For the purposes of a prosecution, the decision concerning what account of events to accept is one to be decided, once and for all, by a magistrate or jury.
If the case later winds up in a higher court, it will generally be so that a point of law can be decided. Only in certain circumstances can a dispute over the facts form the basis for an appeal.
But the imagination of anyone with an interest in criminal law is easily captured by infamous past cases, particular those where someone has been convicted of serious offences against the person, but doubts have emerged as to their guilt.Jeremy Bamber is one of 39 prisoners in British jails serving sentences that will keep them behind bars for the whole of their natural lives. He is the only one who protests his innocence.
Might Bamber really have served half his life in jail for a crime he did not commit?
_______________
Tuesday 6 August 1985, and the south Essex coast was cool for the time of year. Temperatures overnight dipped to 11 degrees and there were brief rain showers.
At approximately 03:30 the next morning, an officer at Chelmsford police station answered the phone to a young man identifying himself as Jeremy Bamber of Head Street, Goldhanger. The caller had dialled the station directly, instead of being patched through after ringing 999.
Bamber told PC Michael West that a few minutes earlier he’d been woken by the sound of his phone ringing. It was his father, calling from the family farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy. “Please come over, Jeremy” Nevill Bamber had urged his adopted son, “your sister’s gone crazy and she’s got the gun”.
Sheila was Jeremy’s 28-year-old sister and the divorced mother of twin boys, custody of whom was principally in the hands of their father. She had been adopted by the Bambers a few a years before Jeremy (himself adopted) was born, and the two were not related by blood. A former model, she had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and spent time at St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton.
Bamber wanted police to collect him on their way to White House Farm, but West urged him to make his own way there and rendezvous with officers who would be in attendance outside.
The constable then contacted Witham station, which was seven miles closer to Tolleshunt. At 03.35, patrol car CA7 was despatched from Witham. Although he lived just a few minutes drive from his parents’ property, Bamber was overtaken by the white Ford Sierra as it sped towards the village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy.
At 03.48 the three occupants – Sergeant Bews and PCs Myall and Saxby – reached Pages Lane, the private road leading to White House Farm. A few minutes later, Bamber arrived at the scene. The three officers were parked a short distance into the lane; Bamber pulled up behind them and left his silver Astra to speak with them. After identifying himself, he was asked to clarify what his father had managed to tell him before being abruptly cut off. The young man reiterated that Nevill, sounding very distressed, had asked him to come over at once because his sister Sheila had gone crazy and got hold of a gun. Sheila (whose married name of Caffell he couldn’t recall), was “a nutter” and recent psychiatric in-patient. As was to be expected, there were a number of guns on the farm, and Sheila was capable of handling them. Bamber told the officers that his mother June also lived at the house, and Sheila’s children, six year old Daniel and Nicholas, were staying on the farm.
Two adults and two children were therefore at the mercy of a mental patient wielding a firearm which she may or may not have discharged. The officers’ first step would be to approach with caution and make a visual assessment. Ideally, Nevill would now have control of the situation and would emerge from the farm house to greet them. The police could then decide whether Sheila needed medical assistance or should be taken into custody.
With Saxby remaining in the vehicle to monitor the radio, Bamber and the remaining officers walked down the lane together in the direction of the property. They stealthily approached the front door, at one point crouching behind a hedge in an effort to remain inconspicuous. It was nearing 04:00, but dawn would not break for another 90 minutes. At the right side of the house on the first floor was Jeremy’s parents’ bedroom. Lights were blazing here and in several other rooms.
Suddenly, there seemed to be movement upstairs. The trio retreated and a decision was made to summon the Tactical Firearms Group. As the group waited next to the patrol car, armed support was an hour away and several decisions had yet to be weighed up.
Accounts of what happened in the hours that followed have been revisited many times in the intervening quarter century. At his trial Bamber didn’t challenge the police timeline or account of events, but when he later gained access to additional material recounting the officers’ experiences that morning, he identified several statements and pieces of information that he claims help exonerate him from responsibility for the murders.
It is common ground that the firearms team entered the farm house shortly after half past seven and reported that everybody was dead.
More than three hours prior to this, Jeremy Bamber and the officers were at an impasse, and faced seeing out what was left of the night in a frustrating wait.
An additional patrol car arrived from Chelmsford, and British Telecom were asked to perform a check against phone number 0621 860209 (there were multiple handsets at the farm but only one line). The operator reported that the phone was off the hook. Sending a signal to clear the engaged tone, she was able to listen in to sounds inside the property, and told the police that the only thing audible was the sound of a barking dog (the Bambers’ Shih Tzu Crispy was later found cowering under their bed). The line could be monitored continuously from this point.
A radio operator was recording details of transmissions made by the officers using their CBs, and this later served to provide a running accounts of events.
The Tactical Firearms Group arrived close to 05:00, and, giving the farm house itself a wide berth, everyone repositioned themselves inside a barn at the rear, which allowed them to scan the back of the property and prepare their next move. With the sun due to rise in barely half an hour, the logical thing for the armed response team to do was to bide their time.
Shortly before 05.25, a challenge was issued using a loudhailer to anyone inside the property.
The wireless operator pre-empted events and recorded “Firearms team are in conversation with a person inside the farm”. However, the call to persons inside met only with silence. The wireless operator updated the log at 05.29 – “From CA7 – Challenge to persons inside house met with no response”
Additional firearms officers arrived at 06.45 and were greeted by Sergeant Bews. Fresh on the scene, PC Woodcock from the Firearms Training Department was told by his colleagues that a siege was underway and a young woman with mental health issues was presumed either to have killed everyone or to be holding them hostage. Whatever had taken place, there had been no response from anyone in the farm at any time, and because of this the group were preparing to force entry into the property.
Inspector Montgomery and Police Sergeant Adams put together the raid team, consisting of PCs Collins, Delgado, Woodcock, Hall, Alexander-Smart and acting Sergeant Manners. The team, working from a plan of the building sketched by Jeremy, divided the property into “White”, “Green” and “Black” zones. Woodcock was nominated to break down the rear door using a sledgehammer. Collins and Delgado lined up on one side of the door. To their right was the kitchen window. Collins peered inside and reported seeing the body of a woman.
The door gave way when Woodcock pounded it several times with the sledgehammer. As the armed officer led the others into the property, he turned into the kitchen and saw the same person witnessed by Collins, obviously dead. In fact it was not a woman but 61-year old Nevill Bamber. A chair was on its side to the left of an Aga oven, and Nevill’s corpse was sat awkwardly on one edge of the backrest. He was slumped forward with arms at his side and his head fully inside a silver-topped bucket – in fact a coal scuttle. Blood had run thickly down the sides of this hod. The body was facing the window Collins had looked through, and all that was visible of Nevill’s head was a dishevelled shock of grey hair. This was why Collins had mistaken farmer Bamber for an old woman.
With Collins having stated over his police radio that he’d seen a woman in the kitchen, and Woodcock now reporting the body of a man, the wireless operator made the following entry at 07.37:
“one dead male and one dead female in kitchen”.
The error was insignificant in itself, but when Bamber obtained a copy of the log in 2005, he quickly sought out anything that could be represented as an inconsistency and manipulated to support his claim that he’d been framed for the crime....read more
http://crimeheartsandcoronets.blogspot.com/2010/11/jeremy-bamber-guilty-as-charged.html
If the case later winds up in a higher court, it will generally be so that a point of law can be decided. Only in certain circumstances can a dispute over the facts form the basis for an appeal.
But the imagination of anyone with an interest in criminal law is easily captured by infamous past cases, particular those where someone has been convicted of serious offences against the person, but doubts have emerged as to their guilt.Jeremy Bamber is one of 39 prisoners in British jails serving sentences that will keep them behind bars for the whole of their natural lives. He is the only one who protests his innocence.
Might Bamber really have served half his life in jail for a crime he did not commit?
_______________
Tuesday 6 August 1985, and the south Essex coast was cool for the time of year. Temperatures overnight dipped to 11 degrees and there were brief rain showers.
At approximately 03:30 the next morning, an officer at Chelmsford police station answered the phone to a young man identifying himself as Jeremy Bamber of Head Street, Goldhanger. The caller had dialled the station directly, instead of being patched through after ringing 999.
Bamber told PC Michael West that a few minutes earlier he’d been woken by the sound of his phone ringing. It was his father, calling from the family farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy. “Please come over, Jeremy” Nevill Bamber had urged his adopted son, “your sister’s gone crazy and she’s got the gun”.
Sheila was Jeremy’s 28-year-old sister and the divorced mother of twin boys, custody of whom was principally in the hands of their father. She had been adopted by the Bambers a few a years before Jeremy (himself adopted) was born, and the two were not related by blood. A former model, she had been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and spent time at St Andrew’s Hospital, Northampton.
Bamber wanted police to collect him on their way to White House Farm, but West urged him to make his own way there and rendezvous with officers who would be in attendance outside.
The constable then contacted Witham station, which was seven miles closer to Tolleshunt. At 03.35, patrol car CA7 was despatched from Witham. Although he lived just a few minutes drive from his parents’ property, Bamber was overtaken by the white Ford Sierra as it sped towards the village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy.
At 03.48 the three occupants – Sergeant Bews and PCs Myall and Saxby – reached Pages Lane, the private road leading to White House Farm. A few minutes later, Bamber arrived at the scene. The three officers were parked a short distance into the lane; Bamber pulled up behind them and left his silver Astra to speak with them. After identifying himself, he was asked to clarify what his father had managed to tell him before being abruptly cut off. The young man reiterated that Nevill, sounding very distressed, had asked him to come over at once because his sister Sheila had gone crazy and got hold of a gun. Sheila (whose married name of Caffell he couldn’t recall), was “a nutter” and recent psychiatric in-patient. As was to be expected, there were a number of guns on the farm, and Sheila was capable of handling them. Bamber told the officers that his mother June also lived at the house, and Sheila’s children, six year old Daniel and Nicholas, were staying on the farm.
Two adults and two children were therefore at the mercy of a mental patient wielding a firearm which she may or may not have discharged. The officers’ first step would be to approach with caution and make a visual assessment. Ideally, Nevill would now have control of the situation and would emerge from the farm house to greet them. The police could then decide whether Sheila needed medical assistance or should be taken into custody.
With Saxby remaining in the vehicle to monitor the radio, Bamber and the remaining officers walked down the lane together in the direction of the property. They stealthily approached the front door, at one point crouching behind a hedge in an effort to remain inconspicuous. It was nearing 04:00, but dawn would not break for another 90 minutes. At the right side of the house on the first floor was Jeremy’s parents’ bedroom. Lights were blazing here and in several other rooms.
Suddenly, there seemed to be movement upstairs. The trio retreated and a decision was made to summon the Tactical Firearms Group. As the group waited next to the patrol car, armed support was an hour away and several decisions had yet to be weighed up.
Accounts of what happened in the hours that followed have been revisited many times in the intervening quarter century. At his trial Bamber didn’t challenge the police timeline or account of events, but when he later gained access to additional material recounting the officers’ experiences that morning, he identified several statements and pieces of information that he claims help exonerate him from responsibility for the murders.
It is common ground that the firearms team entered the farm house shortly after half past seven and reported that everybody was dead.
More than three hours prior to this, Jeremy Bamber and the officers were at an impasse, and faced seeing out what was left of the night in a frustrating wait.
An additional patrol car arrived from Chelmsford, and British Telecom were asked to perform a check against phone number 0621 860209 (there were multiple handsets at the farm but only one line). The operator reported that the phone was off the hook. Sending a signal to clear the engaged tone, she was able to listen in to sounds inside the property, and told the police that the only thing audible was the sound of a barking dog (the Bambers’ Shih Tzu Crispy was later found cowering under their bed). The line could be monitored continuously from this point.
A radio operator was recording details of transmissions made by the officers using their CBs, and this later served to provide a running accounts of events.
The Tactical Firearms Group arrived close to 05:00, and, giving the farm house itself a wide berth, everyone repositioned themselves inside a barn at the rear, which allowed them to scan the back of the property and prepare their next move. With the sun due to rise in barely half an hour, the logical thing for the armed response team to do was to bide their time.
Shortly before 05.25, a challenge was issued using a loudhailer to anyone inside the property.
The wireless operator pre-empted events and recorded “Firearms team are in conversation with a person inside the farm”. However, the call to persons inside met only with silence. The wireless operator updated the log at 05.29 – “From CA7 – Challenge to persons inside house met with no response”
Additional firearms officers arrived at 06.45 and were greeted by Sergeant Bews. Fresh on the scene, PC Woodcock from the Firearms Training Department was told by his colleagues that a siege was underway and a young woman with mental health issues was presumed either to have killed everyone or to be holding them hostage. Whatever had taken place, there had been no response from anyone in the farm at any time, and because of this the group were preparing to force entry into the property.
Inspector Montgomery and Police Sergeant Adams put together the raid team, consisting of PCs Collins, Delgado, Woodcock, Hall, Alexander-Smart and acting Sergeant Manners. The team, working from a plan of the building sketched by Jeremy, divided the property into “White”, “Green” and “Black” zones. Woodcock was nominated to break down the rear door using a sledgehammer. Collins and Delgado lined up on one side of the door. To their right was the kitchen window. Collins peered inside and reported seeing the body of a woman.
The door gave way when Woodcock pounded it several times with the sledgehammer. As the armed officer led the others into the property, he turned into the kitchen and saw the same person witnessed by Collins, obviously dead. In fact it was not a woman but 61-year old Nevill Bamber. A chair was on its side to the left of an Aga oven, and Nevill’s corpse was sat awkwardly on one edge of the backrest. He was slumped forward with arms at his side and his head fully inside a silver-topped bucket – in fact a coal scuttle. Blood had run thickly down the sides of this hod. The body was facing the window Collins had looked through, and all that was visible of Nevill’s head was a dishevelled shock of grey hair. This was why Collins had mistaken farmer Bamber for an old woman.
With Collins having stated over his police radio that he’d seen a woman in the kitchen, and Woodcock now reporting the body of a man, the wireless operator made the following entry at 07.37:
“one dead male and one dead female in kitchen”.
The error was insignificant in itself, but when Bamber obtained a copy of the log in 2005, he quickly sought out anything that could be represented as an inconsistency and manipulated to support his claim that he’d been framed for the crime....read more
http://crimeheartsandcoronets.blogspot.com/2010/11/jeremy-bamber-guilty-as-charged.html
