Matthew Steeples exclusively speaks to the Jeremy Bamber Innocence Campaign as they call for the whole-life tariff prisoner’s case to finally be reviewed by the Court of Appeal in the wake of the hapless and hopeless Criminal Cases Review Commission being shockingly shaken by scandal-upon-scandal after the departure of Helen Pitcher
Last week, in two separate articles, The Guardian’s senior crime and legal affairs reporter Emily Dugan shockingly shared: “For the wrongfully convicted, watching the years disappear from a prison cell, the miscarriage of justice watchdog represents their final hope. But some staff at the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) say its leaders appear divorced from that reality, using public money for executive training retreats in France and networking over fine wine and steak.”
In the wake of this statutory body responsible for investigating miscarriages of justice in England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s chairwoman, Helen Pitcher KC OBE, resigning after “an independent panel decided she was no longer fit to stay in the post,” have come yet further revelations about trouble-and-strife at the CCRC. Pitcher had been forced to vamoose after the scandal of “the case of Andrew Malkinson, who spent who spent 17 years in jail for a 2003 rape he did not commit after the CCRC missed multiple opportunities to help.”
Aside from Pitcher being slammed for conducting “Teams meetings from the balcony of her villa in the sunshine Montenegro” and boasting “about her jetset life,” the still remaining in post chief executive, Karen Kneller, has since been nicknamed ‘Karen Invisible’ by staff. Of her, Emily Dugan observed: “She is described by some of those working for her as ‘absent,’ with her ‘finger off the pulse.’”
“One staff member said that under Pitcher and Kneller, an ‘us-and-them culture’ had been allowed to grow within the organisation, with commissioners – the arbiters of cases – staying at top hotels when staff were summoned to Birmingham for meetings, while others stayed at budget accommodation.”
“Fine wines, lobster dishes and post-dinner brandies featured while Pitcher held court at top restaurants with commissioners at their twice-yearly meetings. One source recalled: ‘It was The Ivy; it was never McDonald’s. It was always the posh restaurant.’”
Separately, in an article for the Romford Recorder last week also, the paper’s investigations reporter Charles Thomson reported on “the family of an East End man [named Jason Moore] challenging a murder conviction” calling “for urgent extra funding at Britain’s miscarriage of justice watchdog.”
Thomson observed: “A Newsquest legal action revealed investigators at the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) are juggling dozens of cases each. The average caseworker at the CCRC is trying to manage 23 simultaneous cases, rising to 25 if trainees, new starters and leavers are excluded… The highest number of cases allocated to a single worker in January this year was 45. With annual leave, that worker would have just one week per year to spend on each potential miscarriage of justice assigned to them – not accounting for any ‘additional responsibilities.’”
Now, aside from Pitcher having been expelled and Kneller clearly on the ropes, it seems that this – the only body that can reinvestigate miscarriages of justice to send them to the Court of Appeal – is going to be rocked by further revelations.
On Sunday 9th February, Scott Jones and Glen Owen for The Mail on Sunday shared that “Jeremy Bamber’s 40-year bid to prove he is innocent of the White House Farm murders will come to a head next month when the under-fire Criminal Cases Review Commission decides whether to refer the case to the Court of Appeal.”
In a letter to the lawyer for Bamber – who is the only whole-life prisoner in a British jail to continue to claim to be innocent, but whom was convicted of the 1985 murders of his adoptive parents, his adoptive sister and her twin sons in 1986 – that was “seen by The Mail on Sunday,” a CCRC case review manager stated:
“I am still aiming to bring Mr Bamber’s case before a decision-making committee around March to consider the core issues. I am continuing to consider Mr Bamber’s submissions, in particular those relating to the number of sound moderators (gun silencers) recovered from White House Farm and the forensic findings from it/them.”
Responding, a spokesperson for the Jeremy Bamber Innocence Campaign (JBIC) today told The Steeple Times that they are finally anticipating action to resolve the clear previous lack of it in the CCRC’s handling of evidence submitted. They exclusively commented:
“Nearly four years ago the CCRC were presented with a cast-iron alibi for Jeremy Bamber in the shape of a 999 call being made from within White House Farm at 6.09 am on the morning of the shootings. This showed that Sheila Caffell was still alive inside the house when Jeremy was standing outside surrounded by police officers.”
“In July 2024, this alibi was corroborated by the police officer who took the call, PC Nicholas Milbank, in an interview with The New Yorker magazine. He confirmed that he did take a 999 call from White House Farm at that time.”
“He also said that he had no knowledge of the typed, unsigned, statement, supposedly written by him, that Essex Police used before Jeremy’s 2002 Appeal to explain away the police records of the 999 call as a ‘misunderstanding.’ Mr Milbank said that he had never written such a statement.”
“In light of these facts, it is utterly extraordinary that the CCRC have, as far as we are aware, made no attempt to contact Mr Milbank directly to confirm what he said to The New Yorker.”
“During the years since Jeremy’s latest submissions were lodged with the CCRC, in March 2021, they have done nothing apart from a cursory desktop review of the prosecution case. The CCRC have not investigated any aspect of the considerable amount of exculpatory evidence they have been shown, such as the fact that the police lied about there only being one moderator involved in the case.”
“Jeremy has served 10% of his current 40-year-term whilst the mass of evidence that proves his innocence has been gathering dust on the shelves of the CCRC.”
“We can only hope that the further evidence of two moderators being involved in the case that was given to the CCRC in November 2024, thereby disproving the central plank of the Crown case that here was only one, will finally prompt the CCRC to refer the case back to the Court of Appeal very soon.”
To learn more about the Jeremy Bamber Innocence Campaign, click here.
To read Heidi Blake’s 17,000-word August 2024 ‘The New Yorker’ article about Jeremy Bamber’s case, ‘A Very English Murder,’ in PDF format, click here.
Editor’s note – Unlike as is the case in many publications, this article was NOT sponsored or supported by a third-party. Follow Matthew Steeples on Twitter at @M_Steeples and watch his shows on YouTube at @mjs2781/streams.
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Some questions Essex Police and the Criminal Cases Review Commission plainly need to answer regarding this case… Including some new ones that could lead to to the exoneration of jailed for nigh on 40 years and still protesting his innocence Jeremy Bamber…
- What happened to a suicide note allegedly left by Sheila Caffell, a paranoid schizophrenic known for suffering psychotic episodes, that was initially referenced by police and then disappeared?
- Why did Sheila Caffell not have rigor mortis when officers discovered her body?
- Why was blood still gaping from Miss Caffell’s body when it was found?
- Why was the bible found by the body of Miss Caffell moved at the crime scene, why was it not used in evidence and why was that bible destroyed by police also?
- Why are there different accounts about how many bodies were discovered on the ground floor of the farmhouse when Essex Police first entered the farmhouse at around 7.30am?
- How could Jeremy Bamber be the killer if police officers repeatedly detected movement inside White House Farmhouse whilst he was stood with them outside at from around 4am onwards?
- How could Jeremy Bamber be the killer if a 999 phone call was made by someone within White House Farm at 6.09am when he was outside at that time with police officers?
- Why was a silencer supposedly used in the shootings not discovered immediately when police entered the residence?
- Why have questions about the number of silencers found never previously addressed? Were there one, two or even three such sound moderators? Did Essex Police make false claims about such devices?
- Why did scratch marks supposedly made in the kitchen of the house supposedly by a silencer not appear in the first photographs taken at the crime scene? How were they actually made in order that they appeared in later imagery?
- Why weren’t issues with whose DNA could have been on that silencer made clear at Jeremy Bamber’s trial?
- How could Jeremy Bamber be the killer if he made a phone call from his Goldhanger home 3.5 miles away moments after his father had called police from White House Farmhouse to say that his daughter had “gone berserk” with a gun?
- Why did Essex Police hide hundreds of thousands of pages of key documentation including police logs and crime scene photographs from being shared during both the 1986 trial and the 2002 appeal? As human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell remarked in May 2024: “[Jeremy Bamber] cannot have a new, fair appeal until all evidence is made available to his legal team. The wholesale suppression of evidence means that Jeremy Bamber did not get a fair trial. His conviction is unsafe.”
- Could the AGA be responsible for the burn marks on Nevill Bamber and if so, why did Essex Police move bodies at the crime scene?
- Why did Essex Police so push the narrative of Jeremy Bamber’s former lover and known thief Julie Mugford given they knew shew had been sold her story for £25,000 to the now defunct News of the World with the payment to be received only if he was convicted?
- Why did Essex Police not investigate why other relatives supported the narrative of Jeremy Bamber as killer given those very relatives only benefitted financially based on Jeremy Bamber’s ultimate conviction?
- Why have the “crisis-hit miscarriage of justice watchdog” Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) “only managed to review three of nine potential grounds of appeal identified by Bamber’s lawyer Mark Newby since an application as made in 2021?”
- When will the Criminal Cases Review Commission – who have less than 2% referral rate back to the Court of Appeal – finally finish reviewing evidence supplied in the Jeremy Bamber case that this shows this as a conviction that clearly needs re-examining at the very, very least?
![In April 2020, ‘The Steeple Times’ reported that “further questions about the conduct of Essex Police [were] raised as it [was] revealed they destroyed the bible, nightclothes and pillows that were found with the victims at White House Farm on the night of the 1985 murders. The 20th March 2000 letter from the Criminal Cases Review Commission to Glaisyers Solicitors LLP and Sheila Caffell is truly a shocking example of a bungling balls-up.](https://b1779429.smushcdn.com/1779429/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Destroyed-evidence-Sheila-Caffell.webp?lossy=1&strip=1&webp=0)
![Veteran human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, a longtime supporter of Jeremy Bamber, tweeted about the case on 7th March 2021. He remarked: “Is this [the] greatest miscarriage of justice?” and previously in 2017, he wrote to the then chief constable of Essex Police, Stephen Kavanagh, to highlight the “grave injustice” of the force’s withholding and destroying evidence with regard to the White House Farm murders.](https://b1779429.smushcdn.com/1779429/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Peter-Tatchell.webp?lossy=1&strip=1&webp=0)
