As the clamour for revenge in many quarters continues to which the recent attack on a Full Sutton inmate attests, one wonders what the future holds for this Category A prisoner, a rating we are told reserved for Britain’s most dangerous and difficult prisoners. Is Jeremy really such a deceitful person, a snake in the grass who once released would immediately set out to exact vengeance and seek financial and violent recompense on those who have wronged him, or has his sentence of time-served satisfied those types whose thirst for revenge almost destroys themselves as well as the perpetrator? Is this man the victim of a massive conspiracy inconceivable even by 1980s standards, yet with the fabric of society so stretched to breaking point over that period that the average person in the street no longer baulks at corruption in the highest office? If Jeremy Bamber is guilty is he the product of such a society which many of us helped to create, or is it notwithstanding unsafe ever to let Jeremy Bamber out and experience life as a free man,at liberty to travel when and wherever he pleases?
A greedy man who wanted more, influenced by the wanton hedonism of his age, a man who out of the confines of his adoptive parents’ influence expected and for the most part achieved complete subservience, who came to despise weakness and was jealous of those who threatened to be his rival, a man who finally even uptore the parental shackles to become master of his own destiny, but for the stalwart Julie who finally realized that Frankenstein’s monster, the monster she amongst others had helped to create, finally had to be destroyed.
A man who killed his entire adoptive family, parents who had nurtured him from three months old, yet who would be slaughtered in that short orgy of violence as Jeremy high on cocaine pumped bullet after bullet relentlessly into his parents’ form, bashing Nevill vindictively with a rifle butt as he sank into his favourite armchair, as Jeremy remembered the nights when his father, weary from farm labour would be too tired to chat to his son and would close his eyes on the world. June too was occupied with events from without and her son, after the formal atmosphere of Gresham’s public school, would come home to a time-warp existence where a young man who initially craved only attention came only to know his place in the Bamber family routine in monetary terms, that of being a skivvy on the farm for as long as they were in charge.
Was June apprised of her attacker in the early hours of Wednesday morning as Jeremy took one last disdainful look before vowing never to see her again, did she have time for a final frantic prayer as the last of seven bullets pierced her skull and brain, did God afford her succour and solace in those last final moments or was she cast into the pit of despair beside the bed as she recognized her assailant and finally realized what Jeremy had planned for her?
What of Sheila, that naïve, gullible, easily-led girl, whose greatest achievement lay asleep in beds across the corridor, yet who believed herself to be such a failure. Can one really believe that she was the instrument of evil that morning, or were the five corpses synonymous with the person who tipped a sack of potatoes in a ditch for others to clear, who scattered papers on the office floor of Osea Road to simulate intruders, the man who set up pranks with Julie, lighting the blue touchpaper ,then retreating from a safe distance to watch the consequences? The man who under a veneer of decency and respectability coveted a secret lifestyle only achievable through cold-blooded murder?
What of the twins, those six year old cherubs Nicholas and Daniel, whom Jeremy had told Liz Rimington what spoilt brats they were and could never do a thing wrong in their mother’s eyes? Those interlopers who were sleeping at the farm in Jeremy’s room, sensing the oppressive atmosphere with only a thumb as comforter as possibly their mother was too ill that night to read them a bedtime story. As Colin reflects on their unwitting abandonment of all the actors in this drama it is he who will feel the greatest sense of relief and security in the years to come as he finally lies down alongside his boys in Highgate, in contrast to an unconfessed and unrepentant Jeremy, who leaves but an awful blank as he acts out daily his sombre charade in front of a host of people to whom he could offer relief if only he so chose.
