Stepmum who killed girl, 5, in scalding hot bath jailed for 12 years nearly 50 years on

A woman has been jailed for 12 years after killing her five-year-old step-daughter by placing her in a scalding hot bath.

Janice Nix, 67, forced Andrea Bernard into the bath as punishment in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1978.

Andrea later died from sepsis with officials considering her death as accidental until her brother Desmond came forward to police in 2022.

The now 56-year-old said on June 6, 1978, Andrea had left the house rather than helping Nix clean. When she returned, Nix beat her.

Desmond then 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 stopped and I could hear Janice calling Andrea to “wake up, wake up”.’

Desmond said he walked into the bathroom and saw Nix cradling Andrea, who was ‘limp’ and wrapped in a towel.

‘I could see skin falling off her,’ he told jurors.

Asked whether Nix said anything, Mr Bernard said: ‘She asked me to say it was an accident… and to say that we were in the garden when it happened and that she would never beat me again.’

He described him and his siblings living in fear of Nix’s punishments, and sobbed in the witness box at Isleworth Crown Court as he recalled the abuse he endured at the hands of Nix.

This included being beaten with a belt, bitten, burnt with a cigarette, and made to eat cat food.

Nix, of Clapham, south London, was convicted of manslaughter and jailed for 12 years.

She was also convicted of cruelty to Mr Bernard between October 1975 and June 1978, when he was between the ages of seven and nine.

Andrea died nearly six weeks after arriving in hospital with burns to 50% of her body, the court heard.

A burns expert told the trial that a child exposed to water hot enough to cause Andrea’s injuries would instinctively try to get out by standing up, not remain seated.

Prosecutors argued this meant Nix must have forcibly held parts of Andrea’s body underwater.

Nix, then called Janice Thomas and in her late teens, had been in a relationship with the children’s father, also named Desmond Bernard, and was in effect their stepmother.

Nix was arrested at Heathrow Airport on February 18, 2025, after arriving on a flight from Antigua, and was charged later that day.

She had denied both the charges of manslaughter and cruelty to a child.

Detective Sergeant Danny Chatfield said in a statement outside court that Nix’s actions were ‘selfish and cowardly’ and that she had maintained a ‘web of lies’ for decades.

Detective Inspector Louise Caveen, from the Met’s cold case homicide team, said: ‘This is a particularly tragic case and my thoughts ultimately remain with Andrea’s family, whose lives were changed irrevocably back in 1978.

‘In particular, I want to pay tribute to Desmond, who bravely made the decision to come forward and speak to us, as well as giving evidence at trial.

‘It is thanks to his courage that Nix has now been found guilty and will finally be held responsible for her actions.’

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