In the Dark Releases “Blood Relatives,” an Examination of a Notorious British Crime

On an August night in 1985, five members of one family were shot dead at Whitehouse Farm, a country manor in the rural county of Essex, in southeastern England. The police were alerted by Jeremy Bamber, the twenty-four-year-old scion of a local farming dynasty, whose parents, June and Nevill, occupied the estate. Inside the locked house, officers found the bodies of Jeremy’s parents, sister, and six-year-old twin nephews. The killings initially appeared to be an open-and-shut case of murder-suicide, at the hands of Jeremy’s sister, Sheila. Then, after a series of shocking twists, suspicions turned on Jeremy—and he was sentenced to life in prison the following year. The crime became the most infamous family massacre in British history, and to this day Jeremy Bamber remains one of the countr