Supporters for the convicted killer Jeremy Bamber attempted to postpone the airing of a new drama based on the notorious case. As reported last month his legal team have issued judicial review proceedings against the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) over a failure to disclose evidence -see here.
They claim that the evidence could undermine Bamber’s 1986 conviction for the murders of his adoptive parents, sister and her six-year-old twin sons, thus rendering his whole life sentence a miscarriage of justice.
The first episode of the six-part ITV drama White House Farm aired last night. The Jeremy Bamber campaign accused the broadcaster of treating the tragedy ‘a money pot… reaping in millions of pounds from a family tragedy that is still unresolved.’
The actor who plays Bamber, Freddie Fox spoke told the Radio Times he decide not meet the prisoner who is serving a whole life tariff. ‘It was probably not the right decision for me [to contact Bamber] because the Jeremy Bamber I’m playing is a combination of the Jeremy Bamber that I’ve created as an actor, in my imagination, and factual, assiduous factual research. And he’s a different man now, it’s 35 years on, and he maintains his innocence.’
According to Bamber’s lawyer, Mark Newby said that they were concerned that that the drama would ‘place a fictional narrative in the public domain at a time when we have a looming High Court Challenge against the CPS’.
‘But more importantly we’re looking after that to get this case back before the Court of Appeal. Programmes such as this don’t just get aired and disappear they stay in the mind of the public and are available online. The actor playing Bamber in interviews refers to creating him from his imagination yet there is a danger the general public will assimilate the real Jeremy Bamber as being this actor.’
He points out that ITV declined any contact with the campaign adding: ‘It is just a dangerous drama to broadcast at this time which is why we invited them just to delay it, whilst matters proceed before the High Court.’
