Jeremy Bamber made huge error after killing family in White House Farm bloodbath

A new documentary delving into a notorious series of deaths in Essex is set to air on Channel 4 this week. The programme, 'Whitehouse Farm: Murder, Bloodline and Betrayal', will examine the contentious deaths of the Bamber family in 1985.

Jeremy Bamber was found guilty a year later for the murders of his adoptive parents, Nevill and June, his adoptive sister, Sheila Caffell, and her twin lads Daniel and Nicholas in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, near Maldon. It was a bloodbath that became one of the most infamous cases in recent British criminal history.

The case has been featured in several documentaries and continues to captivate true crime enthusiasts, largely due to murderer Bamber's steadfast denial that he wiped out his entire family. The deaths will be examined in a new two-part documentary airing at 10pm on August 26 on Channel 4.

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Nevill and June, both aged 61, their adoptive daughter Sheila, 26, and her two six-year-old twin boys, Daniel and Nicholas, were shot and subsequently died from their injuries on August 6 in 1985.

Initially, police and the public believed that Sheila had killed her family and herself in a murder-suicide.

Sheila, who had a career as a model, had been hospitalised with paranoid schizophrenia prior to the murders.

The conviction of Bamber relied on complex forensic arguments about the possible use of a silencer (which the prosecution argued, if used, would have made the rifle too long for Caffell to kill herself with), and Bamber’s former girlfriend Julie Mugford changing her initial statement to the police to say he had told her beforehand that he was planning to kill the family and that he had hired a hitman.

When the hitman she named proved to have an alibi, Mugford again changed her story to say it was Bamber who had murdered his family.

The murder-suicide theory was widely supported by the press, and even the police were convinced initially.

However, it was Bamber's actions that sparked suspicions around his involvement, though there was no direct evidence linking the then 24-year-old to the crimes.

Bamber's suspicious actions, as argued by the prosecution in his 1986 murder trial, included shooting his family with his father's rifle, placing the gun in his sister Sheila's hand to stage a murder-suicide, and potentially tampering with the scene.

He was also accused of lying about receiving a phone call from his father on the night of the murders, which the prosecution claimed he had fabricated to support his defence.

The jury rejected Bamber's account and found him guilty of the murders, with police suggesting that Bamber, who stood to inherit half a million pounds, was motivated by greed.

Despite this, Bamber has consistently denied the murders, maintaining that it was Sheila.

Last year, the New Yorker magazine published a 17,000-word investigation by the journalist Heidi Blake examining whether Bamber had been wrongfully convicted.

She interviewed surviving police officers including Nicholas Milbank, who had been monitoring the open line into White House Farm on the morning of the shootings.

Milbank told Blake that a 999 call had come in at 6.09am from inside the farm (by which time Bamber had been standing outside with police for more than two hours) and that he heard human activity.

He has made numerous appeals against his conviction, but all have been unsuccessful.

The tragic Bamber deaths were dramatized in a six-part series on the White House Farm killings for ITV in 2020. A four-part series produced by Louis Theroux for Sky Crime also aired in 2021.

In July, the Criminal Cases Review Commission refused to refer the case of Bamber back to the court of appeal.

The CCRC has spent four years examining four of the 10 grounds that Bamber’s lawyers identified as undermining the safety of his conviction. It will continue to examine the other six.

In its provisional statement of reasons, the CCRC said the four grounds did not reach the threshold for a referral to the court of appeal. Bamber has a right to challenge the provisional decision, and his legal team says it will judicially review the decision.

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