The New Yorker is establishing a reputation for raising doubts about notorious UK murder convictions. Three months after questioning the case against former nurse Lucy Letby in the deaths of newborns, a new story by Heidi Blake examines the conviction of Jeremy Bamber in the "most infamous family massacre" in the UK. Bamber was found guilty of murdering his parents, his sister, and his sister's two young children in the family farmhouse in the rural community of Tolleshunt D'Arcy in 1985. He's been imprisoned since but always has maintained his innocence. Prosecutors say Bamber staged the massacre to make it look like his sister, who had a history of psychotic episodes and once told social services she feared harming her sons, killed the others and then herself.
The "linchpin" of the case against Bamber revolved around a silencer found in the house days after the murder (not by police but by cousins who would eventually inherit the estate), and Blake digs into its "chaotic handling" and the seemingly iffy forensic evidence gleaned from it. The story also digs into exhaustive details about allegations of crime-scene evidence being moved and of a crucial discrepancy about an emergency call allegedly placed from within the house at a time when prosecutors says Bamber already had murdered his victims—the suggestion being that his sister, Sheila, was still alive and killed herself as police (and Bamber) arrived.
Against the backdrop of all this is the assertion that the British criminal justice system, despite the creation a review board for such cases, is extremely reluctant to overturn cases. That board has Bamber's case on its docket, but it could be several years before Bamber, now 63, hears its result. "Just because you kept me in jail for 40 years, it doesn't make me guilty," he tells Blake. (Read the full story.)
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