COLIN Caffell has a new life. A new wife. A new family.
It has taken him over 20 years to carve out a new beginning after the bloody killing of five members of his family at their farmhouse in Essex.
When he wakes today, on the 20th anniversary of the day their killer was convicted, and cuddles his daughter, Colin's thoughts will not be far from his murdered children.
Nicholas and Daniel were only six years old when "evil beyond belief" Jeremy Bamber pumped eight bullets into their heads as they slept.
The court heard chilling details of how the boys' grandparents, Neville and June Bamber, were shot by 24-year-old Bamber, their adopted son, at White House Farm, in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex.
Bamber then placed the rifle and a bible on the chest of his sister Sheila Caffell, the twins' mum and Colin's former wife, to imply she'd committed the murders before killing herself.
It was a mass murder which stunned Britain. As the guilty verdict was delivered at Chelmsford Crown Court on 28 October, 1986, Bamber appeared to slump slightly but gave no further reaction.
Sentencing him to five life prison terms, judge Justice Drake said: "I find it difficult to foresee whether it will ever be safe to release someone who can shoot two little boys as they lie asleep in their beds."
In the two decades that have passed, Bamber has repeatedly protested his innocence. He's already lost two appeals against his conviction, made in 1989 and 2002. And he's also lost two further High Court actions to recover money he claimed he should have received from his grandmother's will and the family's caravan site firm.
In his latest bid to claim innocence, Bamber and his legal team are still trying to make Sheila, who's thought to have suffered from mild schizophrenia, a scapegoat for the murders.
The thought Bamber, now 45, could be allowed to walk the streets again as a free man haunts Colin.
He and wife Sally Petersen now have a daughter, who at seven is just a year older than his sons when they died, and they have moved to an isolated part of the West Country, where Colin works quietly as a sculptor.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror this week, Colin expressed his anger over Bamber's repeated attempts to win freedom. "In his case, life must mean life," he said.
Colin, now 52, was divorced from Sheila at the time of the killings. He had been on the verge of setting out to collect his sons from their grandparents' home when police came to break the harrowing news.
That moment, and the subsequent unfolding of the massacre, has stayed with Colin ever since.
"My concern is that there might be a change in the law that does allow Bamber to appeal - or worse allow him to be released. The judge said he is one of those few convicted killers who should never be let out."
From his cottage in the South West of England, Colin added: "No one round here knows who I am or my background. I do visit the twins' graves whenever I go to London, but I try not to think about the whole thing. I've re-married and have a new family. I moved to get away from it."
Colin stood side-by-side with Bamber at Sheila's funeral and comforted the only surviving member of the family.
By Don Mackay And Geoffrey Lakeman 28/10/2006
EXCLUSIVE: WE TALK TO DAD OF MURDERED TWINS.. AND TO CAGED BAMBER
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