A detail often overlooked was that the twin boys who were murdered did not live at the farm. Because of their mother’s illness, they were being brought up by their father, who allowed them to visit their grandparents. A few days before the killings, Bamber visited Colin Caffell with the apparent aim of checking when the boys would be there. If they had not been killed, Jeremy Bamber would not have been the sole heir to the family fortune.
There is another rather creepy detail in Caffell’s book, that he later came to believe that Jeremy Bamber was studying him in the immediate aftermath of the murders to see how someone genuinely grief stricken behaved, in order to mimic him.
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2011/01/30/the-strange-case-of-jeremy-bamber/
I feel deep sympathy for Colin Caffell, his feelings are so often neglected in all of the discussions of the murders.
However, this one dimensional view and biased view of what happened does no one any service, Jerry.
Colin had separated from Sheila at the time of the murders. I've read that, during the journey to WHF just days before the murders, Sheila pleaded with Colin to take her back, but he refused because he had a lover and no longer wanted Sheila as his wife.
So, Sheila lost her husband and her children. This must have been a factor making Sheila's depression worse. Any woman in her situation would have been depressed by losing her husband and children and Sheila had already been depressed and mentally ill prior to this happening.
It would therefore be natural if Colin's account of what happened is somewhat coloured by guilt and denial.
I fear you are being unfair to Colin Caffell, it was not his fault that the Bamber family were murdered and there is no reason for him to feel any guilt or denial. Sheila may have wished for a reunion but she knew that such a reunion was unlikely. I wonder who revealed the story that Sheila had pleaded with Colin to take her back, could it have been Colin?
I am not being unfair to Colin Caffell for whom I feel nothing but sympathy and I am not suggesting that it is in any sense Colin's fault that the family were murdered.
I am saying that if Colin did refuse to try again with Sheila, as claimed, then he would be a rare person indeed if he did not feel guilt about that in the light of Sheila's mental illness and what happened a few days later.
Guilt and denial go hand in hand and that appears to be reflected in Colin's one dimensional view of Jeremy Bamber.
Also, as Mike has rightly pointed out, Colin Caffell may be unaware of evidence which suggests that not Jeremy, who killed the family.
