By Mark Williams-Thomas, TV Presenter, Criminologist & Child Protection Expert, Birmingham City University.

The scene that greeted the police officers on their entry into the farmhouse was one of blood-soaked carnage.     In the kitchen on the ground floor, they found the body of Neville Bamber, dressed in his pyjamas and slumped over a chair.   He had been shot eight times, with six of the bullets fired at close range into his head.    But it seemed clear that he had put up a fierce struggle against his lethal assailant, for not only  was his face severely bruised but also around his corpse lay the evidence of a fight, including broken crockery, a smashed ceiling light and upturned furniture.   

The trail of murderous violence extended upstairs.   In one bedroom with tragic poignancy, were the bodies of six-year-old twins Daniel and Nicholas Caffell.   Eight bullets, all delivered from very close range, had accounted for them as they slept.    In the master bedroom lay the heavily blood-stained body of June Bamber who had been shot seven times, once through her forehead right between her eyes.  FINALLY there was the body of Sheila Caffell and the mother of the murdered twins, who had two bullet wounds in her neck, a rifle across her chest and a bible at her side.

Altogether 25 rounds had been fired during this massacre, which took place during the early hours of 7th August 1985 at White House farm in rural Essex.    It was a crime that shook the nation in its savagery and its extraordinary circumstances.  Initially the police and the media were certain that the bloodbath had been perpetrated by Sheila Caffell during some kind of frenzied breakdown.     She was a vulnerable ex-model with a long history of mental illness.    All the victims were members of her immediate family, her adoptive parents, Neville and June, the owners of White house Farm and her twin sons, Daniel and Nicholas.   The pattern of killing suggested that Sheila had killed the other four and then shot herself in a deranged murder-suicide. 

But then the saga took a bizarre twist.   A few weeks after the crime, the spotlight of suspicion began to fall on Sheila’s brother Jeremy, who had also been adopted by the Bambers and lived in a rented cottage near the farm.    Gradually, the police built up a case against him.    Having been charged with the murders, Bamber was put on trial in October 1986 and after a very high profile court case lasting 19 days, was found guilty.    
He has been in prison ever since, one of the few lifers in Britain who has been told that he will never be released because of the gravity of his crimes.

After all these years behind bars, Bamber continues to maintain his innocence.   And in the subsequent 26 years since the trial, doubts have grown about his guilt.   This case has attracted considerable attention and continues with opinions split between those who believe Jeremy Bamber is innocent and those that firmly believe he is guilty.   It is accepted by the original police team that vital evidence was lost, and enquires and forensic examinations were not carried out properly.    Vital material was destroyed or ignored.   The crime scene was never secured properly.  These are all failings that would not be accepted in any murder enquiry today. But we must remember this is 1985 and policing has changed massively since then.

I write as a criminologist and former detective myself with much experience of working on high profile cases and subsequently studying many more.   The White House Farm murders have only recently attracted my attention but having looked in depth at the evidence, it is clear that Bamber’s new legal team have identified some very significant points which need to be carefully considered. 

Tonight, in an ITV documentary special, I have been given exclusive access to a lot of previously unseen documents and have set out to challenge the new evidence by Bambers legal team and see if it stands up under separate scrutiny.  

The essence of the prosecution case is that Bamber was a cunning manipulator who loathed his adoptive parents and staged the massacre so that he could inherit the family farm and fortune.   According to this narrative, Bamber climbed into the White House Farm on the night of 7th August, took one of his father’s rifles, complete with a silencer on it, and embarked on the murders.   But in this account, two unforeseen problems almost ruined the deadly scheme.   First of all, his father Neville put up powerful resistance despite having sustained a number of bullet wounds.   That, said the prosecutors, was why he was battered so badly.    Second, Bamber discovered that, with the silencer on the rifle, it would have been physically impossible for Sheila to have shot herself  because her arms were simply not long enough to stretch to the trigger while holding the muzzle under her chin.    So, according to the prosecutors, Bamber removed the silencer after killing her and left the now shorter rifle on her chest.   Having placed the silencer in the gun cupboard downstairs, the illusion of suicide was complete.

So this object was absolutely crucial to the prosecution case.  The silencer was the key single piece of evidence in this case . In  fact, the judge in the original trial said that “on its own, it could lead the jury to believe that the defendant is guilty.”   Given its strength however to the case it is important to note that the silencer was not found by the police at all during their initial search of White House Farm.    

Instead, it was uncovered by members of the wider Bamber family days after the police had finished their work at the crime scene.   It was the discovery of the silencer that suddenly turned Jeremy Bamber into the suspect. 

The evidence that a silencer was definitely used when Sheila was killed has always has been the prosecutions case, yet this is now where Bamber's lawyers have obtained evidence to challenge this view.  In preparing to mount a renewed appeal to the Criminal Cases Review Commission, his legal team ordered one of the world’s leading ballistics experts, based in the USA, to conduct tests with a rifle and ammunition exactly the same as that used at White House Farm.   This expert’s findings, based on detailed photographs taken of Sheila's two gunshot wounds is that in his opinion,  one of the wounds was consistent with the rifle  without a silencer attached. Just as importantly, in the police photos of Neville’s body, there are a number of small, circular burn marks on his back. Again Bambers's legal team have now obtained expert evidence which concludes that the three marks are consistent with the artificially heated muzzle of a rifle without a silencer.  

For the TV documentary tonight, we replicated precisely the firearms tests from the USA and achieved exactly the same results. One crucial point which has troubled me is how no residue, lead or gun oil was ever found on Sheila, despite having fired 25 rounds, which would have entailed reloading the .22 rifle at least twice.    Furthermore her manicured nails were undamaged. Although no proper forensic tests were carried out;  to the naked eye no residue was visible on her hands.   So I tested this and  loaded the bullets into the magazine . I found that I could easily load the first 9 bullets into the magazine and use the pads of my finger, leaving no residue on my fingers. And if i did get any residue on my fingers it was easily removed simply by wiping my hands on clothing.

The programme also looks at other evidence crucial to Bamber’s conviction.    One is the fact that his former girlfriend, Julie Mugford, was paid £25,000 for her story by the News of the World.   She played a crucial role for the prosecution.   After initially supporting Bamber in the wake of the killings, she turned against him and told the police that he had confessed he was planning to kill his parents.  “Tonight or never”, she claimed he said on the day of the murders.    But the jury never learnt of her dealings with the media.  
In our programme tonight, we have tape of Bamber saying, more with regret than anger, “I think there is no question that Sheila was responsible”

Even after 27 years this case still attracts massive public opinion and attention . Whatever your view - ultimately the decision sits with the Commission as to whether this case will be referred back to the court of Appeal for the second time.   A decision which I am told is imminent. 

Twitter @mwilliamsthomas

By Craig Jackson, Professor of Occupational Health Psychology.

The five days of rioting and incidents that occurred in the UK provide many with evidence that our cultural morals are at a low point. And why should it not - when large groups of people take part in positive acts, we are quick to reassure ourselves that society is "ok" and that we are good people. Look at the aftermath of the death of Princess Diana, Live Aid, or the coming together following terrorist atrocities. Equally then, we should be open to the idea of analysing what state society is in when group-behaviour and mob-rule goes the other way and is destructive, rather than creative.

For a period of almost one week, parts of the UK suffered from rioting and looting, following the death of 29 year old Mark Duggan who was shot by police on Thursday 4th August. Riots began following a peaceful march that weekend to a police station near the family of Mr Duggan, that appeared to be taken over by a violent group. Rioting, damage and looting then spread that night throughout Tottenham, then to other parts of London. By Monday the disturbances had gathered pace, and by Tuesday, rumours of rioting spreading to other major UK cities were proved true. Birmingham, Manchester, Nottingham, Liverpool and Wolverhampton all suffered from city centre disturbances. By this point, the disturbances were no longer associated with the death of Mr Duggan but had transformed into looting and criminal damage. Five deaths occurred throughout; a young male, Trevor Ellis was shot in a car in Croydon; Richard Bowes (68) was beaten when trying to put out a fire, and possibly the most disturbing was the deliberate murder of three men in Birmingham protecting local businesses - Haroon Jahan, Shazad Ali, and Abdul Musavir.

One of the main arguments people now have concerning the UK moral decline is because of the young ages of those involved in some of the most horrifying incidents we saw. However, although experts at the time were quick to point out that the rioting was the preserve of younger people, and the "youth problem", court and police statistics show that approximately 60% of those involved were 20 years or older and therefore should have known better. Looting was not a youth crime in this case. Additional confusion arises because of the variety of people who became involved. Looters ranged from the traditional underclass, angry and un-empowered through to trainee social workers, models, teaching assistants, and even an heiresses. This broad societal cross-section of looters has confounded many and still poses the question as to why such people could get swept up in the damage and opportunistic looting as they did. This question is a fairly simple one to answer - mob-rule and the seductive power of being on the winning team (however short-lived it may be) can be so alluring for some that they do not think rationally about the pros and cons of their choices, and believe the "anonymity of the crowd" will protect them. For others with nothing to lose, the allure is even more understandable. When the reality of the situation was made clear to rioters via the police and media, that cctv and forensic evidence would be used in the hunt for them, that appeared to be the greatest deterrent  that finally saw calm on the streets.

The media also appeared keen to demonise social networking and text messaging - particularly the Blackberry message system - by claiming that rioters were using them to coordinate their attacks. My investigations into this at the time of the riots showed that social networking was not being used for significant strategic advantage by the rioters. In fact I remain convinced that sites such as Twitter actually came of age as a force for good and provided some reassuring evidence of anything but a moral collapse. Almost all users of Twitter who commented on the riots were against what was being done, and it provided a platform whereby people felt they could state their anger or despair at what was happening in their communities or in the UK at large, in a safe way, with no fear of retribution from rioters or looters. After rioting in London, the #riotscleanup stream on Twitter had as many as 45 comments made each second. On the first night of rioting in Birmingham, Twitter was being used by local people to plan to meet up the next morning and commence a clean up of damaged areas with #brumriotscleanup. The collective message of the tweeters was a defiant one; "you can riot every night if you want to, but we will be back each morning to clear it up". The broom and brush became the new symbol of defiance and gave a clear message to looters that they were now on the back foot - this was "community by consent".

Despite the rioting, looting, and (we were subsequently informed) attacks on the police by gangs using handguns in Birmingham, the riots were relatively short-lived and quelled by threats of firmer policing and prosecutions. It should be remembered that while the police were facing criticism for not being harsh enough on the rioters, the disturbances were quelled without a single shot being fired by police, water cannon, or use of CS gas - and the policing by consent model was proved right. I myself witnessed first-hand the benefits of the calm policing approach in the press conference given by Chris Simms, the Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, the morning after the three Birmingham murders. In appealing for calm in the light of potential racial tensions following the triple murder, Sims was able to use the public revulsion at what had happened in order to appeal for calm and to avert further violence. It was as if the deaths had provided a breathing space for everyone to pause and consider the gravity of what had happened in Birmingham. And into that space came the unassuming and quietly noble figure of Tariq Jahan, the 45 year old father of one of the murdered men, Haroon. Speaking the very next day of his loss, his composure and selflessness impressed many. Buoyed by the crowds and tv cameras around him, he could have easily called for revenge and been backed by a community and a viewing public at large who were angry with the looters and who wanted a swift ending. Instead his words, questioning why communities were killing themselves, then telling people to go home unless they wanted to lose their sons also, was stark and noble. The public rally later that week saw five thousand people of all faiths meet to express their regret at what had happened in their city. Such meetings were not isolated just to Birmingham, although the gathering in this city was touched with more loss than anywhere else.

Other elements of the media also helped to bring about the moral outrage of the community; the powerful video of the young overseas student in London who was punched before his backpack was rifled through by "good Samaritans" while he was dazed, was another goal in the game of morality-football against the looters. This was not a riot born of political motives or anger, but wholesale looting and pillaging. Spurred on by repeated tv coverage of such callous acts, other citizens felt motivated to take direct action - creating Walls of Love outside damaged shops, with many using thousands of post-it notes with positive messages written on them to sure up the beleaguered and battered business owners. The silent majority was expressing itself in words, colour and language. These notes looked quite reminiscent of the notes left at ground zero or following the Japanese tsunami. Powerful and silent images. Other shops saw the plywood boards that had replaced the broken windows receive "positive vandalism" - creative artwork with anti-looting messages, like post-it notes written on a large scale. Clearly this was a "low-tech" response to what many thought at the time had been high-tech coordinated rioting.

The public response to the riots has no doubt seen a triumph for the silent majority over a minority who destroyed their own communities. How we think about civil disturbance in the future will no doubt have been changed, and possibly the way the police gather evidence and combat such incidents will also be influenced by what happened last month. The latest debate in this saga now revolves around the courts and criminal justice system - with many experts questioning whether or not the sentences being passed to looters are proportionate and consistent. An outraged and angered public do not want consistency in this matter - but they do want punishment for those involved and they want it to be publicised too. That desire for retribution and restoration through the criminal justice system is itself not morally incompatible with the high-ground the citizens have occupied throughout the riots. It is preferable to lynch mobs, vigilantism and kangaroo courts - which, knowing human nature, would no doubt be the next stage of justice exacted by angry citizens if the riots had not come to the relatively moralistic end that they did. To deny the citizens of the justice they waited for would be anything but moral.

By Professor David Wilson & Professor Craig Jackson

"I am fully aware that the media will attempt to label me as a nut."
“2083 – A Declaration of European Independence” 
Anders Breivik's manifesto

What does the media mean when describing an offender as either evil, twisted, insane, deranged, mad, or more popularly (when the offences committed are non-lethal) as a "nutter”? On an intuitive level, the media might say that these labels could apply to a person who planted bombs to kill others, who repeatedly murdered people that he encountered, or who was intent on carrying out his plans, no matter which innocent victims or laws stood in his way. 

No doubt this was why Anders Breivek, the Norwegian spree killer and bomber, was recently described by his lawyer as “insane”.  Insane of course, is the legal (and less sensationalist) equivalent of all the synonyms listed above that are used by the media. It is a grown-up summary of the definitive "nutter". It stands to reason that someone who targeted the Government buildings in Oslo to plant a bomb, who detonated it without any form of warning beforehand, who drove the distance to Utoeya island to kill more than 60 people who were selected for their political beliefs and future-potential is clearly not normal, but are they necessarily insane? Breivik admitted his responsibility for the crimes, but denounced the seriousness of what he did as being necessary in order to save the Scandinavian culture.

Insanity (as a legal defence or a mitigating circumstance) is for psychiatrists and medics to decide - not legal defence teams. Robert Sartin, a young man who committed a spree in Monkseaton on a bank holiday weekend in 1989 with a shotgun, managed to injure 14 people and kill one person. He was arrested and eventually sentenced indefinitely to a secure special hospital. He was labelled by the press and his legal team as insane at the time of the killings, possibly because no underlying cause could be ascertained for what he did. Why did Derrick Bird, Thomas Hamilton, or Michael Ryan, the three perpetrators of the UK's worst spree killings, not receive the posthumous label of being insane? Perhaps there was no need to describe them as insane because they did not survive, therefore meaning that society did not have "deal" with them. Additionally in the case of all three major UK spree killers, underlying motives were all attributed to Ryan, Hamilton and Bird - something that has never understood with Sartin. Although spree-killers are not the same as serial-killers, (they both have a different type of psychopathology) looking at Dr Fred "Harold" Shipman - the UK's most prolific serial killer who killed at least 215 of his patients – he was never labelled as insane. This could perhaps be because Shipman never admitted to his killings. If mass killers - either serial murderers or spree murderers survive their crimes and acknowledge that they "did it" it seems that society (not the killers themselves) rush to apply the insanity label - possibly for the sake of society in order to make those crimes palatable. 

The Law and Psychiatry are often very hostile bedfellows. The former wants certainty and precision so as to demonstrate responsibility, and the latter is more nuanced and balanced, and weighs up behaviour, thoughts and actions over a long period of time – certainly much longer than the duration of a trial. Naturally, lawyers and psychiatrists are trained in different ways, and have different ways to describe seemingly similar behaviours, events or people.

However, perhaps most people can be agreed that “insanity” involves uncontrollable, impulsive behaviour, and an absence of the influence of reality upon the actions or thoughts of the inflicted individual. This translates into psychosis - the inability to differentiate reality from anything else. Spree killers however are very sane - they plan their actions and they know that what they do is wrong, deliberately targeting younger (innocent) victims as they represent both the ultimate insult to society as well as the easiest victim group. Thomas Hamilton, when embarking on the Dunblane primary school spree took with him ample rounds for his revolver pistols as well as ear defenders and a set of wire cutters. Upon arrival at Dunblane primary school he parked his vehicle and then cut the phone wires on a telegraph pole in the school car park. Unknown to Hamilton, the phone wires he cut were not those of the primary school, and school staff were able to telephone for help - otherwise the number of those injured and killed could have been substantially higher. Insane individuals do not engage in such premeditation - but immoral, self-centred, impulsive and immature individuals do. Breivik’s bomb attack on Oslo and then his killing spree on Utoeya Island were clearly thought-through behaviours, which involved careful and meticulous planning. By psychiatric definition, Breivik is quite clearly sane – even if his views and his behaviour are repulsive and abhorrent. It will no doubt emerge that Breivik is not an Islamophobe who went on a killing spree because of political frustration, but a stymied, thwarted, narcissistic individual who was frustrated with his lack of achievement in life, who believed he deserved to achieve more, who spotted an obvious target group to blame his failings on.

If we are to believe Breivik's “2083 – A Declaration of European Independence” the attacks took almost nine years to plan. Even if this is an exaggeration – and Breivik’s “Manifesto” is prone to narcissistic flights of fancy – he was organised enough to source his bomb making equipment, dress as a police officer, arm himself, take stimulant drugs, and remember to take his iPod in order to provide himself with a pumping soundtrack to accompany the killings that also drowned-out the victims' pleas for mercy. Unlike most spree killers, he surrendered to the police at the scene - he did not commit suicide or attempt "suicide by cop" but complied with the armed officers' demands to put down his arms. Clearly a sane choice - knowing that his impact and infamy will be multiplied if he stays alive. This is not impulsive behaviour, but actions that are quite obviously planned, with one eye kept on the media-portrayals of how the events will look. Nor has Breivik claimed to have heard voices, or seen visions telling him to behave as he has done, but rather his murders are the "product" of a repulsive Islamophobia. At his initial arraignment hearings he no doubt took pleasure in worrying the authorities - and increasing his "power" over them - by stating there were two other terror cells who helped him. Pure narcism, attempting to control events even though he very clearly has no real power.

But what if the Norwegian authorities did decide that he was insane?  Then surely that would absolve him of the guilt of the murders that he carried out, as he would no longer be responsible for his actions?  Labelling Breivik in this way would allow him to portray himself as the victim - driven mad by Islamic immigration while also allowing Norway to ignore the presence of other far right neo-Nazi groups and their followers within the country who peddle views not dissimilar to Breivik’s – indeed he debates the merits of one such man called “Fjordman” in his “Manifesto”.

So let the decision to label Breivik as insane or otherwise be carefully considered - even if the benefits of such a label make it tempting to do so. It must be accepted that the issues at stake are just as likely to involve sociological problems as psychological ones - therefore resulting in the label of "madness" being quite irrelevant. 

By Craig Jackson, Professor of Occupational Health Psychology.

A strange sentence for an “internet predator” guilty of encouraging suicide shows the justice system is uncertain about many aspects of online activity.

A former nurse from Minnesota, William Melchert-Dinkel (aged 48) was recently found guilty of aiding and encouraging the suicide of two individuals after meeting them in internet suicide chat forums. He entered into fake suicide pacts with the victims, because he was fascinated with, and motivated by hanging and death. He was sentenced this week for aiding the suicide of a male from Coventry who hanged himself (which Melchert-Dinkel had asked to be allowed to watch via a webcam), and a female in Canada who drowned herself after his encouragement. He was sentenced to 320 days in prison, as well as 40 extra days to be served in two day "stints" over the next ten years, on the anniversary of his victims' deaths. He was also ordered to pay 18,000 dollars in fines, and a further 29,000 dollars in restitution. He will be on probation for 15 years with a suspended six-and-a-half year sentence and will also be banned from using the internet without approval. Melchert-Dinkel will appeal on the grounds that he was exercising his rights of free-speech on the internet.

He has admitted encouraging twenty or so people to commit suicide online, and entering into fake suicide pacts with ten other people, five of which he believed went on to kill themselves. That Melchert-Dinkel was a nurse who admitted being obsessed with hanging and death was worrying enough, having overtones of the UK’s Colin Norris, Beverly Allit and Harold Shipman. The presiding judge compared Melchert-Dinkel's conduct with stalking, describing it as calculated, intentional and fraudulent, with even his own defence team describing his acts as “sick” and “abhorrent”. Melchert-Dinkel has not yet shown any remorse for his actions. It begs the question as to whether this could be a form of vicarious serial murder. The mother of the deceased man in the case, Mark Dryborough from Coventry, who was 32 at the time of his suicide, has accepted the sentence as being reasonable, and has shown considerable grace as well as empathy and understanding to Melchert-Dinkel in her words.

The act of helping an individual knowingly take their own life remains illegal in the UK as in most countries (whether through selfish or altruistic motivation), and despite this, over 120 UK citizens have never been prosecuted after making the final journey with loved ones to the Dignitas clinics in Switzerland. Proponents of a review of the laws on suicide in the UK that will hopefully end the confusion and uncertainty faced by relatives of the terminally ill, include Lord Carlisle, Lord Falconer and Baroness Finlay. Suicide is currently slowly on the rise in the UK, after consistently falling each year since 1991. Since 2007 an overall increasing trend has been occurring, with approximately 5,500 suicides occurring each year. Internet-based suicide support forums, and social networking media as a whole, clearly play a role in this. The Bridgend suicide “cluster” in Wales was closely related to the phenomenon of copycat suicides and social networking among young people, only stymied by a voluntary news blackout on the topic. Although many feel uneasy about news blackouts in principle, Norway has a scheme where news media reporting of suicides is prohibited, and this no doubt helps make it the only Scandinavian country to have an average suicide rate amongst its citizens, as opposed to a much higher rate found in Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

A case in Braintree, Essex in September 2010 involved a double-suicide. Stephen Lumb travelled from Yorkshire to meet Joanne Lee in Essex, after she posted adverts online asking for a “suicide partner”. They carried out their suicide pact in a car park by poisoning themselves – having only met online not long beforehand. The instantaneous and real-time nature of social networking allows a distressed person to meet another person online and, instead of finding help, support, or time to reflect on their distress, they end up being encouraged to do something they might not have done alone.

Until the law catches up with the role of how the internet is used in both the encouragement of suicide, and as an aid in facilitating early death in those with terminal diseases, suicide will no doubt continue to increase as people continue to operate around the remits of the law.

A crime expert from Birmingham City University says his first-hand experience of how local communities in America are struggling to cope with big issues such as drug abuse and gang warfare highlights concerns over letting citizens deal with big issues on their own.    

Martin Glynn, a criminologist at Birmingham City University, has just returned from working in inner city Baltimore – the setting for the hit crime show The Wire - as part of a prestigious Winston Churchill International Fellowship.

“The sheer weight of the problems the community were facing was frightening,” said Martin. “It reminded me that in the US there is not the level of local democracy we have in the UK, hence the community has to take care of itself.”

Martin said he witnessed “a disconnect between politicians, public servants, academia and the community”. The problems were made worse in an environment of diminishing resources

In comparison, Martin thought the multi-agency British experience was more positive.

He therefore urged UK politicians to think very hard before dismantling or curtailing public service infrastructures as part of the austerity cut-backs with an expectation communities can fill this gap on their own - as anticipated in the Big Society agenda.