who assessed the position then: namely, and tragically, [that] Sheila Caffell murdered her family, then took her own life."

Evidence that the fatal wounds had been fired by a rifle without a silencer are corroborated by further fresh analysis of burn marks on Nevill Bamber's back. The findings are supported by firearms experts working for Dr John Manlove, an Oxfordshire-based forensic scientist.

Manlove states: "From its size and shape, this mark could possibly have been caused by the hot muzzle of a firearm, without a sound moderator." He says that further testing is required with the murder weapon, an Anschütz 525 rifle, to underpin his initial assessment.

Manlove's conclusions are corroborated by gunfire tests conducted last month in Arizona. A report by Daniel Caruso, chief of burn services at the Arizona Burn Centre and executive chair of the department of surgery at the University of Arizona, states: "In my professional opinion, the three wounds sustained by Ralph [Nevill] Bamber are consistent in size, shape and diameter with a threaded end of a model 525 Anschütz rifle barrel heated sufficiently to cause injury."

McKay is adamant that the CCRC has no option but to refer the case.

During the trial, the jury struggled to reach a verdict, requesting to see the evidence relating to the blood on the silencer, before returning with a 10-2 majority. McKay added: "A picture is emerging that exculpates Jeremy Bamber and implicates his sister." Until the finding of the silencer, he says, there was no reason to doubt the initial view of detectives that Caffell committed the murder then killed herself. The pathologist, Dr Peter Vanezis, added: "My examination did not reveal anything to contradict the suicide theory."

Although the burn marks were raised at the trial, McKay said they were dismissed as a "mystery". A senior forensics expert in 1985 raised the possibility that the rifle muzzle may have been responsible but no evidence exists that he pursued this line of inquiry. Bamber's lawyers have recently obtained a copy of a note from the Home Office database endorsing that tests were needed to ascertain how hot the silencer became after firing, but again no proof is available that this was pursued.

Jeremy Bamber New Evidence (various media articles edited)

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,

Edits

Justice4Jeremy. New evidence of innocence

For twenty six years Jeremy Bamber has been fighting for justice, his freedom and to clear his name, having been falsely accused and imprisoned for the murder of his family.  Jeremy has always maintained his innocence.  New evidence shown here, which was known by the prosecution but denied to Jeremy in his trial and Appeals, supports his claims.

Police responsible for Sheila's death (Part 3)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EDp_tqUysI&feature=player_embedded#!