2. A friend
During the years I have known Jeremy I have found him to be open and reliable, ordinary in his manner. He is resilient and truthful, I believe he is innocent not just because of the growing evidence but because I have got to know him as a friend. I don’t believe that the man I know has the capability to have carried out such terrible crimes and I have seen too much evidence which supports his account that Sheila shot the family. I wanted to tell you a bit about the man I know and not the monster that has been built up over 25 years.
Despite the sadness that has befallen him Jeremy feels that he was lucky to have been adopted by Nevill and June Bamber. He grew up in a kind and loving family and enjoyed life on the farm. As the son of a farmer he enjoyed the adventure of playing on the farm with his dog which he loved and also learned the skill of farming from an early age. Jeremy loves growing things (not that he can) and even keeps up –to-date with things like ‘country file’ now. He has expressed a desire to return to farming – it is what he knows and loves although I don’t think he would wish to do it on a grand scale. The farm had no cattle it was only arable farming. He has recounted many happy and fun memories of his childhood on the farm with Sheila who was also adopted from different parents.
As a young man he went to Gresham College which I believe is a private college where the wealthy intelligent attend. Jeremy is very intelligent but he didn’t pursue a degree after college. He wanted to get back to real life and work on the farm. The Boutflours have presented Jeremy as young man who was some sort of delinquent middle class play boy. I think it was quite the opposite, although from a privileged back ground, he was a young man who was happy in long term relationships and he was definitely a ‘farmers boy’ who very much enjoyed that life style and wanted it to continue that way. Jeremy always had long term girlfriends and was able to form and maintain stable relationships with women. Jeremy is not bisexual or homosexual. Jeremy had homosexual friends such as Brett Collins, as much as you or I would today – the difference was that in 1985 if you had gay friends you were ‘branded’ as one of them and it was used in a negative way to represent Jeremy. Jeremy was a typical young man in his early twenties who kept up to date with fashion trends, but he never dressed up as Adam Ant as has been presented at times. In reality he was always smart and well presented. He did go into London to meet up with friends and he saw Sheila every couple of weeks he was friends with Colin Caffell and they got on well.
It has also been suggested that all of Jeremy’s supporters are women, again the idea is use to smear Jeremy, but he also has a lot of male campaigners. However, interestingly someone recently pointed out to me that if you look at Schappelle Corby on Face Book (who is currently serving time in a Bali prison but maintains innocence) you will see that the vast majority of her supporters are female. I think that supporters are often women because they are the ‘doers’ of this world and perhaps feel more compassionately for these causes than men do.
For someone who has been wronged so much by our justice system he is always positive and I have never found him to be bitter and twisted as one imagines he might be. I find him very gracious and respectful, sincere, resilient, loyal, reliable and candid. A number of his friends have known him since before he went to prison showing that he is able to maintain lasting relationships with people on the outside. If you met Jeremy in a cafe you would never know he had endured so much suffering nor been in prison for so long, he comes across as normal, bright and he has a kind smile, he is plainly spoken and has straightforwardness about him. He copes by looking to a brighter future where the truth is shown in a court of law, he has faith that he will win his freedom, I believe he can do nothing more than this as he knows, as well as I do that the truth will out in the end. He says and I quote ‘you take one day at a time and before you know it you have done 25 years’.
