Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Do you want a tea or coffee or something before we kick off? We've got all kinds of tea. We've got licorice and peppermint.
I would just love a water. I would love a little tea if that's all right. One day this spring, I went to visit Philip Walker, a director of Jeremy Bamber's Innocence Campaign, with our producer, Natalie Jablonski.
I don't mind tea, but it's not my favourite drink. I'm a hot chocolate man. Right, where were we?
Philip is a semi-retired company finance director who lives in a neat semi-detached house of brown shingles on England's south coast. He helps direct a small but vocal group of Bamba supporters who've essentially devoted their lives to Jeremy's cause. They hold meetings, issue press releases and troll through the case files looking for leads.
Chapter 2: What new evidence is being presented in Jeremy Bamber's case?
It's become a fairly large part of my life now. So who knows? I might have been a scratch golfer by now if things had worked out differently.
Philip told us he was partly drawn to the case because he feels a personal connection to Jeremy. They're about the same age, and Philip, like Jeremy, was adopted through the Church of England Children's Society as a small boy.
And strangely, around the same time he was adopted, when the Bambas were actually looking for another child to adopt.
So in a sense, there's a slight feeling of, you know, there but for the grace of God, go I. When Natalie and I went to see Philip this spring, it had been a few months since The New Yorker published my story outlining the fresh evidence about the silencer and the crime scene and the 999 call. The Criminal Cases Review Commission had told Jeremy it was looking into the new evidence.
This was a huge moment because the CCRC is the only body in the UK that can compel the Court of Appeal to re-hear a case. It was Jeremy's only clear path to proving his innocence and getting out of prison.
I feel very hopeful indeed, because I think the exculpatory evidence we have is unanswerable. I mean, the real piece of gold that emerged from the article was Milbank, because that 999 call at 6.09, there is no way, if that call happened, that he could have been responsible for any of the shootings. So that was a major development from our point of view. That'll be our man.
Hi there.
Oh, hiya. Well, I just rung Heidi and she didn't answer her phone.
Well, that's probably because she's sitting right next to me. Hi, Jeremy.
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Chapter 3: How does the Criminal Cases Review Commission impact wrongful convictions?
It had lost more than a third of its budget in recent years, and yet commissioners, whose hours had typically been reduced to working just one day a week from home, had seen their caseloads double. As Jeremy Bamber was waiting on news of his case, the organisation's chair was forced to resign.
Then, this spring, its chief executive was summoned before Parliament and grilled by MPs on the organisation's failings. Everything from its low rate of referrals to the Court of Appeal, around 2% of all cases. Fewer than 2% is not a huge number, is it? I know those numbers are quite small. To how rarely is leadership actually showed up at work?
I'm probably in the office maybe one or two days every couple of months or so.
One or two days every couple of months?
Yeah. So we are not an office-based organisation anymore.
Well, when I heard that, my jaw hit the floor.
That's Edward Garnier, a prominent member of the House of Lords and former Solicitor General.
It was like watching a slow car crash. It was terrible.
Lord Garnier co-chaired a previous parliamentary review of the CCRC, which raised a number of red flags. The report said the CCRC failed to investigate cases properly and that it was excessively deferential to the police and the courts, the very institutions it was meant to be scrutinising. Natalie and I went to talk to Lord Garnier soon after the parliamentary hearing.
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Chapter 4: What are the public's reactions to the Jeremy Bamber case?
This undermined the integrity of a crucial piece of evidence and the prosecution's case that it was Jeremy who propped the Bible in its odd position against Sheila's arm as part of his staging of the scene. But the CCRC dismissed what Neil Davidson had told me. They said he couldn't say for sure that Cook had put the Bible back in the wrong place.
Despite those notes I'd found from members of the firearms squad who said the crime scene photos seemed to show the Bible in a different place than where it had been when they first found Sheila dead. And again, the CCRC hadn't managed to speak to Neil Davidson to ask him about it. Natalie and I were flabbergasted by this. And how hard is it really to speak to this guy?
He's a very easy guy to find. Go and knock on his door.
And then it says, the apparent statement by former DS Davidson that DI Cook picked up and then incorrectly repositioned the Bible, if accurate, does not, in the CCLC's conclusion, change the previous understanding of the crime scene to such a degree that it is possible to conclude that the jury might have reached a different verdict if they had known of it. What? Yeah.
So the CCRC was saying, even if Ron Cook had put the Bible back in the wrong place, it just wasn't important. This was an extraordinary position to take. Even the Court of Appeal had acknowledged when it last heard Jeremy's case in 2002 that any disturbance of the scene by police officers, had it really occurred, would have been, quote, a moral sin.
But back then, judges said there was no evidence that this had happened. Now, I had an eyewitness account that Detective Inspector Ron Cook had egregiously rearranged the scene around Sheila's body. And yet the CCRC, whose job it was to root out miscarriages of justice, was saying this just didn't matter.
So, OK, we haven't even got to the most bizarre part of all of this, which is the Nick Milbank stuff. OK.
I got to the part of the document where the CCRC addressed the most revelatory new finding of all, the 999 call. The one Nick Milbank had told me came from inside the manor just after 6am, when Jeremy was standing outside with police.
From what I can remember, it was a case of someone saying the 999 and me answering it, and then it was just hearing background noises.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Jeremy Bamber face in proving his innocence?
You just heard?
Two minutes ago.
Huh.
I'm sad for his wife and for his family. Of course I am. But you couldn't make this shit up. I mean, excuse my language, but you couldn't. I mean, you just couldn't make up the twists and turns in this case. But the reason I'm ringing you saying, look, you've got the audio tape. He told you the truth. We know that there was a 999 call received from the house. He's confirmed that.
And you have that gold, which can no longer be disputed.
Yeah.
It's just another extraordinary day, Heidi. It's not the end of it, honestly. I'm not giving up.
Jeremy does still have a right to challenge the CCRC's decision on the fresh evidence, and there are still a few subsidiary points from his original application that the CCRC has yet to rule on. 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.
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Chapter 6: How did the recent scandal affect the Criminal Cases Review Commission?
Additional editing by Madeline Barrett, Willing Davidson, and Julia Rothschild. Additional production by Raymond Tungakar. Theme and original music by Alex Weston. Additional music by Chris Julin and Alison Leighton-Brown. This episode was mixed by Corey Schreppel. Our art is by Owen Gent. Art direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Mikhailov. Fact-checking by Naomi Sharp.
Legal review by Fabio Bertoni and Ben Murray. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The head of global audio for Condé Nast is Chris Bannon. The editor of The New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have comments or story tips, please send them to the team at inthedarkatnewyorker.com. And make sure to follow In the Dark wherever you get your podcasts.
And as always, thank you for listening to In the Dark.