S. C. Lomax

Why I support Jeremy Bamber by S.C Lomax, Writer

I first looked into Jeremy Bamber’s case in December 2002 following his unsuccessful appeal and his much publicised claim of innocence which had been placed on his website. I was intrigued by a prisoner having a website, which was quite new back then, and how Jeremy had made his announcement of the failed appeal before it had been announced officially at the Court of Appeal. When I visited the site I found an abundance of information about the case, which was updated frequently to argue against each of the appeal judges’ flawed arguments as to why they had no doubt Jeremy had been rightly convicted. I found it fascinating and I needed to know more.

I soon made contact with Jeremy and over the years we have exchanged countless numbers of letters, he has phoned me many times and I have had the advantage of speaking with him in person, at Full Sutton Prison, on several occasions. This personal contact has enabled me to get a good insight into the man himself. I have always found Jeremy to be an outwardly positive man who has no doubt his conviction will be overturned. His hopes have often been shattered but he believes the growing amount of evidence that has come forward in recent years will lead to a successful appeal. I share his optimism.

Knowing Jeremy has been very useful in providing me with the opportunity to gain my own opinion about the character of this man who was dubbed by his trial judge as being “wicked”, “callous” and “evil, almost beyond belief”. However, as useful as it is to gain a good insight into an individual it is more important to look at the evidence itself and try and ignore any beliefs you have about what type of person you are dealing with. Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes but he too campaigned for those wrongly convicted. He once wrote ‘Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner.’ I have tried to remain cold and unemotional when studying Jeremy’s case. The evidence is the facts and you have to allow the facts to speak for themselves.

Over the years I have been privy to huge amounts of documentation in the form of police documents, trial transcripts and expert reports. I have seen crime scene photographs. I have also met with Peter Sutherst as well as Jeremy’s current and previous solicitor. Jeremy has also been entirely cooperative and has been willing to answer any and every question I have raised with him, unlike the police who hide behind Public Interest Immunity rules. If I have ever needed to see a specific document which Jeremy has referred to, it has been made available to me, if Jeremy or his legal team have it, and I have been able to scrutinise it and reach my own conclusions about it.

From early 2003 a large amount of new evidence began to be uncovered and perhaps most notably at this time following the 2002 appeal was the disclosure of the Wireless Message Logs in 2004. These important police documents showed that firearms officers were ‘in conversation’ with someone at a time when, if Jeremy Bamber was guilty, everyone inside the farmhouse must have been dead. Following the disclosure of these logs many more documents began to trickle their way into the hands of Jeremy’s legal team. That these documents were hidden from Jeremy Bamber’s legal team in the run up to his trial in 1986 is a damning indictment of the British criminal justice system. A jury can only reach a valid verdict if it hears the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In keeping many of the facts away form Jeremy Bamber’s legal team the police and Crown Prosecution Service prevented the jury from knowing the full truth. Why did the police and CPS feel the need to hide the full truth from the jury?

Today there are still 340,000 documents and many crime scene photographs which the police continue to keep secret. We are all left wondering what they are hiding and more importantly why do they feel the need to hide evidence? If a defendant refuses to answer a question he or she is seen to be evasive and evasion is usually interpreted as guilt yet the criminal justice system seems to be allowed to hide evidence, not answer questions and provide false and/or misleading information.

Yet the information they have recently disclosed does at least raise questions about the prosecution’s case at trial. There is now overwhelming evidence, which I have seen and therefore I can vouch for its authenticity, that evidence used against Jeremy at trial was fabricated. There is evidence that police documents were edited. There is evidence that Jeremy’s sister, Sheila, was still alive long after Jeremy allegedly killed her. There is therefore proof of Jeremy Bamber’s innocence in the form of an alibi and there are grounds to show the police allowed an innocent man to go to prison using flawed police procedures.

Some of the most persuasive arguments for Jeremy’s defence, which were never presented to the jury because the police hid the evidence until recent years, are: the fact that the police were in conversation with someone who, if Jeremy was guilty, must have been dead; that hidden photographs show Jeremy’s parents both had their arms viciously scratched by someone with long nails at around the time of their death; that the key forensic exhibit allegedly proving Jeremy’s guilt (the sound moderator0 was used to fabricate scratch marks in the kitchen and therefore the integrity of the sound moderator itself is now in question; the statement of one of the key firearms officers (the officer who used the sledgehammer to gain entry into the building and was therefore one of the first officers to enter the house) has been edited; the sound moderator was taken apart and put back together incorrectly before it was properly examined, raising the possibility of contamination; police searches of the farmhouse failed to find a single piece of evidence against Jeremy Bamber. All evidence used against Jeremy at trial was found at a later stage when many people had visited the scene. There is also the small matter of experts lying at Jeremy’s trial. The jury were told Sheila Caffell’s hands and feet were clean and free of blood. It was a very important issue because the prosecution claimed a woman who had just killed four people could not possibly have perfectly clean hands and feet. Yet photographs disclosed in 2004 and more recently show blood on the hands and feet. Again, why did the police lie if Jeremy Bamber was guilty?

I could also throw into the argument the police statement which states all windows and doors were secured from the inside when the police entered, begging the question of how Jeremy could have entered and left the crime scene, and the fact Jeremy has passed a lie detector test. I suggest you buy or borrow a copy of my book for many more of my arguments as to why I believe Jeremy to be innocent. There are far too many to list here.

I have seen so much evidence which entirely undermines the prosecution used at Jeremy’s trial and shows that serious wrongdoings occurred in this case. It is this intimate knowledge with Jeremy Bamber’s case, with my views based exclusively on the evidence available to his defence team whilst examining the arguments both for and against Jeremy, that has left me utterly convinced that he is indeed the victim of a miscarriage of justice. I am happy to stake any reputation I have as a writer on my belief in Jeremy’s innocence. I will support him until the day he walks free from the Court of Appeal.