The Fabricated Statement and Future Appeals

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I'm a writer for a magazine in New York, the New Yorker, and I'm doing a long ish piece about an old Essex police case from the eighties, which the Jeremy Bamber case When I made this call, I'd been waiting through the White House Farm case files for a few weeks And honestly, by this point, I was overwhelmed There's just so much, I mean, there's so much documentation it's just like it's completely bambzzling. just stumbled upon an especially perplexing detail About this guy, Nicholas Milbank A long time Essex police officer. and a nine hundred and ninety nine emergency call that he'd apparently received on the morning of the crime. inside the manor at White House Farm recall that unless I was very much mistaken It' been impossible. I understand you had some involvement with sort monitoring the phone lines on the night of the crime. but basically I was wondering whether you might be willing to have a chat with me about it just make sure I'm not completely barking up the wrong tree with the stuff I'm looking at Yeah, to be honest, yes, I was. I was on the telephone, but say it was back in the eighties. My recollection of it, I mean I've taken millions and millions of phone calls since then and to be honest, in those days it was just another just another phone call Just another phone call, he said But that moment, right there, when Nick Morbag began to tell me about this call That was when my whole understanding of this case started to shift Because if this call had really been made At the time I'd seen referenced in the case files could mean only one thing Jeremy Bamber Could not have committed this crime From in the Dark and the New Yorker. I'm Heidi Blake And this is Bood relelatives It's one of the most notorious and shocking crimes in living memory, a bloody massacre at a remote English farmhouse Who else thought that woman could do this? It was such a believable story. It was It's crazy to think anything else other than what we were presented with. He's lying I mean, that's a classic Detective novel thing, Agathy Christie or whatever I'm gonna to kill my family so I inherrit all the money No matter how many times we slice up this case always innocent One The nine nine nine call The line in the documents mentioning this phone call was buried amid thousands of pages of police memos, from a review of the case by Scotland Yard Codenamed Operations Stoken Church The review was conducted in two thousand two Right before Jeremy Bamber's last appeal And the memos refer in passing Qote, nine hundred and ninetine nine call made from White House Farm At six hundred nine on the morning of the murders The case files contain hardly any detail about this call beyond revealing that it had been received by police constable Nick Milbank. cutors had certainly disclosed nothing about it to the jury at Jeremy Bamber's trial. But when I reached Nick Milbank, still working at Essex Police all those years later as it turned out, He was willing to tell me all about it It's obviously hard to dredge it all up from all of that time ago. Yeah ye fromom what I can remember, it was a case of sort someone playing the nine n ninety nine me answering it. then It was was hearing background noises and police entering the build the room or I't I don't think there was any actual conversation But I really don't remember much about it at all to be honest. Oh interestnteresting, o. This was another one of those moments in my reporting when I was trying my best not to let my astonishment show But it was hard Because at six o nine AM, when the memo said this call had come in Jeremy Bamber had already been waiting outside the house with police hours And so you were you were you like in the control room and picked up a nine ninety nine or Yeah. Yeah, in the cent control room in Chelmsesford. Melbank's shift that morning had just started at around six AM No I do disyspatchually most of the time, but on that occasion, I was call taking. And but yeah, and obviously came through the nine hundred ninetine nine system. And so there was a call came in and it was from the farmhouse itself. Yeah No one spoke when Milbank answered the phone, he said, But the police department's policy when this happened, was that the call taker would just stay on the line, listening If you get a phone call where Um, it's Itinitely an abandoned call because people either aren't speaking or there's someone who's obviously in fear of danger or whatever, our policy is to stay on the phone with them until the police arrive then police officers would get there, they'd pick up the phone and say, yeah, we're here now. and so I could then hang up the phone call and go straight to the next nine ninetine nine call. Right, right, okay. Yeah that makes sense totally So Nick Milbank said, that's what he did that morning He just sat there listening in to what was happening inside the manor And so say I just sat there with the phone open to see if anyone did say anything or I heard anything And like you could hear sort of movement in the background, did you say? or as far as I can remember, there was yeah, movement or voices in the background. I'm not sure I actually spoke to anybody So Nick Milbank was saying, not only did someone dial nine ninety nine from inside the manor that morning before police entered the property. But when he answered, He heard apparent signs of life inside Movements Maybe even speech I just sort of piecing through the records and because I was thinking o, like a nine and ninety nine call from inside the house. I know I hadn't seen that before, but that's sort of Yeah, interestnting. H. ye And who actually made the phone call? This conversation was becoming more and more surreal. Not least, because Nick Milbank didn't seem to realize the gravity of what he was telling me. I'm just trying to get my head round someome of this new stuff in that It does seem like if it's true that you know the way it all went down was apparently You know Jeremy claims there was a call from his dad to him at three in the morning saying, comeome round, your sister's gone ber with a gun and he went round to the farmhouse. and they got there at about three forty eight in the morning. And then from that point on, he was stood outside with the police and the police didn't enter until seven thirty AM If there was a corn inside the farmhouse, it sort of doesn't quite make sense that You know, that would have happened and because that would indicate someone was alive in there. basically, you know, they're all dead by the time. What was they? Yeah. ye Oh Well, obviously, Nick Milbank said Someone was Alive in there Needless to say, that was a gobsmacking thing to hear a police officer say Because if the prosecution's story was true that Jeremy had murdered everyone himself, shooting all five members of the family in the head before cycling home, cleaning himself up, and calling the cops at around three thirty AM There was no way anyone could possibly still be alive inside the house all those hours later att six hundred nine According to the pathologist, they would have died all but instantly Police hadn't entered the property until seven thirty AM So Milbank had been listening in for an hour and twenty one minutes before the bodies were found And he'd heard noises that might have been crucial clues to what was going on in there And so did it sound like because I think there was meant to be a bit of a struggle in the kitchen at something. Did it sound like A commotion or did it just sound like You know it didn't sound a I was for something This movement you know movement really, I don't know. guestings of either a door opening and closing or a chair being moved or you know there was some noise of some sort of movement And u And then all of a sudden, the there were police sounds of police I think someone picked up the phone and said, it's okay, we're in now, well we're here now, whatever. And I said, that's fine, I'll put the phone down Ha, Okaykay, interesting. So someone said someone said we're here now Um Yeah, it's obviously I'm guessing it was a police officer that picked up the phone And you' see that there was no longer the need to leave the nine hundred and ninety nine call open Who could have made this call? Neville, June, and the twins had all been shot in the head at close range If someone was alive inside the house after the police turned up It could only have been Sheila Who was found dead Inside the locked manor holding the murder weapon Hey listeners This is Liz Mayain Zamanzati the New Yorker' P puzzles and Games editor If you're someone who likes making lists and organizing your bookshelf, We think you'll love Catalogs, our new daily game that challenges you to put things in order based on a hidden rule be asked to sort peppers by spiciness, world capitals by population or Martin Scorsese movies by release date You can play catalogs every day at New Yorker d. com slash games and in the New Yorker app for iOS or Android Here's a helpful hint The app gives you free access to our entire archive of catalogs. along with our word scramble game Suffalo and the mini crossword. 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Ai slash New Yorker to get a personalized demo and see what Deagon can do for your team. ck Deagon out at Deagon. Ai slash New Yorker. That's Deagon. Ai slash New Yorker Part two. The shadow at the window As I combed through the records from the night of the crime, I saw that from the very first moment after police arrived at the manor There had been indications that Sheila might still be alive. Almost immediately, when police approached the house with Jeremy, They reported a possible sign of life inside That shadow. that seemed to move in the master bedroom window The one Sergeant Chris Bghs told me he'd seen ough he dismissed it at trial as a trick of the light Quite a moon at night I saw out of the corner of my eye, I caught a movement And as the firearms team prepared to enter the property, at around seven thirty AM One officer reported seeing the slumped body of a woman through the kitchen window. It took several blows to batter down the door with a sledgehammer And when the team got inside The woman was nowhere to be seen The officer later said in a statement that he must have mistaken Neville for a woman Jeremy Bamber's lawyers have proposed a different theory to explain this sighting They've suggested that Sheila was in the kitchen when the police began battering down the door but then fled upstairs and shot herself amid the commotion. Nick Milbank didn't tell me he'd heard any gunshots over the phone, But then again The gun used in the killings was a fairly quiet one It uses subsonic ammunition that makes a noise closer to a thud than a loud bang The rifle was so quiet that a prosecution expert said the twins could have slept through all the shots that were fired Even without the silencer attached Two of the firearms officers who found Sheila dead upstairs more than thirty minutes after they entered the house noted that blood was, quote leaking from both corners of her mouth But it's impossible to say exactly when Sheila died. In those shambolic early hours of the investigation Pathologists didn't examine her for rigor mortis or even take her body temperature Many people who knew Sheila found it impossible to believe she could have killed her sons Everyone, including Jeremy, agreed that she adored the boys She would have done anything for them But as soon as he'd arrived at the scene Jeremy had offered police a story that seemed to explain what might have tipped Sheila over the edge. He said that before leaving the farm the previous night, He'd heard his parents urging Sheila to place her twins in Fostic care Sheila's psychiatrist told police that this suggestion would have been abhorrent to her It would threaten whatever precarious balances she had, he said She would resist it in any way she knew trial Prosecutors dismissed Jeremy's account of the fostering conversation as a cynical fabrication designed to throw the blame onto Sheiva. Mike Ainsley, the chief investigator, had written in a memo to prosecutors, quote Jeremy is the only source of such a suggestion and he has been quite active in spreading this information, or as I would believe, misinformation Every person who knew Neville, June, and Sheila are all agreed that this is an outrageous suggestion and would never have been suggested or entertained. When I spoke to Barbara Wilson, the White House Farm secretary, she told me The police had got this totally wrong The bambers did have a plan to remove the boys from Sheila's care Mr. Bamber said that They were thinking because she I think that was when she was in hospital again And he said then that they were thinking about fostering the children and and sending them to school Private school here Now remember, Barbara didn't like Jeremy But here she was, saying that on this point, He'd been telling the truth all along The idea was that Neville and June would be the twins' foster parents. And the boys would come to live with them on White House Farm That was what Mr. Bamber told me Mm Be it did you I don't know if you picked up at the time that one of the things that Jeremy Bamber had said to the police was that Nevill and June had suggested to Sheila that perhaps they might foster the twins And I you know there there was a question about whether he was lying. No, no, he didn't No, that was right He didn't make it up. Okay No, at one hundred percent one hundred percent sure that that was something they were discussing Yeah Sheila had told her psychiatrist that she felt trapped in a covern of evil by June And she knew that her boys were frightened of their grandmother Witnesses had told police that June had upset the twins on a previous visit to the manor by flying into a frenzy as she chanted about God And she often forced them to kneel and pray weeks before the murders, One of the boys, Daniel, had produced a series of disturbing drawings of the Mor. which his father discovered after his death Led a large, severed head, and beneath it a figure, brandishing guns Another showed June with jagged teeth and narrowed eyes. blood gushing from her head When the police searched the room where the twins slept at the farm, They'd found the words, I hate this place. scratched into the wardrobe door The twins' father, Colin Cafell, had sensed their horror of being left on the farm He'd dropped Sheila and the boys at the manor that final time and later wrote in a memoir that he felt a nagging fear about leaving them. He recalled that Sheila was blank faced and silent throughout the journey When Colin dropped him off Bys clung to him desperately. as if in terror Then, there were several suggestions that Sheila might have left a suicide note In the Scotland Yard files, I found an intriguing statement from a detective involved in the case He'd told investigators Got a not sayaying I've killed myself And so it was treated as four murders and a suicide. The detective, who's since died, was not asked anything else about this and the possibility of a suicide note was never raised during the trial But amid the files disclosed long afterwards, I found two undated letters. Both addressed to Mummy and signed bambs Sheila's nickname They cover pages and pages in a chaotic, swirling scrowll been marked illegible by police It is possible to make out many of their words One letter began Stop looking at my picture. You will break your heart Police are going to be in touch soon and get this whole dirty mess cleared up Jeremy told me he was baffled when he read the letters Sheila had beautiful writing, he said Quite different from this wild scribble But who else would have signed her name The defense team hired a handwriting expert to compare the writing with examples of Sheila's neat cursive. And he found both similarities and differences. Multiple studies have shown that handwriting can change dramatically during moments of psychic disturbance particularly in those suffering from schizophrenia The letter went on Oh, mummy, don't you think I have feelings also in this floating space I am in As soon as the dirt is dug up and the public know, Then, my darling mummy Will my babies and me Go to our rest. If it was Sheila, after all who had murdered the family. rather than risk losing her sons. 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Part three Agatha Christie Syndrome A couple of years ago, before I'd ever spoken to Jeremy Bamber, I talked with a scholar of wrongful convictions, doror Dennis Edy Edie heads up the UK's leading innocence project at Cardiff University And he's developed a theory that interested me about the sorts of cases that tend to result in miscarriages of justice Here he is describing it to me recently Agatha Christie Syndrome It's the application of the who done it fantasy to the real world and to real cases And it's the kind of game that people play working out how somebody could construct the perfect murder And then the kind of over comppllication and there looking for a better story with kind of catastrophic results Edie has argued for years that wrongful convictions can occur when the agents of justice Police, prosecutors, juries Fix hate on fantastical notions of an evil perpetrator with a master plan and overlook facts that are often a lot more mundane He told me there was one case that struck him as a perfect example of this phenomenon The conviction of Jeremy Bamber This case it always struck me as Here we have Agatha Christie being played out in real life that he's constructed this incredibly complex a set of things, arranging phone calls, breaking into the house, managing to lock the house from the outside Riding a bike across fields even giving his girlfriend Fllacious story The amount of planning that we would have gone into it would have been phenomenal I'm an absolute genius u The alternative story is, of course that Sheila, who was very psychotically unwell for a lot of her life and had made comments about killing a children and things like that. But that idea that It's a murder suicide takes any kind of responsibility for this horror Out of the way, you can't really blame Sheila. It's a much better story if you can create the evil sort of aspect to it. Edie told me that the official story of the murders at White House Farm was so firmly entrenched in the public consciousness that even many of his fellow justice campaigners struggle to imagine that the narrative might be wrong But he'd spent time studying some of the case files And he told me that to his mind, it was obvious that Jeremy Bamber had been wrongly convicted In this case, I think there is evidence of deliberate cover upps, deliberate noon disisclosure Deeliver it manipulation of of the evidence by the prosecution. and by the placeace and so on So all of those factors, all of those bodies, have failed and not just failed But they've kept digging into this hole rather than come out and say, look We've made errors here. We need to put this right. And it just goes on and on. So at every level of the criminal justice system, there's been a cover up in this case Talking with Denis Edy about this two years ago. was actually what first set me off investigating these murders That was the tip I told you about right at the start of this story Now, as I weighed all the evidence, I wondered if he was right that it was just easier for the public and police and prosecutors not to mention the family To believe that an avaricious young man who a lot of people disliked had killed his family out of greed in a highly orchestrated plot Rather than something much simpler and Sada Beautiful and devoted young mother might have murdered her sons and her parents Not because she was evil. But because she was ill, Edie's words were ringing in my ears as I sat there on the phone with Nick Milbank. tryrying to make sense of what he'd told me About this nine hundred and ninety nine call he'd apparently received from inside the manor on the night of the crime Pool that had never previously been disclosed anywhere He seemed to have clear evidence to offer about Sheila's involvement But it had never featured in the case I asked him how that could be When this case has been reviewed so many times ' I there've been various investigations along the way, haven't there? I think s of London, police had a look at this and then The Met had a look at this. Have other people asked you about that call like subsequently No, no, not at all. No one Really? But no one's spoken to me about it since the nineteen eighties other than you. Wow Does that seem that seems kind of strange? Does that seem strange to you? You, there wasn't an awful like add to it. All I did was answer the phone, no one was there. I could hear background noises and I hang on the phone until someone picked up and said it's okay, we're here I don't suppose it was particularly pertinent to the incident To me, at least, All of that sounded. highly pertinent to the incident But that wasn't the only reason I was taken aback to hear Nick Milbanks say, no one had ever spoken to him about this Because as I dug through the files, I'd found a typed statement in his name There was a really short statement from you I saw in one of the bundles just saying It just said You came on at five forty five This statement in Nick Malbank's name was short and fairly perfunctory. I could see in the files that it had been gathered in two thousand two by officers from Scotland Yard's Operations Stoken Church, review of the case As I scanned the statement, with Millbank still on the other end of the line I realized that totally contradicted what he'd just told me about receiving a nine hundred and ninety nine call This statement seems to say there was Already a phone line open into the farmhouse and you took over monitoring it The statement said came on duty for early turn at about five forty five AM There was already a phone line open into the farmhouse, and I took over the monitoring of the open line As far as I can recall, I heard nothing for a while, until I heard movement and voices, which indicated that police officers had entered So this statement suggested that no one had actually called nine hundred and ninety nine Instead, it tracked with what prosecutors have always said Their version of events is that the phone in the kitchen at the manor was left off the hook after the killings as part of Jeremy's staging of the scene. They say an operator at the phone company was initially charged with listening in to the open line and then transferred it over to the police station for further monitoring at six hundred nine. So this statement was saying Nick Milbank had just taken over listening in to that open line. and he hadn't heard anything But he just told me something totally different And what's more, he'd said explicitly that I was the first person to ask him about any of this since the nineteen eighties So where had this two thousand two statement come from So you don't remember particularly giving that statement, but you do But you remember but you because you didn't think anyone would talk to you about it. Is that right? I'm just trying to think This doesn't seem to be st actually this document.ince since the event U No The statement wasn't actually signed by hand. Instead, Milbank's name had been typed on the signature line But it's not actually signed and I'm just wondering what it It says signed Nicholas Milbank, but then it's actually tighted, so your signature isn't on it. I'm just wondering becauseuse it was funny that you don't remember talking to them. Is it possible you forgot being interviewed by them? or do you think it's possible that maybe there was a draft statement that you didn't sign because actually they were they didn't get rounded Wh's this first gave a statement to? This is Well it was in the statement Tododay is the eighteenth of july two thousand two so that was during The Operation Stafen Church inquiry U Certainly didn't give anyone a statement. No Tser Fone'sking two thousand two is obvious a lot closose to nineteen eighty six. I don't remember giving anybody a statement. And if it's not signed by me, then I would, you know, I'm not to read the statement through word by word and see whether it rangg any bells. But any statement that I've made I've always signed And if it's typed signed by in our millbangor. wasas it say signed by It says signed Nicholas Milbank and it's typed. I see I wouldn't sign it. I wouldn't sign it, Nicholas Millilbank. I'd find an armil bank. Hu That's funny, isn't it? So that's if I'm asked signity, I'll never sign anything Nicholas Millbank It worth my initials Huh That's just really odd. I can't make sense of that. Yeah. U I wonder where that would have come from then. I certainly don't recall anyone speaking to me and making a statement in two thousand two. And if it's not signed by me, then But if you want to send me a copy, I'll have a look through it and see if it rings any bells I'm fairly certain I didn't I've not spoken to anywhere ever, help you? I'll ping you a copy and see what you think, seeee if you recognize that. And then yeah, I'll drop you your line. All right, amazing. Thanks. I'll send you down. to his take care. Thank. Bye Right after we got off the phone, I sent Milbank a PDF of the statement over WhatsApp He responded a couple of hours later Hi, Heidi A mystery indeed, he wrote. I have no recollection of making this. He conceded that he could have misremembered things and that this statement might be right But then he listed eight things about the document that struck a false note Any statement made by me would have my full name and wouldn't just say PC, as in pololice Cstable. It would show my caller number, he wrote It is not signed by me, and I would never sign Nicolas Milbank There were date and formatting errors that he called very unprofessional and phrasing that he said made quote No sense at all He signed off with an intriguing thought calls into the Force information room are recorded. I'm not sure how long the recordings are kept But again, at the initial investigation I would have thought that all recordings, phone and radio would have been copied I know it isn't much, but if this can be of any help, so be it I certainly didn't have any such recording And I still don't. No call recordings relating to this crime have ever been disclosed by police or prosecutors to anyone Does a recording exist of a nine hundred ninety nine call from inside the White House If so Why is it being hidden? And how had this mysterious statement in Nick Milbank's name comeome into being so many questions But soon after sending that message, Milbank suddenly clammed up He told me he didn't want to talk anymore about the case So I went back pouring through the files And I learned that this statement, Milbank told me he'd never made played an important role in this case. It had been gathered by officers from Scotland Yard in advance of Jeremy Bamber's last appeal in two thousand two. Back then, Jeremy's lawyers had spotted the same line I had about the call, in a batch of freshly disclosed files and raised a query before the hearing about whether someone had really dialed nine hundred and ninety nine from inside the manor. But when prosecutors pointed to this statement, ostensibly from Milbank Jeremy's lawyers accepted it at face value They concluded that the reference to a nine hundred and ninety nine call must simply have been an error