00:00It's not unusual in my experience for victims and witnesses to come forward
00:04and say 10, 20, 30 or even 40 years. This happens to be the oldest case that we
00:11can remember on CPS London homicide units, but it's by no means the oldest
00:18case of its type in the country. But 48 years, almost quarter of a century
00:25ago, it's taken quite a remarkable investigation and efforts to bring this
00:31case successfully to trial, as we have done. Andrea Bernard's death was treated as an
00:37accident until her older brother Desmond Bernard went to police in 2022 with a new
00:43account of what happened. Nix was convicted of the manslaughter of Andrea Bernard by
00:49punishing her with a hot bath in Thornton Heath. Janice Nix of Clapham was also
00:56convicted of cruelty to Mr Bernard. This case was the oldest Crown Prosecution
01:01Service's London homicide prosecutors could recall handling, with Andrea's death
01:08predating the organisation itself by eight years. In this case, it's been very much
01:15joint working with the police. They've come to us at an early stage, asked for
01:19investigative advice, and we provided that and worked with the police. Up to the
01:24point they submitted a false file in January 25, and we were able to give a
01:30charging decision a couple of weeks later. We take for granted now CCTV, audio, mobile
01:38phones, all of the technology that generate documentary evidence. And also, majority of
01:45the homicide cases that I deal with across London, people are caught at or near the time, and so
01:53the witness evidence is fresh in the memory. So this was a wholly different challenge. And so there are
02:00two main aspects to it. One is seeing what documentary evidence was left. And the coroner's hearing at the
02:07time was a one-day hearing. And all that was left, the only documents that were left, no photographs,
02:13nothing like that, were the handwritten notes of that sort of coroner's inquest, 16 pages long. And within
02:23those 16 pages, a number of key pages, which gave us an indication of the level of burns, where they
02:32were,
02:32etc., from which the prosecution team and the police team had to reconstruct the injuries to Andrea at the
02:40time, where those burns occurred, how severe they were, and how they would equate to her being in the
02:48bath at that time. And what we found, looking at that, and looking at what Desmond had to say, is
02:56that
02:57Janice Nix's story simply didn't stack up.
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