Observer/Guardian 30/1/11
The new evidence Jeremy Bamber says could end his 26 years in prison
The murder of five members of one family in 1985 shocked Britain. But new material from an Observer/Guardian Films investigation – including police logs – will be examined tomorrow and could open the way for a fresh appeal
* Eric Allison and Mark Townsend
* The Observer, Sunday 30 January 2011
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Video: Will new evidence bring a historic third appeal for Bamber?
In North Yorkshire's Full Sutton maximum security jail, prisoner A5352AC will go about his business as usual. Up at 7am, the subsequent hours will be spent obsessing over documents that he hopes will overturn his conviction for one of Britain's most notorious multiple murders. Tomorrow Jeremy Bamber is likely to discover whether those efforts have been in vain.
Bamber was a 24-year-old with dark hair and striking youthful looks when five members of his family were killed on 7 August 1985 in an Essex farmhouse; a horrific crime for which he was found guilty. New images, published for the first time, show the effects. "I am an old man now and I feel it," he said last week. "I can feel all that time I have spent in jail. I never thought I'd do 26 years. I always thought another year, maybe another 18 months."
His fate rests on the judgment of three legal experts who will gather in the Birmingham offices of the Criminal Cases Review Commission to decide whether the evidence they have examined over the past two years casts sufficient doubt over the safety of Bamber's conviction to refer the case to the court of appeal.
It is a high-pressure, high-profile, decision. A referral would raise the possibility that Bamber is a victim of one of the UK's longest miscarriages of justice. It would also, clearly, pose fresh questions over the police investigation and subsequent prosecution.
Experts from the commission have examined a wealth of new evidence, including freshly disclosed Essex police files that appear to challenge the assertion that Bamber shot his adopted parents, June and Neville, his sister Sheila Caffell, and her six-year-old twins, Daniel and Nicholas, at their farm in the village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy.
The material, never heard before a jury or during previous appeal attempts, challenges key elements of the prosecution's case. Bamber believes the findings support his allegations that police fabricated, suppressed and interfered with evidence in an attempt to frame him.
Among the newly disclosed material – uncovered during an investigation by the Observer and Guardian Films – are logs chronicling police radio communications on the night of the murders which suggest that another person was in White House Farm and could have carried out the killings.
At 5:25am, when it is accepted that Bamber was standing outside the building alongside police, one states: "Firearms teams in conversation with person in farmhouse." Minutes later, the logs reveal another call requesting the urgent attendance of more firearms officers.
Ninety minutes earlier, the logs reveal that officers had seen a mystery figure inside the farm, with one noting "movement of person in upstairs window". They also show that police used a loudhailer for two hours as they attempted to contact an individual within the farmhouse, a period during which Bamber was outside.
Bamber's case is that Sheila, 27, his schizophrenic sister, shot her family before turning the gun on herself. One firearms officer states seeing a rifle propped against a window in the farmhouse at 7.30am before noting, minutes later, the rifle disappearing, substantiating suggestions that someone apart from Bamber was alive in the building throughout the killings.
At 7.38am, police stormed the property and a log entry records "one dead male, one dead female found on entry". Yet, according to court documents, only the body of Neville was discovered downstairs. Sheila, a model nicknamed "Bambi", was found in an upstairs bedroom alongside her dead mother.
Bamber said: "I know I was outside with the police when they saw someone moving around in the house, when they were talking to someone in the house, when they saw my sister in the kitchen, when they went into the house."
Bamber, described by the trial judge as "warped and evil beyond belief", is one of only 38 convicted killers in Britain who have been given a whole-life tariff, meaning they will never be released. Others include Ian Brady, Donald Neilson, Rosemary West and Peter Tobin. Only Bamber has consistently claimed to be innocent.
"It is incredible that they could give me a death sentence, using old age as the tool. But I have never believed I would stay in jail or that I would not win," he added, before his third appeal is heard.
Another component of his case is testimony from one of Britain's most eminent photographic experts, whose analysis of police negatives found them incompatible with the principal prosecution case. Peter Sutherst, an analyst with 50 years' experience who advises scenes-of-crime officers, found that scratch marks on the farm's kitchen wall that were said to have been made by a silencer fitted to the murder weapon used by Bamber during the killings might have been made more than a month after the murders.
Following that discovery, the review commission asked Sutherst to scrutinise a minute "red spot" on the carpet beneath the scratches. It had initially assumed it was paint, but Sutherst – after examining hundreds of police photographs – matched the fleck to Sheila's toenail varnish.
Further analysis revealed a "missing" area of varnish on her big toe. When Sutherst transposed the fleck upon the missing area, it matched perfectly. He believes this places her in the kitchen on the night of the murders and that the damage may have occurred when she attempted to shoot herself and the recoil from the rifle butt struck her foot.
A decision to refer the case to the court of appeal would lead to fresh criticism over the conduct of the police. One former officer on the case told the Observer that the original investigation was "mishandled". Ex-police sergeant Chris Bews, who met Bamber at the farm on the night of the shootings, also confirmed that officers later compared notes of the incident, although he rejected any allegations of collusion. "We sat down together: it was permissible under what was called judges' rules in those days."
Yet at least one of the statements by officers assigned to the case has raised questions over its integrity. Forensic scientists found that a page of one officer's official statement had been "typed using a different typewriter".
Bamber himself is more exercised by the amount of evidence that is still withheld by Essex police. More than 40,000 documents and 211 photographs relating to the case have yet to be disclosed, with offers by Bamber to pay for the cost of searching through paperwork refused by the police. Of those police photographs recently released, several point towards the movement of Sheila's body and the murder weapon during examination by scenes-of-crime officers. Italian forensic image analyst Martino Jerian, whose specialist software allows pictures to be merged, shows Sheila's body lying in two differing positions. The murder weapon, originally found by her side, is seen propped up against the bedroom window. Essex police deny tampering with the crime scene.
However, when shown the images, Mick Gradwell, a former detective chief superintendent with Lancashire police, identified possible flaws with the police inquiry. "The standard of the investigation did not meet the standard of the time," he said.
Bews, one of the first officers to arrive at the scene, said after studying the pictures: "Somebody has obviously moved her hand." He added: "I don't think any of the police involved at the time would disagree that it was a badly handled investigation."
Other newly disclosed photographs indicate blood on Sheila's hands and feet. However, at the trial the prosecution claimed her hands and feet were perfectly clean. Summing up, the trial judge, Mr Justice Drake, said: "I have reminded you of the fact – and it is a fact – that when she was found she had no marks of blood on the soles of her feet and no marks of having handled bullets on her hands."
The apparent absence of blood on swabs used to test Sheila's hands for the presence of firearms residue has provoked further concerns over police procedure during the inquiry.
In another development, Bamber's cousin, David Boutflour, who found the silencer at the farm days after the killings, has admitted – for the first time – that he inherited a significant sum following the murders. "I have inherited quite a large amount of money as a result of Jeremy. And most of it I've wasted, I've spent," he said.
Boutflour, who gave evidence for the prosecution, has consistently maintained that Bamber is guilty of the murders. However, campaigners have argued that the possibility that Boutflour might benefit from Bamber being convicted was not properly articulated to the jury.
As it was, the prosecution alleged that Bamber's motive for the murders was financial, driven by the hope of an inheritance of £436,000.
Money, says Bamber, seems unimportant after 26 years in prison. "All I want is one day to be on a Dorset beach and have someone around me, or people around, who I love and they love me," he said.
"I have no desire for anything monetary. Simply to go for a walk with someone I love and see a bird together. To enjoy a beautiful ballet, a simple meal in the local cafe or go to a supermarket and buy a mango."
