Hi Dan.
I'm not convinced beyond a reasonable doubt to give an honest answer whether you wish to put it down to gut feeling or whatever. My passion for the case didnt come from meeting him in Long Lartin back in 1993, it came many years later post release. The last time I saw Jeremy Bamber was 1995ish. We have had no contact for 30 years in any shape or form.
To give the best recollection as ive said my time spent on the same wing with him he often spoke about the case. I became convinced he was innocent because of his boundless energy on fighting for freedom I had never witnessed it in a prisoner before. I've served time with many a lifer. When I first met him though I didnt like him. I found him too overbearing and domineering but overtime over gym and him having a side gig of baking and being on the same food boat ( prisoners pooling resources to cook a meal ) and on soc for a time we bonded.
I am deeply suspicious of the relatives. I am deeply suspicious of Julie Mugford. For the former though it is exceedingly difficult to make a tentative link to say they committed malpractice with the silencer. In regards to Julie I can never full get the innocent girl damsel scenario so as said any witness statement from her may be totally self serving. With that in mind I find it difficult to take anything she says seriously as I believe from the guilt stance that I look into she isn't telling the truth.
A persona he has learned to project over the years, from the little boy cowed on the school bus dependent on his sister to fight his battles, to hiding behind June's skirts, and learning about the constellations in the night sky from Nevill, a city boy who never took to the countryside, the sense of bewilderment turning to alienation and resentment as he was packed off to Gresham's at eight years of age.
The sentiment of inadequacy continued until the Jubilee photograph and a little beyond, the snapshot betraying his true inner feelings, still a little boy in many ways, perched upon a vehicle, making himself as small as possible as he wondered what the future held for him, knowing deep down the nonentity he was in that bucolic environment.
Suddenly events turned in his favour. Free from the shackles of boarding school and the weight of academic expectation he flourished at Colchester College, becoming a firm favourite as he offered lifts to fellow students in his newly-acquired vehicle. This was the time of Beatrice Bamber's death. then June's second breakdown, followed by his sister's disintegration and descent into madness, alleviated only by medical intervention and prescription medication.
All that stood in his way now was Nevill, and he too became ill and careworn as the farming life took its toll after all those years of feeling on probation, though the genius in agricultural matters still recognizing it was the Speakmans who owned the land. Criminal activity increased as the Thatcher reforms took hold, the lumpenproletariat creating evermore work for the magistrates, and paterfamilias Nevill witnessed at first hand how demanding the modern generation could be. Thinking he had solved the predicament with the provisions in the will, he dropped his guard a little, yet was still moved to tears thinking of the fate of his sisters Audrey and Diana, both lives tragically cut short. With his mementoes on the mahogany desk in the office he now lived in the past, fearful of the future and unwittingly proceeding with life as he wished it to be, incognizant of the dangers of the immediate future.
