FOR one man the horrific murders at White House Farm are as vivid now as when they took place — 34 years ago.
Colin Caffell can recall the devastating moment police officers told him his six-year-old twin sons had been shot dead, along with his ex-wife and her parents.
He says: “It was like having this huge, heavy, hot blanket thrown over me and everything being sort of slow motion and fast forward at the same moment.”
The brutal slayings at a farmhouse in rural Essex in August 1985 shocked the nation.
Colin’s sons, Daniel and Nicholas, their mum, Sheila, 28, and her parents, Nevill and June Bamber, both 61, were murdered by Jeremy Bamber, Shelia’s brother.
Now a new ITV drama, White House Farm, will revisit the chilling story, drawing on Colin’s memories of the tragedy.
He said: “The hardest thing for me is reminding myself of some of those details — I didn’t really want or need to go back there.
“But I think it actually helps to clarify stories that there may have been some murky water around.”
The six-part drama, which will be shown early in the New Year, sees Bamber played by Freddie Fox — brother of Silent Witness star Emilia Fox — and also stars Prince Harry’s ex-girlfriend, Cressida Bonas, as Sheila Caffell.
Line Of Duty star Stephen Graham and Game Of Thrones’ actor Alfie Allen also star.
White House Farm re-examines the case which horrified the nation, not just because of its brutality, but because of the botched police investigation which followed.
And the controversy continues to this day with supporters of Bamber, now 58 and serving a life sentence, insisting he is completely innocent.
Writer Kris Mrksa said: “I think there’s a complex story there of the pressures and resentments and dysfunction of families.”
For the first time since Bamber was convicted in 1986, Colin has chosen to collaborate with a TV adaptation of the story in a bid to tell the world the truth and gain complete closure.
He said: “Over the years, I’ve been approached by many people about doing something about it, and generally it just didn’t feel right. But the creators made it clear that they wanted to tell the story properly and actually get to the psychological underbelly of the story.
“I had a choice — to be completely consumed by it or to get above it. If I’d just given in and then been the victim of all that, it would have been a sense of defeat to Jeremy. I wasn’t going to let him beat me. Now 35 years down the line I felt very much that I’ve reached a point of resolution and healing.”
Jeremy and Sheila had been adopted as babies by the affluent Bambers, although the children were not related. It’s thought June had a troubled relationship with Jeremy, who never forgave his parents for sending him away to boarding school, and for a time stopped speaking to his mum.
Fervently religious, June also disapproved when Sheila married her art student boyfriend, Colin in 1977. Within three years, she had given birth to the twins and the couple had divorced. At the time of the murders, Sheila had been visiting her parents with the boys for the week. It was Jeremy who alerted the police from his home nearby.
Armed cops broke down the door of the Tolleshunt D’Arcy farmhouse and discovered the five members of the family lying dead. After learning of his sons’ death, Colin’s heartbreak intensified when Bamber claimed Sheila, who suffered from mental health issues, had gone on a rampage after her parents suggested her sons should be put into foster care.
He alleged she killed her parents and sons before turning the gun on herself — a version of events which was initially accepted by police. But weeks later, Bamber was arrested, and at the age of 24, he was convicted of five counts of murder.
His girlfriend, Julie Mugford, told police Bamber had bragged to her he was going to kill his parents and inherit the family’s £400,000 fortune, including the Georgian home set in 300 acres of land.
She claimed he rang her on the night of the murders and told her: “It’s tonight or never.” He rang again shortly after and said: “Everything is going well.”
The trial judge described Bamber as “warped and evil beyond belief.” Yet even after he was jailed, vicious rumours circulated about Sheila which Colin is keen to dispel once and for all.
He said: “Everybody accepted that Jeremy was guilty, but they kept on saying to me: ‘But Sheila was a drug addict, wasn’t she? And she used to beat the children, didn’t she? All the evidence shows that he did’
“That’s not true. She was very heavily medicated for her psychosis, which would have affected everything. There’s no way she could have done any of the things that it was claimed that she did.”
Back in the 1980s, there was not as much awareness about mental illness as there is today. And tragically, Colin said his ex-wife was in a really good place at the time of the murders.
He said: “Apart from the day she gave birth to the twins, I’d never seen her so happy. She started to get better. That’s a big tragedy. And there was no mention of that at all, which is a shame. I had to try and understand what was going on. It’s an area that nobody really understood then and I certainly didn’t.”
Colin, who lives in Cornwall and works as a sculptor, was concerned about how he would be portrayed in the TV adaptation.
He said: “I was very keen to make sure the real me came through. I think that they’ve done very well. The final image of the story is my character being left to pick up the pieces and repair Sheila’s reputation.”
Bamber’s cousin, David Boutflour was also approached, but he refused to take part. He told The Sun: “It’s not fictional. It really happened, and I am not too keen on seeing it any more. I’ve had a belly full of it.”
Mr Boutflour believes Bamber is “evil” and “guilty as hell”. He said: “It is very difficult to come to terms with a family member who has done such a thing. You think, ‘How can anybody actually do that to a relative?’
“I know he was adopted, but he still had his roots there. Maybe he has managed to convince himself that he didn’t do it, but all the evidence shows that he did.”
It was revealed this week that Bamber, who is held in Wakefield prison, has received more than half a million pounds in legal aid fighting to clear his name. Bamber’s case went to appeal in 2002. The 12-day appeal ruled that the convictions were “safe.”
But he is not giving up. Yvonne Hartley, a member of the official Jeremy Bamber Campaign, said: “We believe in Jeremy’s innocence. We were given access to the appeal documents in 2011 and we have evidence to undermine every aspect of the trial, such as the scene itself, entry and exit points. Forensic science and document analysis have moved on considerably.
“We believe that the evidence we’ve got, when presented to a court, will overturn his conviction.”
