EVIDENCE of an alleged botched police investigation will be used by lawyers in a fresh appeal from Jeremy Bamber, convicted nearly 30 years ago for the murder of five members of his family.In the submission, due to be put before the Criminal Cases Review Commission next month, it will be argued that the bloodstained silencer, used to secure Bamber's conviction, was not the only device of its kind found by officers on the farm in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, and could therefore have been subject to contamination.This will be the third time the CCRC, which reviews possible miscarriages of justice in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, has looked at Bamber's case after he was found guilty of the murders in 1985 and handed five life sentences.Former MP Andrew Hunter, who has been involved in the campaign for ten years, said: "We have discovered that there were three silencers taken from White House Farm, but only one was produced at trial and this was the one with Sheila's blood in it.
"There seems to have been so much confusion about which one was taken to police, with serial numbers being changed, that the evidence is unreliable."Another area of new evidence is that Nevill Bamber was found with burns on the back of his neck which it was argued were caused by the silencer on the murder weapon. We have obtained advice that this is not the case and the burns may have been caused without it."Bamber has spent more than 28 years behind bars after being convicted of killing his adopted parents June and Nevill, sister Sheila Caffell and her two sons Daniel and Nicholas at their family home, White House Farm, in Tolleshunt D'Arcy in 1985.It was Bamber's cousin David Boutflour who found a silencer in a cupboard at the farm three days after the murders, with Caffell's blood on it.It was key to the prosecution's case in the trial at Chelmsford Crown Court that the drop of Caffell's blood on the silencer meant she could not have shot herself then placed it in a cupboard downstairs.But despite the new evidence Mr Hunter, who was the Conservative MP for Basingstoke until 2005, admits it is difficult to hold out much hope for a reversal in the court's previous decisions."I don't raise my hopes we have been let down so many times before.
