The White House Farm murders have been retold in an ITV drama over the last few weeks, and the series finale aired last night. The series follows the true story of how Bamber murdered his adoptive parents, Nevill and June Bamber, along with his adopted sister Sheila Caffell and her twin, sons Daniel and Nicholas Caffell, in a brutal killing spree. However, it was a contentious case – police initially suspected Sheila for the mass murders, and believed she then turned the gun upon herself.
Bamber supported this conclusion and claimed his father had called him on the night of their death to say Sheila – who had a history of mental health problems – had gone “berserk” with a gun.
Although police did trace the horrific crimes back to Bamber after a few months and arrest him, the convicted criminal has maintained his innocence ever since.
Bamber launched one of several appeals against his conviction in October 2002, based on two photographs from the scene of the crime which had recently been unearthed.
Bamber’s defence told the Court of Appeal: “The crime-scene pictures would have pointed to the mental state of Bamber’s sister at the time of the murders at White House Farm in Essex almost 17 years [ago].”
Bamber’s barrister Michael Turner QC claimed the photographs could have helped the defence at Bamber’s trial as the jury would have been able to understand his sister’s true psychiatric state.
He said: “What we are seeking to show in this case overall is that documents which were potentially helpful to the defence were obscured.”
One photograph captured the words ‘I hate this place’, written in a cupboard in the bedroom of Sheila’s two six-year-old sons.
A second image revealed that there was an open Bible found on or next to Sheila’s body. This contributed to speculation that Sheila killed her family in a religious frenzy.
A BBC report at the time noted: “[Bamber] is claiming at the appeal that his conviction was built on a series of ‘deceits’ by police and that certain evidence was deliberately withheld to unfairly bolster the prosecution case.”
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The judge said: “We do not doubt the safety of the verdicts and we have recorded in our judgement the fact that the more we examined the details of the case, the more likely we thought it to be that the jury were right, although as explained, we can never go further than that.”
There is also a question mark hanging over the suggestion that Sheila had a violent nature.
Speaking to East Anglian Daily Times in January, Sheila’s ex-husband Colin Caffell said: “Before she was diagnosed and medicated, she could be explosive as a way of dealing with her frustration.
“But she was only ever destructive towards inanimate objects, breaking things in order to cause a reaction in others, usually me.”
It was three days after the murders when one of Bamber’s cousins discovered a silencer in a cupboard at the farm, supposedly covered in Sheila’s blood.
A few weeks after that, Bamber’s girlfriend Julie Mugford changed her official statement and announced her boyfriend had often declared that he wanted to kill his parents.
Bamber was given a minimum of a 25-year sentence in 1986. In 1994 it was announced that he would never be released.
His first appeal was rejected in 1989.
