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00:01The perfect murder, the unsolvable crime, does it really exist?
00:07In the TV First, we reveal the cutting-edge technology
00:12now used by British police to join the dots
00:15and reveal new evidence in all homicide investigations.
00:19I'm Tim Tate. I've been an investigative journalist for almost 50 years.
00:26I'm Sam Robbins and I'm a criminal intelligence analyst.
00:30For over 20 years, I've worked alongside detectives on major murder investigations.
00:34Together, in this new series, we are going to discover the fatal mistakes
00:39which prevented the perfect murder from ever being committed.
01:18A few cases in recent criminal history have attracted as much argument
01:24and controversy as the multiple murders in a beautiful Essex farmhouse in August 1985.
01:32The murders of the Bamber family must rank as one of the most horrific crimes
01:37in British criminal history.
01:41This was a tremendously tragic event
01:45and it just wasn't given the time or attention that it should have been.
01:52For 40 years, Jeremy Bamber, the man convicted of murdering his parents,
01:58his sister and her two young sons, has protested his innocence.
02:04He has pushed for numerous reviews. He has pushed for appeals.
02:09He has quite a following in terms of those who also think that he's innocent.
02:16All have been rejected and with good reason
02:20because although the evidence shows that Essex police mishandled the crime scene
02:26and committed a series of errors, it also shows clearly
02:33that Jeremy Bamber set out to murder his family to inherit their substantial wealth
02:43and then to blame it on his sister.
02:49He had planned and he carried out what he believed would be the perfect murder.
03:03The White House farm murders. What sort of family were the Bambers?
03:09So the Bambers were essentially a farming family in a semi-rural location.
03:17Well thought of family, they provided employment for local people,
03:22they had a successful farm and also shares in a caravan park as well which they ran.
03:28The family in 1985 consisted of Neville and June Bamber who were the parents.
03:34Neville was, as well as being a farmer, was a local magistrate
03:38and June was a pillar of the community in terms of she was very involved in the church,
03:45a very religious lady and well thought of in the community
03:49and they had a close family also living nearby.
03:52They adopted two children, Sheila and Jeremy.
03:56They were grown up children and Neville and June provided very well for them.
04:03So, Sheila was put up in a flat in London where she'd been modelling
04:08and Jeremy had returned home from travels and was supplied with a house in the local village and a car.
04:16And so they took care of their children in terms of lifestyle.
04:20But obviously expected them to work, you know, they were from a working family and that was very important to
04:25them.
04:28White House Farm is a Georgian style farmhouse.
04:33It's set in 300 acres of farmland.
04:36In the village of Tolles Hunt Darcy, in the Maldron district of Essex.
04:42Originally, the farm, in fact, was owned by June's father, who, if she inherited the farm, it was passed on
04:49to Neville and June.
04:50And they worked the farm virtually all of their married life.
04:54Neville and June adopted Sheila.
04:57Four years later, they adopted Jeremy.
05:00They were a very wealthy family.
05:02They owned a flat in London, a cottage in the village about three or four miles from White House Farm.
05:08And indeed part of the caravan site, a few miles further down the road towards the coast.
05:15So there was a great deal of financial assets within the family.
05:20That farm was due to be inherited by the two children, Sheila and Jeremy.
05:26Jeremy was described as having quite a fractious relationship with his parents.
05:31His dad was very disappointed that he didn't do very well academically through school.
05:37He went to a private school and he left with no qualifications initially.
05:43And then his father paid for him to go to Australia and New Zealand.
05:48And then when he come back, he worked on the farm.
05:54So two beautiful children. You have Sheila who's a model.
05:57And Sheila was known as Bambi. That was her nickname on the modelling circuit.
06:01So she's beautiful. He's good looking. They're wealthy.
06:06Yep.
06:07Everything's going for them, isn't it?
06:08Yes. What appears to be an idyllic lifestyle.
06:13But, appearances can be deceptive.
06:15Because behind the scenes, it wasn't like that.
06:17No, all was not well.
06:20And, as is quite often the case, when a serious incident or a murder happens,
06:26you start to look at the backgrounds of the individuals involved.
06:31So whilst the portrayal to the outside world was all was well,
06:37inside, within the family, there was a fair amount of turmoil going on.
06:45In 1977, Sheila met and married a man called Colin Caffell.
06:52And two years later, she gave birth to their twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas.
07:00But her mental health began to decline.
07:09Sheila suffered with quite significant mental health problems.
07:13She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and she had been an inpatient
07:17in different psychiatric facilities as well.
07:21Jeremy was not particularly close to Sheila.
07:24He felt that she received a greater deal of attention than he did.
07:29He resented the attention that she received,
07:32which included her being bought a flat in London,
07:36while Jeremy was made to live in a cottage closer to the farm in the small village.
07:41So I think that really created tension between the siblings.
07:46Nor was Jeremy's seemingly idyllic life any less troubled.
07:50His international adventures included stealing from high-end jewellery shops
07:57and attempting to traffic in heroin.
08:01He bragged, in fact, that he had been responsible for smuggling drugs out of New Zealand.
08:09Heroin, in fact.
08:10He worked for a short while on the farm before getting, again,
08:14some low-paid jobs working in bars and restaurants.
08:17And that's where he met his girlfriend, Julie Mugford, in 1983.
08:25Julie was a single girl, 19 years of age.
08:28And they struck up a relationship and they became quite close.
08:34All of their friends at the time said that Julie was much more committed to this relationship than Jeremy was.
08:41And I do wonder if Julie saw themselves as a bit of a Bonnie and Clyde type partnership.
08:48Jeremy did confide in Julie that he basically detested his parents.
08:55He expressed hatred for Sheila and indeed even for the twins.
09:01And the reason for this hatred was he didn't want to share the inheritance with Sheila.
09:06He felt that the inheritance, the farm and all that went with it, should be his and his alone.
09:14When does this resentment first show itself?
09:18Jeremy and his want for the best things in life and his entitled lifestyle starts to play out in March
09:27of 1985,
09:28where he realised that cash is kept in the offices at the caravan park that the Bamba family have a
09:35share in.
09:36It's a family owned part with other members of the family.
09:40He planned to rob the office during night time when he knows that no one's going to be in there.
09:47And he gets away with cash?
09:48He does, yeah.
09:49£980, which is about, it would have been about £3,000 today.
09:54Shortly after that, he starts telling farmhands that he's going to get his hands on his inheritance sooner rather than
10:03later.
10:03Yeah, he very much feels that wealth in the family isn't being divided up as he wants it to be.
10:11And it's his inheritance, he's entitled to it and he's going to get hold of it.
10:16So I think the plan was really for him and Julie to ride off into the sunset with an inheritance
10:24that he thought that he was entitled to.
10:28So Bamba apparently had made remarks about killing his family previously and this is something that he certainly thought about
10:36and it's not necessarily an unusual thing for people to do when they're thinking of an inheritance.
10:43But there's a big difference between the fantasy and the reality, but it certainly seems it was something that he
10:48thought about for some time and then, you know, as we see with lots of people who go on to
10:52kill, is that those fantasies then start to take on a life of their own until they actually do materialise.
11:01Cases of patricide are quite rare.
11:04The actual thought of it is relatively inconceivable in terms of that you're so driven by money and the want
11:14of a good life that you're willing to kill the family that brought you up.
11:22Initially he told Julie that his plan was to sedate the family, shoot them and then set fire to the
11:29farm.
11:31He used the term that he was pissed off with them.
11:34And on the evening of the 6th of August 1985, the evening before the actual murders, he rang Julie and
11:42said that he'd had enough, that he'd been thinking about the crime all day and that it was now or
11:49never, that it had to be tonight.
12:07At the start of August 1985, Sheila had come down to Essex from London with her twin sons, Ben H.
12:196 years old, to stay with Neville.
12:22And June.
12:23That evening, the family had a dinner.
12:28Jeremy Bamber attended that.
12:31He left at 9.30 and went back to his own cottage, three miles away.
12:43At 3.30 on the morning of August 7th, the phone rang in Colchester Police Station.
12:51It was Bamber.
12:54Um, my father's phone from White House Farm and he sounded really frightened.
13:00He says, my sister's gone crazy and she's got a gun.
13:05He actually took the time to find the number in the phone book of the local police station.
13:11Now, why ring the local police station, not the emergency 999 number?
13:20So, he calls the local Nick?
13:21Yes.
13:22And the local Nick sends officers to White House Farm?
13:26They do.
13:27So, police begin to make their way to White House Farm.
13:32On the way, obviously, they're going to have their blues and twos going to get there as quickly as they
13:37possibly can.
13:39They pass Jeremy in his car, who appears just to be dawdling along to the scene, which is rather odd
13:46behaviour.
13:46So, he's dawdling, not rushing to the scene?
13:50No.
13:50He's in a car, but they overtake him to the point where one of the police officers notices that they've
13:56overtaken someone and then he pulls up and they realise that it's Jeremy.
14:02What is his attitude and what does he try and tell police?
14:06Everything that I've read about this case, he's very much trying to direct the narrative at this scene.
14:13So, he starts to tell the police about the fact that Sheila is schizophrenic, that she knows how to use
14:22guns, that she's used guns before, that her two young children are in there.
14:27And then there's one point where he allegedly spots someone at an upstairs window, to the point where he then
14:34gets the police to hide.
14:36They're not armed, so they need to protect themselves and wait for the armed response to get there.
14:40So, he's immediately controlling what the police are understanding from that scene.
14:47From a very early stage, everything's being pointed towards Sheila.
14:53The officers who waited with Jeremy stated that his behaviour swung between being extremely stressed and concerned to laughing and
15:04joking and talking about a car.
15:06Now, we need to be careful when we look at expected behaviour of people in situations, whether that's in tense
15:14situations or in situations of grief.
15:18So, we can't pin too much at this point on his particular behaviour, because at this point, as far as
15:24anyone is aware, Jeremy didn't know what was happening inside the property.
15:29And it wasn't until 7.45am that morning, before they made the decision to enter the farmhouse.
15:37And the officers broke down the front door and were basically met with what one could only say was a
15:46scene of absolute carnage and slaughter.
15:51Neville Bamber was found downstairs with numerous gunshot wounds and also wounds that looked as though there'd been some sort
16:00of physical struggle as well.
16:02Neville had been shot eight times, six times to the head and twice to the body.
16:09And a later post-mortem would actually reveal that in addition to the fatal shotgun wounds, he had suffered a
16:17number of injuries where he'd been struck obviously with the rifle, the butt of the rifle and the barrel of
16:22the rifle.
16:23Crockery had been knocked over and smashed on the floor, which included a sugar bowl and sugar was spread all
16:30over the kitchen floor.
16:31And furniture was knocked over, etc.
16:35I think most tragically in this particular case, Sheila's young boys, Nicholas and Daniel, were also found dead in their
16:43beds from multiple gunshot wounds.
16:47In the upstairs master bedroom, lying on the floor near the bed was the body of June.
16:53She had been shot seven times.
16:57Near to June, on the floor, was the body of Sheila.
17:02Sheila had been shot twice, once to the throat and once near the mouth area.
17:08And a rifle was laying on top of her on her chest with the barrel pointing up to her throat,
17:15which gave the appearance, if you like, the appearance that she had shot herself.
17:24There's a problem called confirmation bias, isn't there?
17:28Yes.
17:29What part does confirmation bias play at this specific point?
17:35So the SIO, the senior investigating officer, is going to go in and make an initial assessment about the scene.
17:42He goes in and, for him, everything's laid out.
17:47So, essentially, it's the sort of crime scene that you would expect to see with a murder-suicide.
17:53You've got dead members of the family and someone who seemingly looks to have taken their own life.
18:01That is reinforced by the fact that Jeremy has been in the ears of the officers.
18:06So you've got that narrative already set up and then you go in and you find the scene that you're
18:14expecting to find.
18:16When an experienced, experienced officer sees a scene like that, with that confirmation bias, what's the danger?
18:24The danger is that you take a single route of investigation and that you close off all other avenues, all
18:33other avenues of inquiry.
18:35And what you should be looking at is the mechanics of the scene, like thinking with clarity and objective overview
18:43to think what has happened here.
18:46Not what you see is to work out what has happened here.
18:50And that is not what happens in this case, which is a fatal error.
18:57All of the family were shot multiple times.
19:01Sheila is the one who had the least gunshot wounds and she had two wounds, both to her head.
19:09It's quite unusual, I think, for people to think, well, how could she have taken her own life?
19:15How could you shoot yourself in the head twice?
19:17Now, the pathologist at the time did indicate that the initial shot, which was more around this sort of area,
19:25would not necessarily have proved fatal.
19:28And that she would have been able to, in theory, shoot herself again.
19:34And the fact that Sheila had schizophrenic episodes is why they went with the initial verdict of a murder-suicide.
19:45Some officers retrospectively discussed the fact that they thought the crime scene was quite staged, that it was almost too
19:53perfect.
19:54There were also issues around the fact that Sheila's family indicated she didn't know how to use a gun,
20:00and yet the rifle would have had to have been reloaded twice.
20:05But police didn't seem to look that closely.
20:08They certainly didn't preserve the crime scene very well.
20:11Only a few days later, they were seen burning artefacts such as the mattresses, you know, which now would be
20:18indicated as evidence.
20:19So this was a really arguably botched job by the police from the very beginning.
20:27A lot of the doubt in this case arises from the fact that materials and items that we would have
20:34hoped were available for examination were no longer available for examination because they'd been destroyed.
20:42And obviously then, if we think of an investigation as a jigsaw, it means that we might start to piece
20:51that together, but there are a large number of those pieces that are no longer available for examination.
20:56And of course, when you don't have those answers, when you can't get those answers, it naturally attracts uncertainty about
21:07the kind of the picture as a whole.
21:14What's Jeremy Bamber doing?
21:16He once again starts to not only control the narrative, but control any potential evidence.
21:24So he wants to get rid of as much stuff in the house as possible.
21:31And more critically, he requests that the remains of Sheila and his mother and father are cremated.
21:40That happens very quickly at the funeral.
21:44He's looking devastated and downtrodden.
21:49And when other witnesses are spoken to, apparently the minute that those cameras were taken away, he was laughing and
21:55joking and making inappropriate comments at the wake.
21:58To the point where people were disgusted and thought it was odd.
22:03So the whole grieving son and brother and uncle was an act?
22:08Yes, yeah. He acts as if he's just won the lottery, basically.
22:17So when we look at the psychopathology of Bamber, really, he fits this dark triad pattern very, very closely.
22:23He has this very high psychopathic traits, the glib superficialness, the ruthlessness, the lack of empathy.
22:32He also has this very narcissistic personality in that he doesn't really see anybody else as being important.
22:37His sister would sometimes have psychiatric episodes and he would actually get quite jealous of that.
22:44He was jealous of her children.
22:46And he saw himself as a very, very important character.
22:49And this final trait, this kind of Machiavellianism, this kind of ends justify the means, he didn't really have any
22:55point to worry about in terms of implicating his sister in these crimes.
23:00His sole purpose, really, was to get his hands on the inheritance.
23:05Jeremy was someone who behaved perhaps quite oddly for somebody who had just lost their entire family.
23:13It may not be what we would expect from someone, but it doesn't mean that that isn't a normal response
23:19for them.
23:20However, his behaviour went perhaps beyond what we would expect in terms of grief or sorrow, frustration, anger.
23:33He and Julie Mugford flew to Amsterdam, where Bamba bought a substantial quantity of cannabis and was reported to be
23:43in very high spirits indeed.
23:45When he got back, he tried to sell nude photos of his deceased sister, Sheila.
23:58In Sheila's early days, she did some topless modelling and Jeremy tries to sell the nude photos of her to
24:09the son for £20,000.
24:12That's not the actions of a grieving brother, is it?
24:16It's unbelievable.
24:17I mean, she's been killed in the most horrific circumstances along with her children.
24:22And he thinks that's an appropriate action to take.
24:28It's honestly staggering.
24:32All of Jeremy's actions raised quite significant suspicion within his own family.
24:37And this was raised to police as well.
24:40Now, retrospectively, some officers have said that they also found Jeremy's behaviour to be quite unusual at the time.
24:48Not what they would have expected or not from their own experience of giving people such news.
24:54So his behaviour was seen as quite unusual, even from experienced police officers.
25:01So Bamba did actually believe he'd got away with it for a point and became quite, again, quite sort of
25:07arrogant in his lifestyle following the incident.
25:11He did believe that he succeeded in some respects in pulling off the perfect murder.
25:32At some point, the senior investigating officer, the SIO is overruled.
25:37Yes.
25:38And some semblance of sanity begins to return.
25:42Yes.
25:43So a new SIO is appointed and starts to run an investigation with an open mindset, an open investigative mindset.
25:53However, by that point, you have gone past what we know is the golden hours of investigation.
26:01Your first 72 hours in the investigation are the time when you're going to gather and obtain and secure the
26:07best evidence that you possibly can.
26:10And that time was lost.
26:12And it was catastrophic in terms of the loss of evidence for this particular case.
26:17So when a more forensic mindset is applied, what stood out as the problems with the crime scene?
26:27So let's start with Sheila and Neville.
26:31Neville was a farming man.
26:35He was six foot four.
26:37He was a giant of a man, apparently.
26:41Sheila's of very slight build.
26:43She was called Bambi for a reason.
26:45She was tiny.
26:46What you've got to ask yourself is, would a five foot seven slip of a young lady be able to
26:55overpower a six foot four, well-built man in order to shoot him not only upstairs, but also downstairs and
27:07inflict various injuries to him in the kitchen.
27:09And then also shoot her own children and her mother.
27:18She was in her night clothes lying on the bedroom floor.
27:24And that was important because in the kitchen, when Neville lay across the chair, a sugar bowl had been smashed
27:30and there was sugar everywhere.
27:32There was nothing whatsoever on Sheila's feet.
27:35She was, her feet were perfectly clean.
27:37So you have someone who was allegedly, according to Jeremy, massacred the family, shot all these individuals, walked through the
27:47house, caused all this carnage, and yet has got nothing, no residue whatsoever on her hands and feet.
27:55It's also about the lack of evidence as well.
27:58So when the telephone is examined, so the phone that he would have had to use to call Jeremy has
28:03no blood on it.
28:04And at that point, he would have been bleeding heavily.
28:08He was shot upstairs, and we know this because the trail of blood comes downstairs and leads into the kitchen,
28:13where he's then assorted again because there's blood pattern analysis in the kitchen and no blood on the phone.
28:24Now, an important factor in relation to Sheila's body was that when they examined her hands, they were perfectly clean.
28:31There was no sign of any residue, any dust, any lead, or indeed any grease.
28:37And all those things you would expect if someone had used that rifle, that weapon, that type of residue you
28:44would expect to find on their hands.
28:46And sort of to confirm that, if you like, evidence was given by the family that in order to load
28:54the chamber of the rifle, it held 10 cartridges.
28:57And the last cartridge was extremely difficult to put into the chamber and had to be actually forced in by
29:05whoever was loading the gun.
29:06And that sort of action, if you like, that act of forcing in that cartridge, without doubt, would leave some
29:12trace, some residue on whoever was loading the gun.
29:17So the gun was found across Sheila's body, and it did not have a silencer attached to it.
29:24A couple of days later, the silencer for the gun was found by a family member in the gun cupboard.
29:31The chain of evidence was not followed. The family member picked it up. They called the police. It took the
29:38police a couple of days to come and collect it.
29:40There was a hair reported to be on the silencer at one point, but that never made it to the
29:44lab.
29:45So there were a lot of issues around the sort of chain of evidence with this silencer.
29:52So the proposition in this case was that Sheila Caffell had murdered her family and then turned the gun on
30:00herself.
30:01And the murder weapon was an Anschutz rifle.
30:05So that rifle was found posed on her body, but the silencer, the moderator, was found in a downstairs cupboard.
30:13And when it was examined, it had on it backspatter that had been sucked into the inside surface of the
30:25sound moderator.
30:26That illustrates that it was on the gun when it was fired.
30:33Now, if that had been in place when she purportedly shot herself, then there is great doubt as to how
30:42that would have then ended up in the cupboard downstairs.
30:45So that finding in itself tells us that the scenario that was presented to the police by Jeremy Bamber just
30:55didn't add up.
30:58When the silencer was attached to the rifle, as of course it was during the killings, it was too long.
31:05It was impossible for Sheila to have placed it on her chest and shot herself in the throat.
31:11She would never have been able to reach the trigger, which is obviously he must have realized that, Jeremy,
31:17and obviously removed the silencer and placed it in the cupboard after he had killed the family.
31:25So how did it end up in the gun cabinet?
31:30Had Sheila shot herself twice, the second of which would have been fatal,
31:37then somehow come back to life, stood up, walked across the room, neatly stacked the silencer in the gun cabinet,
31:45walked back upstairs, laid down and died?
31:49Well, that is so implausible as to be risible.
31:56The large part of forensic evaluation is considering the findings that we do have in the context of two alternative
32:06propositions.
32:07One is the allegation, which is typically provided by the police, which is in this case that Sheila was involved
32:15in the shooting of the family members.
32:18And the alternative, and the alternative is often provided by the defendant.
32:24And in this case, the account provided by the defendant just simply didn't add up with the scientific findings that
32:31were available.
32:32And on that basis, the jury can use that information to consider it in combination with other information that they
32:41might have and come to a conclusion.
32:50Of course, he'd convinced the investigating officers that Sheila was the perpetrator, that his sister, due to her schizophrenia, had
33:00carried out the killings.
33:02So what turned it then? What spoiled it? Well, of course, again, this is all down to him and his
33:07personality and his arrogance and not thinking things through.
33:10You would think, when you bear in mind what he had said previously to Julie Mugford and how she had
33:17supported him, you would think that he would make every effort to keep her on board, as it were, to
33:24keep her happy, to make sure that she loved him so that she would never, ever reveal his secrets.
33:31But what does he do?
33:32All those engaged to Julie Mugford began seeing other women and he conducted an affair with at least one other
33:41woman and didn't trouble to hide it from Mugford.
33:46Inevitably, that led to rows and those rows would lead to his downfall.
33:53There's that famous saying, hell hath no fury, like a woman's scorn.
33:58And indeed, in the case of Julie Mugford, here's a young woman who, you're going to leave me? You're going
34:04to go with other women?
34:05Then, I am going to tell the police exactly what happened. And of course, she had all those, what we
34:12would call golden nuggets of evidence.
34:14She was aware he had actually verbally told her virtually exactly what he'd done and how he'd committed the murders,
34:21how he planned the murders, why, etc, etc.
34:29Playing devil's advocate, this is a woman scorned.
34:34It's a massive issue for the police. So, on one hand, you've got a woman giving you critical information about
34:42someone plotting to murder their family and the actions that they took out at the time.
34:48And on the other hand, you've got exactly that, a woman who is potentially looking for revenge.
34:54So, how do you decide what is valid in that information and what is not?
34:59And the answer is, presumably, in the rest of the crime scene evidence.
35:04Yes, of which a massive amount has been lost.
35:08And, you know, the family quite rightly, particularly cousins of Jeremy and Sheila, who almost took on an investigative role.
35:19You know, they really felt so strongly that Jeremy was responsible for this, that they started to do their own
35:27investigations.
35:27And it was them that led them to discover that actually Jeremy could have entered the house after leaving it
35:36without detection.
35:39There was a window to the side of the house that had a footprint in the mud, and Jeremy potentially
35:46could have got in the house that way.
35:52It took Julie Mumford about a month after the murders to go into the police station and to confess that
35:59she was aware of what Jeremy was planning,
36:01and that she had been told by Jeremy some specific details that she wouldn't have known had that conversation not
36:09have taken place.
36:10But it still took the police about another month to be able to make that arrest.
36:16And that required some very specific and significant investigation in the background.
36:22The police needed to make sure that, given the fact it had been such a lengthy period between their deaths
36:28to this point,
36:29that they'd done a really thorough investigation this time.
36:33If someone has been accused of such a horrific crime, and they believe that they are innocent,
36:42that they have had nothing to do with this, to behave in the way that Jeremy did in an interview
36:46is quite unusual.
36:48We need to be quite careful that we're not just making assumptions about somebody's behaviour in quite a tense situation.
36:54But he displayed a level of arrogance which even very seasoned police officers found very, very unusual,
37:02let alone for such a horrific crime.
37:06He was charged with the murders of Neville, June, Sheila and, of course, Daniel and Nicholas.
37:12He pleaded not guilty to all charges and claimed that it was his sister, Sheila, that had committed the murders.
37:20And all of a sudden now, the grieving brother, who was very prominent in the kind of the pictures in
37:27the media,
37:27was now the main suspect and on trial for their murders.
37:45The trial of Jeremy Bamber lasted 18 days.
37:49He was described by the prosecution, if you like, in the witness boxes, coming across as quite an arrogant young
37:56man.
37:56Showed absolutely no remorse whatsoever or emotion in relation to what had occurred.
38:02The trial is something which attracted quite a significant amount of media attention.
38:08It was described as being a bit of a circus.
38:11And part of that, I think, was due to Jeremy's behaviour as well.
38:16He responds to the prosecution barrister that it's up to him to prove the fact that he has killed his
38:24family.
38:25Now, that's a very, very unusual thing to say when you're on trial for multiple murders.
38:32To have that kind of response rather than just really focused on proving your innocence,
38:37I think really speaks to his level of arrogance because he genuinely believed that he would get away with this.
38:43He had plotted the perfect murder.
38:46Jeremy Bamber was found guilty of all murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.
38:52Some eight years later, he was given a whole life order.
38:57When the results were read out, he didn't really seem to react in a way that we, again,
39:05we may expect someone to react in this particular situation.
39:08But he has, from the point of trial all the way through to now, maintained his innocence
39:14and has continuously attempted to appeal those verdicts.
39:18He has never accepted or admitted his guilt. In fact, quite the contrary.
39:24He has launched appeal after appeal. Each one has been rejected.
39:33Jeremy Bamber will never be released from prison unless his convictions are overturned.
39:37He is serving a full life sentence. So, unless he does have a successful appeal,
39:42he will never be released. So, he will never be up for parole.
39:46He will never be able to be released back into the community.
39:52So, Bamber is serving a full life tariff which really reflects the dangerousness of his personality
39:57and the probable lack of any chances of rehabilitating him.
40:01And certainly, we see this with people with psychopathic personalities that they really are quite resistant to change.
40:07And actually, part of their personality is this arrogant self-belief that they can live in this world
40:13where other people are to be manipulated. And he's shown no signs, really, of admitting his guilt
40:18or any remorse for his crimes.
40:24Looking, with the benefit of hindsight, at what you've been able to establish in the timeline
40:29and his associations chart, what can you say about his plan for a perfect murder?
40:36Everyone always says about Jeremy Bamber, yes, he was entitled. Yes, he was the playboy.
40:41He loved the lifestyle. He loved this and that. Doesn't make him a murderer.
40:46And it doesn't until you start to look at the actions that he takes before the crime,
40:52as the crime has taken place and after the crime.
40:57And that, for me, points to someone with no remorse and the ability and the motive,
41:04so the means, motive and opportunity to carry out this crime.
41:09Why would we say this was an almost perfect murder?
41:13Well, he had a number of options here.
41:16He had, importantly, Sheila with a mental health condition.
41:20She could be the scapegoat, as it were. She could be the reason for it all that he could construct,
41:26if you like. The family, you know, the arguments in the family, et cetera, et cetera.
41:31It was all there for him. And how he planned the murder, et cetera,
41:36he thought this would be the perfect scenario. I can get away with this
41:40by all these little issues I've put in place.
41:44But, of course, he made a number of fatal mistakes during the course of the killings and afterwards.
41:50And, of course, his behaviour, his personality, he couldn't help himself.
41:56So Bamba clearly thought he'd managed to pull off the perfect murder,
42:00and he'd really, to some extent, he'd got away with it for a short period of time.
42:04Unfortunately, his behaviour after the crime was, again, a display of his arrogance,
42:08and he went on a bit of a jolly and a spending spree, which raised some suspicions amongst people.
42:14And then the police further investigated the crimes and he came to light.
42:18But, certainly, he believed that he had almost managed to pull this off.
42:21And, to some extent, perhaps if he'd been a slightly more careful, he might have actually achieved this.
42:28I think this case was almost a perfect murder because the context of the situation was utilised in such a
42:36way
42:36that made the police think this was an open and shut case.
42:41So, for example, the fact that Sheila had suffered with significant mental health difficulties,
42:47had schizophrenic episodes, that was used to explain the outcome and the level of violence.
42:55So, I think that, using the context of the situation and the fact that Jeremy had plotted certain points along
43:04the way,
43:04according to the prosecution, to redeem himself from any involvement,
43:09and I think that's what makes this an almost perfect murder.
43:14So, ultimately, in the case of the White House Farm murders,
43:18what differentiated Jeremy Bamber's planned perfect murders
43:23from the almost perfect ones that got him convicted?
43:27I think he vastly underestimated his wider family.
43:33The silencer is a massive point that unravels this case here.
43:38Silencer off or on, because how could she possibly have shot herself with a silencer on,
43:45blood inside that silencer, and then taken it and put it downstairs and gone upstairs to die beside her mother?
43:52What explains his mistakes?
43:56I mean, he's planned this carefully.
43:58How can someone so calculating, so callous, have made such fundamental mistakes which led to his own downfall?
44:08Because he is so arrogant that he felt that nobody would question that a mentally ill female had shot her
44:21family.
44:21Such was the groundwork that he laid about the fact that she knew how to use guns.
44:27She was mentally unwell.
44:29So he's played on people believing that mental health leads you to become a crazed murderer.
44:36And I think most critically, he believed that he was so clever that arrogance and entitlement undid him in this
44:45case.
44:53I think somebody who can commit this level of violence to never demonstrate any remorse,
45:00to have the forward thinking of being able to blame this on his sister,
45:07who had suffered significant mental health issues, and then never take any responsibility for this.
45:14That would indicate that he remains a very dangerous man.
45:24When you look at how he went about the premeditation, if you like, his planning of it,
45:29how he covered himself with the alibi, etc., the phone call,
45:33had he not made those few fatal mistakes which the forensic and witness evidence proved,
45:40and had he not been foolish enough to make statements and not be so arrogant?
45:46And again, if you're that clever, if you're going to plot and plan the perfect murder,
45:50then you don't go telling people that you're going to do it.
45:54And of course, like he did with Julie Mugfoot, no matter who it is,
45:56you don't discuss the murder with people.
45:58And that was his mistake. But that, of course, was his arrogance.
46:03But had he not had that personality, that arrogance within his personality,
46:08in other words, had he had kept quiet and thought perhaps just a little bit more
46:12about how he was going to plan it and what he was going to do,
46:16then you could say that it could have been, it could have been the almost perfect murder.
46:22The police is now.
46:43The police is now the only thing that he was saying is,
47:03Transcription by CastingWords
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