Janet Nix, who was found guilty of the manslaughter of her five-year-old step-daughter by scalding her in a hot bath in Thornton Heath in 1978, has today at Isleworth Crown Court been sentenced to 12 years in jail.
Arrested: Janet Nix had flown back from Antigua when police were waiting for her
Andrea Bernard was forced into the bath as a punishment by Nix and suffered severe burns to half her body. She died in hospital five weeks later, on July 13, 1978. The jury at Nix’s trial heard Andrea’s death had been treated as an accident until her older brother, Desmond Bernard, came forward at Croydon Police Station in 2022.
Nix, now 67, of Rodenhurst Road, Clapham, was also convicted of cruelty to Desmond Bernard between 1975 and 1978, when he was between seven and nine years old.
Nix denied all the charges.
Desmond Bernard, who is 56, told the trial he had go along with what his step-mother had told him to do, and described his sister’s death as an accident because he wanted Nix to stop beating him with a belt.
He said Nix had also burned him with a cigarette, bit him and made him eat cat food.
Jurors were told that on June 6 1978, a “furious” Nix shouted at Andrea and beat her after she ignored instructions not to leave the house and to help clean instead.
Desmond Bernard testified that he later heard the bath running, adding: “I could hear Janice shouting, ‘Get in the bath!’ and I could hear Andrea saying, ‘The bath is too hot mummy’.
“I could hear Janice shouting, ‘Get in the bath! Get in the bath!’ and then I heard screaming and splashing.
“Then I heard the screaming stop, and I could hear Janice calling Andrea to ‘Wake up! Wake up!'”
Bernard said when he entered the bathroom, he saw Nix cradling his sister, who was “limp” and wrapped in a towel. “I could see skin falling off her,” he said.
Andrea had suffered burns to 50% of her body.
Nix was arrested at Heathrow in February 2025 after arriving from Antigua and was charged the same day.
Nix had been aged 19 at the time of Andrea’s death.
The Coroner at the time concluded her death was a result of sepsis caused by the burns, and it was ruled an accidental death.
However, in 2022, Andrea’s brother Desmond walked in to Croydon Police Station and said he believed Nix was responsible for Andrea’s death. Desmond recounted how he and his siter had lived in terror of punishments doled out by Nix, including being beaten and forced to eat cat food.
A criminal investigation was opened as a result.
Detectives trawled through thousands of documents found in local authority archives and hospital records, as well as attempting to trace anyone who lived in the street at the time who may have remembered the incident.
They managed to piece together fragments of information to build a case against Nix.
Child cruelty: Andrea Bernard died of her injuries when just five years old in Thornton Heath in 1978
When questioned by the police, Nix behaved calmly, answering “No comment” to every question.
Nix had plenty of experience of the criminal justice system: she had already spent 20 years in prison, and on release, she’d retrained as a probation officer.
She had a memoir published about her past as a London drug dealer known as “Mama J”, and in 2021 she was interviewed by the BBC over her past. At least, some of her past.
In December 2016, Nix was even invited to speak at a government select committee, as a witness, describing the challenges she faced as an ex-offender in the workplace.
“I felt that society was not forgiving, even though you try your hardest to show people that you have changed,” Nix said at that time.
In 2022, when Desmond Bernard took up his case with the police, he explained that he had always told people his sister’s death was an accident because his abuser, Nix, had promised never to hit him again if he kept the real cause of Andrea’s death a secret.
In a statement, he said Nix regularly beat him and Andrea up when she thought they were being naughty, and that on the day of the incident, Andrea was in trouble and Nix had not allowed her to go to school.
She had however managed to leave the house and met her brother. On returning home, Nix immediately began shouting and hitting Andrea before running a bath and calling her to get into it.
Desmond had gone straight up into his bedroom, which was directly next door to the bathroom. Although he couldn’t see what was happening, he heard Andrea screaming, “It’s hot! It’s hot!”, with Nix shouting at her to get in.
When the screaming stopped, Nix called him into the bathroom where he found Andrea limp.
Following Desmond’s account, an investigation was started by local officers before detectives from the Met’s Cold Case team took over.
Given the length of time passed, the vast majority of records had not been retained and almost everyone who had been involved in the incident or with the family in any way had died.
Officers did recover the 16-page Coroner’s report. The report included a description of the injuries Andrea sustained alongside the treatment she received in hospital, as well as a statement from Nix taken shortly after Andrea’s death.
When questioned as part of the 2022 police investigation, Nix provided a significantly different account of the events of that day. She also claimed that the Coroner had found Andrea died as a result of a tragic accident caused by a malfunctioning boiler which overheated the bath water. There was no mention of this in the Coroner’s report.
During trial, expert witnesses gave evidence to explain the level of injury and the likelihood as to how Andrea sustained them.
A burns expert said he would expect a child, when immersed in water hot enough to cause Andrea’s injuries, to immediately try to get out by standing up. He would not expect that they would voluntarily sit down or stay in this position.
The prosecution argued that this showed Nix must have caused parts of Andrea’s body to be submerged.
Nix consistently denied any involvement in abusing Desmond and claimed Desmond had provided an inaccurate account of what happened that afternoon.
Under oath in court, Nix admitted she had given a false account of the events to the coroner, but said she had been “in a panic” over having failed to supervise the little girl. She put this down to her “negligence” as a then 19-year-old, telling jurors that she’d been busy gardening when she heard Andrea’s screams and had run to her in seconds to pull her from the water.
Bernard told the prosecution team that he had found it very difficult to see his step-mother in court “stand there and lie and try to discredit him”.
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