Heidi Blake

Already, his lawyers are pushing back on the refusal to refer his case on multiple grounds.

Among them is an argument that the CCRC failed in its duty of care to Nick Milbank.

The lawyers say he was a whistleblower and the CCLC had an obligation to protect him after he disclosed a potential cover-up by his employer, Essex Police.

But instead, it had put him at risk and compromised his evidence by allowing the force to deal with him directly.

They wrote, the result of this dereliction of the CCRC's duty of care is that Mr Milbank, who was by all accounts quite ill at the time, was possibly pressured by Essex Police into producing a statement that was not factual.

I sent detailed questions to Essex Police about all of this, but the force declined to answer any of them.

Jeremy Bamber's lawyers maintain that the CCRC's failure to interview Milbank, along with multiple other grounds set out in their latest submissions, should be enough to overturn the decision and to get Jeremy his fresh appeal.

There is, however, one big hitch.

The authority that gets to decide whether the CCRC got it right, well, it's none other than the CCRC.

They're the house of last resort, so they get to mark their own homework.

And each time the CCRC says no, all that remains is to go back to square one and start all over again.

Because there's no limit on the number of times a person can make new applications to the CCRC, any time fresh evidence turns up.

And so already, Jeremy and his team of supporters are back at work, scouring through the case files, looking for something new.

I still keep in touch with Jeremy, but we no longer talk every day.

He told me our calls had taken more of an emotional toll than he'd expected.

It's not hard to see the last years of Jeremy's life stretching ahead, just like this.

Locked away in his cell, combing through all those piles of documents, burning through his phone minutes, counting down his birthdays, endlessly waiting, and calling out into the void of that empty building.

Blood Relatives is written and produced by me, Heidi Blake, and lead producer Natalie Jablonski.

It's edited by Alison McAdam.

Samara Freemark is the managing producer for the series.