Prank Phone Calls, Cash Windfalls & Other Strange Reasons for Banging Your Head Against Walls: The White House Farm Murders

Cold Case Murder Mysteries

True Crime

3.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2020

⏱️ 98 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sometime during the night of August 7, 1985, a gruesome mass murder took place within the residence located at White House Farm in Essex, England. Homeowners June and Nevill Bamber, 61, were hosting their 28-year-old daughter, Sheila, and her twin sons, Daniel and Nicolas, who were both 6 years old. Sadly, by morning, all of them will have been shot to death. Even more tragically, the crime scene appears to show the incident was a murder-suicide orchestrated by Sheila, who was troubled by severe mental illness, and seemingly on the verge of losing custody of her kids.

But the police can feel something isn't right. Living nearby is the Bamber's son Jeremy, whose story appears to have some holes. Soon enough, he finds himself under suspicion, and a controversy ignites about the true identity of the killer. Was it Sheila, motivated by paranoid delusions related to her Schizophrenia, or did Jeremy Bamber have his sights set on inheriting the family estate for himself, and saw Sheila as an easy target for a scapegoat?

Join host Ryan Kraus for a psychological examination of this fascinating, yet horrific crime in an effort to learn the truth about what really happened that fateful night.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody welcome back to Cold Case Murder Mysteries. I'm your host Ryan Kraus
0:10.3	here once again to drag you down deep into the dark underbelly of the human condition
0:15.0	to uncover the truth about an incessantly controversial case, the White House Farm Murders.
0:21.3	On the night of August 6th, 1985, leading into the early morning hours of the next day,
0:27.4	a gruesome massacre took place at a large farmhouse in rural Essex, England.
0:35.1	Five people were shot and killed with a 22 rifle by an unknown assailant. The victims were homeowners June and
0:40.6	Neville Bamber, both 61 years of age, in addition to their 28-year-old daughter Sheila and her six-year-old twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas.
0:51.0	In the immediate aftermath, it seemed all but inevitable that police would conclude what was evident at the crime scene.
0:59.0	Sheila went off the deep end and committed a murder suicide that left everyone in the house did.
1:06.0	Case closed.
1:07.7	But not so fast, despite the evidence initially appearing to promote a narrative conducive to Sheila being at fault,
1:16.0	police begin to have suspicions about her 24-year-old brother Jeremy Bamber, who lives only three miles from the farmhouse. A closer look at the
1:26.2	evidence while it muddles the overall picture of exactly what happened that
1:30.5	night also starts revealing a likelihood that Jeremy happened that
1:34.0	Jeremy,
1:35.0	Jeremy, not Sheila, was the killer.
1:38.0	Soon enough, Jeremy Bamber finds himself defending accusations of guilt and is thereby arrested.
1:46.3	In the end, he's convicted of murdering five people.
1:50.5	But did he do it? Or as the crime scene suggested, was the culprit really Sheila.
1:57.0	Let's take a look. Now, what's interesting about this case is that it's eerily similar in tone to the Bain family murders.
2:06.5	We have the same number of victims, the same murder weapon in the form of a 22 rifle with silencer, a mother who was unreasonably obsessed with religion,
2:17.0	specifically the devil, a son who exhibits highly suspicious behavior,
	...

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