Mass murderer Jeremy Bamber is hoping the discovery of new photographic evidence could set him free. It comes ahead of the 40th anniversary of a crime that shook Britain and led to the killer, now 64, being jailed for life after shooting dead five members of his family at their farm. Bamber was convicted after a jury heard how he had used a rifle with a silencer to murder adoptive parents, June and Nevill, both 61, and adoptive sister Sheila Caffell, 28, along with her twin boys Daniel and Nicholas, aged six.

At his trial he claimed Sheila who suffered from schizophrenia, had shot her family and then herself before he arrived at the scene. But the prosecution argued his sister’s blood was found inside the silencer, and she was too short to have killed herself with the rifle with it still in place. Trial judge Justice Drake told jurors they could convict Bamber “on the evidence of the silencer alone”.

Now Bamber’s lawyers say they have photographic proof that a second silencer, which they claim was seized by police on the day of the killings at White House Farm in Tolleshunt D’Arcy, Essex, was also examined by investigators and never disclosed to the defence. They hope the new evidence can be taken to the Court of Appeal on the basis that the jury had not been made aware of possible new evidence that would have helped the defence case. Bamber’s lawyer Mark Newby said: “The whole tenet of the case run by the Crown in the original trial was that there was one silencer.

“The whole basis of the case was to link it to one and to argue the only possible explanation for that was that Jeremy had staged the scene, which was then linked to blood on that one silencer. “It’s all interlinked and so if there were two it undermines potentially all the evidence the Crown linked to this silencer. So it’s really important if there were two.”. The prosecution claimed Bamber broke into the house in the early hours of August 7 and killed his entire family using a rifle already inside the property, and which already had its silencer attached.

The order of events is unclear, but it was claimed during the attack that Bamber and 6ft4in farmer dad Nevill had been embroiled in a violent struggle in the kitchen downstairs. During this fight, the silencer, still attached to the gun, had scraped against a mantlepiece, leaving red paint on the device. It was argued the silencer also contained one flake of blood, which matched Sheila’s type. The prosecution said there was only ever one silencer in the case - and this was retrieved from White House Farm by Bamber’s cousin David Boutflour on August 10, and Essex Police collected it from Boutflour’s sister’s home on August 12.

Bamber’s lawyers say they now have photographic proof that a second silencer, which they claim was seized by police on the day of the killings, was also examined by investigators and never disclosed to the defence, which they claim would undermine the safety of the conviction. “The whole tenet of the case run by the Crown in the original trial was that there was one silencer,” said Mark Newby, Bamber’s lawyer.

“The whole basis of the case was to link it to one moderator and to argue the only possible explanation for that was that Jeremy had gone back into the house and staged the scene, which was then linked to blood on that one silencer. “It’s all interlinked and so if there were two it undermines potentially all the evidence the Crown linked to this moderator, and so it’s really important if there were two.”.

Evidence from Bamber’s ex Julie Mugford, who said he had told her he was going to kill his family, was also crucial to his conviction. Bamber’s defence claimed Sheila, a model who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, had committed the murders and then killed herself. Prosecutors successfully argued Sheila was too short to have killed herself with the silencer attached and could not have shot herself and then placed the silencer in the gun cupboard, where it was found, and so she must have been killed by a mass murderer.

During the trial the silencer was referenced as exhibit number DRB/1. But within thousands of police files released in 2011, there are statements from at least two forensic scientists, along with other handwritten notes, that reference a silencer with a different exhibit number, describing it as “SBJ/1”. While two different exhibit numbers were also attached to two different “item” numbers. Bamber’s team say there is also evidence there were different amounts of blood and contaminants retrieved from them.

They contest they have found that one silencer had four blood stains on it and another had just two. They claim records show that SBJ/1 had paint evidence on it and that DRB/1 had blood evidence, and that Essex Police merged the items to produce one key piece of evidence for the prosecution’s case. These claims have been with the CCRC since 2021 but we can reveal that an image obtained only in recent months and added to Bamber’s submission in November could now prove the theory.