Jeremy Bamber case: Does the CCRC have a duty of care towards witnesses?

About eighteen months ago journalist Heidi Blake of The New Yorker magazine published an article about the White House Farm murders and revealed that she had spoken to former Essex Police Constable Nicholas Milbank. He revealed that he received a 999 call from White House Farm at 06:09 am on 7^th August 1985. This telephone call had to have been made by one of the ‘dead’ victims as Jeremy Bamber was standing outside surrounded by policemen. If true, then Jeremy Bamber has a solid alibi.

Milbank revealed that he did not make a witness statement attributed to him dated in 2002 and, therefore, it had to have been forged (see here). Additionally, it is now revealed in a podcast by The New Yorker that Milbank described what happened when he received the 999 call:

"Milbank stated that he received a 999 call through the 999 call system at 06.09. He said it was standard procedure to monitor the line if nobody spoke. He referred to this as if it was an 'abandoned call.' He said that a police officer picked up the phone and told him they were in the house, and that’s when he cut off the call."

Police entered the house around 07:30 am. This means that Milbank monitored the 999 call for around an hour and a half – something never known previously. During that time he heard noises indicating that someone was moving around.

Following The New Yorker article, CCRC Watch and others asked the CCRC via the then Chairman Helen Pitcher to ensure that Milbank was interviewed without delay as his testimony could free Jeremy Bamber.[1] What we did not know was that Milbank had cancer and was dying. We now know that the CCRC resisted all those requesting that they interview Milbank. However, presumably in an effort to prevent The New Yorker article from exposing an Alibi for Bamber, Essex police seemingly fabricated a witness statement[2] and shoved it in front of Nick Milbank for his signature.

The Guardian put to Essex police that Bamber believes the original 2002 Milbank statement was fabricated and that pressure was put on Milbank last year to make a statement contradicting what he told The New Yorker. Writing from Wakefield Prison, Jeremy Bamber says:

“We asked that the CCRC appoint an independent investigator to go and speak to Mr Milbank about what he’d told the New Yorker magazine. The CCRC refused our request, thereby losing the opportunity to hear Mr Milbank’s evidence."

Philip Walker of the Jeremy Bamber Innocence Campaign says that the CCRC has failed in its duty to protect a whistleblower.

“It had an obligation to protect Nick Milbank after he disclosed a potential cover-up by his employer, Essex police.”

Walker is adamant that Essex police should not have been allowed to interview Milbank after he told the New Yorker that he had taken a 6.09am 999 call from Whitehouse Farm and that he had never made a statement about it to Operation Stokenchurch in 2002. Not only was Essex police his employer – it had also carried out the original controversial investigation into the murders. The CCRC put him at risk and compromised his evidence by allowing the force to deal with him directly,” says Walker:

“The result is the CCRC’s dereliction of duty of care to Mr Milbank, who by all accounts was seriously ill at the time and was possibly pressured to produce a statement that was not factual. It’s obvious who should have interviewed Mr Milbank. The CCRC!”

Indeed, what was the CCRC thinking of when it refused to interview Nicholas Milbank? Is there nobody at the CCRC who understands the importance of an alibi witness? The CCRC has a very curious attitude towards evidence indicative of innocence, as Andrew Malkinson experienced during his lengthy fight to clear his name.[3]

The CCRC has policies that cover many eventualities – mostly to the advantage of the CCRC in allowing them to dismiss evidence. It is obvious that the CCRC will receive many representations from people protesting their innocence and it is time-consuming for CCRC staff to treat each submission with equal importance. Therefore, judgements have to be made about the potential value of evidence. In the case of Nicholas Milbank, anyone with a modicum of knowledge about the White House Farm case would have known that what The New Yorker article revealed was a potential game-changer. Irrespective of whether Essex Police denied forging the 2002 witness statement, or the hasty production of a 2024 witness statement from Nicholas Milbank denying any knowledge of a discussion with Heidi Blake (now known to be untrue), the CCRC had a duty to:

• (a) investigate independently of the police in respect of the 2002 witness statement and the 2024 witness statement; and,

• (b) protect Nicholas Milbank from bullying by the police.

They failed to do either, but it is not too late for the CCRC to instigate a thorough investigation – have they the courage to do so?

If Nicholas Milbank received a 999 call from White House Farm (from Sheila Caffell), it means that pretty much all of the evidence used to convict Jeremy Bamber MUST have been falsely constructed. The ‘blood in the silencer’, the forensic evidence, the police testimonies, the evidence about telephone calls, etc. It is all false. Yet, the CCRC has been failing to investigate submissions and writing Statements of Reasons rejecting Jeremy Bamber’s case for over 30 years – it is the same failure as experienced by Andrew Malkinson and others multiplied by a factor of X. It represents an astounding dereliction of duty by numerous employees of the CCRC, many of whom have expressed in writing sarcastic dismissals of points made on behalf of Bamber. Is this why the CCRC dare not find that Nicholas Milbank provided Jeremy Bamber with an alibi?

Was the refusal/failure of the CCRC to speak to Milbank deliberate once the CCRC knew that Nicholas Milbank was dying? It certainly looks that way; how convenient for Essex Police and the CCRC that Nicholas Milbank is not able to give testimony that neither of his witness statements are telling the truth and that Jeremy Bamber has been wrongly imprisoned for nearly 40 years.

By Bill Robertson

Bill Robertson has researched alleged miscarriages of justice for around 20 years and advised on several cases, including the most recent application to the CCRC by Jeremy Bamber.

Please let us know if you think that there is a mistake in this article, explaining what you think is wrong and why. We will correct any errors as soon as possible.

References

[1] Our open letter stated, “In an article produced by the New Yorker magazine on 29 July 2024 information is revealed that confirms what many of us have said for years; Jeremy Bamber is innocent. No ifs, buts or maybe’s, he is beyond doubt innocent. We know this because an Essex Police officer, PC Nicholas Milbank received a 999 call from inside White House Farm at 06:09. The only person who could have made that call was Sheila Caffell, sister of Jeremy Bamber. Jeremy Bamber was outside in company with police officers; therefore he could not have killed Sheila Caffell and by implication she must have killed her family (as two police investigations determined). During the 2002 Metropolitan Police investigation known as ‘Stokenchurch’, police officers discovered Action Record Print 343. This shows that the 999 call was received by Essex Police. In the New Yorker article Milbank has confirmed that the call was received and he could hear noises indicating that someone was moving around. Milbank also stated that he had never made a witness statement about the call, even though a statement dated 18^th July 2002 exists and consists of a single paragraph. “As far as I can recall I heard nothing for a while until I heard movement and voices which indicated police officers had entered.” Milbank denies making this witness statement, which implies that it has been forged by the police. I am sure that you will wish to avoid another ‘Malkinson’ situation. Therefore I urge you to ensure that your staff urgently explore the Metropolitan Police Stokenchurch investigation files for confirmation that the 999 call took place. Additionally, please ensure that the Essex Police investigation into the White House Farm murders conducted by Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Jones (SC/688/85) is accessed to examine for all references to the 999 call. With confirmation that Jeremy Bamber is innocent coming from former PC Nicholas Milbank it is imperative that the CCRC secures the release of Bamber from prison swiftly”. 

[2] Nicholas Milbank's supposed confirmation statement made just before he died in which he repudiates Heidi Blake, in two places has his surname misspelled as 'Millbank' with someone (presumably Nicholas Milbank) striking out one of the surplus 'l' 's. Milbank must have spent his entire life telling people how to spell his surname; therefore it is hard to believe that in his handwritten statement he misspelled his own name twice. This indicates that someone wrote/forged the statement. 

[3] James Burley, Chief Investigator at the charity APPEAL, who represented Andrew Malkinson commented: ”Thanks to a nationwide retesting initiative, DNA evidence pointing to Andy’s innocence was available. Specifically, unaccounted-for male DNA had been detected on the victim’s clothing in a location that the Crown Prosecution Service itself described as ‘crime specific’ and Andy had been ruled out as the source.However, as Chris Henley KC found 15 years later in his review of the CCRC’s mishandling of Andy’s case the CCRC displayed ‘a complete failure to get to grips with the potential significance’ of this new evidence. Internal records showed the CCRC was ‘bemused’ by Andy’s protestations of innocence and had concluded that the DNA breakthrough mattered little ‘in view of all the other strong ID evidence … which has been approved by the [Court of Appeal]’. It rejected Andy’s application in 2012, having neither commissioned DNA testing of its own nor obtained the police’s file on the case. The CCRC then turned down another application from Andy in 2020. It was left to APPEAL to instigate further DNA testing. The results showed that there was DNA in additional samples taken from the victim and her clothing, including in a nail sample from the hand with which she insisted she had scratched her attacker’s face. This DNA could not have come from Andy, but it was consistent with the unknown male profile detected on the vest top. It was also left to APPEAL to examine the police’s case file. We discovered that crucial evidence had been withheld from Andy’s defence and the jury at trial. In particular, the police had failed to hand over photographs disproving medical evidence that had been used to undermine Andy’s strongest defence point, namely the lack of a scratch on his face. Additionally, we discovered that the two supporting eyewitnesses both had undisclosed criminal records, including for dishonesty offences. After further digging, we found that one was a long-term heroin user who had been arrested both on the date he came forward to police as a witness and the date he attended a police identification procedure and picked out Andy. When we learned that the CCRC had decided finally to refer Andy’s case for appeal, I felt great relief. But I was right to have been worried: Chris Henley KC later found that the CCRC was seriously considering rejecting Andy’s case for a third time. Internal records showed that unless the unaccounted-for male DNA could be matched to a suspect on the national database (which, fortunately, it was), the CCRC was minded to reject Andy’s application once again. Additionally, the CCRC had refused to make the fact that crucial evidence had been withheld at trial a freestanding ground of referral, even though Andy ultimately succeeded in persuading the Court of Appeal that this provided a separate basis for overturning his conviction. In other words, the CCRC had taken a more conservative stance than the court.