On an August night in 1985, five members of the same family were shot dead at Whitehouse Farm, a country estate in rural Essex in southeast England. The police were alerted by Jeremy Bamber, a twenty-four-year-old scion of a local farming dynasty whose parents, June and Neville, occupied the estate. Inside the locked house, police found the bodies of Jeremy's parents, sister and six-year-old twin nephews. The murders were initially an open-and-shut case of murder-suicide committed by Jeremy's sister, Sheila. Then, after a series of shocking turns of events, suspicion turned to Jeremy and he was sentenced to life in prison the following year. The crime became the most notorious family massacre in British history, and to this day Jeremy Bamber remains one of the country's most offensive criminals. But almost four decades later New Yorker Staff writer Heidi Blake got a clue that things may not be as they seem.
October 28, In the dark, New Yorker investigative podcast, will release a six-part series, Blood Relatives, which looks at the Whitehouse Farm murders. The series takes an in-depth look at the case, presenting evidence that was never presented to the jury and interviews with sources whose recollections undermine prosecutors' version of the crime. The results call into question not only Jeremy Bamber's conviction, but the entire British legal system.
New Yorker subscribers get immediate, ad-free access to every episode of Blood Relatives on the channel New Yorker app and further Apple Podcasts. For non-subscribers, the first two episodes will be released on all podcast platforms on October 28th; The remaining episodes will be released weekly, on Tuesdays. Necessarily follow in the dark so you never miss a single episode.
“Blood Relatives” is In the Dark's first release since the podcast won a Pulitzer Prize in May for third seasonwhich looked at the killing of twenty-five civilians by American troops in Iraq. Since the podcast's debut in 2016, In the Dark has become one of the most respected programs in long-form audio journalism. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, it has won three Peabody Awards and, in 2019, became the first podcast to win the George Polk Award, one of journalism's highest honors. ♦
