The White House Farm massacre phone calls: could a single disputed digit set Jeremy Bamber free?

On August 7, 1985, five members of the Bamber family were found dead at White House Farm in Essex: Sheila Caffell, her six-year-old twin sons, and her adoptive parents, June and Nevill Bamber. All had been shot with a rifle. Caffell, who had schizoaffective disorder, was found with the rifle on her chest. Her brother Jeremy Bamber, who was also adopted, had called police to report a disturbance, claiming his father had called him first.

Bamber was later convicted of the murders after his former girlfriend Julie Mugford testified against him. Mugford had agreed to sell her story to the News of the World for £25,000 if Bamber was convicted, and Essex police had dropped charges against her in exchange for her testimony.

Bamber has maintained his innocence throughout his 41-year imprisonment. The Criminal Cases Review Commission has been reviewing his case but has only examined four of ten points of evidence so far, with none meeting the threshold for referral to the court of appeal.

The disputed call

The case hinges on the timing of a phone call Bamber made to police. At his trial, there was confusion about whether it was 3.26am or 3.36am. The judge instructed the jury to accept 3.26am, but police logs not disclosed at trial suggest the call was made at 3.36am.

PC Michael James West, who took Bamber's call, initially recorded the time as 3.26am in his first statement but changed it to 3.36am a month later. Under cross-examination, West admitted he may have misread the clock, though he insisted the control room clock was generally accurate.

Timeline significance

The difference between 3.26am and 3.36am is crucial because Bamber claimed his father called him at about 3.15am. If Bamber called police at 3.36am, it suggests his father did make a call first, supporting Bamber's alibi.

Bamber's defense attorney at the time, Geoffrey Rivlin, insisted the call was made at 3.26am because he thought a shorter delay would seem more reasonable to the jury. However, Bamber has said he didn't immediately realize the emergency's severity, noting there had been previous incidents with his sister.

New evidence

The significance of the timing discrepancy only became clear 25 years later when 347,000 documents related to the case were released. Evidence suggests the two different times may refer to two different calls - one made by Nevill and another by Jeremy Bamber.

If Nevill did call police to report his daughter had gone "berserk" with a gun before Bamber made his own call, it would undermine the prosecution's theory that Bamber fabricated the call to create a false alibi. The phone was found off the hook at the crime scene, supporting the possibility that a call was made.

Bamber's case continues to be reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which has taken four years to examine less than half the evidence he has submitted. The disputed digit in police logs represents one of the most potentially significant pieces of evidence in this long-running legal saga.