Tom, Ben And Lorraine Making Light Of The White House Farm Murders

[Erik Narramore]

With some hesitation, I offer you a podcast on the case from a YouTube channel called 'I Could Murder A Podcast'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XL1W9uvMpic

I don't like this podcast and didn't particularly enjoy it.  Like many of these things, it may be a good watch for someone of average intelligence who is new to the case and is in need of a nice, easy introduction.  At times, Tom and Ben are quite comical in a negative way in that they fall into very basic factual errors: just one example is that they declare early on that Sheila was born a Caffell, which comes as quite a revelation to me as I am sure it will for all of you.

These sorts of podcasts have appeared as the case has penetrated mainstream web culture in the wake of the 2020 dramatisation, which revived popular interest.  Inevitably this in turn results in the dumbing-down and vulgarising of discussion.  Tom and Ben mention about Jeremy growing weed.  Tom and Ben look like the types who would grow weed themselves (not that I can talk given my adventures with magic mushrooms). They are like teenagers in their bedrooms.  Mam and Dad are downstairs presumably.  The two of them dress childishly, have squeaky, non-masculine voices, with the tattoos on display that are, I assume, intended to make them look masculine but instead make them look ridiculous.  They are both wearing headphones and staring at screens from which they read and rely on totally for information.  Look at them carefully.  They have 'screen eyes' – very much they are creatures of the Information Society.  A pair of robots with no real thoughts of their own.  A Ones and Zeroes culture, a digital world in every refined sense; a world of dichotomies in which judgement ceases, facts are relegated in importance, and what matters is what you – yes, you! – think about it all.  There is a long dialogue in which Tom and Ben go through the case chronology with music in the background and insistent voices, as if they need to hurry this bit along before they move to the important bit in which they tell us what they think.  What I Think has taken over in importance from Facts.  The result is psychotic screeching on public fora, and an ADHD generation that needs background music when anything requires attention or concentration.

None of this is new, though.  Vulgarisation was a heavy feature of Victorian literary culture.  Even the great English novelists, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins – the Shakespeares of the novel – were considered vulgar and cheap in their own time, though Collins self-consciously lampooned the vulgar culture and has one of his best characters go on a hysterical national tour regaling working-class audiences with her obscene adventures.  Collins could have been writing of today.  Dickens was a self-published ha'penny bit writer.  The novel itself is, arguably, a signal of a vulgar and degenerate culture.  At the same time, one aspect of the vulgarisation, the use of humour, is a very English thing.  It is typical of English people to make light of the darkest things.  We live on a small, dark, wet, windy island, now quite crowded, and successive generations of working-class English people have undergone appalling conditions of adversity, including industrialism, indentured servitude in the colonies, and before that, the impositions of feudalism   I am told that, before the Normans, the Old English had some sort of golden age of liberty from which the famous English attachment to liberalism can be traced, but if so, then the Anglo-Saxons can't have had a sense of humour.  Humour comes out of darkness, misfortune and adversity, or it loses its force.

A different aspect of vulgarisation, more dignified, and that is presented as more respectable, is that served up to us by the established mainstream culture: on the terrestrial TV channels and radio, and their virtual offshoots.  Morning TV shows presented by vapid dullards, sententious dramatisations, various documentaries, talks from Carol Ann Lee – all vulgarise the White House Farm tragedy to some extent.  Colin Caffell gave his input to one or two morning TV shows with contested anecdotes about Jeremy's dark humour and racy behaviour with Julie; however his own book, In Search of the Rainbow's End, is a more considered examination of the case, albeit entwined with flights of fancy.

As the 2020 TV drama began - based on books by Carol Ann Lee and Colin Caffell respectively - it was strange seeing Colin congratulate Cressida Bonas, an actress, on her portrayal of Sheila.  Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUn9hIdNDVI

This was on a show called Lorraine.  Lorraine wants us to see her as our friend.  It's Lorraine.  Just call me Lorraine.  Sheila was portrayed in that drama snorting coke up her nose and with serious mental health problems, and generally as a quite one-dimensional character.  But Lorraine thinks the drama treats those tragic events with "real sensitivity" and Colin lathers the producers with praise.  He "liked them and trusted them" and gushed to Cressida about her uncanny portrayal: "it is Sheila at that time", Cressida "picked up the fragility of her character" and gave us a "wonderful heartfelt insight into that".  This is another hint towards Colin's people-pleasing disingenuousness.

Lorraine complained about how Sheila's reputation was "trashed" by the press back in 1985, but the drama Colin is praising trashed her and turned her into some cheap Wednesday night TV character.  Cressida chimed in with the templated recitation, so popular now, that there is more understanding about mental illness these days.  This brought the only flash of authenticity that came out of Colin when he expressed scepticism about this and said, "Everyone is wearing their hearts on their sleeves now", implying that it might have all gone a bit too far.  Lorraine quickly shot him down.  Not very nice of you, Lorraine!  But Colin meekly agreed.  It's Lorraine's show, don't forget.  Don't push it, Colin!

Why is it that in the hands of these dull people, all women are "fragile"?  If Sheila really was as fragile as they say, what was Colin doing leaving the children with her?  It's not as if he needed hindsight.  Why does he assume that her "fragility" could not motivate her to murder?  Why would multiple fatal shootings committed at close range require a marksman?  Why is it important to know whether Sheila could handle the gun?  It was practically a toy gun.  A child could handle one.  How could a woman diagnosed with schizophrenia, who is acknowledged to still suffer symptoms despite medication, be permitted supervision of two six-year-old boys?  That's astonishing.  Apart from that, how could Sheila have been allowed to continue on medication that affects basic functioning?  And what is all this about her skipping down Pages Lane with her sons on the day before the shootings? Another thing: how did Sheila manage to keep herself clean and do her nails, etc., if her medication caused severe motor impediments?  How does this, again, fit in with her being allowed custody of the boys?  What caused her fragility?  Was it anything to do with you, Colin?  Colin may complain about the portrayal of Sheila by an open and free press, but they were reporting on a matter of public interest in which it was believed Sheila had shot her family.  That's what the press do.  Exactly what should they have done differently?  Colin denies Sheila was a drug addict and upbraids the press for suggesting it, but the drama itself shows her taking hard drugs.  Closer to home, does he accept that in private his own treatment of her was less than stellar?  Not just things that would be run-of-the-mill between married couples, but more serious behaviour such as sleeping with another woman during Sheila's 21st. birthday party, possibly encouraging her to go into modelling, allowing her to abort at least one unborn child for non-medical reasons due to pressure from June, and leaving her while she was pregnant with the twins.  Questions like these won't be asked by Lorraine.

It sounds like Colin isn't the questioning type either.  He tells Lorraine:

"When it first happened, I didn't want anything to disturb my original memories of the children.  I didn't want to see the bodies, I didn't want to identify them, so I didn't let anybody tell me anything, so I kind of accepted the story and was completed seduced by Jeremy."

Didn't want to identify the bodies?  The father?  This is nonsense.  The father of two dead boys would demand to see his sons' bodies at the mortuary forthwith and would be interrogating everybody in sight, questioning the family, Jeremy, and the police.  Indeed, most fathers in that situation would be screaming blue murder.  In an interview he gave for This Morning, Colin says that he began to become suspicious of Jeremy due to certain incidents in which he behaved obnoxiously or inappropriately:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afIXWrexiWk

The reality is that Colin accepted what he was told by everybody at every stage, both before and after suspicion fell on Jeremy, and fitted his understanding of the facts into whatever was the dominant view.  That is Colin Caffell's character: to fit in, to accommodate, to appease, to be intimidated (as he was by June), to say sensitive things at the right moment.  He is a master of tone, not content.  To believe the killer of his sons could not have been Sheila, he has to omit from consideration facts that indicate it could have been Sheila and he must disingenuously aver, as he did to Lorraine, that the killer needed to be a marksman.

The 'mmm'ing' and 'yessing', from motherly Lorraine to indicate agreement helps round it all off, giving the occasion the feel of a women's coffee morning at some executive detached home in placid middle-class suburbia.  Indeed, the conversation – it's not really an interview – takes place on a comfortable sofa against a faux-domestic backdrop similar to the kind you would expect in a bland, but well-appointed home.  This soup is made for an audience, but it's not about what the audience wants, it's what Lorraine – their figurative Mother – insists is good for them: a feminine public environment, in which there is great pressure towards an emotionally-safe orthodoxy, and difficult and awkward questions, problems and issues are swept under the carpet.  After all, we are all fragile.

True crime, then, is more than hobbyism and entertainment or business.  It is a matter of political economy even.  On the morning of the 7th. August 1985, a crack opened in the ordered reality of things and an explosion of violence wiped out a family and crushed a man's dreams and hopes for his sons.  The Lorraine format trivialises the horror, agony and awesome cruelty of this as much as Tom and Ben do.  We are admonished not to ask questions, only to 'feel' and adopt the right tone and join in the tut-tut over vulgar minutiae.  What would be the implications if the authorities have drawn the wrong solution?  What would be the implications for individuals - Colin, the relatives - who have built their entire lives on the belief Jeremy Bamber is a mass murderer?  Little wonder they implore us to accept what we have been told, though much of it makes nil sense.  Moreover, Colin's narrative of a fragile Sheila fits the Zeitgeist, in which women are good and men are bad, and Colin himself is a sort of janissarial man assigned to deliver this message.  I don't doubt that, in addition, they would not have Colin on if they did not think the backstory was titillating for their audience; the validation that Colin enjoys under the cloak of Manicheanism has a price, and there is a price for us in the lack of depth and seriousness.