New Evidence in a Notorious British Murder Case

"The massacre at Whitehouse Farm, in the summer of 1985, was one of the most infamous crimes in British history. A wealthy farming couple named Nevill and June Bamber were shot dead in the middle of the night in their country manor, along with their daughter, Sheila, and her six-year-old twin sons. The Bambers were regarded as gentry in the sleepy rural community of Tolleshunt D'arcy, in Essex, where they lived, and their murder obsessed the nation."

"The crime had all the trappings of a classic English whodunnit. The Whitehouse-a grand Georgian manor facing the bleak Essex salt marshes-had been locked from the inside when the family's bodies were discovered. Sheila, a successful model who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, was found dead holding the murder weapon. Police initially assumed she had killed the family in a murder-suicide, but that theory was upended by a series of troubling clues:"

The massacre at Whitehouse Farm in the summer of 1985 left Nevill and June Bamber, their daughter Sheila, and her six-year-old twin sons shot dead. The house had been locked from the inside and Sheila was found clutching the murder weapon. Police first suspected a murder-suicide but discovered troubling anomalies: a bloody Bible propped at an odd angle, missing family valuables, and a blood-spattered silencer hidden under the stairs. Prosecutors charged Sheila's brother, Jeremy Bamber, alleging he murdered the family for inheritance and staged the scene to frame his sister. He was convicted in 1986 and remains incarcerated in a maximum-security prison known as "Monster Mansion." Substantial questions now surround the evidence and whether the conviction reflects guilt or a miscarriage of justice.

Read at The New Yorker