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- [00:01]
A
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it@progressive.com, progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states. I know that when I'm navigating my day to day, sometimes I just really need to talk to somebody and Grow Therapy makes it so easy. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your 50th, grow makes it easier to find a therapist who fits you, not the other way around. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters like insurance, specialty, identity or availability and get started in as little as two days. And if something comes up, you can Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow helps you find therapy on your time. Whatever challenges you're facing, Grow therapy is here to help. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com thedark today to get started. That's growththerapy.com thedark.com growtherapy.com thedark availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
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B
Do you want a tea or coffee or something before we kick off? We've got all kinds of tea. We've got licorice and peppermint.
- [01:33]
A
I would just love a water. I would love a little tea if that was tea.
- [01:36]
B
Yeah. Okay. Any particular?
- [01:38]
A
One day this spring I went to visit Philip Walker, a director of Jeremy Bamber's Innocence Campaign, with our producer Natalie Jablonski. Have you got a hot chocolate there, Philip?
- [01:48]
B
I have no. I don't mind tea, but it's not. Not my favourite drink. I'm a hot chocolate man. Right, where were we?
- [01:57]
A
Philip is a semi retired company finance director who lives in a neat semi detached house of brown shingles on England's south coast. He helps direct a small but vocal group of Bamber supporters who've essentially devoted their lives to Jeremy's cause. They hold meetings, issue press releases and trawl through the case files looking for leads.
- [02:19]
B
It's become a fairly large part of my life now, so who knows, I might have been a scratch golfer by now if things had worked out differently.
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A
Philip told us he was partly drawn to the case because he feels a personal connection to Jeremy. They're about the same age and Philip, like Jeremy, was adopted through the Church of England Children's Society as a small.
- [02:42]
B
Boy and strangely, around the same time he was when the Bambers were actually looking for another child to adopt. So, in a sense, there's a slight feeling of, you know, there but for the grace of God go I.
- [02:55]
A
When Natalie and I went to see Philip this spring, it had been a few months since the New Yorker published my story outlining the fresh evidence about the silencer and the crime scene and the 999 call. The criminal Cases Review Commission had told Jeremy it was looking into the new evidence. This was a huge moment because the CCRC is the only body in the UK that can compel the Court of Appeal to rehear a case. It was Jeremy's only clear path to proving his innocence and getting out of prison.
- [03:28]
B
I feel very hopeful indeed because I think the exculpatory evidence we have is unanswerable. I mean, the real piece of gold that emerged from the article was Milbank, because that 999 call at 6:09, there is no way, if that call happened, that he could have been responsible for any of the shootings. So that was a major development from our point of view. Unknown caller. That'll be our man. Hi there. Oh, hi. Well, I just rung Heidi and she didn't answer her phone. Well, that's probably because she's sitting right next to me.
- [04:02]
A
Hi, Jeremy.
- [04:04]
B
Hiya, Heidi. Well, I. I did ring you.
- [04:06]
A
Philip speaks with Jaremi almost every day, and on this day, they were both feeling full of optimism.
- [04:13]
B
We've certainly talked our way into believing that it's gonna be positive, and rightly so, I think. I mean, come on. Y. Well, we can but hope that they're going to, within the next couple of weeks, do the right thing.
- [04:32]
A
Within the next couple of weeks. After 40 years of fighting to overturn his conviction, Jeremy Bamber seemed finally to be on the verge of clearing his name. From in the Dark and the New Yorker. I'm Heidi Blake. This is the final episode of Blood Relatives.
- [05:06]
B
From what I can remember, it was case of sort of someone find the 999.
- [05:09]
A
And me answering sort of doesn't quite make sense because that would indicate someone was alive in there, basically by the time, obviously.
- [05:16]
B
Yeah, yeah. Those that are at the time, at the scene, it was. Who else but a mad woman could do this? He'll continue to make spurious allegations until the day he dies. I don't Want to speak to you any further about this.
- [05:33]
A
Oh, at every level of the criminal justice system there's been a cover up in this case. Part one the Last Resort. Jeremy Bamber and his supporters had settled in to wait for news from the ccrc. News that could determine Jeremy's fate. They'd been told to expect this in March of this year, but March came and went with no hint of a decision. Jeremy told me the suspense was almost unbearable.
- [06:15]
B
It's extremely stressful having to wait.
- [06:18]
A
It's a huge moment, isn't it? I can't imagine how frustrating it must be not quite knowing when you're going to find out.
- [06:24]
B
Well, it'll be life changing if they refer my case to the Court of Appeal.
- [06:31]
A
The CCRC deliberates behind closed doors, so there was no way to glean how their review of the evidence was going. But by now there had been a notable shift in public attitudes to this famous case. In the months since the article, even some of the tabloids were starting to throw their weight behind Jeremy Bamber. My findings had been covered by nearly every national paper in Britain and they were splashed over multi page spreads in the Colchester Gazette, the local paper where David woods once covered the case as chief reporter. He'd been so sure of Jeremy's guilt.
- [07:11]
B
Cocky narcissist, psychopath and also cold blooded.
- [07:16]
A
But now even he was reconsidering.
- [07:18]
B
It's almost like feel terrible that I thought he was this cold blooded killer all these years and it won't be great to think how wrong I was. But I'm not alone, am I? I always said to people I don't know what's going to happen but I know there's going to be a twist one day, a massive twist. I always thought that, I thought there'd be something revealed and I think maybe what you've done has done it.
- [07:39]
A
He said what had really clinched it for him was Nick Milbank's story about the 999 call.
- [07:46]
B
That is kind of mind blowing. And if you were hearing sounds while Jeremy Bamber was outside, wow, it pretty much proves he's innocent to me. What else could it be? They can't ignore that, can they? Surely they can't ignore that.
- [08:15]
A
Jeremy had now been told that a panel of commissioners from the CCRC would meet in mid April and decide whether to refer his case for a fresh appeal. But that date came and went. Still no news. In mid May Jeremy called me to say the CCRC had told him its decision was coming by the end of the month.
- [08:42]
B
I'LL make sure that Philip lets you know as soon as we know, because I think, you know, a referral, it's going to spiral out of control quite quickly.
- [08:52]
A
Jeremy was expecting the CCRC's written decision to be devastating for the prosecution case against him. He even thought he might get out of prison right away on the strength of it.
- [09:03]
B
I'm hoping it's going to be as strong as we expect and therefore the referral will be a very strong and therefore it'll move it along very quickly. And I mean, I would be putting in a very powerful bail application asap.
- [09:20]
A
But then, at this pivotal moment, the leadership of the ccrc, this powerful organization that held his fate in its hands, was totally engulfed in a huge public scandal.
- [09:35]
B
Major failings by the Criminal Cases Review.
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A
Commission, the body that investigates wrongful convictions. The Criminal Cases Review Commission has issued an unreserved apology.
- [09:44]
B
The government has announced that there's going to be a bigger, wider public inquiry into exactly what went wrong in this case.
- [09:53]
A
The controversy that came to a head as Jeremy Bamber was still waiting for news had nothing to do with his own case. It had its roots in another wrongful conviction story, that of a former security guard named Andrew Malkinson, who'd served 17 years for a rape he didn't commit. Andrew Malkinson suffered one of the worst miscarriages of justice of modern times. Malkinson had finally been exonerated in 2023 after his lawyers commissioned DNA tests. And it turned out that police and prosecutors had known for at least 14 years that another man's DNA was found on the victim's clothing. The CCRC had twice rejected his applications for an appeal, despite glaring evidence that he was innocent. Outside the court, Malkinson said that he had been kidnapped by the state.
- [10:47]
B
I applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. They didn't investigate and they didn't believe me. I have been innocent all along.
- [11:01]
A
In the months that followed, more cases were reported, where it turned out that the CCRC had overlooked evidence that could have exonerated innocent people. As public outrage grew and scrutiny of the organisation intensified, it became clear that the CCRC's effectiveness had been seriously hampered by brutal funding cuts. It had lost more than a third of its budget in recent years. And yet commissioners, whose hours had typically been reduced to working just one day a week from home, had seen their caseloads double. As Jeremy Bamber was waiting on news of his case, the organisation's chair was forced to resign. Then, this spring, its chief executive was summoned before Parliament.
- [11:49]
B
Order. Order.
- [11:51]
A
Welcome to this afternoon and grilled by MPs on the organisation's failings. Everything from its low rate of referrals to the Court of appeal. Around 2% of all cases. Fewer than 2% is not a huge number, is it? I know those numbers are quite small to how rarely its leadership actually showed up at work. Oh, I'm probably in the office maybe one or two days every couple of months or so.
- [12:20]
B
One or two days every couple of months, yeah.
- [12:22]
A
So we are not an office based organisation anymore.
- [12:26]
B
Well, when I heard that, my jaw hit the floor.
- [12:30]
A
That's Edward Garnier, a prominent member of the House of Lords and former Solicitor General.
- [12:35]
B
It was like watching a slow car crash. It was terrible.
- [12:39]
A
Lord Garnier co chaired a previous parliamentary review of the CCRC which raised a number of red flags. The report said the CCRC failed to investigate cases properly and that it was excessively deferential to the police and the courts, the very institutions it was meant to be scrutinising. Natalie and I went to talk to Lord Garnier soon after the parliamentary hearing. He said that watching this spectacle of the organisation's leadership appearing before MPs apparently oblivious to the depth of its failures made him actually angry.
- [13:12]
B
And it wasn't funny, it was awful. Completely failing to read the room.
- [13:19]
A
Like they didn't fully understand how badly the Malkinson scandal had scarred the public's.
- [13:25]
B
Or should we say the, the political and legal world's view of the CCRC and its senior management and I guess.
- [13:31]
A
Public faith in the justice system by extension.
- [13:34]
B
Well, to me, the CCRC is an essential component of the British justice system. It is the last resort for many people. Of course, there are lots of people in prison who think I'm innocent. I didn't do it when they jolly well did. But there will be a hard cohort of wrongly convicted people in prison who need a CCRC to be able to assist them and to enable us as a civilized nation to be able to maintain a proper, humane criminal justice system.
- [14:09]
A
And how confident do you think people in prison who are innocent, who've been wrongfully convicted and who are seeking relief, those who have a case currently before the ccrc, how confident do you think they can really feel that they'll get a just outcome?
- [14:22]
B
Well, I don't imagine they're encouraged by the current state of affairs.
- [14:26]
A
The hearing ignited public fury at the CCRC and soon afterwards the Chief Executive would be forced to resign. The organisation seemed to be in freefall and Jeremy Bamber kept waiting. The CCRC had now indicated that their decision would be made by the end of May. But that day, too, flew by without news.
- [14:56]
B
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. Heidi, it's Jeremy here. It's the 28th today. I'm shocked, appalled, and cannot believe that they've. That they've missed their own deadline. I think it's absolutely shocking, and I think it's cruel, and I think that they are just unprofessional and useless. Why not just say, you know, we're referring it or we're not referring it, but anyway, I shall speak to you soon. Bye now.
- [15:43]
A
A few days after that call, the Jeremy Bamba campaign held a protest outside the CCRC's offices. They hoped to spur the organization into action. Natalie and I went along. Oh, there they are. You can see the banners already. That's actually quite a good crowd. That's not bad, is it? That's a lot of people. It was a windy, late spring day, and so scores of people had gathered in front of the organization's glass office building. Jeremy's campaign director, Philip Walker, was there, handing out flyers and directing people to their places. So have you seen anyone going in? Is there anyone actually in there today?
- [16:19]
B
As far as we know, no. Apparently we'd soaked the building sort of manager, and she said, oh, no, there's not really anybody here. So we are talking to an empty building. But yes, there is the symbolism of it, but that's about it.
- [16:35]
A
Outside the building, protesters spilled off the pavement onto the tracks of the tram, scattering every time the train went by. There are a lot of guys here wearing bright yellow T shirts that say Jeremy Bamber is innocent. And then they have these big kind of kite banners that say, innocent and failed by the ccrc.
- [16:55]
B
Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you all for joining us today.
- [16:59]
A
Philip had lined up a whole roster of speakers to address the crowd.
- [17:04]
B
There's no doubt in my mind Jeremy is innocent. I would not be here today if I didn't think he was innocent. Shame on them in there. Shame on the ccrc.
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A
One by one, the protesters took to the microphone.
- [17:15]
B
Jeremy Bamber has been incarcerated as an innocent man for almost 40 years, and nobody reading the evidence could possibly.
- [17:24]
A
They spoke for more than an hour. Talking to an empty building and is.
- [17:30]
B
There anyone from the CCRC here listening?
- [17:33]
A
No. Speaks volumes, doesn't it? Amid the crowd, I spotted a familiar face. Well, it's nice to properly meet you. I feel. I feel like we have met. You don't recognise people on Zoom when you see them in real life. It was Dennis Eady, the wrongful conviction scholar, whose tip about the Jeremy Bamber case had got me started on this whole reporting journey. Natalie and I had arranged to meet him after the protest and when we sat down together, he said that in his mind, the new evidence showed that Jeremy Bamber was the victim of the longest running miscarriage of justice in British history. If the original case that the jury looked at doesn't exist anymore, and it doesn't in this case, even people who think Jeremy's guilty would admit that, then surely you've got to have at least.
- [18:20]
B
A retrial because there is no case anymore and you can't rely on a jury that made a decision on a.
- [18:25]
A
Bunch of evidence which was completely fallacious. Still, he was not feeling optimistic. I have my doubts, let's put it that way. I'm the resident pessimist, I suppose. I've seen so many failures and so many cover ups and things that I don't trust the system anymore. Eady said that in his view, the CCRC was utterly failing in its original mission. Instead of providing the wrongly convicted with a path to exoneration, it had become just another obstacle shielding the system from scrutiny.
- [19:00]
B
You can't help thinking they're looking for a way not to refer it and.
- [19:04]
A
You can't help thinking even if they did, the Court of Appeal would probably.
- [19:07]
B
Look for a way not to quash the conviction.
- [19:09]
A
The Court of Appeal is notorious. If it doesn't want to overturn a case, it will find a way in this most high profile of cases. He said there's just too much at stake for the system to admit it might have got it wrong. It would be extremely embarrassing for Essex police because they've resisted it to this day and they fail to disclose stuff all along the line. It would be extremely embarrassing for the ccrc. It would be extremely embarrassing if the Court of Appeal to have turned the case down on at least two previous occasions. And that's why it's so difficult now to believe that they are actually going to finally overturn the case. I hope I'm wrong, but the system does not want to admit its mistakes unless it's absolutely forced to. If you're a reader, or even an aspirational reader, I hope you'll join us on Critics At Large from the New Yorker.
- [20:35]
B
Each week on this show we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here.
- [20:40]
A
And because we're culture critics, we just.
- [20:42]
B
Love to go back to the text.
- [20:45]
A
Yes. So if books are for you, critics at Large just might be for you as well.
- [20:49]
B
Join us on Critics At Large from.
- [20:50]
A
The New Yorker every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Part two, decision.
- [21:06]
B
This calling is from a person currently in a prison in England. If you do not wish to accept this call, please hang up now.
- [21:13]
A
Jeremy, thank you so much for calling back.
- [21:16]
B
Well, trying.
- [21:17]
A
I really, really appreciate it.
- [21:19]
B
Trying my best. Well, I've not had a chance to read the thing yet, so I don't know quite what they're saying. You've had a copy, so you've probably had a chance to flick through it.
- [21:31]
A
I have seen it. Yeah. The decision had finally arrived in June and the news for Jeremy was crushing. The CCRC had declined to refer the case to the Court of Appeal. Tell me sort of how you're feeling just at this news this morning.
- [21:52]
B
I mean, I'm devastated, obviously, but I don't know why they've made the decision. I don't get it, Heidi.
- [21:58]
A
I really don't.
- [21:59]
B
Yeah, I don't know. I. I mean, I'm just frustrated. I. I just. I'm just lost for words, if I'm honest, Heidi. But I've got no unit, so I'm gonna have to go. Yeah, all right, move on. Onwards and upwards. But it's not surprising. No, I didn't expect it. But there we go anyway. All right, Jeremy, speak again soon.
- [22:23]
A
You take care. We'll speak soon. All right, thanks for calling.
- [22:26]
B
Bye now. Bye. Bye.
- [22:30]
A
I had, so far only had time to skim the document in which the CCRC had set out its reasons for refusing to refer Jeremy's case. It ran to more than 200 pages of detailed argument. And when I did start to page through it more closely, it made for astonishing reading. While I was still making sense of it, I called our producer, Natalie. I wanted to fill you in on what's been happening. Oh, my gosh, yes, please fill me in. So the CCRC have made a decision not to refer the case to the Court of Appeal. Oh, my God. Yeah. So they've considered this new stuff, the kind of disturbance of the crime scene, the silencer issue and the 999 court, and they're saying none of that on its own is enough to refer the case.
- [23:19]
B
Wow.
- [23:19]
A
Okay, so. But they've done this in quite an extraordinary way that I wanted to walk through with you, because it's this document, it's like a pretty shocking document. What have they said exactly? The first Thing I should say is they're complaining that, you know, the New Yorker declined to hand over all of our source material to them, which is what they had requested. So they specifically call out the New Yorker in their decision. Yeah, there's a. There are like 16 mentions of us and they, they say we decline to hand over our source material. It says on 5 August 2024, the CCRC had written to the New Yorker asking for the tapes of my interviews, and the magazine had told them no because it never turns over source material to any official body. This is a common principle among U.S. news organizations to preserve editorial independence. Besides, the CCRC is an investigative agency. My article named all the key witnesses they needed to talk to. All they had to do was call them. And so they're kind of saying that they couldn't really assess the merits of what, you know, the new evidence that we uncovered because we didn't disclose our source material. You might think, how about CCRC going to talk to the police officers who we spoke to, for example? They have not done that, Natalie. The CCRC hadn't spoken to any of the witnesses I quoted in my article. Instead, they'd just dismissed the new evidence piece by piece. First they'd addressed my findings involving that linchpin of the case, the Silencer. The CCRC said there was nothing about the way the silencer had been handled by Jeremy Bamber's relatives or the police that could undermine the conviction. They'd considered the strange circumstances in which the silencer shaped scratches had appeared on the mantel at the manor and the records indicating that blood found in the device matched both David Beauflower and his father, Robert, when the jury had been told it matched only Sheila. But amazingly, the CCRC said none of that was, quote, relevant to the factual matrix in this case, even though David had admitted to me that he could have contaminated the silencer, you know, when you were unscrewing it. Contaminated?
- [25:50]
B
Yeah. I could have had a bit of DNA on it, of course I could.
- [25:53]
A
He never. No, that never, ever came up. The CCRC had just dismissed this out of hand. They concluded that he just hadn't really meant what he'd said to me. Quote, the comments appear flippant and suggest that David Beauflower was frustrated by the journalists questions and did not take them seriously. They do not raise any credible reason for considering that David Beauflower was making a genuine admission. The CCRC had also rejected the suggestion by Jeremy's lawyers that police had more than one silencer in their possession during the case and were running tests on all of them and potentially conflating the results. They said there was no evidence for that, even though David had told me that the police had taken away his own silencer, identical to the one he'd found at the farm, as well as his father's. Prosecutors have previously denied that the cops examined more than one silencer. Now, the CCRC said something slightly different, that police had taken the Bowflowers silencers, but only much later, once the trial was already underway, by which time there could have been no question of contamination of evidence because the investigation was complete. That was very definitely not what David had told me. So when did they come and take your silencers away and do all of that?
- [27:16]
B
Oh, within a few days of having got the. Got the results from the blood in the. In the other. The silencer. Yeah.
- [27:22]
A
I see. And then. And do you remember how long did they keep him for? For.
- [27:25]
B
Oh, months.
- [27:26]
A
Months. O.
- [27:27]
B
Months and months, yeah. When did you get to get them back?
- [27:31]
A
Really? Yeah. The CCRC had found ways to discount everything David had told me without asking him about any of it. Not one single question. They said they'd, quote, not identified any legitimate justification to seek to interview David Bowflower. So they hadn't even tried. Then they turned to my finding about Detective Inspector Ron Cook and his disturbance of the crime scene. When I'd spoken to Neil Davidson, the former crime scene investigator, he told me how, on the morning after the murders, his boss, Ron Cook, had picked up the bloodied Bible that was found next to Sheila's body and fumbled with it before the official photos were taken.
- [28:24]
B
Remember Bumbling run?
- [28:26]
A
Yeah.
- [28:27]
B
As I recall it, he lifted the Bible up, had a look at it and then he said, oh, we better put it back how it was.
- [28:34]
A
This undermined the integrity of a crucial piece of evidence and the prosecution's case that it was Jeremy who propped the Bible in its odd position against Sheila's arm as part of his staging of the scene. But the CCRC dismissed what Neil Davidson had told me. They said he couldn't say for sure that Cook had put the Bible back in the wrong place, despite those notes I'd found from members of the Firearms squad, who said the crime scene photos seemed to show the Bible in a different place than where it had been when they first found Sheila dead. And again, the CCRC hadn't managed to speak to Neil Davidson to ask him about it. Natalie and I were flabbergasted by this. And how hard is it really to speak to this guy like he's a very Easy guy to find, go and knock on his door. And then it says, the apparent statement by former DS Davidson that DI Cook picked up and then incorrectly repositioned the Bible, if accurate, does not, in the CCLC's conclusion, change the previous understanding of the crime scene to such a degree that it is possible to conclude that the jury might have reached a different verdict if they had known of it. What? Yeah. So the CCRC was saying even if Ron Cook had put the Bible back in the wrong place, it just wasn't important. This was an extraordinary position to take. Even the Court of Appeal had acknowledged when it last heard Jeremy's case in 2002, that any disturbance of the scene by police officers, had it really occurred, would have been a moral sin. But back then, judges said there was no evidence that this had happened. Now, I had an eyewitness account that Detective Inspector Ron Cook had egregiously rearranged the scene around Sheila's body. And yet the ccrc, whose job it was to root out miscarriages of justice, was saying this just didn't matter. So, okay, we haven't even got to the most bizarre part of all of this, which is the Nick Milbank stuff. Okay, I got to the part of the document where the CCRC addressed the most revelatory new finding of all. The 999 call, the one Nick Milbank had told me, came from inside the Manor Just after 6am When Jeremy was standing outside with police.
- [30:58]
B
From what I can remember, it was a case of sort of. Someone phoned the 999me answering it, and then it was just hearing background noises.
- [31:07]
A
If what Nick Milbank told me about this 999 call was true, that not only meant that Jeremy had to be innocent, but also that police had allowed vital evidence to lie buried for years because he said no one had ever asked him about what he heard on the phone that night and that a statement police had produced in his name in 2002 had not been given by him.
- [31:33]
B
Well, I certainly didn't give anyone a statement. No one's spoken to me about it since the 1980s other than you.
- [31:42]
A
I'd expected the CCRC to go to every possible length to speak to Nick Milbank directly, but instead the CCRC hadn't contacted him at all. They said that they didn't need to because Essex Police, the force responsible for the shockingly improper investigation of this crime, had got there first. It turns out that Essex Police, of their own Initiative, located Mr. Millbank and spoke to him about it. And so they've allowed Essex Police to interview Nick Milbank rather than speaking to him themselves. Right. When the allegation here is against Essex Police. So they're allowing the person being accused of something to do the investigating and the interviewing of the witness. That is. That is shocking. Yeah, I mean, my mind is kind of blown by it. Nick Milbank still worked for the force and his bosses told the CCRC that after they read his interview with me, they'd gone ahead and taken a new statement from him on their own to ask him about what he'd said. This new statement, produced by Essex Police, is handwritten and dated 9-10-2024. So this new statement from Nick Milbank says, I am making this statement in relation to a recent article in the New Yorker. I was not aware of the existence of this article until today. I have never to my knowledge spoken to the New Yorker and certainly have not endorsed the article. I mean, that is just not true. That is just. I mean, needless to say, that is completely false. What is this guy's deal? You've heard the tape. I mean, that's just not true and we actually can prove that. Milbanke's statement continued that he did remember getting a few texts from some woman asking about statements, but he said this woman did not identify herself as a journalist and that he'd never met her. It was true that we'd never met in person, but we had spoken on the phone and I had clearly identified myself. Hello, my name's Heidi Blake. I'm a writer for a magazine in New York, the New Yorker, and I'm doing it for like longish piece about Milbank. And I went on to exchange dozens of texts about the 999 call and the statement he said he never gave. And he also responded to a memo containing detailed questions from the New Yorker's fact checkers. The weirdest thing was that he knew I'd recorded our phone call. I even told him by text that we planned to use the tape in this podcast and he'd replied with two thumbs up emojis. So now there was this new statement in Nick Milbank's name containing the demonstrably false assertion that he'd never spoken to me. But that wasn't all. Alongside it, Essex police had now produced a different version of the earlier statement from 2002, the one he'd told me he never gave. Unlike the version I'd seen in the files, which was typed and unsigned, the this latest iteration was handwritten with a signature that read NR Milbank the way he told me he always signs his name. Then they'd produced a final statement from Millbank confirming that the signature on this handwritten document was his and therefore the 2002 statement must have been written by him all along. As if this strange game of statements about statements about statements wasn't baffling enough, I could already see that there were discrepancies between the two handwritten documents, the statement from 2002 and the recent one in which he'd apparently denied ever speaking to me. If you scroll to 104, this is the handwritten statement that he's just produced in response to the article, which is not written by the same person. I mean, the handwriting is different. The handwriting is different. Also, if you look at the top, his name has been spelt wrong.
- [35:46]
B
What?
- [35:46]
A
Wait a second. Yeah, his name's been spelt with two Ls and it's Milbank with one L and they've crossed one out. But most astonishing of all to me was that amid all this fuss over his statements, it seemed that no one had asked Milbanke the most important question of all. Had he really received a 999 call from inside the manor, as he'd told me? And what had he heard inside? Without speaking to Millbank, the CCRC had concluded that the reference in the files to a 999 call from White House Farm was just an administrative error. The CCRC declined to answer detailed questions about its reasons for reaching this decision. My first thought was to go back to Milbank to ask what had happened to make him disavow our conversation. And then, while I was still pondering how to go about this, I was blindsided by something totally unexpected.
- [37:26]
B
Hey.
- [37:27]
A
Hi. This is me blowing up Natalie's phone again. So, yeah, something crazy has happened. I'm still kind of making sense of it, but okay. So Nick Milbank has died.
- [37:45]
B
What?
- [37:46]
A
Yeah, he's died. He died on the 6th of June. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah.
- [37:53]
B
Oh, my God.
- [37:54]
A
Yeah. His funeral is actually today. I'm just looking at a death notice Essex Police have just sent out.
- [38:00]
B
Oh, my goodness.
- [38:02]
A
Nick Milbank had died a few weeks earlier, on June 6. He was 67 years old and Essex Police had published a notice thanking him for 50 years of service. He'd started out as a police cadet when he was about 17, but. Yeah, so that's it. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. We'd had no idea that Nick Milbank might be ill. And the news was still sinking in, because his death was not only tragic for his family. It had huge implications for Jeremy Bamber's case. Like, now no one can ever speak to him about this. Like, the CCRC have not spoken to him and he's produced this bizarre statement and now.
- [38:57]
B
Whoa.
- [38:58]
A
Yeah, it's kind of wild that he's. His employer of 50 years has come to him and, like, he's given them a statement which kind of kicks all of this down the road by kind of saying, he never really spoke to me when he did and now he's gone and now the CCRC can't ever interview him about that phone call. That is crazy. And now we'll never know why he made the one statement to us and then told Essex Police that he never spoke to us. Yeah, we can only guess. Yeah. So, like, we're just left with this kind of. We've got this tape. This tape is the only document now of what Nick Milbank heard that night. That's the only, like, glimpse through the White House window. Like, it's just what he heard. Yeah, it's quite kind of haunting to think about. Later that day, I got a call from Wakefield Prison.
- [40:02]
B
So, Milbank, you need to keep those recordings extremely safe.
- [40:08]
A
Sure. No, they're safe. When did you hear about Nick Milbank having died? And what was.
- [40:12]
B
Two minutes ago? You just heard two minutes ago.
- [40:15]
A
Huh.
- [40:17]
B
I'm sad for his wife and for his family. Of course I am. But you couldn't make this shit up. I mean, excuse my language, but you couldn't. I mean, you just couldn't make up the twists and turns in this case. But the reason I'm ringing is saying, look, you've got the audio tape. He told you the truth. We know that There was a 999 call received from the house. He's confirmed that. And you have that gold, which can no longer be disputed.
- [40:46]
A
Yeah.
- [40:47]
B
It's just another extraordinary day, Heidi. It's not the end of it. Honestly. I'm not giving up.
- [40:55]
A
Jeremy does still have a right to challenge the CCRC's decision on the fresh evidence. And there are still a few subsidiary points from his original application that the CCRC has yet to rule on. Already, his lawyers are pushing back on the refusal to refer his case on multiple grounds. Among them is an argument that the CCRC failed in its duty of care to Nick Millbank. The lawyers say he was a whistleblower and the CCRC had an obligation to protect him after he disclosed a potential cover up by his employer, Essex Police. But instead it had put him at risk and compromised his evidence by allowing the force to deal with him directly. Correctly, they wrote, the result of this dereliction of the CCRC's duty of care is that Mr. Millbank, who was by all accounts quite ill at the time, was possibly pressured by Essex Police into producing a statement that was not factual. I sent detailed questions to Essex Police about all of this, but the force declined to answer any of them. Jeremy Bamber's lawyers maintain that the CCRC's failure to interview Milbanke, along with multiple other grounds set out in their latest submissions, should be enough to overturn the decision and to get Jeremy his fresh appeal. There is, however, one big hitch. The authority that gets to decide whether the CCRC got it right. Well, it's none other than the ccrc. They're the house of last resort, so they get to mark their own homework. And each time the CCRC says no, all that remains is to go back to square one and start all over again. Because there's no limit on the number of times a person can make new applications to the ccrc, anytime fresh evidence turns up. And so already, Jeremy and his team of support quarters are back at work, scouring through the case files, looking for something new. I still keep in touch with Jeremy, but we no longer talk every day. He told me our calls had taken more of an emotional toll than he'd expected.
- [43:55]
B
I mean, I've probably been more emotional with you than I have with many others because we've had to touch on things that have made me cry, you know, and have been emotional and have been private and personal and kind of, you know, the love of my family and personal stuff that I haven't wanted to share, but it's made me tearful. I mean, I coped the best I could and did the best I could, and I ask anyone to put themselves in my position and try and figure out how we cope. I hope I get out and maybe I can have a little life outside. But sometimes, you know, Heidi, I don't think that I will ever get out. And I mean that genuinely. I genuinely mean that they will. Will find ways to just obstruct and, you know, and. And I just feel, you know, it is what it is. It doesn't. Just because you kept me in jail 40 years, that doesn't change my innocence.
- [45:08]
A
It's not hard to see the last years of Jeremy's life stretching ahead just like this. Locked away in his cell, combing through all those piles of documents, burning through his phone minutes, counting down his birthdays, endlessly waiting and calling out into the void of that empty building.
- [45:35]
B
Sam Sa.
- [46:32]
A
Blood Relatives is written and produced by me, Heidi Blake and lead producer Natalie Jablonski. It's edited by Alison Macadam. Samara Freemark is the managing producer for the series. Additional editing by Madeleine Barron, Willing Davidson and Julia Rothschild. Additional production by Raymond to Tonga Ka Theme and original music by Alex Weston. Additional music by Chris Julin and Alison Leighton Brown. This episode was mixed by Corey Schreppel. Our art is by Owen Gent. Art direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Mikolov Fact checking by Naomi Sharp Legal review by Fabio Bertoni and Ben Murray. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The head of Global audio for Conde Nast is Chris Bannon. The editor of the New Yorker is David Remnick. If you have comments or story tips, please send them to the team@inthedarknewyorker.com and make sure to follow in the Dark wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Madeline. If you've enjoyed this series and want to support in the Dark, then please subscribe to the New Yorker. Subscribing is the absolute best way to support our show and gives you access to all our past episodes and future seasons too. We're already working on our next big story and we can't wait to bring it to you. Subscribe@newyorker.com Dark and as always, thank you for listening to in the Dark. Kay Jeweler's Black Friday Sale is on. Now's the time to get up to 50% off Black Friday deals with Save it this big. You can get gifts for everyone on your list. Plus, if Black Friday lines aren't your thing, skip em at Kay. You can buy online and pick up in store or get free shipping right to your home. This holiday season. Unwrap love and savings with Kay. Exclusions apply. See kay.comexclusions for details. With stays under $250 a night, VRBO makes it easy to celebrate sweater weather. Book a cabin with leaf views or a home with a fire pit for nights with friends with stays under $250 a night. Find a home for your exact needs. Book now at verbo. Com.
- [49:12]
B
From PRX.