The Bambers - Murder At The Farm - 1 Of 4
A family of five are found dead in a remote Essex farmhouse. Police initially suspect a murder-suicide, until the surviving son's behaviour starts to raise eyebrows.
Transcript
00:00We are in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
00:04It's just little villages on the outskirts of the Molden district
00:09that follow the River Blackwater.
00:12OK, this is Head Street, Goldhanger.
00:15This is the village that Jeremy Bamber lived when the killings happened.
00:20His cottage, we're just about to pass it, is up here.
00:24It's the pink house on the right.
00:30It's approximately three miles away from Whitehouse Farm.
00:35Goldhanger's a really small, little, tight-knit community.
00:39In 1985, I believe, the population was around 800 or thereabouts.
00:46Today, you might have a little bit more crime,
00:49but back then, you just didn't have crime.
00:51If someone moved a garden gnome, that was big guilt.
00:55It just was unbelievable that this could have happened
00:59in this tiny, little town.
01:04It should have been a happy family get-together.
01:07Mrs Sheila Bamber had left her London flat
01:10to bring her two young sons to her father's farm on Tuesday night.
01:14They had gone to the 400-year-old farmhouse to help with the harvest.
01:19But late on Tuesday evening, something happened
01:22which triggered the deaths of all five of the Bamber family.
01:26The only remaining member of the family was Mr Bamber's adopted son, Jeremy.
01:30Suspicion fell on Jeremy Bamber,
01:32and he was convicted of all five murders in 1986.
01:36I have a question.
01:37Has everyone totally made up their minds, or is anyone still unsure?
01:42Where's the black cap? Guilty.
01:44Innocent. Innocent.
01:46I'm right there with you. Innocent.
01:4817 years after receiving five life sentences,
01:51Jeremy Bamber was back in court today.
01:54He's one of the few prisoners in the UK who will die in jail,
01:57but he's still protesting his innocence.
02:00There are so many different theories,
02:02and people like to explore all the avenues.
02:05One minute they think he's guilty, then he's innocent, then he's guilty,
02:08and then they get gripped.
02:10Jeremy does keep very actively involved.
02:13He wants to clear his name.
02:24He wants to clear his name.
02:26He wants to clear his name.
02:28He wants to clear his name.
02:30He wants to clear his name.
02:32He wants to clear his name.
02:34He wants to clear his name.
02:36He wants to clear his name.
02:38He wants to clear his name.
02:40He wants to clear his name.
02:42He wants to clear his name.
02:44He wants to clear his name.
02:46He wants to clear his name.
02:48He wants to clear his name.
02:50He wants to clear his name.
02:53To the best of my knowledge,
02:55I'm the only person who's ever formally interviewed Jeremy Bambert.
02:59I don't know if other people have gone to visit him as journalists,
03:02but I had an official visit in 2010,
03:04and I was there first,
03:06and then he suddenly appeared through a locked door
03:09accompanied by two prison officers.
03:12He was quite nervous as well,
03:14struck by the fact that his hands were shaking,
03:17and he said,
03:20Normally you can't take recording devices into prisons,
03:23but I was able to,
03:25so on the table between us was my little Victor phone.
03:28He said he felt aware of being analysed and studied,
03:31so I guess he was watching me and I was watching him,
03:35and I was trying to work out,
03:37was he being honest, was he being truthful?
03:40You know, did you do it or didn't you?
03:43Really hard to know.
03:46They think this guy's killed three adults and two little children,
03:50he's done it for money, he can't be allowed to get away with it,
03:53and he thinks he's cleverer than that,
03:55so, you know, he's committed the perfect murder,
03:57but it's not like that, it's skewed.
04:00I've never been violent, ever.
04:02You know, I don't have any...
04:04I'm not someone who's angry, who's contemporary,
04:06who lashes out, ever.
04:08You know, I certainly am not a murderer.
04:10Not only am I not a murderer, I can prove that I'm not a murderer.
04:13I'm not a murderer.
04:21The night in question, I was out on patrol
04:23with two of my colleagues, Bob Saxby and Steve Mile.
04:28We got a call because the duty inspector at Chelmsford Police Station
04:32wanted to speak to me urgently.
04:34He said that Jeremy Bamber had called,
04:37saying that there was a serious incident at Whitehouse Farm.
04:41The duty inspector wanted us to go out there, assess the situation
04:44and meet Jeremy at the scene.
04:47En route, we passed a small white Vauxhall going very slowly.
04:55We arrived at Whitehouse Farm.
04:58We'd been told to wait there to meet Jeremy.
05:03And he'd turn up about five minutes after us
05:06and it turned out that the small white Vauxhall
05:09that we'd passed going slowly was his.
05:14He told the story about his father, Neville Bamber,
05:17phoning up, saying that his sister, Sheila,
05:20had gone berserk with a gun
05:23and then the phone had been hung up.
05:26I asked him if his sister was likely to go berserk
05:31and he replied to the effect that,
05:33yes, she's a nutter.
05:35I said, what do you actually mean by that?
05:37And he said, she's under psychiatric treatment.
05:39She's on drugs.
05:41She could get up to anything.
05:44That was the point I decided that
05:47we weren't going to go into the house to find out what had happened.
05:50I decided to call armed assistance.
05:55While we were waiting, Steve Mile and I went with Jeremy
05:59to have a walk round the farmyard
06:02at a fair distance from the actual farmhouse.
06:08It was ominous, shall we say,
06:10that there were no sounds from the house other than the dog,
06:14that there was no movement, yet the lights were on.
06:20As we rounded one of the corners of the farmyard,
06:23I thought I caught movement in the corner of my eye
06:27from one of the upstairs windows.
06:30I retraced my steps
06:32and I got exactly the same impression of movement.
06:35I realised it was actually the moon's reflection in the glass,
06:38just an optical illusion based on my position in the farmyard.
06:47In 1985, I was in fact the deputy head of CID.
06:53I haven't spoken to anybody, journalistic-wise, in the past,
06:58and I think the time has come to do so.
07:02When the firearms team entered, they went into the kitchen.
07:06They found Neville, Jeremy's adoptive father,
07:10slumped forward by the stove.
07:13He had been shot eight times.
07:17That is the disarray that the firearm officers discovered when they went in.
07:26Poor old Neville.
07:29Poor old Neville.
07:51They went upstairs and found Sheila's twin boys.
07:56Both had been shot a number of times in the head.
08:01Oh, little boys.
08:12In the main bedroom, Neville's wife, June, was lying alongside the bed.
08:18She'd been shot a number of times.
08:22I mean, poor old June, what she did deserve that, I don't know.
08:29This is the body of Sheila, lying on her back,
08:33with the rifle lying along her body.
08:37Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear.
08:52In 1985, we covered news and pictures in East Anglia
08:57with a team of photographers and reporters.
09:00It was our custom to make check calls to police forces in the area early in the morning.
09:05Spoke to Essex Police, and we asked them,
09:08what's anything going on, what's the report,
09:11and they said, oh, yeah, there's a bit of a domestic,
09:14a bit of a domestic incident,
09:16and we asked them, what's anything going on, what's the report,
09:19and they said, oh, yeah, there's a bit of a domestic,
09:22and five people had lost their lives,
09:25which is something of an understatement, really.
09:30We got there around half past eight, probably.
09:33The main entrance had a marked police car parked across the lane going down to the farm.
09:38He was just a sentry, and his job was just to stop punters and us
09:42from going up towards what was obviously a crime scene.
09:56A phone call came saying that there was a helicopter flying around the White House
10:04and that one of the farm workers had reported that there was something wrong.
10:12So I literally, within five minutes, got in my car and drove to the White House,
10:19and at the entrance to the driveway at the White House was a police car.
10:24So I said, look, this is my aunt and uncle here, can I go up?
10:29I was refused access.
10:32They wouldn't let me go up the driveway.
10:35The neighbour who lives further down the drive came out.
10:40I said, Francis, what's going on?
10:43And he said, it's so horrendous, he said, I don't...
10:49I don't think I can repeat it.
10:52At that point, my head was spinning because I didn't know what was happening.
11:11I then had a briefing from the policeman to say that my parents
11:17were going to Jeremy's house, which is the next village at Goldhanger,
11:21and I drove from the White House to Jeremy's house.
11:26I arrived to be welcomed by my sister at the door.
11:31And she told me what had happened.
11:34But, you know, I couldn't take it in.
11:37One minute I thought it was just June and Neville,
11:41and then it wasn't until a few minutes later
11:45that actually I was able to understand that they were all dead.
11:49And then Jeremy came to the door,
11:53and I'd been told that Sheila had shot them all.
11:57And at that point, I actually gave Jeremy a big hug and said,
12:01oh, my God, I just don't know what to say, I'm so sorry.
12:05Today, Jeremy Bamber was inside his home in the nearby village of Goldhanger.
12:11Police officers were with him, taking a statement about the shootings.
12:15But he was too distressed to come to the door.
12:19I turned up several times to his chocolate box cottage
12:24and wasn't allowed in the house.
12:28The police message to me was that we're pretty sure
12:34that Sheila has committed the murders
12:37and then turned the gun on herself.
12:40This was a murder-suicide.
12:43Suddenly this was a major story right on my doorstep,
12:47and I had access to it.
12:49The weapon used to kill the family was a .22 rifle.
12:53Ironically, it came from Mr Bamber's own collection of guns.
12:56He was an avid collector.
12:58Police now are seeking expert guidance to find out exactly what happened.
13:02The last shot, detectives believe, was the suicide shot of his daughter, Sheila.
13:11Police in Essex are investigating a bizarre shooting
13:14in which a 27-year-old woman is thought to have shot her twin sons,
13:18her parents and then herself.
13:20No one knows why the family had to die.
13:23One theory is that Sheila, a former model,
13:26had been severely depressed since a divorce two years ago.
13:30But there were suggestions today she'd had a drugs problem.
13:34And at her flat in Maida Vale, West London,
13:37neighbours said they'd only recently been looking after her
13:40after a serious nervous breakdown.
13:44It's extraordinary to imagine her being able to shoot her children.
13:49I don't know, many people do.
13:51It's an altruistic.
13:53This is an evil world, this is hell.
13:55And if that's in your mind, then that's how it'll be.
13:59I don't blame the family.
14:01Because, you know, when you're ill, you're ill.
14:04I feel guilty for not being a better brother, really.
14:20MUSIC PLAYS
14:28Mr and Mrs Bamba is how I always called them.
14:32They were seen as respectable landowners of Toulson-Darcy.
14:38Most people had great respect for them.
14:42They were so good to the villagers.
14:44They would help, they were always around.
14:47Nothing was too hard or too difficult for them.
14:50If somebody needed help, they were there.
14:53And they were like the landlords of the village, really.
14:58Mr and Mrs Bamba, being farmers, had to have helpers on the farm.
15:03They had three cottages, I think,
15:07and those families worked on the land for years.
15:12We were very close-knit families.
15:15We did most things together.
15:17When it was the Jubilee, we all got together
15:20and had a parade through the streets.
15:25June and Neville couldn't have children,
15:28and then they finally adopted.
15:32Initially, they adopted Sheila, and then later on Jeremy.
15:40I think both Neville and June always had in mind
15:44a picture of what they wanted for their children as they grew up,
15:48and that was basically the rural life that they'd had themselves.
15:52But both Jeremy and Sheila had ambitions beyond that
15:55and certainly beyond the confines of rural Essex.
16:00They were both very much the kind of people who wanted to be in cities.
16:04They wanted to go to nightclubs and see the bright lights.
16:15Sheila had that lifestyle in London then, and she had a flat there.
16:19She was going to parties, making friends.
16:21She was moving in the modelling world.
16:30Sheila ended up getting together with somebody in London,
16:34and they did have children,
16:36and I think we had what was politely known as a shotgun wedding.
16:40Not quite, but almost.
16:44Sheila and Neville had old-fashioned values,
16:47and June was highly religious.
16:50Although she was a shy person,
16:52underneath she had some very, very strong views,
16:55morals and all the other things that go together,
16:58and the children certainly didn't possibly match up to what she was hoping.
17:05Jeremy and Sheila never really fitted into the village life.
17:10They had different values altogether, I think.
17:14They were a different class of people, probably, to us villagers.
17:20It strikes me that because the Bambers had money,
17:24the children thought it was their right somehow to use it, I suppose.
17:36Being in the office, I wrote all the cheques.
17:39I wrote them out, and Mr Bamber just signed them,
17:42and then I would post them.
17:46Most of the money was going towards helping Sheila and Jeremy,
17:51because Jeremy got into various difficulties when he was abroad.
17:56He was in New Zealand,
17:58trying his hand at whatever he took to his fancy at the time.
18:10I met Jeremy in New Zealand.
18:13It was his time off. It was his summer break.
18:16He was supposed to do a diving course,
18:18which his father had paid cash up front for him to do.
18:24He had $5,000 in cash.
18:27He'd finished the season harvesting on the estate,
18:31and then Jeremy turned up about a week later
18:34and stayed for quite a few weeks.
18:37He didn't want to leave and didn't want to do the diving course.
18:40He was happy just partying,
18:42and he and I just became best friends.
18:49I liked the look of him.
18:51Clean cut, spoke really well.
18:54Immaculately dressed.
18:56He'd been to boarding school at a very young age.
18:59He had an air of royalty about him,
19:01and would see the funny side of most things.
19:04He had a great personality.
19:10He spoke to me about the diving course,
19:13and he told me that he was changing his mind
19:16and he started going out on the town on his own.
19:19And in one of those times out,
19:22he met somebody in a bar who turned out to be a drug dealer,
19:27and he invested the $5,000 in a drug deal, I found out later,
19:32and he lost the lot.
19:35I think Jeremy was trying various businesses and they just failed.
19:41We had to send another cheque,
19:43never say, oh, Jeremy's wanting another handout.
19:48It wasn't quite a lot of money at certain times,
19:52especially when Sheila wasn't well.
19:56We'd helped Sheila a lot because of her difficulties
20:00with her illness.
20:03The first time I met Sheila, she was quite a lovely girl.
20:09Unfortunately, when she wasn't well,
20:12she did suffer quite a lot with her nerves
20:15and had very dark thoughts.
20:18We used to go down to the kitchen for coffee
20:21and she would sit at the end of the table
20:24and she'd say things that all men were black.
20:29Not black skin, but men are black,
20:34whereas women, she thought, were white.
20:38Men were black.
20:40You felt that she was really, really ill.
20:45She made you feel very sad...
20:49..somehow.
20:53Colin Caffell was Sheila's ex-husband
20:56and the father of her twin boys, Nicholas and Daniel.
21:02In spring 1985, the twins actually went to live with their father
21:06because Sheila's mental health was not good at all.
21:10She started calling her father in the middle of the night.
21:13She believed that she was the Virgin Mary during one phone call,
21:17kept him on the phone for hours on end.
21:19There was another occasion where she thought she was Joan of Arc.
21:22They were always religious characters
21:24that she believed were inhabiting her.
21:37On the first weekend in August 1985,
21:39Colin took Sheila and the twins to Whitehouse Farm
21:42to spend a week there.
21:46I don't know the reason why she came down,
21:49but it was August, so it was holiday time.
21:53But Mr and Mrs Bamber were concerned about the two boys.
21:58Neville did say that they were thinking about adopting them.
22:02That is what he said.
22:06They would have a safe environment there.
22:09He said they would go to school from here, they could look after them.
22:13Because Sheila was so poorly so often, I think,
22:17and she seemed to be getting worse rather than better.
22:22She wasn't at all well that weekend.
22:35Mum and Dad were concerned of Sheila being isolated with Mum
22:39and felt that she ought to come and live out on their rights.
22:43But Sheila didn't respond to that.
22:46She didn't really... I don't think she was in a good place.
22:49She didn't really say very much.
22:51She was just Mum and Dad trying to give you her ideas, I think.
22:54She feared that they were trying to take the children away.
22:57She didn't express that.
22:59I hope she wouldn't have had that view.
23:03We were doing a bicycle up for one of the twins and it was finished,
23:08so I thought I'd let Mr Bamber know that it was ready.
23:12So I rang.
23:15It was well after 8 o'clock when I rang him
23:18and said that the bicycle was ready for collection
23:21or I could pop it up now if he wished.
23:24And he said in rather a curt way,
23:27no, I can collect it tomorrow morning.
23:30And he was rather rude without saying goodbye
23:33and he just put the phone down.
23:35And I then thought, there's something up.
23:45Anne Eaton was suspicious of Jeremy from the very beginning,
23:49from the morning after the murders.
23:51She was at Jeremy's house when she heard him tell Stan Jones,
23:56one of the police officers,
23:58that he got on very well indeed with his parents
24:01and Anne knew that was far from always the case.
24:05Jeremy was going on about his relationship with his parents,
24:09how he loved his parents dearly
24:11and loved them to bits.
24:13But it didn't actually quite stack up
24:16because there wasn't a loving relationship.
24:18It was a very, very difficult one
24:20and he was painting a completely different image to what we saw.
24:27But it was only about a week after the murders
24:30when the silencer was found that things began to change.
24:36The police had complete control of the house.
24:39It wasn't until about three days after the event
24:42that they actually allowed the family to move back into the house.
24:48I went to my uncle's gun cupboard,
24:51which was basically a cupboard under the little niece,
24:56where he kept his guns and ammunition.
25:04But I remember standing here,
25:07but I remember standing here
25:09and seeing my brother on his hands and knees,
25:14because this is the gun cupboard.
25:18It was quite dark in the cupboard,
25:20but I could see a silencer.
25:24And I pulled it out
25:26and it was sticky.
25:28Very, very sticky. Horrible.
25:31He made some exclamation
25:33and I turned round to look, to touch it, to get hold of it.
25:36This is an automatic reaction.
25:38He said, don't touch.
25:40So I sort of stood back.
25:42On the end of the silencer was a little spot of blood and a hair.
25:48I was thinking, why was the silencer off the gun?
25:54Because normally speaking, you never take the silencer off.
25:58There's no reason to.
26:00Now, if it was Sheila that had shot herself with the gun,
26:04she would hardly have taken the silencer off,
26:07casually put it away back into the cupboard,
26:09walked back to where she was and died, would she?
26:13It wasn't going to happen.
26:15So obviously the gun had been used by somebody else
26:18with the silencer on.
26:20We rang the police
26:22and I took the silencer back to my sister's house
26:25and we put it in a plastic bag
26:28and it finally made its way, after some considerable time,
26:33to the Witton police station.
26:36The police focused on the fact that it was a suicide and four murders.
26:41They were tending not to listen to what anybody had to say.
26:52The small village of Toulson-Darcy
26:54has been in mourning now for over a week.
26:57Information for the funeral to go ahead was given on Wednesday
27:00at the inquest into the deaths of Neville and June Bamber,
27:03their adopted daughter Sheila,
27:05and her two children, Daniel and Nicholas.
27:08Police said they had all died together from gunshot wounds.
27:12In Sheila's case, her death had been self-inflicted.
27:16BIRDS CHIRP
27:24We had the funeral and we had to go to the church at Toulson-Darcy.
27:29I think we were on autopilot.
27:33I think our feelings were so numb with the unreality of it all.
27:39The multiple tragedy was deeply felt in the village,
27:43with a population of just over 800,
27:45the Bamber family was well known and respected by everyone in the community.
27:54Because they were so well known,
27:57a lot of people gathered from the village outside
28:01just to watch, really, and to pay their last respects.
28:06I was a bell ringer and we were going to ring the bells anyway.
28:10I was very upset.
28:11I went up into the bell tower and we just rang the bells.
28:18Suddenly it was a major day for Jeremy
28:20to put his parents and sister to rest.
28:23Shocking.
28:29I was in Greece and when I heard about the murders,
28:33I flew back to England.
28:35I just was there for support if he needed me.
28:40I advised him to go and get himself a nice suit for his parents' funeral.
28:48And I told him to have a haircut and make himself look decent.
28:54Jeremy Bamber arrived with his girlfriend
28:56and close members of the family in the cortege.
29:03He'd had make-up done on his face so he wasn't white.
29:06Put your new suit on and feel good.
29:10It did work. It took his mind right off things
29:12and he did what I'd advised him to do.
29:16There were just too many for the tiny 12th century church,
29:19so many stood outside.
29:23Neighbours have spoken of how much the six-year-old twins
29:25love to visit Whitehouse Farm and play in the surrounding fields.
29:29Their father is arranging a separate funeral for them
29:32in London, where their mother Sheila lived.
29:35Today, though, was the service for their grandparents and mother.
29:39The Bambers' adopted son Jeremy followed, his deep grief obvious.
29:47There were lots of people at the funeral,
29:49but I would think half of them were journalists and photographers.
29:53It was a very, very sombre occasion.
29:58Bamber himself there is clearly being supported by Julie Mugford.
30:04A couple of members of the extended family
30:06amongst those following the coffin, including Colin Caffell.
30:13Jeremy Bamber was seen to be devastated and he was crying.
30:19His face was white. He was leaning on his girlfriend for support.
30:25And honestly, I thought, I don't know if I believe this.
30:34I thought it was odd.
30:38Once the coffin had come out of the church,
30:40it was put in the back of a hearse,
30:42and the courtiers set off for Colchester,
30:44the crematorium, which is about 10 miles away.
30:47When we get to the crematorium, Bamber got out of the car.
30:51He was talking, smiling, almost laughing,
30:54and you think, well, something must have happened in that 30-minute drive.
30:58My brother-in-law said to me,
31:00as Jeremy turned round and gave a massive great smile,
31:05he said to me,
31:07Jeremy did it, didn't he?
31:09And that's, I think, the point where we hadn't got any doubts.
31:23I met Jeremy Bamber when he came to Colchester.
31:28I met Jeremy Bamber when he came into the Caribbean Cottage,
31:32a restaurant I was running at the time.
31:35Jeremy and his friends came in after the funeral that evening,
31:40and obviously it was a sombre occasion.
31:43They were ordering drinks as well as food.
31:46A few of them were trying to make him laugh, trying to cheer him up.
31:50They were drinking, and I would say drinking quite heavily,
31:54but only because I think they wanted to wipe the memories of that day out
31:58as quickly as possible.
32:02Julie would always sit very close to him at the table
32:05and would hang on his every word.
32:08I think with Julie, she definitely had delusions of a wedding in the future,
32:15but I didn't get the impression that she was the be-all and end-all of his world.
32:21I got to meet Julie when she came to visit Jeremy in his little house in Goldhanger.
32:27She wasn't there all the time because they lived miles apart,
32:31but she always suspected that he and I were having a bromance.
32:35She couldn't work out why we could be so close,
32:39and that was a lot of friction because he liked my company.
32:45After the funerals, Jeremy's behaviour surprised a lot of people.
32:49He really didn't strike them as a young man who'd lost his entire family.
32:54He just wasn't grieving as people expected him to.
33:00Things were going missing.
33:02Police let us know that Jeremy had taken these things and was selling them.
33:07Jeremy and his friend, Brett, were clearing the house out
33:10and taking all the silver, antique furniture.
33:14Paintings, ornaments, anything that he thought he could get money from, he was selling.
33:21He asked me to help him load the company van, a big van.
33:27He wanted the whole lot valued in Australian pounds.
33:33He was suddenly the heir to everything, and had never been heir to everything,
33:37and had never had the control over what he was about to have control over.
33:42And he didn't know how to spend money.
33:47If you are a grieving son, you don't go out and have a party,
33:52and then just start selling all the furniture.
33:55If you are a grieving son, you don't go out and have a party,
34:00and then just start selling all the family silver off.
34:03It's not normal behaviour.
34:26When Julie Mugford walked into Whitton Police Station,
34:30it completely changed the story, the investigation.
34:34No one had expected anything like this.
34:39Well, the allegations that Julie made to the police
34:42were that she had heard Jeremy talking about how he'd planned to kill his parents,
34:48and she hadn't believed it.
34:51But then she thought, my God, he's actually done it.
35:03I can remember everything of that evening.
35:06I interviewed Julie Mugford for at least two hours, probably a little longer,
35:13and she was telling me how Jeremy had planned for some months
35:17and she was telling me how Jeremy had planned for some months
35:22to kill his family for the purpose of obtaining whatever wealth was to be obtained.
35:27In other words, pure greed.
35:31She convinced me that the murders had been committed by Jeremy Bamber
35:37and that I needed to have the case looked at again properly, fully investigated.
35:44Mr Ainslie started up a whole new team,
35:47and they took all the cream, all the best officers from everywhere,
35:52and they started up a brand new inquiry.
35:56He turned the whole thing round.
35:58I decided that I ought to carry out the responsibilities
36:02as a senior investigating officer.
36:05Up until that time, there hadn't been a senior investigating officer
36:09because it was not believed, of course, anything was there to be investigated.
36:14Well, I started to talk to some of my police contacts,
36:17and they all said the very top of the police force
36:20are realising that something isn't right about this
36:24and they may well be looking at somebody else.
36:28Essex police now say that the model Sheila Caffell, nicknamed Bambi,
36:32could have been murdered.
36:34Earlier, they thought she'd committed suicide
36:36after killing her parents and her twin sons.
36:39Essex police stress they haven't ruled out suicide by Sheila Caffell.
36:43I think that's still a possibility,
36:45but we have kept an open mind from the day of the incident,
36:49and it is also a possibility that perhaps Sheila Caffell was murdered.
36:53So what we're now seeing could prove to be a murder investigation.
36:56Yes, it could.
37:01Two men were arrested late on Sunday afternoon.
37:04They were brought here to Witton Police Station
37:06where they were interviewed for several hours
37:08by Detective Inspector Robert Miller.
37:11They wanted to question me about whether Jeremy had ever mentioned,
37:15as they put it, what really happened.
37:18You're close. He must have told you something.
37:21We want to put the light on you and sit you in the cell
37:25and come backwards and forwards, good guy, bad guy.
37:27Jeremy's told us this,
37:29and I've seen all that kind of thing in television movies, you know.
37:33I just said to him, look, here's my passport.
37:36Brett had as good an alibi as he could get.
37:39He was in Greece at the time,
37:41and the passport stamps that he had proved it.
37:45Later this afternoon, another unexpected twist.
37:49A man arrested at the same time as Jeremy,
37:51his friend Brett Collins from New Zealand,
37:54was suddenly released from custody without charge.
37:57He was immediately escorted to a waiting car
38:00by a reporter from The Sun newspaper.
38:02They have paid a four-figure sum for his exclusive story.
38:06I did get a lift home. They were trying to offer me a deal.
38:09They paid me money to give my side of the story.
38:15I considered Bamber to be extremely dangerous.
38:18Were you hoping for him to confess?
38:21I did not anticipate that he would confess to anything.
38:25But in the interview with Julie,
38:27she also disclosed that Bamber had burgled their caravan site shop
38:32owned by the family.
38:35She also disclosed that Bamber was using and dealing in cannabis.
38:42So what I wanted to do was to have him remanded in custody
38:46on those two charges,
38:48to give me time to do the job that I had to do.
38:5124-year-old Jeremy Neville Bamber
38:53was brought to number one court here at Chelmsford
38:56in the back of a white police transit van.
38:58He had his head covered with his own white pullover.
39:01The prosecuting solicitor told the magistrates
39:04that Jeremy is accused that on the 25th of March this year
39:07he entered the offices of the OC caravan site as a trespasser
39:11and stole £980 in cash.
39:13Police today wanted a further three-day remand in custody
39:16to allow them time, they said,
39:18to investigate further wide-ranging inquiries.
39:21Meanwhile, Jeremy Bamber, sitting next to a court policeman,
39:24appeared relaxed and smiling as the magistrates considered the application.
39:28When they returned, the bail application was granted unconditionally.
39:35The court weren't told we suspected him of murder, but they knew.
39:39Of course they knew.
39:41I had hoped that the court would see fit to remand him in custody.
39:47But that was their decision.
39:49They decided to bail him. Bail him they did.
39:52Mr Bowler, Mr Bamber's solicitor,
39:54said Bamber had vehemently denied any involvement at all in the killings.
39:58Jeremy said, look, I've got some cash.
40:01Let's go away for a week or two and let this all blow over.
40:06I said, well, I've just come back from a month in Greece.
40:09He said, don't worry, I'll shout us.
40:12And we ended up with central pay.
40:15But, of course, he made life easier by going abroad.
40:18I was quite pleased about that.
40:20And I knew he'd come back,
40:22because he wanted that arm and the wealth that went with it.
40:34I said to Jeremy, what really happened?
40:37And I looked him right in the eye.
40:40What really happened?
40:42And I looked him right in the eyes.
40:45And he said to me, you would not believe what happened.
40:50And I thought, what's that mean?
40:53But I didn't press it.
40:55He wasn't that kind of guy who could press.
40:57If he wanted to hold a secret, he would.
41:00But that's all he gave me.
41:03MUSIC
41:07There was a meeting convened at the laboratory
41:10to discuss certain aspects of the case
41:13which didn't seem to fit in with the scenario
41:16that they'd got four murders and a suicide.
41:19It was then decided that we needed to look much more closely at the incident.
41:24A lot more items were submitted.
41:28And at that stage, I was given the job as reporting officer.
41:33They started re-examining all the evidence that they'd got.
41:37And the gun silencer, which had been found by Jeremy's cousin David Beaufoy,
41:42takes on a new importance.
41:45The sound moderator, or silencer, as they're often called,
41:49was not on the gun.
41:51When the deceased Schielekeveld was found,
41:54the sound moderator was found several days later
41:59in this particular cupboard under the stairs.
42:03And what made you and your team believe that the sound moderator
42:07had been on the gun at the time of the murders?
42:10Well, basically, that was down to the work of the biologists
42:15and the finding of the blood inside the sound moderator
42:20and their opinions that the blood could have come from Schielekeveld.
42:28Nearly two months after the murders,
42:30the police have finally got enough evidence to arrest and charge Jeremy.
42:36I arranged for him to be arrested when he came back
42:40and he was identified coming into Dover.
42:43I know he said that they wished he'd come in at some other port instead.
42:47It wouldn't have made any difference, I'd have had him found anyway.
42:51Jeremy was charged with the murders and I was dead go.
42:57Jeremy Bamber was arrested at Dover,
42:59on his way home from a continental holiday,
43:01and he looked relaxed, even cheerful.
43:06Inside, his manner never changed,
43:08not even when the details of the charges were put to him.
43:11Murdering Nicholas and Daniel Bamber-Caffell,
43:13they're the six-year-old twins, his nephews.
43:16Murdering their mother, Mrs Schielekeveld.
43:18Murdering Neville and June Bamber, his adoptive parents.
43:26He seemed astonishingly confident.
43:31Smiling.
43:32He didn't seem to be taking the case seriously.
43:37The description of him as arrogant certainly rings true.
43:42But still, that didn't mean to me
43:45that he was responsible for murdering the whole of his family.