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PA Images via Getty ImagesJeremy Bamber was jailed for life in 1986 after being convicted of shooting dead his mother, father, sister and twin nephews at the family farmhouse in Tolleshunt D’Arcy, Essex. Jeremy Bamber was convicted and sentenced to life in prison more than 35 years ago for the infamous White House Farm murders in Essex, in which he killed his adoptive parents, his sister and her children. ITV's new factual drama White House Farm revolves around five murders that took place at an Essex farmhouse one night in August 1985, and the subsequent media storm and police blunders following the horrific killings. Yet, despite this treasure trove of forensic evidence, police, influenced by Bamber’s call, almost immediately pinned the blame on Caffell. Her body was found holding a semi-automatic .22 rifle, along with a bible.
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At first officers suspected Ms Caffell, who was found with her fingers around the .22 calibre rifle used to shoot all five, but suspicion fell on Bamber after Julie Mugford told police he had plotted to kill his parents for his £436,000 inheritance. Prior to the murders he had been working on the family farm and living in a cottage in nearby Goldhanger, which was owned by his father. Instead, he engaged in petty theft, once breaking into a jewelry shop and stealing watches. He also may have begun dealing heroin before finally returning to England, where he worked menial jobs. By 1985, the year of the murders, he had returned to work on his family farm.
Storyline
White House Farm (broadcast in some countries under the titles White House Farm Murders and The Murders at White House Farm) is a British television crime drama based on the real-life events that took place in August 1985. According to The Mail on Sunday, a defence dossier sent to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) contains 10 new pieces of evidence, according to Bamber's lawyers. 14 months after the initial crime, Sheila was vindicated and Jeremy Bamber was found guilty of the five murders, as the judge described him as "evil, almost beyond belief".
The real-life events behind ITV's true crime drama White House Farm
Thirdly, you can say, “Oh, well, it’s important to hear every side of the story,” but I think once we were completely convinced that he was guilty, I certainly didn’t want to give him any kind of a platform. In October of the following year, her younger brother Jeremy was convicted of the murders and will remain in prison for the rest of his life. Then 24, it seems he killed everyone before placing the shotgun in his dead sister’s hands to look like a murder-suicide. Detectives initially missed that Sheila couldn’t have reached the trigger to shoot herself.
One week before the murders, Bamber reportedly trashed and robbed the family business at Osea Road Caravan Park. Yet, despite the seemingly irrefutable evidence against him, Bamber still insists he’s innocent. And to this day, his legal teams continue to challenge his conviction. On a cool, windy day in February, two big white dogs escaped from a well-known nonprofit farm in Westchester County and ended up on a public footpath deep in a New York State park.
The disturbing encounter’s aftermath has been considerable. The farm, Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, which is connected to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Pocantico Hills, filed an appeal on Thursday to stay the dogs’ euthanization. According to the claims, burns on the father's back were not caused by the hot part of a rifle, as the jury was told in 1986, but by a hot kitchen AGA cooker. They say the evidence raises questions over a gruesome key detail highlighted by the judge at Bamber's trial. The Essex house and site of the 1985 murders wasn't demolished, as one might expect - instead, it's now the home of a classic car rental company.
And then all of a sudden, oh no, it’s gone way, way too far. But maybe she feels that she’s in too deep to get out now. I hope that the show does act as a critique of the institutional culture where dissenting voices or whistleblowers or the little person can so easily be crushed and not listened to, and sadly that’s still a problem in the world today. I think our show is as relevant in speaking to that as anything set now would be. Murder mystery drama based on true story is well-done. Hours later when armed officers broke into White House Farm they found 61-year-old Nevill shot eight times and beaten.
So, I guess that I agreed with the team on that score. I must admit, there’s part of me that would’ve been very curious to meet him. But whether that would’ve been a positive thing, I’m doubtful. For a start, Jeremy is now a much, much older man who has lived most of his life in maximum security prisons. In some ways, I don’t think we would’ve been meeting the same person that committed those crimes anyway. Secondly, my take on him is that he’s manipulative, and I think to that extent it would also have been potentially counterproductive.
Murder-suicide theory, crime scene
But, in the subsequent days, Bamber’s ex-girlfriend revealed to police that he’d been plotting their massacre. This, combined with the discovery of a silencer that contained Sheila’s blood, prompted the police to arrest Jeremy Bamber for the murder of his family so he could inherit their estate worth more than $500,000. When questioning the Bambers' son, Jeremy Bamber, he claims that his sister, Sheila, who was suffering from schizophrenia, went "berserk", got hold of a silenced rifle and killed their parents and Sheila's six-year old twin sons. As the murder case unravels, a devastating twist comes to light. Bamber was convicted and sentenced to life in prison more than 35 years ago for the White House Farm murders in Essex, in which he killed his entire family. Questions were also asked about Jeremy, then 24 years old, who acted strangely at the twin boys' funeral, his behaviour veering between hysterical to smiling and joking around.
"What I experienced after it all happened was, yes, everybody accepted that Jeremy was guilty. [But] they kept on saying to me, 'But yes, Sheila was a drug addict wasn’t she?', 'She used to beat the children didn’t she?' and I said 'No that’s not true'," he said. Speaking at the press screening of White House Farm, Colin Caffell, the real-life ex-husband of Sheila Caffell, revealed that the initial press coverage of the murders has long impacted the way Sheila is viewed. Bamber’s behaviour at the funeral did not just raise suspicions with Caffell, a sculptor now aged 66.
On the night of August 6th, 1985, just outside of the picturesque village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy in Essex, England, a shocking attack left five members – and three generations – of a family brutally murdered. At first, the police thought they were dealing with an open-and-shut case, suspecting that it was Sheila Caffell – diagnosed with schizophrenia – who had shot her adoptive parents and twin sons before turning the gun on herself. As one detective set out to prove, however, certain elements of that narrative that didn’t add up – and the spotlight turned to Sheila’s brother, Jeremy Bamber. Each episode of the podcast takes a deeper dive into one of six nuanced themes that contributed to the particularly disturbing nature of this surprisingly complicated case, providing further context and background for this horrific crime. Revolves around the true story of a fateful night in August 1985 when five members of the same family are murdered at an Essex farmhouse, and the ensuing police investigation and court case ... It was the smutty jokes Jeremy Bamber cracked during the funeral of his parents and sister that first raised alarm bells.
The pair’s relationship had fallen apart by this point and Bamber has always maintained Mugford made up the allegations as revenge for him ending their relationship. He was found guilty of the five killings and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The Judge, Justice Drake described him as “evil, almost beyond belief”.
But it’s easy to forget how recently our attitudes to things like mental illness have been shaken up and changed, I hope. "I cannot say whether he is guilty or not, but certainly from the evidence I have heard from people who have met him, and evidence of former prisoners with him, he does not fit the profile of a mass murderer." His last attempt at getting a new trial was in 2013, but he was unsuccessful, though his lawyers have filed a new appeal as of March 2021.
On August 7, 1985, Jeremy Bamber called the police to inform them that his entire family — his father, Nevill; his mother, June; his sister, Sheila; and Sheila’s six-year-old twin boys — were shot to death at the White House Farm. Having seen the crime scene photos, when I was looking at the rushes of the stuff shot in the house, there were moments when I had to keep reminding myself that’s not the real house. The most interesting thing about that was that unlike Mike, who’s quite just straight down-the-line adamant, “Jeremy did it.
If you watch her in the first couple of episodes, she hardly says a word. She’s sort of floating around and on Jeremy’s arm or whatever, and building to the point where she comes forward at the end of episode four and says, “I’m going to tell you the truth,” then stands up and speaks that truth, I think that’s a hero’s journey of sorts as well. It allegedly had traces of Ms Caffell's blood on it and, given her injuries, the trial was told she would have been unable to place it in the cupboard before her death.
Upstairs Nicholas and Daniel were found dead in their beds while June and Sheila's bodies were in the master bedroom. The scene had been made to look like a murder-suicide, with his sister Sheila Caffell, who had schizophrenia, initially thought to have carried out the killings before turning the gun on herself. In January 2020, ITV in Britain broadcast a television miniseries called White House Farm, which was based on the events on that fateful day in 1986 and starred the ex-girlfriend of Prince Harry. These links to the British monarchy marked just the beginning of the strange turns that this case would take. Photo by PA Images via Getty ImagesThe Essex farmhouse at Tolleshunt D’Arcy near Maldon where Jeremy Bamber shot his family. This is the tragic true story of the White House Farm murders.
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