First let us get a little run down of the English criminal system which the American system is modeled after. It runs on the common law system. Magistrate courts deal with the less serious criminal offenses. Youth courts are special magistrates' courts which deal with all but the most serious charges against those between 10 and 17 years old. The Crown Court deals with the most serious offenses, for example murder and rape, which are triable by judge and jury.
Now let’s hop into the crime story because there is a lot to cover. White House Farm was originally built at the end of the 16th century in near Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex, England. June’s parents bought white house farm in the early 1930’s along with six near by farms and established the company Osea Road to manage the daily activities. During the summer of 1948 June’s parents asked a nearby university to send students to help with that year’s harvest and that’s where Nevill Bamber enters our story. June and Nevill married in September 1949 and in 1951 they moved to White House Farm. The couple was well liked around Tolleshunt D’Arcy, and very active in their church.
The couple were desperate to have a child but by 1955 their efforts weren’t working. This perceived failure caused June to have a nervous breakdown and seek psychiatric attention at a mental hospital. After treatment they contacted the Church of England’s Children’s Society in 1957 and a baby girl who they named Shelia was placed in their care. June again experienced mental health issues related to clinical and/ or psychotic depression and in 1958 she went into another psychiatric hospital where she received at least six electroshock therapies. June was said to have made a full recovery after this and in the spring of 1961 June and Nevill adopted another baby named Jeremey. When Shelia and Jeremey were 7 years old, June and Nevill explained the adoptions to them.
Jeremey and Shelia grew up a privileged life and attended a local school in Tolleshunt D’Arcy where Shelia was pretty and popular among classmates but Jeremey was somewhat troubled. The decision was made to send Jeremey to a boarding school where he struggled with issues of abandonment and later, he recalled having been sexually abused whilst at the school.
Shelia started to attend secretarial school in London after high school but she wanted to be a model and her parents helped pay to have a portfolio created. While living in London at the age of 17 Shelia discovered she was pregnant by 23-year-old Colin Caffel. June was mortified and to save the reputation of the family June decided that Shelia would get an abortion. This caused a riff in June and Shelia’s relationship and June started referring to Shelia as the devil’s child. These words were branded into Shelia’s brain, and she told a friend she was scared of her mother.
In 1977 Shelia discovered she was pregnant again and Colin wanted to get married but June would not allow them to get married in the church. Instead, Shelia and Colin got married by a registrar but sadly Shelia miscarried shortly thereafter. Her career started to take off and Shelia went on a two-month modeling gig in Tokyo, Japan. Upon returning home she became obsessed with having a baby and being a mother . Luck happened and n June 22, 1979, after a difficult pregnancy, Shelia gave birth to twin boys. She named them Nicolas and Daniel. Never one to have luck last, Shelia learned that Colin had an affair while she was pregnant and Colin even brought his girlfriend to Shelia’s 21st birthday party. The couple divorced in May 1982. Shelia then worked odd jobs and was aided by Social workers as a “preventative” measure, because Shelia sometimes found motherhood as overwhelming.
In the meantime, Shelia’s brother Jeremey went to college for agriculture and upon his graduation his father paid for a six-week trip to New Zealand. Jeremey discovered bisexuality in New Zealand. He stole an expensive watch and smuggled cocaine back to England upon his return. Jeremey’s parents then gifted him a cottage near White House Farm where he grew cannabis. His parents also gifted him a car as well as 8% of family company Osea Road. Soon thereafter, Jeremey proposed to Suzette Ford ,10 years his senior and parents Nevill and June disapproved. This caused Jeremey to break things off with his older woman but he remained angry at his parents and acted out. He would provoke his mother by riding circles around her on his bicycle. He also started to wear makeup and provoke fights with his parents. He even broke in to the offices of Osea Road and stole money to prove to his dad and the other owners that they needed better security. In 1983, Jeremey started dating Julie Mugford.
Also in 1983, Shelia’s mental health took a sharp decline, she became easily agitated, paranoid, depressed, and would bang her head against walls. Shelia started seeing a psychiatrist Hugh Ferguson who has previously treated June the previous and was admitted for treatment . Dr. Ferguson diagnosed Shelia with Schizoaffective disorder which he later changed to schizophrenia. Shelia had these complex feelings about evil vs. good (which was the same issues her mother had). She stared calling her sons “devil’s children”. Shelia also believed she had direct communication with God and that people were out to kill her. In early 1985, Shelia readmitted herself into a psychiatric hospital and her doctors prescribed her a monthly injection of haloperidol. Shelia hated the injection because of the drug's sedative affect.
On the first weekend of August 1985, Colin drove his ex-wife and two six-year-old sons from London to White House Farm for a relaxing week. In the car Shelia asked Colin to talk to her parents about her getting off of or lowering the dose of the haloperidol and his sons asked him to tell Grandma Bamber that they didn’t want to say so many prayers during their stay. Colin dropped them off and Shelia was mad because he didn’t talk to June or Nevill about the haloperidol. The housekeeper saw Sheila on August 5th and noticed nothing unusual. Two farm workers saw her the following day with her children and said she seemed happy. On August 6th Jeremey came over to have dinner with his family. Now we will never know what was truly said at that dinner because Jeremey is the only person alive who was at the event but he stated that Nevill and June asked Shelia to adopt the boys or to put them in daytime foster care. Colin the boys father later said that the custody agreement was working out just fine, that he had the children a majority of the time and that it would have been odd for the Bamber’s to adopt the boys or to put them in foster care. Jeremey said this suggestion angered Shelia and he left around 9:30pm. Barbara Wilson, the farm's secretary, telephoned Nevill at around that time and was left with the impression that she had interrupted an argument. She said Nevill was short with her and seemed to hang up in irritation, something he had never done before. June's sister, Pamela Boutflour, telephoned around 10 pm, she spoke to Sheila, who she noted as quiet, then to June, who seemed normal.
According to court records at 3:26am of Wednesday, 7 August Jeremey called Chelmsford Police Station on a direct line number as opposed to the 999 emergency call system and said, "You've got to help me. My father has just rung me and said, "Please come over. Your sister has gone crazy and has got the gun." Then the line went dead". He explained that he had tried to ring his father back at White House Farm but he could not get a reply. The police told Jeremey to go to the farm and wait for the police there. 3 police officers passed Jeremey’s car on their way to the farm. Jeremey’s cousin Anne testified that Jeremey was normally "a very, very fast driver". Jeremey’s car arrived at the farmhouse 1-2 minutes after the police vehicle. Jeremey told the officers about the telephone call from his father, adding that it sounded as though someone had cut him off. When asked if it was possible that his sister was inside with a gun he said yes. He told the police that he did not get on with her. He was asked if it was likely that his sister had gone berserk with a gun and he replied, "I don't really know. She is a nutter. She's been having treatment." When asked why his father had called him and not the police, he said that his father was not the sort of person to get "organizations" involved, preferring to keep things within the family. When asked why he had not dialed 999, Jeremy said he did not think it would make any difference to the time it would have taken for the police to arrive. Jeremey told the officers there were firearms in the house and that Shelia knew how to use a gun, later disputed.
At 7:30am the police decided to go into the house. In the kitchen the police found Nevill Bamber's body slumped forward over an overturned chair next to the hearth, so that his head was just above a coal scuttle. The police evidence showed other chairs and stools upturned and broken crockery, sugar and spots of blood on the floor. A ceiling light lampshade also appeared broke. Police concluded that a violent struggle had taken place. On one of the surfaces investigators found a telephone off the receiver with a large quantity of .22 shells beside it. Other searches of this room revealed Nevill Bamber's blood stained wristwatch under a rug and a piece of broken rifle butt on the floor. Upstairs the bodies of June Bamber and Sheila Caffell laid on the floor of the main bedroom. Mrs Bamber heavily bloodstained body lay by the doorway while Sheila’s lay by her parents bed. The .22 rifle (with the sound moderator and telescopic sights removed) lay cradled on her body with her right hand resting lightly upon it and the muzzle of the weapon just below her wounded neck. Immediately to her right, resting on the upper right arm and the floor, authorizes found June Bamber’s Bible. Police found the bodies of Daniel and Nicholas Caffell in their beds in another bedroom. The murderer shot Nevill Bamber eight times and also broke his nose, shot June 7 times, Daniel 5 times and Nicolas 3 times. At first, the medical examiner stated that the scene seemed like a murder suicide, but hedged his conclusion after processing Shelia’s body and noting that she had been shot 3 times. The pathologist could not say, one way or the other, whether Shelia had been murdered or had taken her own life.
The police did not find gun residue on Shelia, she did not know how to reload a rifle, something given the number of bullets fired would have happened, and a barefoot Shelia did not have blood on her feet, and all the blood found on Shelia appeared to have come from her. If Shelia was indeed the perpetrator of this horrific crime it was a bloody mess. Remember her father had a broken bone; he stood 6’4” and if a struggle had occurred Shelia would have had some bruising. None at all. The physical evidence of a murder-suicide did not add up.
On August 10, 1985 members of the family, who were far from convinced that Sheila had been responsible for the killings, went to White House Farm with the executor of the estate. During the afternoon David Boutflour found the sound moderator together with the telescopic sights for the murder weapon at the back of the gun cupboard in the downstairs office. His father, his sister Ann Eaton, the executor and the farm secretary all witnessed the recovery. They took the silencer to Ann Eaton's address for safekeeping and that evening members of the family examined it. They noticed that the "gun blue" of the surface had been damaged and there appeared to be red paint or blood upon it. They packaged the moderator and informed the police of the discovery. The police collected the gun two days later and on 12 August noticed a grey hair, about an inch long attached to it. By the time the moderator had been delivered to the Lab the hair on the silicener was lost.
Clearly the police did not treat the crime scene very well. They never examined the Bible found near Shelia. A journalist writes that a hacksaw blade that might have been used to gain entry to the house lay in the garden for months. Officers did not take detailed notes; those who had dealt with Jeremey wrote down their statements weeks later. They released the bodies days after the murders, and three of them (Nevill, June and Sheila) were cremated. They only examined Jeremey’s clothes one month later. Ten years later all blood samples were destroyed.
On August 14, 1985 authorities opened an inquest into the murders and police gave evidence of the murder-suicide theory. Jeremey’s behavior became more and more concerning to the extended family, at the wake he joked with those present but at the funeral he sobbed and appeared that he couldn’t walk, but then smiled. After the funeral Jeremey went to Amsterdam to party and smoke cannibas. He also began selling his family’s belongings and said that the extended family wouldn’t get anything. Jeremey tried to sell twenty nude photographs of Sheila for £20,000 to The Sun, and went on another overseas trip with a friend, Brett, this time to Saint-Tropez.
Julie Mugford, Jeremey’s then girlfriend started talking to her friends about Jeremey’s behavior. Julie stated the year before the murder that Jeremey stated that he parents “tried to run his life” and that he didn’t get along with his sister. He did not like that his parents paid for his sister’s flat in London. Jeremey also said that his "father was getting old, his mother was mad … Sheila was mad as well … and in respect of the way the twins had been brought up, … they were emotionally disturbed and unbalanced". Jeremey also told Julie he had seen copies of his parents' wills. Julie also testified that conversations about the killings were spoken in October to December 1984. At first he spoke of being at the house for supper and then drugging the family, he said that he then intended returning to the farmhouse on foot or on bicycle and burning the house down. Jeremey then realized that it would be difficult to burn the premises down especially since it would destroy the valuables within the property. Therefore, he had decided to shoot his family and he told her that he had discovered that the catch on the kitchen window did not work and he could gain access to the house in that way. He spoke of Sheila being a good scapegoat because of her admission to a hospital during Easter 1985 and said that afterwards he would make it seem as if Sheila had done it and then killed herself.
According to Pamela Boutflour (June Bamber's sister), Sheila had never used a gun and she did not consider her violent. Evidence given by Ann Eaton (June Bamber's niece) also stated that she had never seen Shelia with a gun and that she "would not know one end of the barrel of a gun to another" she added that Sheila had very bad hand-eye co-ordination. Other witnesses called during the trial also said they had never seen her with a gun, save for an occasion when she had been photographed carrying one as part of a modelling assignment.
Colin Caffell said that although there had been violent outbursts by Sheila during their time together, this had involved the throwing of pots and pans and the occasional striking of him. To his knowledge she had never harmed the children or behaved violently towards anybody else. At the time, Shelia took haloperidol, a drug used to treat agitated states and it has anti-psychotic and tranquillizing properties. It also has sedative side effects at the levels prescribed her. Also, if the silencer was attached there would have been no physical way for Shelia to have shot herself.
After’s Julie’s statements and the physical evidence, police arrested Jeremey Bamber on September 8th, 1985. The trail started a month later the prosecution case argued that Jeremey, motivated by hatred and greed, left White House Farm after dining with his family. Later he returned to the farm on his mother's bicycle, borrowed a few days earlier—cycling along a route that avoided the main roads and approached the farmhouse from the back. Jeremey entered the house through a downstairs bathroom window, taking the rifle with the silencer attached, and going upstairs and staging the scene to make it appear that Shelia committed the murders. The defense argued that Shelia killed everyone and that people misinterpreted Jeremey’s words about the dislike of his family. Julie had lied about Bamber's confession, they said, because he had betrayed her. No one witnessed Bamber cycle to and from the farm, and he had no marks on him on the night in question to suggest he had been in a fight. Police never found blood-stained clothing belonging to him.
The judge summed up to the jury, he suggested that three "crucial questions” needed to be answered. The first, and he made clear that they were not in any order of importance, was whether or not they believed Julie Mugford. If they were sure that she had told the truth it meant the appellant had planned and carried out the killings. The second question asked whether or not they were sure that Sheila Caffell did not kill the members of her family and then committed suicide. The third question asked whether or not a telephone call had been made in the middle of the night from Nevill Bamber to his son. If t no such call existed, then it meant that no reason existed for Jeremey to have invented it, save to cover up his responsibility for the murders. On 28 October, after deliberating more than nine hours, the jury found Bamber guilty by a majority of 10–2 (the minimum required for conviction), and sentenced him to five life terms, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of twenty-five years.
Jeremey tried to appeal his conviction on numerous occasions and maintains his innocence. In 2013 Jeremey and two of the prisoners (one of them the serial killer Peter Moore) appealed that decision, and in 2013 the European Court's Grand Chamber ruled that keeping the prisoners in jail with no prospect of release or review may not be compatible with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. In July 2012, they were granted the right to appeal the decision. In July 2013, the Court's Grand Chamber ruled in their favor, holding that there must be a possibility of release and review. There is a campaign to release Jeremey from jail making arguments about the mishandling of the case and the silencer. Jeremy Bamber is currently one of 75 prisoners in the UK serving a life sentence behind bars. He's a category A prisoner in HM Prison Wakefield, Yorkshire where he works as a peer partner, helping other prisoners learn to read and write, even winning several awards for transcribing books in the prison's Braille workshop.
Sources:
The Murders at White House Farm Jeremey Bamber and the Killing of his Family By: Carol Anne Lee https://www.amazon.com/Murders-White-House-Farm-shocking-ebook/dp/B00UXKJ0SA
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