Mark: I'm Mark Williams-Thomas and I'm here with Jeremy Vine.

jeremy: A very warm welcome to another edition of Thirty Minute Crime. Mark, we're discussing a case very close to your heart this week.

Mark: Yeah, the case of Jeremy Bamber. Jeremy Bamber is languishing in jail, but he's always maintained his innocence. He has been convicted for the murders of five members of his family. His mum, his dad, his sister and her two children. Now it's a crime that has been covered so widely. Newspapers, articles, books, films, even a big ITV documentary. And yet... It divides so many people. the early hours of the 7th of August, 1985, in a small little village, Tolson Darcy, on the outskirts of Essex, countryside rolling around this farmhouse. And yet it saw one of the most barbaric crimes. The judge, when he sentenced Jeremy Bamber, said he was evil beyond belief. but he's always maintained his innocence. He's in prison for life. Unless he manages to get the case overturned and acquitted, he will never see light again. But, and this is the massive but, he says it's a miscarriage of justice. And there are people who believe him, but there are also people who say he isn't. And what I want to do is walk you through the case, walk you through why he was convicted. the evidence that led to that, and of course the evidence now that challenges that. And Jeremy, you and I have spoken about this case a number of times and it is a generation thing because you and I know this case, it's really infamous, but there are some younger generation that will be watching that perhaps don't understand the case. But it is something that has absolutely captured our generation.

jeremy: Right, and I d for me, I was twenty when it happened. He Bamber is a little bit older than me. I've always thought that he when you say li he's got life, he's got a whole life tariff. So he is in prison until the day he dies unless he gets out on appeal. Over the years, I've been very conscious of quite powerful voices. And I think I would say yours among them, Mark, saying, we need to look again at this conviction. This doesn't feel right. Now, I I'll give you my just broad outline of the case as I understand it, and you can tell me what I got wrong. The adoptive parents is crucial. So they adopted him and his sister Sheila. Sheila had mental health problems. She had these twins. She was parenting not that successfully at times, we're told. The parents were wealthy farm owner. The farmer was cheesed off with ban because he didn't get any grades at school and he was just going off and apparently some stealing and some drugs and so on. So he was a bit of a what you might call a ne'er do well. He was, you know, his slightly checkered life he was leading. and the motivation, if it was him, is that he wanted his father's very large inheritance. So that's that's the kind of background. And then you go into this, it's not a serial killing this, it's a one-night spree by someone. And there's two people, it seems, who might have done it. Either Bamba or his sister. And now I get hazy mark and this is where I want you to help me, because every time I see people saying it wasn't Bamba, they mention the silencer. They say the silencer is crucial. Can you explain that?

Mark: Yes, so what you have is the judge was very clear at court. He says, is either Sheila Cofel or it Jeremy Bamber. There is no other party involved. It has to be one of the two. And therefore, if you rule out Sheila Cofel as having killed herself, it therefore has to be Jeremy Bamber. Now, the evidence that was presented at court was that Sheila could not have put the silencer. in the cupboard having killed herself. It's obvious but having had the gun with a silencer on it and having shot herself she couldn't put the silencer in the cupboard under the stairs and the silencer is one that was found with blood inside the baffles and so therefore the crown's case was

jeremy: Plainly.

Mark: it must have been Jeremy because having killed Sheila he took the silencer off the end and put it under the stairs. Now you might say that's very simple and that is obvious and therefore yes Jeremy Bamber has to be responsible but as is always the case when you dig into the detail it is not as clear as that. So for a start, the blood that was found inside the silencer that was considered to be the one that was on the end of the gun was told to the court as belonging exclusively to Sheila Caffell. It was her blood. Now in those days, there wasn't DNA. There was only blood groupings. But that wasn't true. It was true to an extent in so much as it did fit Sheila's DNA, but it also fitted the DNA of other members of the family and in particular a man called Robert Balfour who was the man who found the silencer. Now the silencer has its own life because the police were at the address from the 7th and they maintained that address until three or four days later without allowing anybody else into it because it was a crime scene and they wanted to take photographs. They took photographs under the stairs and a box and contained in this box from what Robert Balfour says was a silencer, was a telescopic lens and was a sight and was also some ammunition, 12-bore ammunition. Now the police saw all of that and didn't remove it at all. Fast forward a number of days and Robert Balfour goes to the address also with his sister in the farmhouse and finds this silencer. Takes the silencer home and says, I noticed Red, that's when I contacted the police. And therefore that is the silencer that the police say had the blood in it, which was Sheila Caffells. Of course we now know it wasn't evidence given at the trial, it wasn't just Shilika Fell's blood, it was a blood grouping that was also the same as the person that found it. Now there is other elements of this silencer which is that there was more than one silencer seized. there were three separate silencer exhibit reference numbers. I'll just for accuracy let me just read you what they are. There was DB1 and DRB1. Now you could say, okay, as the process has changed it's slightly in so much as someone's added an initial. But when you look at the other elements, there's a different silencer called SBJ1. So, we have an exhibit which has three different exhibit references. Now, an exhibit reference is given using the initials of the person seizing that exhibit. So, if I seize this pen, it is my exhibit MWT and then with a sequential number. So, if it's my first seizing item, it's MWT1. the continuity of that exhibit remains the same from the point to which I seize it to the point that it goes to chord. And so the lifeline of that is doesn't change its name, remains MWT1. The only thing that gets added to it is every time it passes to a new person, they sign the exhibit label. The difference here is, the silencer that was found And Essex police say there is one silencer found, the silencer found by Robert Balfour. The silencer through its life and through the documentation has moved from DB1 to having two other references. It's been DB1, it's been DRB1. Now you could say, okay, that's an initial put into it and I'll accept that. But what I don't accept as being the same silencer is a new reference SBJ1. So what that tells

jeremy: Right.

Mark: you is that the initial item that was seized which was the silencer, because I have no doubt that Robert Balfour did find a silencer, there is a separate silencer obtained. And actually the

jeremy: Geez, okay, just I'm pausing you only because I just this is where I can see what's happened to me in this case now, Mark, which is that I've I've lost control of my understanding of it, always at the point where the blimmin' silencer comes in. So this is really helpful. Now, just to go back to basics here, why was there a silencer at all? Why, why do we think a silencer was used?

Mark: so we say the silencer was used because it has blood in it, which matches the same blood group as Sheila Caffele. And what the police say is with the silencer on the gun, Sheila could not have shot herself because of the way that the length of the gun was. Okay, and of course she couldn't have taken the silencer off the end.

jeremy: But but but okay, but but but is it possi leave out the blood for a second. Is it not possible the silencer had nothing to do with the crime? That the rifle was used without a silencer throughout the whole episode?

Mark: Absolutely and that is the position that I believe is true. I do not believe the silencer was on the gun at any stage. We know that the injury on June Bamba was not caused when a silencer was on the end of the gun.

jeremy: Right.

Mark: because she's got a contact wound on her neck and that is not with a silencer on it. So I can say with confidence, June didn't have a silencer when she was killed and therefore it follows you're not gonna kill people by putting a silencer on, taking it on, taking it off. So I believe the silencer is an absolute red herring. But of course, why it's significant...

jeremy: Right. So w so then in that case, just sorry, just to take you through it though, because I know you're steeped in it, but in that case, we you we have to explain that Sylvia's blood was in the silencer, don't we? That's the key thing.

Mark: But the thing is, is the blood that's in the silencer is only matched through blood group and that blood group is also held by a number of other family members, including the person that found the silencer. also, so if you were shooting and you cut your finger, you may well end up with blood in there and that blood could have been at any stage. It wasn't present, it wasn't recent. There's another piece of significance. So that kind of explains a silencer. In simplistic terms, one silencer the police say exists, there are three separate exhibit references. If you take two of those exhibit references being very similar, there is a third one that's completely different initials. I say, and the evidence supports, there were minimum of two silencers found. And in fact, the reports on the day from the media was that a silencer was found. But the bough flowers don't find the silencer for another three or four days afterwards.

jeremy: Okay.

Mark: So so there's a report in the media that's contrary to that. So Essex police have always said only one silencer. Evidence does not support that.

jeremy: Just before we move off the silence of the mark, have we not got samples from it still that we could test more accurately?

Mark: No, no, unfortunately not. Every single exhibit was destroyed.

jeremy: Oi.

Mark: So there is nothing else to test and this if we were in a position where items were saved the problem is is the police go into the premises and the first starting point and I think this is something that's really important is the police go into the crime scene and The police's position is this is murder-suicide Okay, in other words Sheila Kafele has murdered her family including her two children and then killed herself That was a position that the police adopted for a number of weeks before it turned around and then of course the Bower flowers put Jeremy Bama back in place but because of that the police went in and within a matter of days had burnt all the evidence that's there. Now let me tell you about something else that's really important is that the Metropolitan Police were asked to undertake a review of this case and they undertook a review of this case and during the course of their interviewing they interviewed a Detective Sergeant Stanley Brian Jones who was part of the Essex Police investigation and they said to him Why is it that when you got there you didn't do a thorough examination of finding and looking at search all the whole area, take forensics and everything? His response was We were dealing with this as murder-suicide and the reason we did that was because we found a suicide note and the suicide note would explain exactly that this was what had happened. Now Essex police have always said there is no suicide note, there was never one left. But that's not what the detective sergeant who's part of the investigation has said. So where is that suicide note? along with other pieces of evidence. Well, I'll tell you where it probably is. Is that when a major crime happens, police forces will keep files, but there's also the National Archives at Q. Now the National Archives will hold documents relating to significant crimes that have happened over the generation. And police forces will often send their documents there because they're kept. Now the National Archive has in its archive 245 documents sealed for between 50 to 80 years. They will not allow those documents to be released. Now there are only two reasons that you can refuse to... allow those items to be released and that's national security. There are no national security issues in relation to this case and secondly because it will impact on victims etc. Well that can be dealt with by literally removing the names from it. They are refusing to allow those documents. Why is it we have such a high profile case that we have 245 sealed documents that are not allowed to be seen? And I say that is because I believe that within those documents there are probably significant pieces of evidence which undermine this prosecution case and in particular probably this suicide note.

jeremy: Right. Just on the night itself. We now need to discuss where Bamba was and and whether what he did implicated him. Because his story was he wasn't in the house, correct? He was called to the house by his father, adoptive father, Neville, because Neville said your sister's gone berserk with a gun. And that as things trickle down, the police said, Wait, do we really believe that in a situation where you've got Sylvia on a rampage with a gun, Neville's gonna call his wayward son? Why would he not call the police? And that was one problem with the Bamba defense.

Mark: Yes, so let me just set the scene. So we have the afternoon and June is at, June, Neville, Sheila are all at home and there is a discussion that takes place in the late afternoon, early evening and we know this because not only does... does Geri Bamber talk about it, but actually a person that worked at the farm has also related this to say that in the days leading up to the murders, Sheila was in a very anxious state. She was not communicating properly. They were really, really worried about her. And as a result of that, that evening there was a conversation taking place between Sheila, June and Neville in regards to whether or not the children should go back into respite care. kind of giving her a break away from the children. She'd been walking around reading a Bible, not getting dressed, not sleeping. Terrible state. so as, so Jeremy goes, he's there in the evening, they shoot, he shoots some rabbits, he puts the gun that we know is the murder weapon and he puts that gun, which is in the kind of like a boot room area and he goes home, leaving them all. Now, We know that during the course of that evening that there are a number of phone calls that take place and eventually the family go to bed. Jeremy is at home, which is about a 10 minute drive away, considerably longer than that as far as on walk, and he is woken by a phone call from his dad who says... that to worse of the effect is Sheila has gone berserk with the gun. This is in the early hours of the morning. And he then says the phone goes dead. He then phones the police and tells the police what's just happened. And then the police go to the address, he goes to the address and kind of catches up with them. So the police car even takes them and then he follows them and into the address. So then he's at the address and then the police at the address and they are now surrounding the farm. There are reports from different elements to say there was communication with the farm, there wasn't communication, there was lights on the farm, there wasn't, there was a phone call made. Lots of these inaccurate reports courts at different stages. My investigation says that there was no communication within that farm. At that point, everybody was dead. Now, what we have is we have... Yeah.

jeremy: Right. I just I was gonna just again to pause you for a second. that's an important point because there's recently been a documentary w on and again from people campaigning for Bamba who say there's evidence that when the police were in that circle round the farm, somebody rang them from inside the farm. And I couldn't make head and a tail of that, and it sounds like you can't either.

Mark: No, so the recent story is, and this came out very much as a result of the New Yorker, which is an American of magazine that covered the case and they did a podcast on it. And their evidence is from a retired police officer who's now died. And he was basically saying, you know, I took a phone call from a 999 and therefore the campaign group has said, well, as a result of that, of course, if a 999 call was made within that property, can't be Jeremy responsible because he's outside the property. therefore it must have been Sheila. Now what, and the evidence actually doesn't support that hypothesis because what you've got is we know that at the same time as that phone call is alleged to be made, the 999 call handling system at police headquarters at Essex are asked to open the 999 line. In instance, what that was is the phone was off the hook and they were asked to monitor it, make it live so they could hear any noise in the house. So when there is a suggestion that a 999 call was made, I say, in the documentation I say supports this, is that actually the 999 call was not a call, but the 999 operator opening the line. which was the 9999 to be able to listen. Now, if Sheila had made a 999 call, why didn't she speak? Why didn't she say something? She was surrounded by police outside, and this is the early hours in the morning now. They would have had lights on, they were trying to engage with them, they were doing loud speakers, none of that. She didn't present herself in any way, but yet, it's alleged to have made a 999 call, so I'm sorry. I believe Jeremy Bam is innocent. But what I don't believe is some of the campaign elements are not helpful for his campaign because they're looking at evidence that doesn't stand up in any way at all.

jeremy: Right. So okay, so you've got the police, let's let's take that extra call out of it. You've got dead pe only dead people in the house, the farmhouse, Bamba with the police, Bamba not a suspect at this stage, and at that point the police then go in and they discover this awful crime scene.

Mark: So they go into the premises in the early hours of the morning and this is a... a violent crime where they believe firearms are used. So there was a delay in terms of going to the property. Nowadays, we have firearms officers on duty 24 hours a day. In those days, they had to be called out. It takes a long time. It takes hours in those days to be able to get a firearms team to come out. So once the firearm team were out, they were in a position to ready to go into the property. They went into the property having gained forced entry. they found Jeremy, so they found Neville Bamber. in the kitchen. slumped over a chair where the Argo is and he had been shot eight times, six at close range and had been involved in some kind of fight to some degree. Now there is the one of the positions of the Crown and the police was to suggest that there is no way that Sheila could have fought with her dad because of the size difference. I can tell you that not only can women be extremely violent and very powerful even the smallest of people when your adrenaline is flowing. when you are in a state of anxiety, when she is clearly, because she has got mental health illness, when you're in that position, and she was probably in some kind of psychotic episode from what the evidence we hear, you can be incredibly powerful. And she also had a gun, if it was of course her that was responsible. And we do know that some of the injuries that he took on his head was as a result of being hit by the butt of the gun. So that is him. So he's then in the kitchen downstairs and dead. You then walk up the stairs and as you walk up the stairs on the right hand side are the bedrooms of the two boys, Nicholas and Daniel and between them they had eight bullets. Now my analysis of the crime scene is that the bear in mind I believe Sheila Caffele is responsible is I believe the boys were killed first and I believe they were killed first. One because she wouldn't have wanted them to be present whilst everything else was going on. But more importantly is that we do know in the years previous to Sheila to the murders taking place Sheila had been under a lot of treatment for mental health illness from psychotic behavior Her drugs on the night had been reduced incorrectly because of a prescription issue But so she was not she was not on the level of medication that would have controlled her psychotic state We also know that she had talked previously about killing her children and about having a fear that her children wanted to engage in sex with her. So there was a very bizarre situation that she was in. And so I believe she killed her children first. So that accounts for them. And then in the doorway between the hall and the bedroom, we have June Bamber.

jeremy: Yeah.

Mark: June Bamber is on the floor and she had been shot seven times, two of the injuries right into her neck. So there was a close confrontation between a gun pointing directly into her and that would have taken place towards the end of the bed and then June subsequently falling down. And then just at the side of the bed, we have Sheila Caffele who is laid prostate with a head slightly to the right with two shot wounds underneath. Now, The crime scene is very significant. The crime scene photographs had been, the crime scene had been altered as a result of the officers going into the location, clearly believing it was murder, suicide and moving the victims. We know June was moved. because of the way the blood has travelled in between different sorts of photographs. We know that some of the evidence was moved. We know that the pillows were puffed up to make them look slightly better before photographs were taken. We know that Sheila Caffell was moved because we've done some analysis in terms of when she was shot. We know that head moved to the left because there is blood that flows down here and there is rigor. which settles on her shoulder which is a bruising after death but when the police fight the police photograph show her neck to the right and we show that the blood that's come out is dried blood. So what we've got is Sheila's whole head is being moved. But we also have a police officer, a detective sergeant who goes in there with the head of the forensics, who's an inspector at the time. And he called this guy an incompetent police officer. And he picks up a crucial piece of evidence, which is a Bible, which is sat beside Sheila, and he flicks through it and then puts it back down.

jeremy: Mm.

Mark: But we've done an analysis on the blood pattern and everything tells us that the point to which Sheila was shot, she wasn't shot when she was laid flat, she was shot nailed up. And in fact, three police officers who attended the crime scene when they wrote their notes afterwards said, the photograph that we have been shown. is not consistent with what we saw when we attended the crime scene. So this is before the photographs were taken.

jeremy: So so okay, 'cause again with Sheila And bear in mind, I'm I'm watching this case over the years from a much greater distance than you, Mark. With Sheila, the two things are how does she kill herself with a silencer and stick it in a cupboard? And you've answered that. The silence has nothing to do with the crime. And secondly, how does she she's killing her shooting herself? How does she shoot herself twice? And that's like one of those sort of ridiculous things where you think, no, obviously she's a victim, not the perpetrator. Now you've given me extra evidence. I'm still not clear on how she shot herself. Twice, by the way, but when you've given me the extra evidence around it, it does sound like it was her, not him, I must say. But how would she shoot herself twice?

Mark: Yeah. Okay, so this was a struggle that the police and the Crown had at the beginning because they were saying, well, hang on a there's no way she could have shot herself. And indeed the pathologist was of that view. This was in the early stages of kind of understanding gunshot wounds and understanding how people, so what we found out, or found out much more after that through pathology, was that you can shoot yourself twice because it was a gun with a single trigger. It had a magazine. Therefore if you pull the trigger once, it's a like to use a rather crude analogy, if you chop the head of a chicken they keep running and so when you kill yourself your finger on the trigger does not just stop

jeremy: Right. And it would discharge twice, would it, then?

Mark: your finger will automatically pull through. Yeah, so it discharged twice into her before her hand and the gun fell off each other. So that's why she's got two and that's why they're not in the same hole. They are moved slight distances apart. And so that is why she's got two shot wounds, gunshot wounds into her neck. Totally explained. And in fact, today, if the pathologist looked at that today, the pathologist would go, of course you can shoot yourself twice.

jeremy: Okay. I n you've laid that out so brilliantly. And I and in a way I don't I I've just like everyone else, I'm just I can see how it's an awful puzzle because in the end there's there's one woman who's dead accused and there's one man in prison accused and we can't choose between them and you sort of feel there must be somewhere a piece of evidence that unlocks this. I mean, these days, Bamber wouldn't be able to s hide a journey from the farmhouse back home and back again. you know, kill them all, go to bed, pretend he doesn't know about it, come back with the police. He couldn't do that. But in those days he could, and it sounds like we're dealing with some police incompetence and everything else. I it is just absolutely a mystery. I d what the thing that comes through to me is the number of times all of the victims were shot, which to me doesn't I hate to use this word, is not very efficient form of killing. It sounds like an angry killing. It sounds like a deranged killing, and that points more towards Sheila, I would have thought. I'm so sad for those twins to be if they're shot by their own mum in bed, that's and four times each, who does that?

Mark: you You see, that's a really important point and it's a point that I address on my tour, which is talking about the professionalism. So the police said... that in terms of shooting a gun, Sheila couldn't have done it. Sheila had long nails and as a result of that, she couldn't be capable of loading the magazine. Now, we know that's not true. That's very sexist to suggest that a female who's got nails can't load a magazine. You don't load a magazine with your nails. You load it with the base of your thumb. You slide the bullet into the magazine. If you look on the internet, you'll put in there, can you load a magazine with fingernails you'll see fingernails like really long where people are loading bullets so that's the first point so that blows that out and then to suggest that Sheila isn't capable of shooting and being able to do it well the shots were all over the place the majority of them were in the head certainly in relation to the two boys but in terms of the shots against June and against Neville they were in different parts of the body this isn't somebody and these are these are close range. This isn't somebody that is a good shot. Jeremy was a very good shot. These are body shots around the place. So that's one massive point. And the other thing is, nowadays we would be able to test your fingers and see if you've got gunshot residue. Okay. Now in those days, gunshot residue didn't exist. But what they did do at the post-mortem is they bagged Sheila's hands. As a result of that, they then took some swabs, they sent them off to the forensic laboratory and the forensic laboratory did some tests around lead. So not so much now, but in those days, lead was a massive part of bullets. They've reduced it significantly now because we know the impact of lead. of lead feeds through the bodies. So what those bullets had, and they were Eli bullets with lead, but they also had some paraffin on them, which was to try and reduce the amount of transfer of lead from the bullets in contact with skin. They tested her hands and they showed that there was lead on her fingers. The forensic tests they did, they used a female and they used males, they used similar bullets, we don't know if they used exactly the same bullets, they used similar bullets, and they came up with lead transfer on the test people's hands. So what we're saying is that there is lead on Sheila's hands and there is lead on the hands of the people that did the forensic tests and we know that the people that did the forensic tests loaded bullets into a magazine.

jeremy: Well

Mark: Now their explanation to that when it was challenged at court was, yes I understand that but the explanation could be that Sheila had been using pencils or something with lead that was around the house.

jeremy: Okay. I I mean if If Bamber is innocent, given that whole life tariffs are the modern equivalent of capital punishment We would be into one of the worst ever miscarriages. And we might see that followed by Lucy Letby. Who knows? I know we're only scratching the surface here, Mark, but my God, you've really helped me understand this case. And this is an unusual one for us, because you're the man with all the details here. And I know you've done it on stage and everything else, but that really helps me understand. So thank you so much for that.

Mark: Yeah, it's a fascinating case. I firmly believe and I don't follow the line of the campaign. I think they've got some things completely wrong. But when you look at the evidence, as I have done, I would say that this is a massive miscarriage of justice. And just a little plug is I have a tour, Jeremy Bamber, Guilty or Not Guilty, it starts back up again in September. If you haven't come to it, there are venues, seats at a number of those venues still. Please come along and I'll give you the insight to it. But I think, Jeremy, this is one of those cases that, as you say, if it is a miscarriage of justice and they are successful in getting it to the criminal case review to crush the conviction, then this opens up, not just in terms of a huge financial implication for the government, but it raises so many questions. I'm a firm believer of justice. If you have done something wrong and the evidence is there to support you then throw away the keys. But if you're innocent then we as a society have to do everything that gets that person out and sitting behind 245 documents at queue is not acceptable at all. so if it is a miscarriage of justice, then of course it is right that the government and it's right the judiciary challenges its position because an innocent man should not be in jail. That leads me into next week. Next week, we're going to talk about this fascinating case of Joanna Yates. And I say it's fascinating because the implications from it were far reaching, far more so than just simply catching the offender, which was the police missed right under their nose. But, and this is the world that you and I live in, the media had such a massive role to play in basically labeling a man. because of the way that he looked as being the offender.

jeremy: Yeah, a very, very important watershed case. Joanna Yates is next with us on thirty minute crime. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Do follow, get your friends to follow, and we'll see you next week.

Mark: Take care.