Lifers

by Geoffrey Wansell

  McLoughlin showed little remorse, telling the police, ‘I’m not sorry for what I did to the “nonce”, but I’m sorry for what I did to the pensioner.’ In his perverted view Buck had clearly been a homosexual.

  McLoughlin’s sister, Karen Baker, called him an ‘evil psycho’ who should hang. She told reporters outside the Old Bailey when he was convicted and sentenced to a whole life term in October 2013 that she had been terrified of her brother throughout her adult life.

  ‘He was a ticking time bomb,’ she said. ‘It was when he was thirteen he started to change and began getting into trouble at school. He started burgling people’s homes and stealing cars.’ Then he turned to violence.

  ‘He used to beat me,’ McLoughlin’s sister added, ‘and put rubber balls in the fire to heat up and throw them at me. He is a horrible man and I was terrified until he got caught … He’s had his second chance and I hope he rots in prison. He should have been hanged for what he has done in the past. A life for a life, I say.’

  The sister of McLoughlin’s second victim Peter Hall branded his release from Springhill in 2013 as part of his ‘rehabilitation’ as a ‘joke’. ‘This monster has struck again and been allowed to strike again,’ the seventy-one-year-old said, ‘because he has been freed to walk the streets just as he was with my poor brother.’

  Unable to come to terms with her brother’s killing, even after twenty years, she described him as ‘evil’ and went on, ‘McLoughlin has never shown a scrap of remorse for what he did to Peter. I would be happy if they gave him a lethal injection.’

  The second case the specially constituted Court of Appeal considered in their judgement on 18 February 2014 was every bit as shocking as McLoughlin’s. On 19 September 2013 Mr Justice Jeremy Baker, sitting at the Crown Court in Leamington Spa, had sentenced Lee Newell, then aged forty-four and a prisoner in Long Lartin Prison in Worcestershire, to a whole life term for the killing of convicted child killer Subhan Anwar while they were both prisoners in the jail.

  At the time Newell was already serving a life sentence for the murder of his fifty-six-year-old neighbour Mary Neal in Gateley Gardens, Norwich. He had tricked his way into her home, demanded money and then strangled her, hiding her body in a cupboard and getting away with just £60. That was in 1988, when he was nineteen. He had been sentenced to life with a minimum term of fifteen years, but had spent the following twenty-five years in jail because of his violent behaviour. Newell was still there when he took another life on Valentine’s Day, 14 February 2013. Newell’s accomplice was fellow inmate Gary Smith, at forty-eight just four years Newell’s senior, who was also serving a life sentence for murder with a minimum of eighteen years for killing twenty-two-year-old Ali Hassan and dumping his naked body in a Leicestershire quarry in 1998. Smith believed that Hassan had been about to tell the police about a jewellery shop robbery he was planning.

  Just before 6.00 on that Thursday evening in February 2013, Newell and Smith went to visit Subhan Anwar in his cell at Long Lartin Prison. Anwar considered the two men friends and was certainly not frightened of them. He should have been, for quite without warning, that day his two ‘friends’ took the twenty-four-year-old man from Huddersfield in West Yorkshire hostage. They were armed with a sharpened toothbrush and a sharpened pen.

  Anwar had been in the prison for four years and had built up friendships with prisoners and officers. A member of his family later described him as ‘a very young knowledgeable man. He had proven to be a model prisoner, was a wing representative, helped prisoners to be heard, was well behaved and never caused any trouble.’ He was serving a life sentence with a minimum of twenty-three years for killing his partner’s two-year-old baby – although he had repeatedly insisted that he was innocent.

  Newell and Smith, who had been involved in taking hostages in the prison twice before in the previous six years, engaged the ‘security lock’ on Anwar’s cell – effectively barricading themselves in. To lull him into a false sense of security, they told him they were keeping him hostage to bargain with the prison authorities, but they nevertheless tied the young man up with Sellotape.

  Once they had done so, Newell used Anwar’s tracksuit bottoms as a ligature around his neck and strangled him to death. It took him more than half a minute to do it. Newell then used the cell intercom to inform the authorities that Anwar was dead. Meanwhile Smith made Newell a cup of hot chocolate from Anwar’s supply and sweetened it with icing sugar.

  When prison officers asked why they had done it, one of the pair shouted through the cell door, ‘I am bored and it was something to do.’

  As the siege went on, the officers heard the pair talking behind the cell door. One was joking to the other, ‘It just snapped. I wonder where he is. I bet Allah has got him.’

  There was speculation in the prison that the fact Anwar had been a child killer had made him a target for Newell and Smith. What is not in doubt is that the pair showed no emotion throughout the siege, which lasted until shortly after 8.20 that evening, and walked calmly out of Anwar’s cell after the killing. They were each wearing a trophy from the dead man – Newell his watch and Smith his earring.

  ‘There was no tension between them,’ one prison officer said afterwards. ‘They were horrendously calm.’ Newell just laughed about the murder and refused to answer any questions. The fact that the killing might mean that he could spend the rest of his life in prison proved no deterrent whatever.

  After a two-week trial in September 2013 both Newell and Smith were convicted of the murder of Subhan Anwar. But before the judge could begin his sentencing remarks both men demanded to be returned to their cells because they objected to Anwar’s family members being allowed into the well of the courtroom to hear Mr Justice Jeremy Baker pass sentence. They did so, but their attitude did not deter the judge.

  ‘One of the most chilling aspects of this case,’ he told the Court out of the men’s earshot, ‘was the almost complete lack of emotion shown by either of you after the killing … you have both murdered others before, on this occasion you did so in a cold-blooded manner, having deliberately lulled your victim into a false sense of security … You, Newell, later laughing about what you had both done.’

  Calling these ‘exceptional circumstances’, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker then sentenced both men to life imprisonment with a whole life term.

  Of the two men, only Newell launched an appeal against his sentence, and it was this appeal, together with the Attorney General’s appeal against Ian McLoughlin’s ‘unduly lenient’ sentence of a minimum of forty years that was the basis of the landmark ruling by the Lord Chief Justice and his specially constituted Court of Appeal on 18 February 2014.

  In the case of McLoughlin, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Thomas, specifically stated in the Court’s judgement that Mr Justice Sweeney had been wrong in his view that he could not impose a whole life sentence on the killer. ‘It is clear that the judge did not think he had the power to make a whole life order,’ the Lord Chief Justice pointed out. ‘The judge proceeded on the basis of a misunderstanding of the law. It is our duty to exercise our judgement free from that misunderstanding.’

  ‘In our judgement,’ he went on, ‘this was a case where the seriousness was exceptionally high and just punishment required a whole life order. A fixed term of forty years was for that reason unduly lenient. We therefore quash the minimum term of forty years and make a whole life order.’

  In the case of Newell the Lord Chief Justice concluded on behalf of the whole Court that, ‘The murder was premeditated and involved the use of a
n improvised weapon. It occurred in prison whilst Newell was serving a life sentence. The deceased took a significant time to die. There was no mitigation. This was a murder where the seriousness of the offence was exceptionally high. The judge was right in making a whole life order.’

  The Court concluded firmly: ‘These two cases [of McLoughlin and Newell] are exceptional and rare cases of second murders committed by persons serving the custodial part of a life sentence. The making of a whole life order requires detailed consideration of the individual circumstances of each case. It is likely to be rare that the circumstances will be such that a whole life order is required. Our decision on each case turns on its specific facts and cannot be seen as a guide to any similar case.’

  The Court was of the opinion, however, that there remained the ‘possibility of release’ – even for a prisoner sentenced to spend the rest of his or her life in prison. The Court cited what is known as ‘The Lifer Manual’, issued by the Prison Service in 2010. It suggested that the criteria that allowed for the release of a whole life prisoner included: ‘terminal illness, where death is likely to occur very shortly (say within three months); where the prisoner is incapacitated, being paralysed or suffering from a severe stroke; the risk of re-offending is minimal (particularly in sexual or violent cases); further imprisonment would reduce the prisoner’s life expectancy; there were adequate arrangements available for care outside the prison, and early release would bring “some significant benefit” to the prisoner and his or her family.’

  But the Court of Appeal also explained that those criteria ‘did not represent the whole of the circumstances in which the power of release might be exercised’. In particular, the Court pointed out that the Secretary of State for Justice had powers to ‘release a life prisoner on licence if he is satisfied that exceptional circumstances exist that justify the prisoner’s release on compassionate grounds’.

  Yet they also reiterated the view of successive Lord Chief Justices, in particular Lord Steyn, who argued, ‘There is nothing logically inconsistent with the concept of a tariff by saying that there are cases where the crimes are so wicked that even if the prisoner is detained until he or she dies it will not exhaust the requirements of retribution and deterrence.’

  At the same time, they quoted another Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, as saying, ‘If … the position is reached where the continued imprisonment of a prisoner is held to amount to inhuman or degrading treatment, we can see no reason why, having particular regard to the requirement to comply with the Convention [of Human Rights], the Secretary of State should not use his statutory power to release the prisoner. In our judgement the law of England and Wales,’ the Court concluded, ‘therefore does provide an offender “hope” or the “possibility of release” in exceptional circumstances which render the just punishment originally imposed no longer viable.’

  In other words there may be light at the end of the tunnel for a whole life prisoner, but it is a very faint one, for no one, not even the Court of Appeal, can precisely define what those ‘exceptional circumstances’ are – as the case of Jeremy Bamber, who was convicted of killing no fewer than five members of his family, including two children, amply proves.

  6

  ‘Imprisonment is nothing’

  Jeremy Bamber and Peter Moore

  When Douglas Vinter won his victory at the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights, two other murderers shared his success – Jeremy Bamber and Peter Moore. Both men had repeatedly appealed their whole life terms in England only to lose, but both clearly hoped their victory in Strasbourg might see their early release. But the decision by the specially constituted Court of Appeal in London in February 2014 that ‘life could still mean life’ for the most heinous crimes robbed them of that chance.

  But Jeremy Bamber remains the only whole life prisoner in jail in England who has always maintained his innocence. As the fifty-four-year-old, who was adopted as a six-month-old baby by the wealthy couple Nevill and June Bamber, now insists fiercely, ‘Imprisonment is nothing, but to live defeated and innocent is to die daily.’

  Bamber was convicted in October 1986 at Chelmsford Crown Court of killing his father Nevill, sixty-one, his mother June, also sixty-one, his married sister Sheila Caffell, twenty-eight and her six-year-old twins Nicholas and Daniel in what famously became known as the ‘White House Farm Murders’ in the early hours of Wednesday 7 August 1985. He was imprisoned at the age of just twenty-five, and has spent thirty years behind bars.

  As Bamber puts it, ‘Because I have maintained innocence I have not taken part in any rehabilitation programmes and neither can I be viewed as a prisoner who has gained atonement.’ Instead, he has firmly and repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, which brings him a distinctive view of the meaning of a whole life term of imprisonment. He insists that any individual who is condemned to spend the rest of their life behind bars is living a ‘social death’ before adding, ‘Release for me with my conviction intact means no life at all.’

  ‘There is only one freedom and one hope for me,’ Bamber explains, ‘and that is the truth of my innocence will be heard in a court of law, allowing me the liberty I have been fighting for.’ He believes the sheer notoriety of his multiple murder case means that it is ‘unlikely that I would ever be released without my conviction being overturned in a court of law.’

  ‘I am the only person in the United Kingdom,’ he insists, ‘who was given a life tariff on a majority verdict that maintains his innocence.’ Bamber also believes that a whole life sentence contradicts the notion that prison is meant to rehabilitate and denies the possibility of redemption to the prisoner.

  ‘If the state wishes to have a death penalty,’ he maintains, ‘then they should be honest and reintroduce hanging.’

  That view is not reflected among all whole life prisoners, however. Triple murderer John Hilton told the Guardian newspaper in 2012, ‘Whole life versus hanging: well you can make a life for yourself, a very basic life, but life is better than death – especially by hanging.’ Hilton was then in his eighties, and had his whole life term set aside so that he could be released at the age of eighty-eight.

  In March 1963 Hilton watched a judge at the Central Criminal Court in Old Bailey put a black cloth on his head and sentence his co-defendant to death by hanging. He called it a ‘very sobering experience, especially while on remand’. Hilton himself had been weighed and measured by the prison authorities in case he too was sentenced to be hanged.

  Jeremy Bamber, meanwhile, protests his innocence still from his cell in Full Sutton Prison near York, running his own website and acting as a trusted ‘peer partner’ to some of his fellow inmates who find it hard to read and write.

  It would be fair to say that Bamber always did, and still does, arouse very strong emotions. At his trial witnesses described him as ‘arrogant’; yet the writer Scott Lomax, who published a book in 2007 proclaiming his innocence, says his friends describe him as ‘gentle’ and ‘caring’. In recent years a number of journalists have examined Bamber’s character, with two concluding that he was ‘clever and strategic’, and a man ‘who exudes arrogance and indifference’.

  What is not in doubt is that Bamber was born the illegitimate son of the daughter of a Norfolk clergyman, who had had an affair with a married army sergeant, and then put the child up for adoption at the age of six months through the Church of England Children’s Society. It was then that he was taken in by Nevill and June Bamber.

  The Bambers were the wealthy farmers of three hundred acres in Essex who lived
in a large Georgian house at White House Farm, near Tolleshunt D’Arcy. Nevill, who was six feet one inch in height, was a local magistrate and former RAF pilot. Four years earlier, he and his wife had also adopted a baby girl, whom they called Sheila.

  Bamber was sent to a local Essex primary school, but then sent away to board at Gresham’s in Norfolk. His father felt it might be difficult to send him to a local school for the village children, when he might one day have to employ them on the family farm. According to author Claire Powell, who wrote about the case in 1994, this led Bamber to feel increasingly alienated from his family and their life in the countryside. One friend alleges that Bamber was sexually assaulted at his boarding school, which may have encouraged a trait of bi-sexuality, though neither has ever been confirmed.

  Whatever the truth, Bamber became an attractive, eloquent and plausible adult, a man who managed to convince people, both men and women, to trust him implicitly.

  After he attended a sixth-form college in Colchester, passing seven GCSEs, his father paid for him to take a trip to Australia and New Zealand, where he did a scuba diving course. While in New Zealand, Bamber allegedly broke into a jewellery shop and stole two expensive watches. He also boasted, according to Claire Powell, that he had been involved in smuggling heroin, while a cousin also alleged that Bamber ended up leaving New Zealand in a hurry, because his friends had been involved in an armed robbery.

  What is not in question is that he went back to Essex to work in restaurants and bars, which included spending time as a waiter in a Little Chef on the A12 in Essex, but Bamber later returned home to work on the family farm. It was a decision he resented, as he was paid just £170 a week, even though he was given a car and allowed to live rent-free in a cottage his father owned in Goldhanger, just over three miles from White House Farm. It was from there that he made a fateful telephone call to the police in the early hours of 7 August 1985.