| Jane Andrews | |
|---|---|
| Born | Jane Andrews c. 1960 Cleethorpes |
| Occupation | Royal Aide |
| Employer | Duchess of York (1988-1997) |
| Known for | Murder of Tom Cressman |
| Criminal charge | Murder |
| Criminal status | In prison |
| Spouse | Christopher Dunn-Butler (1989-1994) |
| Partner | Tom Cressman (deceased) |
Jane Andrews (c. 1960-) is a one-time Royal dresser, convicted of murder during a sensational trial in 2001 that attracted much public interest, both due to the dramatic circumstances of the killing and the story of the working-class girl who mixed intimately with the rich and glamorous, though officially only as a servant.
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Daughter of a joiner in the building trade, Andrews was born in Cleethorpes, North Lincolnshire, near the seaport of Grimsby, to which the family moved soon afterwards. Having completed a foundation course in fashion at Grimsby College of Art, she worked freelance as a clothes designer for Marks and Spencer.
At 21, Andrews applied for a job as a personal dresser, advertised anonymously in The Lady magazine. Ultimately, it was to work for Sarah, Duchess of York, on a live-in basis at Buckingham Palace.[1] The two women, from their very different backgrounds, bonded closely. Sarah even forgave Jane for her carelessness in failing to safeguard some priceless jewellery, given her by the Queen, which was stolen at an airport, though later recovered. It is clear that nine years travelling the world in high society gave Jane an exaggerated idea of her own rank and status.
In 1997, Andrews was suddenly made redundant, supposedly as a straightforward budget-cut, though one friend believed that Sarah saw Jane as a rival for the attentions of her admirer Count Gaddo della Gherardesca. This was a bad blow to Andrews' fragile ego - on top of a failed marriage to Christopher Dunn-Butler, an IT expert twenty years her senior, and a tempestuous affair with Dimitri Horne, stepson of a Greek shipping tycoon. Despite this, she soon embarked on a more promising relationship with a well-connected entrepreneur in the car business, Tommy Cressman, and moved into his mews house in Fulham in 1998.
For the next two years, Jane made it obvious that all her hopes were pinned on Cressman as her future husband and father of her children. But his friends did not think he was wanting to settle down, and he never did propose to her. When she accidentally came across some sexually explicit emails from Cressman to a woman in America, which included some unflattering references to herself, she reacted in uncontrollable rage, and bludgeoned and stabbed him to death while he slept. Only hours earlier, he had rung the police, warning that someone was likely to get hurt.
Andrews immediately fled the scene and issued a stream of texts and emails to friends, with a mass of conflicting statements, claiming to be unaware of any murder, then protesting her innocence and blaming intruders or blackmailers. Four days after the attack, police found Andrews in her car in Cornwall, suffering from an overdose. After changing her story again, and claiming that she killed him in self-defence, she was committed for trial.
At her Old Bailey trial in April 2001, Andrews presented herself as the victim of sexual violence on the part of Cressman, though she had already confessed to her friend Baria Briggs that she fabricated those claims in order to blacken his name out of revenge (as revealed by Briggs in a Channel 4 documentary 'Dressed to Kill'). Evidence from his previous girlfriends, combined with her own cross-examination, eroded her credibility and she was found guilty and sentenced to twelve years minimum.
In 2002, she tried to get her conviction quashed on the grounds that she had been suffering delayed shock from the effects of childhood abuse by her own brother. This was dismissed by three judges, and her appeal was rejected.
In January 2008, there was a bizarre incident at Send Prison, Woking, where Jane was breakfasting with another high-profile female murderer, also called Andrews. This was Tracie Andrews, who had been given life in 1997 for murdering her boyfriend, Lee Harvey in his car, initially pretending to police that it had been a road-rage attack by an unknown assailant. At the breakfast incident, another female prisoner had poisoned the milk served to the two women, causing immediate discomfort, and they were promptly given medical treatment.
Meanwhile Jane had become obsessed by an ex-prisoner and fraudster, who had visited her at Send Prison, and later at East Sutton Park open prison, near Maidstone, Kent. When he failed to meet her by appointment at East Sutton in November 2009, she absconded and police warned him that he was in danger from her. Three days later, she was caught after her parents had made a mercy-dash South, driven all the way by their local taxi-driver, who recognised her at a roadside rendezvous and refused to take them back home. Instead he dropped them at a nearby hotel and notified the authorities.
When it was announced that she would be assessed by a parole board for possible release in early 2012, the murdered man's brother declared that her sentence was too short, and warned that she was a highly manipulative person who should not be walking the streets.
The Jane Andrews story meets a popular appetite for scandals where a woman lashes out at a man who has humiliated her. This echoed Sarah Ferguson’s own situation, when her long-time boyfriend, racing-driver Paddy McNally, refused to marry her, and she responded by capturing a prince. It also reflects the enduring fascination with dramas rooted in the class system, as this story embraced palaces, jails and the perils of social climbing, spiced with an intriguing sexual element too.