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Topics: News, True Crime
Jake Massey
White House Farm murderer Jeremy Bamber has made a bid to have his convictions overturned, according to a new report.
The 61-year-old is serving life after being found guilty of murdering his adoptive parents, Nevill and June, his sister, Sheila Caffell, and her six-year-old twins, Daniel and Nicholas, at White House Farm, near the village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy in Essex, in August 1985.
He has always protested his innocence and claims that Caffell - who suffered from schizophrenia - shot her family before turning the gun on herself.
Now Bamber's lawyers have submitted a dossier containing 10 new pieces of evidence to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), according to The Mail on Sunday.
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The evidence reportedly indicates that burns to Nevill's back were caused not by the hot end of a rifle but by a hot kitchen AGA. Bamber's lawyers argue that his portrayal as a man capable of torturing his own family was critical in securing his conviction.
It is also claimed that Essex Police tampered with the crime scene.
Speaking to The Mail on Sunday from HMP Wakefield, Bamber said: "After 36 years it can now be proven with absolute certainty that I did not burn my dad with the rifle barrel or the rifle's sound moderator, as my trial jury were misled into believing."
In a statement to Tyla, Essex Police said: "In August 1985 the lives of five people, including two children, were needlessly, tragically and callously cut short when they were murdered in their own home by Jeremy Bamber.
In the years that followed this case has been the subject of several appeals and reviews by the Court of Appeal and the Criminal Cases Review Commission – all of these processes have never found anything other than Bamber is the person responsible for killing his adoptive parents Nevill and June, sister Sheila Caffell and her two sons Nicholas and Daniel.”
Essex Police have continued to comply will all legal requirements in this case, and will continue to assist the CCRC as required.”
The CCRC also said: "We have received Mr Bamber's application, and a review is ongoing."
The challenge is the latest action in Bamber's long-running battle to clear his name.
He had an appeal against his convictions dismissed by the Court of Appeal in 2002, and also had a High Court challenge to the CCRC's refusal to refer his case for another appeal rejected in 2012.
In 2020, he lost a bid to bring a legal challenge over a refusal by the Prison Service to downgrade him from maximum security.
Bamber sought permission for a High Court challenge over a decision taken by the director of the long-term and high security estate – part of the Prison and Probation Service – not to downgrade him from a Category A inmate.
Category A prisoners are considered the most dangerous to the public and held in maximum security conditions.
The senior judge ultimately refused Bamber permission to bring the challenge.
In his judgment, Mr Justice Julian Knowles said: "I have concluded that permission must be refused on the basis that neither of the grounds of challenge advanced on behalf of the claimant is arguable."