In The Dark - Blood Relatives, Episode 6

Episode Date: November 25, 2025

Jeremy Bamber has a new opportunity to clear his name. But will the British justice system acknowledge that it might have gotten this famous case wrong? New Yorker subscribers get access to all of In the Dark’s previous seasons. Subscribe within Apple podcasts or at newyorker.com/dark. In the Dark has merch! Buy specially designed hats, T-shirts, and totes for yourself or a loved one at store.newyorker.com.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

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I would love a little tea if that's all right. One day this spring I went to visit Philip Walker, a director of Jeremy Bambor's Innocence Campaign, with our producer, Natalie Giblonski. Have you got a hot chocolate there for that? I have. I know, I don't mind tea, but it's not my favourite drink. I'm hot chocolate man.

Right, where were we? Let me see. Philip is a semi-retired company finance director who lives in a neat semi-detached house of brown shingles on England's south coast. He helps direct a small but vocal group of Bamba supporters who've essentially devoted their lives to Jeremy's cause. They hold meetings, issue press releases

and troll through the case files looking for leads. It's become a fairly large part of my life now. So who knows? I might have been a scratch golfer by now if things had worked out differently. Philip told us he was partly drawn to the case because he feels a personal connection to Jeremy. They're about the same age, and Philip, like Jeremy, was adopted through the Church of England Children's Society as a small boy. And strangely, around the same time he was, when the bambas were actually looking for another child to adopt. So in a sense, there's a slight feeling of, you know, there but for the grace of God,

go away. When Natalie and I went to see Philip this spring, it had been a few months since the New Yorker published my story outlining the fresh evidence about the silencer and the crime scene and the 999 call. The Criminal Cases Review Commission had told Jeremy it was looking into the new evidence. This was a huge moment because the CCRC is the only body in the UK that can compel the Court of Appeal to rehear a case. It was Jeremy's only clear part. It was Jeremy's only clear path to proving his innocence and getting out of prison. I feel very hopeful indeed, because I think the equilpatory evidence we have is unanswerable. I mean, the real piece of gold that emerged from the article was Milbank, because that

999 call at 609, there is no way, if that call happened, that he could have been responsible for any of the shootings. So that was a major development from our point of view. A phone caller. That'll be our man. Hi there. Oh, hi, yeah. Well, I just wrong Heidi, and she didn't answer a phone. Well, that's probably because she's sitting right next to me.

Hi, Jeremy. Hi, you, Heidi. Well, I didn't ring you. Philip speaks with Jeremy almost every day, and on this day, they were both feeling full of optimism. We've certainly talked our way into believing that it's going to be positive. And rightly so, I think. I mean, come on.

Yeah, well, we can but hope that they're going to, within the next couple of weeks, do the right thing. Within the next couple of weeks, after 40 years of fighting to overturn his conviction, Jeremy Bamba seemed finally to be on the verge of clearing his name. From In The Dark and The New Yorker, I'm Heidi Blake. This is the final episode of Blood Relatives. From what I can remember, it was a case of someone saying the 9-99 and me answering it. It sort of doesn't quite make sense, because that would indicate someone was alive in there, basically. Well, obviously, yeah, yeah.

those that were at the time at the sea it was who else but a mad woman could do this he'll continue to make spurious allegations until the day he dies I don't want to speak to any further about this but every level of the criminal justice system there's been a cover-up in this case Part 1. The Last Resort

Jeremy Bamba and his supporters had settled in to wait for news from the CCRC, news that could determine Jeremy's fate. They'd been told to expect this in March of this year, but March came and went with no hint of a decision. Jeremy told me the suspense was almost unbearable. It's extremely stressful. having to wait. It's a huge moment, isn't it?

It must be, I can't imagine how frustrating it must be not quite knowing when you're going to find out. Well, it'll be life-changing if they refer my case to the Court of Appeal. The CCRC deliberates behind closed doors, so there was no way to glean how their review of the evidence was going. But by now, there had been a notable shift in public attitudes to this famous case. In the months since the article, even some of the tabloids were starting to throw their weight behind Jeremy Bamba.

My findings had been covered by nearly every national paper in Britain. And they were splashed over multi-page spreads in the Colchester Gazette, the local paper where David Woods once covered the case as chief reporter. He'd been so sure of Jeremy's guilt. Cocky, narcissists, psychopath, and also cold blood. But now even he was reconsidering. It was almost like, feel terrible that I thought he was this cold, I had a killer over these years.

And I won't be great to think how wrong I was, but I'm not alone, am I? I always said to people, I don't know what's going to happen, but I know there's going to be a twist one day, a massive twist. I always thought that I thought there'd be something revealed. And I think maybe what you've done has done it. He said what had really clinched it for him was Nick Milbank's story about the that is kind of mind-blown and if you were hearing sounds while Jeremy Bamba was outside wow it pretty much proves he's innocent to me what else could it be they can't ignore that can they

surely they can't ignore that Jeremy had now been told that a panel of commissioners from the CCRC would meet in mid-April and decide whether to refer his case for a fresh appeal. But that date came and went. Still no news. In mid-May, Jeremy called me to say the CCRC had told him its decision was coming by the end of the month. I'll make sure that Philip lets you know as soon as we know. Because I think, you know, a referral, it's going to spiral out of control quite quickly.

Jeremy was expecting the CCRC's written decision to be devastating for the prosecution case against him. He even thought he might get out of prison right away on the strength of it. I'm hoping it's going to be as strong as we expect, and therefore the referral would be a very strong referral, and therefore it'll move it along very quickly. And I mean, I would be putting it a very powerful bail application, ASAP. But then, at this pivotal moment, the leadership of the CCRC, this powerful organisation that held his fate in its hands,

was totally engulfed in a huge public scandal. Major failings by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, the body that investigates wrongful convictions. The Criminal Cases Review Commission has issued an unreserved apology. The government has announced that there's going to be a bigger, wider public inquiry into exactly what went wrong in this case. The controversy that came to a head as Jeremy Bamba was still waiting for news had nothing to do with his own case. It had its roots in another wrongful conviction story, that of a former security guard named Andrew Malkinson, who'd served 17 years for a rape he didn't commit.

Andrew Malkinson suffered one of the worst miscarriages of justice. of modern times. Malkinson had finally been exonerated in 2023 after his lawyers commissioned DNA tests, and it turned out that police and prosecutors had known for at least 14 years that another man's DNA was found on the victim's clothing. The CCRC had twice rejected his applications for an appeal,

despite glaring evidence that he was innocent. Outside the court, Malkinson said that he had been killed, kidnapped by the state. I applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission. They didn't investigate and they didn't believe me. I have been innocent all along. In the months that followed, more cases were reported, where it turned out that the CCRC had overlooked evidence

that could have exonerated innocent people. As public outrage grew, and scrutiny of the organisation intensified, it became clear that the CCRC's effectiveness had been seriously hampered by brutal funding cuts. It had lost more than a third of its budget in recent years, and yet commissioners, whose hours had typically been reduced to working just one day a week from home,

had seen their caseloads double. As Jeremy Bamber was waiting on news of his case, the organisation's chair was forced to resign. Then, this spring, its chief executive was summoned before Parliament. Order, order, welcome to this afternoon. And grilled by MPs on the organisation's failings. Everything from its low rate of referrals to the Court of Appeal, around 2% of all cases.

Fewer than 2% is not a huge number, is it? I know those numbers are quite small. To how rarely its leadership actually showed up at work. Oh, I'm probably in the office maybe one or two days every couple of months or so. One or two days every couple of months? Yeah. So we are not an office-based organisation anymore. Well, when I heard that, my jaw hit the floor. That's Edward Garnia, a prominent member of the House of Lords and former solicitor general.

It was like watching a slow car crash. It was terrible. Lord Garnia co-chaired a previous parliamentary review of the CCRC, which raised. a number of red flags. The report said the CCRC failed to investigate cases properly and that it was excessively deferential to the police and the courts, the very institutions it was meant to be scrutinising. Natalie and I went to talk to Lord Garnia soon after the parliamentary hearing. He said that watching this spectacle of the organisation's leadership

appearing before MPs, apparently oblivious to the depth of its failures, made him actually angry. And it wasn't funny, it was awful, completely failing to read the room. Like they didn't fully understand how badly the Malkinson scandal had scarred the public's, or should we say the political and legal world's view of the CCRC and its senior management. And I guess public faith in the justice system by extension. Well, to me, the CCRC is an essential component of the British justice system. it is the last resort for many people.

Of course there are lots of people in prison who think, I'm innocent, I didn't do it when they jolly well did. But there will be a hard cohort of wrongly convicted people in prison who need a CCRC to be able to assist them and to enable us as a civilised nation to be able to maintain a proper humane criminal justice system. And how confident do you think people in prison who are innocent, who've been wrongfully convicted and who are seeking relief? Those who have a case currently before the CCRC, how confident do you think they can really feel that they'll get a just outcome?

Well, I don't imagine they're encouraged by the current state of affairs. The hearing ignited public fury at the CCRC, and soon afterwards the chief executive would be forced to resign. The organisation seemed to be in freefall. And Jeremy Bamba kept waiting. The CCRC had now indicated that their decision would be made by the end of May, but that date, too, flew by without news. All calls are logged and recorded and may be listened to by a member of Britain staff. If you do not wish to accept this call, please hang up now.

Hi, D. It's Jeremy. here. It's the 28th today. I'm shocked, appalled, and cannot believe that they've missed their own deadline. I think it's absolutely shocking. And I think it's cruel. And I think that they are just unprofessional and useless. Why not just say, you know, we're referring it or we're not referring it? But anyway, I shall speak to you soon. By now. A few days after that call, the Jeremy Bamba campaign held a protest outside the CCRC's offices. They hoped to spur the organisation into action. Natalie and I went along.

Oh, there they are. I can see the banners already. That's actually quite a good crowd. That's not bad, is it? It's a lot of people. It was a windy late spring day, and scores of people had gathered in front of the people. of the organisation's glass office building. Jeremy's campaign director, Philip Walker, was there,

handing out flyers and directing people to their places. So how did you see anyone going in? Is there anyone actually in there today as far as we know? No, apparently, we'd soaked the building sort of manager, and she said, oh, no, there's not really anybody here. So we are talking to an empty building, but which, yes, there is the symbolism of it, but that's about it. Outside the building, protesters spilled off the pavement

onto the tracks of the tram, scattering every time the train went by. There are a lot of guys here wearing bright yellow t-shirts that say Jeremy Bamber is innocent, and then they have these big kind of kite banners that say innocent and failed by the CCRC. All right, good afternoon, everybody. Thank you all for joining us today. Philip had lined up a whole roster of speakers to address the crowd.

There's no doubt in my mind, Jeremy is innocent. I would not be here today if I didn't think he was innocent. Shame on them in there. Shame on the CCRC. One by one, the protesters took to the microphone. Jeremy Bamba has been incarcerated as an innocent man for almost 40 years. And nobody reading the evidence could possibly doubt his innocence. They spoke for more than an hour, talking to an empty building. And is there anyone from the CCRC here listening?

No. It speaks volumes, doesn't it? Amid the crowd, I spotted a familiar face. It was nice to properly meet you. I feel like we have met. You don't recognise people on Zoom when you see it in the real life. It was Dennis Eadie, the wrongful conviction scholar, whose tip about the Jeremy Bamba case had got me started on this whole reporting journey. Natalie and I had arranged to meet him after the protest,

and when we sat down together, he said that in his mind, the new evidence showed that Jeremy Bamba was the victim of the longest-running miscarriage of justice in British history. If the original case that the jury looked at doesn't exist anymore, and it doesn't in this case, even people who think Jeremy's guilty would admit that, then surely you've got to have at least a retrial because there is no case anymore, and you can't rely on a jury that made a decision on a bunch of evidence which was completely fallacious. Still, he was not feeling optimistic. my doubts. It's put it that way. I'm the resident pessimist. I suppose I've seen so many

failures and so many cover-ups and things that I don't trust the system anymore. Edie said that in his view, the CCRC was utterly failing in its original mission. Instead of providing the wrongly convicted with a path to exoneration, it had become just another obstacle, shielding the system from scrutiny. You can't help thinking there. looking for a way not to refer it. And you can't help thinking even if they did, the Court of Appeal would probably look for a way not to squash the conviction. The Court of Appeal is notorious.

If it doesn't want to overturn a case, it will find a way. In this most high profile of cases, he said there's just too much at stake for the system to admit it might have got it wrong. It would be extremely embarrassing for Essex Police because they've resisted it to this day. and they failed to disclose stuff all along the line. It would be extremely embarrassing for the CCRC.

It would be extremely embarrassing for the Court of Appeal who will have turned the case down on at least two previous occasions. And that's why it's so difficult now to believe that they are actually going to finally overturn the case. I hope I'm wrong, but the system does not want to admit its mistakes unless it's absolutely forced to. If you're a reader, or even if you're a reader, or even an aspirational I hope you'll join us on Critics at Large from The New Yorker.

Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. And because we're culture critics, we just love to go back to the text. Yes, so if books are for you, critics at large just might be for you as well. Join us on Critics at Large from the New Yorker every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts. Part 2. Decision This call is from a person currently in a prison in England. If you do not wish to accept this call, please hang up now. Jeremy, thank you so much for calling back.

Well, trying. I really appreciate it. Well, I've not had a chance to read the thing yet, so I don't know quite what they're saying. You've had a copy, so you've probably had a chance to flick through it. I have seen it, yeah. The decision had finally arrived in June, and the news for Jeremy was crushing.

The CCRC had declined to refer the case to the Court of Appeal. Tell me sort of how you're feeling just at this news this morning. I mean, I'm devastated, obviously, but I don't know why they've made the decision. I don't get it, Heidi. I really don't. Yeah. I don't know I mean I'm just frustrated I just

I'm just lost for words if I'm honest Heidi but I've got no unit so I'm going to have to go yeah we move on onwards and upwards but it's not surprising I didn't expect it

but there we go anyway I'll speak again soon you take care we'll speak soon all right thanks for calling bye now bye bye I had so far only had time to skim the document in which the CCRC had set out its reasons for refusing to refer Jeremy's case.

It ran to more than 200 pages of detailed argument. And when I did start to page through it more closely, it made for astonishing reading. While I was still making sense of it, I called our producer, Natalie. I wanted to fill you in on what's been happening. Oh my gosh. yes please fill me in um so the CCRC have made a decision not to refer the case to the court of appeal um oh my god yeah so they've they've considered this new stuff uh the kind of disturbance of the crime scene the silencer issue and the the 999 court and they're saying none of that

on its own is enough to refer the case wow okay so but they've they've done this in quite an extraordinary way uh that i wanted to walk through with you because it's This document, it's like a pretty shocking document. What did they said exactly? The first thing I should say is they're complaining that the New Yorker declined to hand over all of our source material to them, which is what they had requested. So they specifically call out the New Yorker in their decision? Yeah, there are like 16 mentions of us and they say we declined to hand over our source material.

It says on 5th of August 24... The CCRC had written to the New Yorker asking for the tapes of my interviews, and the magazine had told them no, because it never turns over source material to any official body. This is a common principle among US news organizations to preserve editorial independence. Besides, the CCRC is an investigative agency. My article named all the key witnesses they needed to talk to. All they had to do was call them. and so they're kind of saying that they couldn't really assess the merits of what, you know,

the new evidence that we uncovered because we didn't disclose our source material. You might think, how about CCRC going to talk to the police officers who we spoke to, for example? They have not done that, Natalie. The CCRC hadn't spoken to any of the witnesses I quoted in my article. Instead, they just dismissed the new evidence. Peace by piece. First, they'd addressed my findings involving that linchpin of the case, the silencer. The CCRC said there was nothing about the way the silencer had been handled by Jeremy

Bamber's relatives or the police that could undermine the conviction. They'd considered the strange circumstances in which the silencer-shaped scratches had appeared on the mantle at the manor, and the records indicating that blood found in the device matched both David Bowflower and his father, Robert, when the jury had been told, it matched only Sheila. But amazingly, the CCRC said none of that was, quote, relevant to the factual matrix in this case. Even though David had admitted to me that he could have contaminated the silencer. You know, when you were unscrewing it, could all cut yourself with? I could have had a bit of DNA on it, of course I could. We never, no, that never.

The CCRC had just dismissed this out of hand. They concluded that he just hadn't really meant what he'd said to me. Quote, the comments appear flippant and suggests that David Bowflower was frustrated by the journalist's questions and did not take them seriously. They do not raise any credible reason for considering that David Bowflower was making a genuine admission. The CCRC had also rejected the suggestion by Jeremy's lawyers

that police had more than one silencer in their possession during the case and were running tests on all of them and potentially conflating the results. They said there was no evidence for that, even though David had told me that the police had taken away his own silencer, identical to the one he'd found at the farm, as well as his father's. Prosecutors have previously denied that the cops examined more than one silencer. Now, the CCRC said something slightly different, that police had taken the Beauflower's silences,

but only much later, once the trial was already underway, by which time there could have been no question of contamination of evidence, because the investigation was complete. That was very definitely not what David had told me. So when did they come and take your silences away and do all of that? Oh, within a few days of having got the results, from the blood in the other the synezzar.

I see. And do you remember how long did they keep them for? Oh, months. Months, really? Months and months, yeah. When did you get them back? Really?

Yeah. Yeah. The CCRC had found ways to discount everything David had told me without asking him about any of it. Not one single question.

They said they'd, quote, not identified any legitimate justification to seek to interview David Bowflower, so they hadn't even tried. Then they turned to my finding about Detective Inspector Ron Cook and his disturbance of the crime scene. When I'd spoken to Neil Davidson, the former crime scene investigator, he told me how on the morning after the murders, his boss, Ron Cook, had picked up the bloodied Bible that was found next to Sheila's body and fumbled with it before the official photos were taken.

Remember bumbling wrong? Yeah. As I recall it, he lifted the Bible up, had a look at it, and then he said, oh, we'd better put it back how it was. This undermined the integrity of a crucial piece of evidence and the prosecution's case that it was Jeremy who propped the Bible in its odd position against Sheila's arm as part of his staging of the scene.

But the CCRC dismissed what Neil Davidson had told me. They said he couldn't say for sure that Cook had put the Bible back in the wrong place. Despite those notes I'd found from members of the Firearms Squad who said the crime scene photos seemed to show the Bible in a different place than where it had been when they first found Sheila dead. And again, the CCRC hadn't managed to speak to Neil Davidson to ask him about it. Natalie and I were flabbergasted by this. And how hard is it really to speak to this guy?

He's a very easy guy to find. Go and knock on his door. And then it says the apparent statement by former D.S. Davidson that DiCook picked up and then incorrectly repositioned the Bible, if accurate, does not in the CCLC's conclusion change the previous understanding of the crime scene to such a degree that it is possible to conclude that the jury might have reached a different verdict if they had known of it. What?

Yeah. So the CCRC was saying, even if Ron Cook had put the Bible back in the wrong place, it just wasn't important. This was an extraordinary position to take. Even the Court of Appeal had acknowledged when it last heard Jeremy's case in 2002 that any disturbance of the scene by police officers,

had it really occurred, would have been, quote, a moral sin. But back then, judges, said there was no evidence that this had happened. Now, I had an eyewitness account that Detective Inspector Ron Cook had egregiously rearranged the scene around Sheila's body. And yet the CCRC,

whose job it was to root out miscarriages of justice, was saying this just didn't matter. So, okay, we haven't even got to the most bizarre part of all of this, which is the Nick Milbank stuff. Okay. I got to the part of the document where the CCRC addressed the most revelatory new finding of all, the 999 call. The one Nick Milbank had told me came from inside the manor just after 6am,

when Jeremy was standing outside with police. What I can remember, it was a case of someone saying the 999 and me answering it, and then it was just hearing background noises. If what Nick Milbank told me about this 999 call was true, that not only meant that Jeremy had to be innocent, but also that police had allowed vital evidence to lie buried for years. Because he said no one had ever asked him about what he heard on the phone that night and that a statement police had produced in his name in 2002 had not been given by him.

Well, I certainly didn't give anyone a statement. No one's spoken to me about it since the 1980s other than you. I'd expected the CCRC to go to every possible length to speak to Nick Milbank directly. But instead, the CCLC hadn't contacted him at all. They said that they didn't need to, because Essex Police, the force responsible for the shockingly improper investigation of this crime, had got there first. It turns out that Essex Police, of their own initiative, located Mr. Bulbank and spoke to him about it. it. And so they've allowed Essex police to interview Nick Milbank rather than speaking to him themselves, right? When the allegation here is against Essex police, so they're allowing the

person being accused of something to do the investigating and the interviewing of the witness. That is, that is shocking. Yeah. I mean, my mind is kind of blown by it. Nick Milbank still worked for the force, and his bosses told the CCRCR. see that after they read his interview with me, they'd gone ahead and taken a new statement from him on their own to ask him about what he'd said. This new statement produced by Essex Police is handwritten and dated September 10th, 2024. So this new statement from Nick Milbank says, I am making this statement in relation to a recent article in the New Yorker. I was not aware of the existence of this article until today. I have never, to my knowledge, spoken to the

New Yorker and certainly have not endorsed the article. I mean, that is just not true. That is just, I mean, needless to say, that is completely false. What is this guy's deal? You've heard the tape. I mean, that's just not true, and we actually can prove that.

Milbank's statement continued that he did remember getting a few texts from some woman asking about statements, but he said this woman did not identify herself as a journalist and that he'd never met her. It was true that we'd never met in person, but we had spoken on the phone, and I had clearly identified myself.

Hello, my name's Heidi Blake. I'm a writer for a magazine in New York, the New Yorker, and I'm doing a longish piece about... Milbank and I went on to exchange dozens of texts about the 999 call and the statement he said he never gave, and he also responded to a memo containing detailed questions from the New Yorker's fact checkers. The weirdest thing was that he knew. I knew I'd recorded our phone call. I even told him by text that we planned to use the tape in this podcast, and he'd replied, with two thumbs-up emojis. So now, there was this news statement in Nick Melbank's name containing the demonstrably false assertion that he'd never

spoken to me. But that wasn't all. Alongside it, Essex Police had now produced a different version of the earliest statement from 2002, the one he'd told me he never gave. Unlike the version I'd seen in the files, which was typed and unsigned, this latest iteration was handwritten, with a signature that read N.R. Milbank, the way he told me he always signs his name.

Then they'd produced a final statement from Milbank, confirming that the signature on this handwritten document was his, and therefore the 2002 statement must have been written him all along. As if this strange game of statements about statements about statements wasn't baffling enough, I could already see that there were discrepancies between the two handwritten documents, the statement from 2002 and the recent one in which he'd apparently denied ever speaking to me. If you scrolls 104, this is the handwritten statement that he's just produced in response to the

article, which is not written by the same person. I mean, the handwriting is different. The handwriting is different. Also, if you look at the top, his name has been spelt wrong. Whoa, wait a second. Yeah, his name's been spelt with two L's, and it's Milbank with one out. And they've crossed one out. But most astonishing of all, to me, was that amid all this fuss over his statements,

it seemed that no one had asked Milbank the most important question of all. Had he really received a 999 call from inside the manor as he'd told me? And what had he heard inside? Without speaking to Milbank, the CCRC had concluded that the reference in the files to a 999 call from White House Farm was just an administrative error. The CCRC declined to answer detailed questions about its reasons for reaching this decision. My first thought was to go back to Milbank, to ask what had happened to make him disavow our conversation. And then, while I was still pondering how to go about this, I was blindsided by something totally unexpected. Hey.

Hi. This is me, blowing up Natalie's phone again. Um, so, yeah, something, um, crazy. crazy it's happened. I'm still kind of making sense of it. Okay. So Nick Milbank has died. What?

Yeah, he's died. He died on the 6th of June. Oh, my God. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, his funeral is actually today. I'm just looking at a death notice. Essex police have just sent out. Oh, my goodness. Nick Milbank had died a few weeks earlier on June 6th.

He was 67 years old, and Essex Police had published a notice thanking him for 50 years of service. He'd started out as a police cadet when he was about 17. Um, but yeah, so that's it. Oh my gosh. Yeah. We'd had no idea that Nick Milbank might be ill and the news was still sinking in

because his death was not only tragic for his family it had huge implications for Jeremy Bamber's case like now no one can ever speak to him about this like the CCRC have not spoken to him and he's produced this bizarre statement and now whoa yeah it's kind of wild that he's his employer of 50 years has come to him and like he's given them a statement

which kind of kicks all of this down the road by kind of saying he never really spoke to me when he did and now he's gone and now the CCRC can't ever interview him about that phone call that is crazy and now we'll never know why he made the one statement to us and then told Essex police that he never spoke to us. Yeah. We can only guess. Yeah. So, like, we're just left with this kind of, we've got this tape.

This tape is the only document now of what Nick Milbank heard that night. That's the only, like, glimpse through the White House window. Like, it's just what he heard. Yeah, it's quite kind of haunting to think about. Later that day, I got a call from Wakefield Prison. So, Milbank, you need to keep those recordings extremely safe. Sure, no, they're safe. When did you hear about Nick Milbank having died?

Two minutes ago. You just heard? Two minutes ago. Huh. I'm sad for his wife and for his family. Of course I am, but you couldn't make this shit out. I mean, excuse my language, but you couldn't. I mean, you just couldn't make up the twists and turns in this case.

case. But the reason I'm ringing you is saying, look, you've got the audio tape. He told you the truth. We know that there was a 999 call received from the house. He's confirmed that, and you have that gold, which can no longer be disputed. Yeah. It's just another extraordinary day, Heidi. It's not the end of it, honestly. I'm not giving up. Jeremy does still have a right to challenge the CCRC's decision on the fresh evidence, and there are still a few subsidiary points from his original application that the CCRC has yet to rule on. Already, his lawyers are pushing back on the refusal to refer his case on multiple grounds. Among them is an argument that the CCRC failed in its duty of care to Nick Milbank.

The lawyers say he was a whistleblower, and the CCC, CCLC had an obligation to protect him after he disclosed a potential cover-up by his employer, Essex Police. But instead, it had put him at risk and compromised his evidence by allowing the force to deal with him directly. They wrote, the result of this dereliction of the CCRC's duty of care is that Mr. Milbank, who was, by all accounts, quite ill at the time, was possibly pressured by Essex Police into producing a statement that was not factual. I sent detailed questions to Essex Police about all of this,

but the force declined to answer any of them. Jeremy Bamber's lawyers maintain that the CCRC's failure to interview Millbank, along with multiple other grounds set out in their latest submissions, should be enough to overturn the decision and to get Jeremy his fresh appeal. There is, however, one big hitch. The authority that gets to decide whether the CCRC got it right? Well, it's none other than the CCRC. They're the house of last resort, so they get to mark their own homework.

And each time the CCRC says no, all that remains is to go back to square one and start all over again. Because there's no limit on the number of times a person can make new applications to the CCRC, any time fresh evidence turns up. And so already, Jeremy and his team of supporters are back at work, scouring through the case files, looking for something new. I still keep in touch with Jeremy. but we no longer talk every day. He told me our calls had taken more of an emotional toll than he'd expected. I mean, I've probably been more emotional with you than I have with many others

because we've had to touch on things that have made me cry, you know, and have been emotional and have been private and personal and kind of, you know, the love of my family and personal stuff that I haven't wanted to share but made me tearful. I mean, I cope the best I could and did the best I could and I ask anyone to put themselves in my position and try and figure out how we cope. I hope I get out and maybe I can have a little life outside

but sometimes, you know, Heidi, I don't think that I will ever get out. And I mean that genuinely, I genuinely mean that they will they will find ways to just obstruct and, you know. And I just feel, you know, it is what it is. It doesn't, just because you kept me in jail 40 years, that doesn't change my innocence. It's not hard to see the last years of Jeremy's life. stretching ahead, just like this, locked away in his cell, combing through all those piles

of documents, burning through his phone minutes, counting down his birthdays, endlessly waiting, and calling out into the void of that empty building. You know, and Blood Relatives is written and produced by me, Heidi Blake, and lead producer Natalie Jablonsky. It's edited by Alison McCadham, Samara Fremark. is the managing producer for the series. Additional editing by Madeline Barrett,

Willing Davidson, and Julia Rothschild. Additional production by Raymond Tunga Kar. Theme and original music by Alex Weston. Additional music by Chris Julin and Alison Leighton Brown. This episode was mixed by Corey Shreppel. Our art is by Owen Gent. Art direction by Nicholas Conrad and Aviva Mikhailov. Fact-checking by Naomi Sharp

Legal review by Fabio Bertoni and Ben Murray. Our managing editor is Julia Rothschild. The head of global audio for Condé Nast is Chris Bannon. The editor of The New Yorker is David Remic. If you have comments or story tips, please send them to the team at in the dark at new yorker.com. And make sure to follow in the dark wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, it's Madeline.

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