Bamber’s battle for freedom

JEREMY Bamber’s legal case has been fraught with denial, conspiracy theories and claims of unearthed “evidence”.

Bamber has always maintained his innocence and, over the years, varying narratives between defence lawyers and the police have emerged.

The killer was found guilty in October 1986 of the murders of his family after the prosecution convinced a jury that Bamber placed the gun in the hands of his 28-year-old sister, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, to make the scene appear to be a murder-suicide.

Bamber has repeatedly applied unsuccessfully to have his conviction overturned or his sentence reduced. But his extended family remain convinced of his guilt.

Silencer

The killer argued in 1985 his sister Sheila, who was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, feared having her children taken into care, suffered a psychotic episode and carried out the murders before turning the gun on herself.

But the police said that

Bamber must have carried out the murders because the gun had been fitted with a silencer. This made it too long for her to be able to shoot herself.

Police say that if Sheila had gone on a rampage her feet would have been covered in blood which they said was not the case.

In 2013 Bamber’s defence team claimed they had obtained a picture of the feet – and it showed bloodstains. A year later they also said they received new lab results which suggest that burn marks on the back of Bamber’s dad had been made by the muzzle of a rifle without a silencer.

They also say that even if the gun had been fitted at the time with a silencer it would still have been possible for Sheila to have shot herself. Bamber’s legal team has also highlighted what it described as other flaws in the original trial.

These, it says, included the fact that a bloodstained Bible, found by Sheila’s side and open at pages containing Psalms 51-55 – a section relating to the struggle between good and evil – was never forensically examined nor produced at trial, despite repeated requests from Bamber’s solicitor.

Phone

Photographs also showed a handwritten note sticking up from between the pages of the Bible reading “love one another” – the same words that were on a banner on a wall in a room in Guyana when 909 people died in a mass murder-suicide.

In October this year it emerged that Bamber claims to have unearthed phone call evidence that could set him free, 33 years after he was jailed for slaughtering his family.

His legal team say a police record referring to a call made by Bamber on the night of the White House Farm massacre in 1985 proves he was not there at the time and could form the basis of an appeal.