Janice Nix, 67, sat in the dock at Isleworth Crown Court in a white shirt and black blazer, weeping loudly as the judge read his remarks. Moments later, loud gasps and sobbing erupted from the public gallery as Mr Justice Nicholas Lavender announced her sentence: 12 years for killing her five-year-old stepdaughter Andrea Bernard in a scalding hot bath in 1978.
On June 6 that year, Nix was furious after Andrea returned from leaving the house instead of helping clean. She forced the child into a bath so hot that water caused burns to 50% of her body. A burns expert told the trial a child exposed to that temperature would instinctively try to stand up, not remain seated – meaning Nix must have forcibly held parts of Andrea underwater.
“Janice Nix jailed 12 years for killing stepdaughter Andrea Bernard, 5, in scalding bath in 1978 after brother came forward.”
Andrea died nearly six weeks later from sepsis. For decades her death was treated as accidental. Then in 2022, her brother Desmond Bernard, now 56, went to police with a new account.
Desmond told jurors he heard the bath running and Nix shouting, “Get in the bath,” while Andrea pleaded, “The bath is too hot, mummy.” He then heard screaming and splashing, then silence. Walking in, he saw Nix cradling Andrea, who was “limp” and wrapped in a towel. “I could see skin falling off her,” he said. Nix asked him to say it was an accident – and promised she would never beat him again.
Desmond described living in fear of Nix’s punishments: beatings with a belt, bites, burns with a cigarette, being forced to eat cat food. Nix was also convicted of cruelty against him between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was aged seven to nine.
Nix, then Janice Thomas and in her late teens, had been in a relationship with the children’s father and acted as stepmother. She was a retired probation officer when arrested at Heathrow Airport on 18 February 2025, arriving on a flight from Antigua. She had denied manslaughter and cruelty.
In a victim impact statement, Desmond said: “The last memories I have of my sister’s life are piercing screams and lying about her death to survive.” Turning to Nix, he added: “You took away her future and changed mine forever. Your contrived grief at Andrea’s funeral, the lies, the tears. You fooled my family…”
Angela Bernard, the children’s mother, described Andrea as “so sweet and loving”. Her statement read: “When she died, it completely destroyed me. She deserved to have a life, not be lying around in a cemetery. I think about her every single day.”
Detective Sergeant Danny Chatfield said Nix’s actions were “selfish and cowardly” and that she had maintained a “web of lies” for decades. As she was led away, the court heard the judge’s words: “At the very least the risk ought to have been obvious to you.”