Composite: Guardian Design; Sinenkiy/Getty View image in fullscreen Composite: Guardian Design; Sinenkiy/Getty The Bamber files Jeremy Bamber The White House Farm massacre phone calls: could a single disputed digit set Jeremy Bamber free? He has been in prison for 41 years for killing five members of his family. But if a phone call was made to the police by Bamber’s father on the night of the murders – as his team believes – one of the UK’s most notorious criminals could be exonerated
On 7 August 1985 , five people were found dead at White House Farm in Essex, England: 28 -year-old Sheila Caffell ( known to her family as Bambi ); her six -year-old twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas ; and her 61 -year-old adoptive parents, June and Nevill Bamber . All five had been shot with a rifle. Caffell’s 24 -year-old brother, Jeremy Bamber , who was also adopted, had called to alert Essex police to a disturbance inside the farmhouse – he said his father had called to tell him – and had been outside with the police for four hours before the bodies were discovered. Caffell, who had recently been hospitalised with schizoaffective disorder and is said to have feared her children were going to be taken into foster care, was found with the rifle lying on her chest, pointing towards her neck. There were two gunshot wounds to her neck and chin and a bloodied Bible by her side.
The case was initially thought to be open and shut, a tragic murder-suicide committed by Caffell. But a month later , Bamber was arrested after relatives went to the police to voice their suspicions about him ; his former girlfriend Julie Mugford then told police he had made a confession to her. The relatives went on to inherit from Nevill and June Bamber’s considerable estate after Bamber’s convictions. It was later discovered that Mugford had agreed to sell the story of their relationship to the News of the World for £25,000 if Bamber was convicted. Essex police and crown prosecutors had also agreed to drop charges against her for burglary, chequebook fraud and selling cannabis , because “ prosecuting her could jeopardise her availability or credibility as a key witness ” against Bamber.
View image in fullscreen Bamber arrives at Chelmsford crown court for his murder trial, October 1986. Photograph: Peter Case/Mirrorpix/Getty Images Bamber was found guilty of the murders and has now been in prison for 41 years , but questions have always been asked about the safety of his conviction. These have grown recently. The proper body to examine these is the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), but it has already taken the CCRC four years to consider less than half the evidence that Bamber has submitted to them . In July 2025 , it concluded that the first four of 10 points did not meet the high evidentiary threshold needed to refer the case back to the court of appeal.
In the third piece in our series considering discrete pieces of evidence , we analyse discrepancies in timelines recorded by Essex police that could prove Bamber’s innocence.
“Imagine how stupid I’d have to be to put myself in the frame for murdering my family by telling the police I’d received a phone call when I hadn’t,” Jeremy Bamber says. “Like most people, I assumed the police would have been able to trace the call. If it turned out Dad hadn’t called me, I’d have basically been handing myself in.”
View image in fullscreen Bamber with his girlfriend Julie Mugford at the funeral of his sister, his adoptive parents an…