Jeremy Bamber and White House Farm, 1985

A review of my Christmas listening: the New Yorker’s "In The Dark" podcast presented by Heidi Blake. Season 6, Blood Relatives, is about the White House Farm murders.

I have addictively binged the In The Dark podcast over the last few days, even taking extra walks to make the time. It is a gripping account of a very old case that manages (against all odds) to uncover new information, new leads, and a fresh perspective, over 40 years after the murders.

I remember this case re-appearing in the news regularly since 1985. I cannot quite remember it happening, unlike the Suzy Lamplugh abduction the following summer, but it remains a major story. An entire family had been shot dead in a remote farmhouse in the middle of the night, in a building that was apparently locked tight from outside intervention. Suspicion gradually formed around the 24 year-old adopted son of Nevill and June Bamber. Could he have used inside knowledge to enter through a closed window, meticulously staged the whole scene and then re-arrived later on in the company of Essex Police, feigning complete ignorance?

The label of ‘noble cause corruption’ is something new to me this Christmas, but the idea behind it is familiar. The idea that there are some cases which just do not have enough evidence to secure a conviction, even though what happened is commonly accepted among the police and members of the public. In other words, ‘everyone knows who did it’ but cannot quite prove it. This happens a lot in all aspects of our lives, and it is desperately annoying when it happens to you. That speeding fine, that parking ticket… the mitigating circumstances, the reasons why you don’t deserve that particular penalty, but you lost the receipt or some other piece of paper that you need to show the authorities. You know you’ve been treated unfairly, but can you prove it?

It is difficult to imagine how appalling it would be if you were accused of murder, knowing you were innocent, but totally without an alibi or any way of demonstrating your innocence. I have written before on Crime Guy about how most of us cannot demonstrate our whereabouts for about 90% of our normal daily activities. When you think about it, alibis do not often exist.

The more I listened to Blood Relatives this Christmas, the more Jeremy Bamber reminded me of Ian Bailey. Bailey, now deceased, was an undisputed narcissist, an alcoholic and a convicted wife-beater. He was a thoroughly unlikeable man. Knowing he was innocent of the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier, he took pleasure in taunting the police, neighbours, friends, and even strangers with his innocence. He trusted the system to protect him, an innocent man in his own eyes, and took his eccentric actions to extremes, thoroughly alienating most of Ireland. But in the end, and quite surprisingly, Ian Bailey was right. The system did protect him. He was never charged with murder, never faced a court on that matter.

I find the most striking aspect of the White House Farm murders to be that the police did conclude it was a murder-suicide. Everything pointed to the explanation that Sheila Caffell, who was suffering from poor mental health, shot her family and herself. It was a tragic and unsatisfactory explanation, but the police were so sure of this that they began burning the damaged house contents. Mattresses, carpets, anything covered in blood, was burned in a fire at the farm soon after the tragedy. It was an open and shut case. A locked room mystery. The house was locked up from the inside, so whoever perpetrated the crime had also died in the farmhouse.

It was only when Tolleshunt D'Arcy’s very own Agatha Christie started rummaging around that a new narrative emerged, one that the police had either never seriously considered or had emphatically ruled out. Ann Eaton decided that her cousin (not a blood relative) Jeremy Bamber, had killed his family. Evidence in the form of a gun silencer was suddenly ‘found’ and even though that item was mishandled at every turn, it was relied on in court as a crucial part of the prosecution case.

Most people seem to agree that Sheila Caffell could not have shot herself if the silencer had been on the end of the long rifle, making it so long that she could not use the weapon. And her blood type had been found inside the silencer, perhaps indicating that the silencer was indeed on the rifle when she was shot. But another member of the close family also had that blood type. In the absence of DNA testing, the blood could have belonged to two people, not just Sheila, even though the jury were emphatically told there was only a match for Sheila.

The reliance on the silencer was invalid because of the way it had been brought to the attention of police, carried around, taken to another property, thrown in a car, thrown in a desk drawer, perhaps taken back to the farmhouse… the silencer had been on quite a journey. And it turned out that it was not the only one. The police inspected ‘several’ silencers, at least two and perhaps three including this one. Silencers which belonged to two men, David and his father Robert Boutflour. It turns out that Robert had the same blood type as Sheila, and David’s blood type had also been found on the ‘main’ silencer found by David. This is all very intricate, and it seems the police and CCRC have glossed over or brushed aside these details.

I will leave you to discover all the to and fro about the key piece of new information described in the podcast: the possibility of a 999 emergency call from within the farmhouse during the period of time when Jeremy Bamber was standing outside with about half of Essex Police. It is another eye-watering case of incompetence from the much-maligned CCRC. However if that phone call did indeed happen, it leaves open the possibility that earlier police intervention might have saved lives.

I cannot add anything to this case that has not been covered in this excellent and sober podcast, other than to draw your attention to it. If you are as obsessed about the Sophie Toscan du Plantier case as I am then perhaps you will always look for parallels in other cases.

There is a sophisticated and committed campaign group supporting the innocence of Jeremy Bamber. I have also been reading The Doc Maker here on Substack over the last year or so, someone who believes in Bamber’s innocence. If you prefer to read rather than listen then most of the podcast’s revelations are detailed in Heidi Blake’s extensive 2024 article linked below.

Resources

New Yorker ‘In The Dark’, Season 6 by Heidi Blake

New Yorker Feature Article, Heidi Blake, July 2024

The Doc Maker (Substack)

Jeremy Bamber Innocence Campaign

Crime Guy “Unsolved” Podcast

My podcast returns on New Year’s Day with another look at the disappearance in 1986 of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh. I am joined once again by Geraldine Comiskey.

Noël Cause Corruption