Bamber fails to appeal farmhouse family-murder conviction © Reuters/Finbarr OReilly Jeremy Bamber, who was convicted over 25 years ago of the murder of five members of his family, has failed to take his case to the Court of Appeal. Bamber was handed multiple life sentences for the 1985 shotgun massacre in a remote Essex farmhouse. However, he has always protested his innocence, blaming his schizophrenic sister Sheila Caffell for slaying her parents parents, June and Neville, and her six-year-old twin sons Daniel and Nicholas before turning the weapon on herself. Bamber, 51, who is being held in Full Sutton prison in York for the crime, has been behind bars for 25 years since his conviction in 1986. Giving its reasons in a 109-page statement, The Criminal Cases Review Commission said: "Matters of pure speculation or unsubstantiated allegation constitute neither new evidence nor new argument capable of giving rise to a real possibility that the Court of Appeal will quash a conviction."