Family fortune drove Bamber to kill

Bamber has always proclaimed his innocence

The brutal murder of Jeremy Bamber's family shocked the nation in August 1985.

With Bamber standing to inherit his adoptive family's £500,000 fortune, it was inevitable suspicion would fall on him.

But Bamber, now 41, has always denied shooting his parents, his sister and her six-year-old twin sons at their Georgian farmhouse in Tolleshunt D'Arcy, Essex.

At 0326 BST that morning a caller giving his name as Jeremy Bamber rang Chelmsford Police Station.

He said he was ringing from his home in Goldhanger, Essex, where he had just had a call from his father saying "your sister's gone crazy and she's got a gun".

Line dead

After the sound of a shot, he said the line had gone dead.

Hours later armed officers who broke into White House Farm found the carnage.

In the living room they found the body of Bamber's 61-year-old father Nevill. He had been shot eight times and beaten.

Bamber has appealed before

Upstairs Bamber's young nephews were in their beds. Nicholas had been shot three times and Daniel five times.

In the master bedroom was the body of Bamber's mother June. She had been shot seven times.

Also in the room, lying beside the bed, was the body of his sister Sheila Caffell. She had been shot twice.

Bamber said his sister, who had not been taking her medication for mild schizophrenia, had "gone crazy", shooting her parents and children before killing herself.

At first, police did suspect Ms Caffell, who had been found with her fingers around the .22 calibre rifle used to shoot all five victims.

Suspicion then fell on Bamber when his then girlfriend told police that he had plotted to kill his adoptive parents.

Julie Mugford told detectives Bamber had bragged about how he would kill them to collect a £436,000 inheritance.

Silencer blood

At Bamber's trial at Chelmsford Crown Court in 1986 she said he had talked of sedating his parents and setting fire to the farmhouse but had changed the plan to hiring an assassin.

A silencer which allegedly had traces of Sheila's blood on it was found in a cupboard three days after the shootings.

The trial heard expert evidence that Ms Caffell could not have replaced the silencer in the cupboard given her injuries from the first shot.

Scientific evidence also showed no traces of gun oil on her nightdress even though 25 shots were fired and the gun had been reloaded at least twice.

Sentencing Bamber to five life prison terms, the judge Mr Justice Drake said he was "warped and evil beyond belief".

He recommended that Bamber served at least 25 years.

Bamber's first appeal was dismissed in 1989 - three years after his conviction - but the case was sent back to the Appeal Court in 2001.

The grounds for the latest appeal rested on new DNA tests which suggested the blood found on the murder weapon could have belonged to his parents, not his sister.