Down the Bamber Rabbit Hole
From a lockdown binge fest to "Cat A" prison visitor.
Four years ago I started on this journey. A journey that so far has lead to meetings with murder detectives, forensic scientists, lawyers, corrupt cops, organised crime families, investigative journalists and arguably one of Britain’s most notorious prisoners.
It was watching the ITV drama “The Murders at Whitehouse Farm” in the middle of Covid lockdown that it all began. I was just finishing up the edit on a Channel 4 documentary and was in self quarantine when I stumbled across the series.
Born and raised in Essex I knew this story.
Well I thought I did.
Along with everyone else in the country I’d believed the narrative of Jeremy Bamber being one of our most despotic and psychopathic killers. A narrative shaped by lurid tabloid newspaper headlines, the smirking photographs of twenty-four year old Bamber in the back of a police van and the low-budget “made for telly” documentaries with their grainy, cheesily re-enacted scenes that was standard documentary fodder in the 80’s and 90’s.
In the ITV drama this narrative was perpetuated by the TV company that had bought the rights to a book by Carol Ann-Lee, a British true crime author. A book “self subtitled” as the “definitive” investigation of the case.
Said book, “ The Murders at White House Farm”, has some long meandering details around the Bamber family dynamics, but still raises far too many questions than it answers and has the most preposterous “how he did it” chapter you could possibly read.
It sticks to the tried and tested “Monster Bamber” narrative and completely ignores the elephant in the room of police corruption, cover-up and actual evidence (but why let the truth get in the way of a good story?)
Digging around I’d read that during the pre-production process for the ITV drama series, the producers and screenwriter Kris Mrksa, had declined to meet with Jeremy Bamber but instead met with the ex-police officers Ron Cook and Mike Ainslie, two of the three senior cops on the case (the third, Stan Jones had passed away).
I found that odd. Why would you not want to meet the actual protagonist of your story if he is still alive?
I wondered if it was the “Hannibal Lecter”style image of Bamber that the media perpetuates? I always think of it as “The Monster Myth”. I mean Bamber’s birthday is Friday the 13th.
Krska in an interview with Deadline magazine was asked about this,
My take on him is that he’s manipulative, and I think to that extent it would also have been potentially counterproductive. Thirdly, you can say, “Oh, well, it’s important to hear every side of the story,” but I think once we were completely convinced that he was guilty, I certainly didn’t want to give him any kind of a platform.
That line,
once we were completely convinced he was guilty
rang alarm bells.
I’d obviously been reading the wrong evidence or speaking to the wrong people because it only takes a couple of days - a week at the most - of reading through the evidence to realise it’s a physical impossibility for Bamber to have committed these crimes.
Of course that’s before you have made any contact with Bamber - well known for hypnotising or manipulating you to do his bidding; as seems to be a common description of his “mind bending” manipulative personality (always by people who have never met him or have the most to achieve (or least to lose) by describing him this way.)
These two retired officers, Cook and Ainsley, played a major part in the investigation so it’s easy to see how, with the shoe on the other foot, THEIR manipulation of screenwriter Mrksa would continue to perpetuate the narrative they had worked so hard to establish in 1985 1.
Mike Ainsley and Ron Cook. They’re both in the show. Ainsley was the second lead investigator. We were able to meet with him and we were able to meet with Ron Cook, who was the head scene of crime guy who was there right from the start.
And you know, in TV shows, the retired detective will pull out these folders full of evidence, and I always watch that and I think, “That’s bullshit. They would never have all that stuff still, 20 years later or 30 years later.” It’s such a TV cliché. But sure enough, Ron just pulls out all this stuff. In this pub. He was bringing out crime scene photos, which were really shocking.
He’s right about one thing - it is bullshit - Why would Ron Cook be holding on to these photos so many years later? An insurance policy? To show off at dinner parties?
It’s interesting in this context now to read the recent New Yorker article by Heidi Blake2 where she interviewed one of the cops also at the scene, Detective Sergeant Neil Davidson, and his description of Cook is somewhat insightful.
“We called him Bumbling Ron,” Davidson said. “Chaos reigned wherever he trod.” Cook oversaw the cleanup of the crime scene.
Seems the “head scene of crime guy” maybe knew he had to keep something important close to hand for almost forty years.
You know, Just in case.
So you can see how the drama drew me down this Bamber rabbit hole. There was, I felt, definitely something rotten in Denmark with this entire conviction.
I then watched as much supporting programs as I could, I read CAL’s book, and others by Scott Lomax and Roger Wilkes, I trawled through internet forums and Facebook groups (a stiff drink and cold shower is needed after spending a few hours on the majority of these). I watched archive footage and news clips of a twenty something Bamber, decked out in 1980’s Hugo Boss; and then, months later, contacted Bamber’s campaign team and lawyer, Mark Newby.
Then finally I approached Bamber himself. Initially by prison mail and then some months later the phone started to ring.
This call is from in a prison in England. All calls are logged and recorded and may be listened to by a member of prison staff. If you do not wish to accept this call, please hang up now.
And through family birthdays, Summer holidays and Christmas Days, over the past couple of years, it hasn’t stopped.
It was lovely to talk to you yesterday, you’re probably in bed on a Sunday morning and the last thing you want is to talk to me but it’s great that we’re now on the phone and we’ll be able to have some great chats.
Since the end of March 2022 I’ve had hundreds of calls where we’ve discussed the intricate details of the case, his early family life, schooling as well as surviving a lifetime as a “Cat A” prisoner,
You know, I'm sixty-one now, and of course I've liked a different experience, but I've had this experience. I mean, you've not met Ronnie Kray. I have. And I've met Reggie. And I've sat and got stoned with Reggie Kray. You know, you haven't had that. But people like Kenny Noye or any of the really big, well-known gangsters. I've met them all. I've got drunk with them all. You know, I can't just roll names off the top of my head. But there will be hundreds of names when I get to sit down with you afterwards and we're at a dinner party.
His personality,
You might think I’m a dick, you probably do. But that really doesn’t matter, it really doesn’t, all that matters is the evidence.
The corruption in the case,
I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time with corrupt officers like Ainsley and Jones and Cook…because they hated me, you know, when I was being interviewed… I just looked at them and thought, for fuck's sake, you know, what are you doing? You know, you're trying your very hardest to stitch me up like a kipper, but I didn't do anything, you know, what are you doing?
As well as just calls where we’re both falling around in hysterics of laughter,
The Doc Maker: Yeah. Well, you'd never have met me, mate, would you?
Jeremy Bamber : No, and I mean, that is well worth it. To be honest, I would have gone through these 37 years just to meet you.
Laughter
JB: I wouldn’t. I may have done for Sarah, but not you. Sorry, mate.
Laughter
JB: Honestly, would have been nice if we bumped into each other, but 37 years of this for that? I don't know. Maybe.
Laughter
JB: Maybe.
DM: We'll see.
JB: We'll see.
DM: You know. We'll see.
JB: It may develop more.
But also I’ve seen the fragility of what a lifetime professing your innocence and fighting for justice has done and continues to do to him.
Mike O’Brien an ex-inmate who spent 7 years in the same prison as Bamber (and also a miscarriage of justice victim) describes the fallout, when you are eventually released after years in prison, as being akin to PTSD from being a kidnap victim.
I'm not an angel, and I've never professed to be, but I didn't kill my family. And, you know, what more can I say?
It does do my head in, and it does my head in because I feel, you know, now that I'm 61, I think, well, I've had a good life, you know. Why, you know, why am I even bothering with all this nonsense? You know, and I do feel like that. Not just about, you know, staying in jail and just giving up. Just giving up on everything, just saying, oh, bollocks. And that's when I get to my lowest.
And I shouldn't really kind of feel that fatal kind of, well, you know, I just don't want to live anymore.And that's awful, and it's an awful position to be in, but I think I've had a good life, and, you know. And I can live with that, or I can die with it. You know, I'd not die an unhappy man now.
I'd like to be free, and I'd like to clear my name, but my name will be cleared in due course anyway. But it's just coping with the nonsense, and the shit, and the just. People like (CCRC Officer) and the CCRC, and the CPS, and Essex Police, and the whole lot of them. And we wrote to all 649 MPs, and not one wrote to me. You know, just saying, come on, guys. Really?
Is my case so unworthy of your attention?
The deeper I’ve gone down the rabbit hole the more bizarre and twisted the story gets. As screenwriter and TV Showrunner, who has known Bamber for years, Emilia Di Girolamo says,
Jeremy’s case is so bizarre, so loaded with mistakes, cover ups and conspiracies it’s way beyond anything I would dream up at my desk. But at the heart of this case is an innocent man who has been locked up far too long. The evidence is so overwhelming, the CCRC are going to look very stupid if they reject an appeal again.
The CCRC have had ten grounds of new evidence submitted to them by Bamber and his legal team since March 2021.
We’re now at the tail end of 2024 and they have claimed to have read only three of those issues.
They have confirmed a decision making committee will meet in March 2025.
In the next story I’ll be looking at the state of the broadcast and TV industry in trying (and failing) to get this story made into a documentary over the past four years.
https://deadline.com/2020/10/hbo-max-the-murders-at-white-house-farm-kris-mrksa-interview-1234591002/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/08/05/did-the-uks-most-infamous-family-massacre-end-in-a-wrongful-conviction
Looking forward to following your progress with this.