As Julie turns 50 this Summer it may be apposite to look back for a moment, to reminisce and reflect on the legacy of this notorious case of which Julie was so much a part. Of course none of us are the same as we were 29 years ago; we have all moved on in some part of our lives and so it is with Julie, now living in a smart Winnipeg suburb and seemingly the woman who has it all: a loving husband, two healthy children and a stratospheric rise up the ladder of the education profession to rank amongst one of the most highly paid in that sector today.
Yet it was not always the case for Julie, the product of a broken home and allegations of abuse within it,the one constant being the excellent free State education of a Northern town so often mocked by the London-based tabloid press, yet which gave Julie the escape route she needed and indeed the safety and security which it afforded her may well be the reason she chose to continue in that sphere when around her things looked less certain.
It may be worthwhile here to pause for a moment and take a look back at the Britain of the 1980s, a place which had broken with all economic policy pertaining since 1945 and which now championed the pursuit of individualism and the acquisition of wealth, as politicians told the workless people of the North to "get on their bike" and find work in the more prosperous areas. Many did follow this advice including Julie's family, and it was for this reason that Julie found herself at Colchester Sixth Form College amidst a more prosperous community. It's not hard to fathom that Julie must have realized she was comparatively lucky in the scheme of things as wages for those in work rose year on year and with student loans not yet introduced Julie must at this stage have been optimistic about her future as she secured a place at Goldsmith's University to train to become a teacher.
Yet there must always have been a doubt in Julie's mind as there was with many people, as the champagne flowed for some yet the Miner's Strike showed just how deeply the country was divided. Julie would have known instinctively which side she preferred to be on, as to be fair anyone in her place would(remember Sheila was quoted as saying "it's important to be in the right crowd"): if she kept her head down and worked hard (so we were constantly told) things would work out.
It was amid this background of the new work ethic that Julie met Jeremy Bamber, working as a casual barman at Sloppy Joe's restaurant in Colchester where she was a waitress. It's uncertain as to whether it was love at first sight, but they both seemed to be suited, with Julie as the brains of the outfit and Jeremy with the eye for a pretty girl and never so happy as when he had a cocktail shaker in his hands. In fact had this story worked out differently these two who met as Yuppies may now have been running a wine bar in a fashionable area of London and nobody would bat an eyelid as they ordered their Caipirinha and watched the world go by, as the owners made the transition from exuberant youth to comfortable middle age.
However there is no way to avoid the subsequent narrative because reader, this is no Mills and Boon paperback, but a tragedy worthy of the great stories of which Shakespeare himself took and reworked,with redolences of the troubled personage of a Hamlet, the bloodthirstiness of a Macbeth, or the miscommunication evoking a Romeo and Juliet, depending on your point of view.
A word about Jeremy here, though the thread for the most part concerns itself with Julie and her motivations. An adoptee at birth, Jeremy was sent to Gresham's School at eight years of age, an institution renowned for its Cadet Force and its links to the military. It served the children of the landed gentry of East Anglia, and though Jeremy's parents Nevill and June Bamber were very comfortably off they were not in that Premier League when it came to the pecking order in society to which wealth and privilege bought access. Jeremy survived his schooling- one might say he went through the motions without any distinction in particular, though any dirt which tabloid journalists might have wished subsequently to have dug up remained unforthcoming, Jeremy remaining through life rather squeamish if anything, which only adds to the conundrum of this story.
For those like myself who do still retain an empathy for Julie (though far more for Colin), it is only fair that we bear the onslaught of the Jeremy supporters who maintain amongst other things that Julie was an accomplice (yet if she is an accomplice Jeremy is not innocent) or was prepared at least to go along with his scheme of murdering five people for a family inheritance which would set them both up for life and remove the insecurity which had always surrounded her once and for all. Other diehard supporters assert that Julie's statements to Police are simply a pack of lies, extracted out of her by a combination of peer pressure, Police and relatives and that the Jeremy Bamber conviction was the price paid for Julie's extrication from all charges.
Julie's statement to Police is a combination of the mundane and the breathtakingly ghoulish, which could only too readily alienate her from any modicum of public sympathy. For example on Sheet 4 we are told by Julie:
"We were talking round the house and he stated that he would like to kill his parents. He said that he would have to kill Sheila and the twins as well. I asked him why as I could understand him talking about his parents like that not about Sheila and the twins."
Julie: how could you possibly know enough about the family in October 1984 to differentiate between any of the family members who were subsequently slain, how could you possibly argue for Sheila and the boys on this occasion and in the same breath condemn the parents to die, letting the whole matter slip from your train of thought on any following occasion, especially the night of Tuesday 5th August 1985 when your boyfriend telephoned you with the message: "It's tonight or never.." knowing that the power of life and death was in your hands? How could you see Jeremy kitted out in Williams and Griffin and buy yourself a black dress from Miss Selfridge and go through the charade of the funerals with a mass murderer on your arm and be content a few days later to have Jeremy move a settee into your new address, whilst outwardly maintaining your composure? You say in your statement that you wanted to make Jeremy happy: is this just a complete communications breakdown, or is there something more sinister behind it all?
"Julie is telling lots of lies" Jeremy tells us during his first interrogation by Police on Sunday 10 September 1985,yet won't elaborate on what these things are. Whilst Jeremy's personality is central to this case,(as all adoptees do not become mass murderers) one cannot help but think that he is holding back on information which may have incriminated Julie(whilst by definition incriminating himself),or maybe a woman's love for the picaresque villain is the all-consuming emotion which explains this case without need for further investigation. Were the social mores of the time such that money was the all-consuming god which showered power and status on people who deep down had no roots to fall back on, no backbone of character as Jeremy saw what religion had done to his mother and sister and vowed to steer a different course? Did the Winner Takes All philosophy triumph as some explored short cuts to the Thatcherism of the 1980s, except that in this case there were no winners, just a pile of corpses and some sad, lonely people as Jeremy played Theseus to Julie's Ariadne, yet the conclusive skein of wool which could unravel this mystery remains ever elusive, as Jeremy Bamber begins his 29th year of incarceration, where old sins cast long shadows.
