Jeremy Bamber
The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) was asked via an open letter to Chairman Helen Pitcher on 6th August this year (see here and here) to conduct an urgent review of relevant documentation so as to confirm that a 999 call, hitherto unknown, was made on the morning of the discovery of five bodies at White House Farm. This telephone call, made by the supposedly murdered Sheila Caffell, would exonerate Jeremy Bamber and lead to the conclusion that the prosecution case against him was a work of fiction.
A normal person may think that after Bamber has been wrongly imprisoned for nearly forty years, the CCRC might act with a sense of urgency to interview the man who could verify that Jeremy Bamber is innocent. But we are dealing with the CCRC, who despite an excoriating dressing down from barrister Chris Henley KC (see here) continues to function as if the last thing they ever consider is the urgency of freeing innocent people from jail.
The CCRC’s response to my open letter was dismissive:
“The approach taken to reviewing the thousands of pages submitted with this most recent application was agreed with Mr Bamber’s representatives and we have been prioritising the most complex issues first - these naturally take the longest time to review. Mr Bamber’s representatives have already provided us with a copy of the magazine article to which you have referred in your letter and it will be considered as part of the review”.
What?
Okay, the CCRC have got a lot of materials to review in the latest submission made by Jeremy Bamber’s supporters and the CCRC is working their way through it. But hold on a minute – a former police officer, Nicholas Milbank has said that he received a 999 call from someone who was supposed to be dead, killed by Jeremy Bamber. If Sheila Caffell made a telephone call at 06:09 and spoke to PC Milbank the entire case against Jeremy Bamber collapses. Even worse from the prosecution perspective, it means that any blood said to have been found in a silencer had to have been planted there and the chief suspect is Uncle Robert Boutflour, as the blood matched his blood group exactly. Additionally, blood discovered inside the silencer that matches either Pamela or David Boutflour suggests a possible family conspiracy. The CCRC knows this, or rather should know this if it has studied the case.
Former PC Milbank has also said that he never made a witness statement into the 999 call incident, even though Essex Police have an unsigned witness statement on file in his name.
If it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck - can the CCRC not see that it might be a duck?!
So why waste time ploughing through the entire submission when an appointment with Mr. Milbank (who works at Essex Police HQ) could clear up Jeremy Bamber's innocence without any further delay?
Is this yet another instance of the CCRC being determined to drag out the incarceration of an innocent prisoner, like they did with Andy Malkinson?
Has Jeremy Bamber not suffered enough? Does anyone at the CCRC have a sense of shame at this blatant attempt to continue punishing Jeremy Bamber who should now be accepted as totally innocent?
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.
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