BLOOD RELATIVES

Did the U.K.’ most infamous family massacre end in a miscarriage of justice?

- HEIDI BLAKE

The Whitehouse Farm murders were an unusual case, because from the outset there were only two plausible killers.

Whitehouse Farm stood in open fields, facing the bleak Essex salt marshes, its columned portico lit by the moon. It was a midsummer night, nearing 4 A.M., when a patrol car sped toward the property. Three police officers got out at the end of the driveway, and a silver car pulled up behind. The driver, Jeremy Bamber, was the twenty-four-year-old scion of a local farming dynasty; his parents, Nevill and June, occupied the Whitehouse. Bamber had phoned the police half an hour earlier to report a panicked call from his father. His sister, Sheila, had “gone berserk,” he said. Her six-year-old twin sons were asleep upstairs, and she had a gun.

Two of the officers told Bamber to follow them. The Whitehouse lay around a bend, concealed by tall trees, and they crept through the darkness until its rear wall came into view. Lights were shining in three windows: the kitchen, a bathroom, and the bedroom where Sheila’s twins were sleeping. But the only sound from within was the faint whining of a dog. They cut across a field to the front, where light filtered through the curtains of the master bedroom. Seeing a shadow looming at the window, the men ducked behind a hedge and braced for shots. When none came, they raced back toward the patrol car, the officers radioing for reinforcements.

At the car, Bamber made a confession. The previous night, before heading home from work on the farm, he had taken his father’s .22 Anschutz rifle out to shoot rabbits—and he had left the weapon in the kitchen, its magazine still loaded. “Oh, God,” he said. “I hope she hasn’t done anything silly.”