It can be mind-boggling to hear the heinous acts of abuse some people are capable of committing. Things get even more confusing when the culprit manages to get away with their crimes for an extended period of time.
Thankfully, a UK woman will no longer be able to escape the child death she caused back in 1978 after a new confession almost five decades later revealed what was once considered accidental to actually be a cold-blooded murder.
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As many outlets like Sky News have recently been reporting, 67-year-old Janice Nix was found guilty of manslaughter on Tuesday (May 26) in the tortuous death of her stepdaughter, Andrea Bernard, by way of being forced into a scalding hot bath. Andrea, who was only five years old at the time, died six weeks after the incident and the coroner ruled it as an accident due to sepsis caused by the burns.
More details below on how the case went cold for 48 years and the shocking confession by an older sibling that finally helped to convict a child killer, via Sky News:
“Andrea’s death was treated as an accident until her older brother Desmond Bernard went to police in 2022 with a new account of what happened, Isleworth Crown Court heard.
Nix, from Clapham, was also convicted of cruelty to Mr Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was seven to nine years old.
Mr Bernard, 56, tearfully told the trial he initially described his sister’s death as an accident because he wanted Nix to stop beating him with a belt. He said she also burned him with a cigarette, bit him and made him eat cat food.
He added that Nix, whom he described as physically ‘strong’ with a ‘heavy-set build’, regularly beat the siblings, even for not folding their clothes ‘to her standards’.”
The brutal attack occured on June 6, 1978, after Nix grew irate with Andrea for leaving the house instead of staying in to help clean up. After a routine beating, Mr. Bernard told jurors the following as he heard bath water running: “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 stopped and I could hear Janice calling Andrea to ‘wake up, wake up’.” Upon walking into the bathroom, he graphically described what he saw by boldly stating, “I could see skin falling off her.”
Nix, described as being in her late teens at the time, originally claimed Andrea took the bath on her own, only later complaining of itchy legs before allegedly fainting. Although admitting decades later in trial to the falsehood behind that statement, it appears she believes a lack of supervision was her only mistake, telling jurors, “I realized I had done something I shouldn’t have done: I should have been with Andrea.” She also adds, “I was young and I was clearly not thinking. On hindsight now, I see my negligence as a teenager.”
She’s since made an attempt to reframe her story overall by publishing a memoir in 2021 titled Breaking Out that details her transformative life from a convicted ex-drug dealer into a caring probation worker.
Now remanded in custody, her current sentencing is scheduled for a later date.
Keep scrolling for social media reactions to the chilling conviction against Janice Nix for child abuse and murder:
1. scary how that murderer Janice Nix was also a foster carer wtf
via @jennn_xoxoxo