White House Farm: who is DS Stan Jones and what happened to him?
ITV's popular series White House Farm comes to its conclusion on Wednesday night, and while there is plenty attention on Jeremy Bamber, who was ultimately convicted of killing his family members, DCI Taff Jones, the head of the investigation, was determined that it was a murder-suicide. Julie Mugford's testimony may have been crucial to Jeremy's arrest – but what about the man behind the scenes, who realised that the case wasn't quite so simple as they initially thought? Find out everything you need to know about DS Stan Jones here…
WATCH: Colin reveals the moment he began suspect Jeremy Bamber
According to Mark Addy, who plays the detective sergeant in the show, Stan was indeed asked to take care of the family but to otherwise stay out of the investigation. Mark told Bradford Zone: "The officer in charge deemed it to be a murder-suicide which meant police didn’t feel there was a crime scene to keep intact so people were literally traipsing through the house at White House Farm, through pools of blood, with footsteps all over the place. This was in the days when forensics was a relatively new tool for the police. Stan was the guy who said, ‘Wait. Hang on a minute. We shouldn’t be doing this. There should be a proper forensic investigation. Stop moving the bodies around. The crime scene is being compromised.'"
Like in the show, Stan was also the person to enter the silencer into evidence after it was handed to him by one of the family's cousins, David Boutflour. The silencer ended up being a crucial piece of evidence to convict Jeremy, as it was discovered in a cupboard containing blood which matched either Sheila's blood or a mixture of Nevill and June's blood – meaning that it would have meant that someone else had killed Sheila, or that Sheila had placed the silencer in the cupboard before going upstairs to take her own life, a move that made little sense.
READ: White House Farm: what happened to the site of the Jeremy Bamber murders?
What happened to DS Stan Jones?
While the contamination of the crime scene changed how the police dealt with them in the future, a point that Stan tried to make during the investigation, not much is known about him following the case. According to Mark, he passed away in 2014. He said: "I’ve seen footage of him. He was an interesting character, such a distinctive person, so it would be tricky to try and replicate him completely. But I’ve tried to give a life to what it was about him that made him stick to his guns and go against his bosses in the police. There is something about him that is honourable and wants to see justice done."
Speaking about whether he thinks Stan should have received official recognition for realising there was more to the crime scene than what met the eye, Mark said: "The police could not condone him going above his commanding officer’s head so he got a cup of tea and a pat on the back. That was possibly enough for Stan. And in my version of Stan he was happy with that because justice was served. It wasn’t about him being feted or decorated. It was about justice for those two six-year-old boys and the three adult victims."
READ: White House Farm: How true to the real Jeremy Bamber murders is the show?
