Was it really murder? Part I
Next month, former royal aide Jane Andrews will appeal against her conviction for murdering her lover. Relentlessly portrayed as a callous social climber, here she gives her account of their tortured relationship and the hours that led up to the killing. Report by Libby BrooksThe women on the wing already call her "Fergie's bird", and now it's only going to get worse. It is October 9 2001, two days before the transmission of Dressed To Kill, Channel 4' s investigation into the trial of Jane Andrews, the former dresser of Sarah Ferguson who was, five months previously, convicted of murdering her boyfriend, Thomas Cressman, and sentenced to life imprisonment. In the boisterous visiting room at HMP Bullwood Hall in Essex, where she is currently serving her sentence, Andrews is perched at one of the plastic table-and-chair sets, working her fingers anxiously. Her hair is limp, her face pinched and pallid. She is in a state of extreme agitation at the prospect of further media exposure.
Since her trial, a number of former friends and lovers have given interviews, offering lurid addenda to the popular account of the girl from Grimsby who rose to become one of the Duchess of York's closest confidantes, before the loss of her job on the royal staff precipitated a decline into romantic obsession and murder. Some of her letters written from prison have already been passed on to the Mirror by a former inmate. "Now every time I write a letter, even to my mum, I have to think about each word and how it would look in a newspaper." An unauthorised photograph of her attending a concert in Holloway prison appeared in a number of tabloids. The film is a nightmare, she says distractedly. She is worried about how her parents will react. She talks about loyalty. "I could have given you a list of all the people who would talk about me on camera." She says she knows what people think of her. "I don't want sympathy. I just want understanding."
The headlines at the time of Andrews' conviction were unequivocal. Dubbed "the Fatal Attraction killer", she was portrayed as an unstable and emotionally manipulative individual, who beat her boyfriend with a cricket bat and stabbed him through the chest with a kitchen knife in a vengeful rage after he refused to marry her. She was a gold-digger, it was said, who went on to lie in court. Furthermore, she attempted to destroy Cressman's reputation by detailing his interest in sadomasochistic sexual practices, and claiming that, on the morning of the day he died, he had tied her up and beaten and anally raped her.
Jane Andrews has never before spoken to the press. But since our first meeting, through numerous visits and letters, and through her solicitor, Andrews has provided the Guardian with a detailed account of her life that may go some way to achieving the understanding that she craves. Yet even the construction of this account has been fraught with difficulties.
Inmates are normally forbidden to give interviews to journalists under prison service regulations but, following a 1999 House of Lords ruling, they have a right to a visit from a media outlet of their choice in exceptional circumstances. Having made a number of informal visits, the Guardian applied for such an authorised press interview, but the prison service deemed that our request did not satisfy the criteria, because Andrews' appeal is ongoing (the appeal against conviction, to be heard on September 23, is based on "fresh" psychiatric evidence, strengthening the plea of diminished responsibility). The prison service added: "In this case, Ms Andrews has received a large amount of press exposure already and I am sure you will agree that we cannot allow such a visit merely in order to overcome any negative publicity."
But the fact is that all the publicity about Andrews has been negative, and whenever she has attempted to press for corrections she has been prevented - by the press complaints commission, the prison service and the broadcasting standards commission. She has had no opportunity to answer the significant allegations made against her following the trial by those who claimed to have known her. As a convicted murderer, the law of libel offers her little protection. It would seem that a woman in Andrews' position can be demonised at will, with no redress through the normal channels. It is in this context that Andrews has decided that her only option to correct some of this highly prejudicial coverage is to tell her side of the story to the Guardian. She does so at considerable cost to herself, since the prison authorities have now effectively barred her from speaking to the press; punishment or loss of privilege may result from the appearance of this article.
This is not a simple story, and Andrews herself is not always a sympathetic witness. She appears a deeply damaged woman who was, last year, diagnosed by a psychiatrist as suffering from a borderline personality disorder. She can be a neurotic and frustrating interviewee. And on other occasions, I witness a flash of the stylish, engaging and independent young woman she once was. "She was so good to know," one close friend told me. "You can't imagine how great it was to be with her. But she never believed that she was loved."
Towards the end of her final dispatch from prison, Andrews recounts an incident which, she says, occurred one afternoon a few months before Cressman's death. The couple had yet to resolve an argument from the previous night, in which Cressman had accused Andrews of flirting with a friend of his. "I came in from work and the dishwasher door was open. I remember thinking, 'About time, too, he's started clearing up.' The next thing I knew I got hit from behind and I went flying. He started kicking me round the kitchen. I was covered in cuts and bruises.
"I had to go into work the next day. I said to Tom: 'What am I going to tell them?' and he laughed and said, 'Tell them you fell off your bike, you stupid cow.' I must have sounded pathetic. Why didn't I say anything to anybody? For the simple reason I didn't think I'd be believed, I was ashamed, I felt a failure. People at work would laugh and say, 'Tommy picks Jane up from work every night, isn't it sweet?' No, it wasn't. It was so I couldn't go out with anyone else. That's why I used to say, 'You push me back and forwards, Tom.' I never knew where I stood with him. In front of other people he was charming, but behind closed doors he wasn't."
Over the past 16 months, Andrews' resolve both to take responsibility for her actions and to tell what she believes to be the truth about her life with Cressman has strengthened. She insists that she does not consider herself an innocent victim. "I've caused all this heartache and grief to so many people and there is absolutely nothing I can do about that. To even say the word 'sorry' is so feeble, insignificant. But I am. I'm a much stronger person now, and if I was given the chance I could talk about things that I was incapable of talking about at the trial. That doesn't mean I'm trying to blame anyone else for Tom's death. I was responsible and I have to live with that every second of my life. I just want people to understand what has happened and hopefully make some sense of it."
Jane Andrews was born in north Lincolnshire in 1967, the youngest child and only daughter of the family. Her brothers were five and three years older than her. Jane's father worked as a joiner, but was seldom in full-time employment. Her mother first trained as a social worker, then as an infant school assistant, and was the main breadwinner for the family. The marriage was not a happy one, a situation compounded by their frequently dire financial straits. By the time Jane was eight, debt had forced the family to sell up and move to a small townhouse in Grimsby with no bathroom and an outside toilet.
"From an early age I was aware that things were not right at home. My parents were always arguing. I remember shouting. But they were very proud. I remember one day we didn't have enough to buy a loaf of bread and Mum had us looking down the sides of the settee and in our coats for money to scrape together. I was brought up in an environment of keep it in the family. Don't let the relatives think that we're anything other than comfortably off."
When she was 15, Andrews took an overdose, consuming the contents of the bathroom cabinet after social services informed her mother that she had been playing truant. Her mother found her collapsed in bed. "I was fading in and out of consciousness, but they didn't call for help or take me to the hospital. Keep it in the family, another thing."
As a teenager, Andrews' psychological state became prone to severe fluctuation, as she struggled with bouts of depression, panic attacks and a recurrent eating disorder. From the age of 15, when she embarked on her first sexual relationship, Andrews established a pattern that she says has sustained throughout her life. "I would sleep with someone, possibly on the first date, because I was frightened if I didn't they would go. I allowed men to do anything they wanted to me." Her chronic fear of abandonment, abysmal self-esteem and extreme insecurity resulted in a dependence on intimate relationships, a number of which she says were characterised by incidents of violence and sexual practices that left her feeling degraded and worthless. Such a pattern is a core feature of borderline personality disordered individuals.
Andrews' continual truancy had taken its toll on her school work, and she left with three O-levels to study fashion at the local technical college. At 17, she fell pregnant and had an abortion, which traumatised her greatly. Then, at the age of 21, while working as a sales assistant for Marks & Spencer in Grimsby, she answered an anonymous advert for a personal dresser in the Lady magazine. Six months later, out of the blue, came a summons for an interview with the Duchess of York. The pair struck up an immediate rapport and Andrews was offered the position. She started in July 1988.
"I was running away from all the horrible things in my past that Grimsby represented. I arrived at King's Cross with a suitcase and £10 in my pocket. I got in a taxi and said, 'Side door of Buckingham Palace' and the driver made a joke. One of the housemaids met me and took me up to my room, and there was a little posy of flowers from Fergie and a card that said, 'Welcome to the team, the Boss.'"
The Duchess was heavily pregnant with her first daughter, Beatrice. Andrews loved the job, though she found it increasingly demanding. During her trial she was depicted as a devious social climber, in thrall to the glamorous and sophisticated circles she now found herself mixing in. It was suggested that she became besotted with her royal employer, mimicking her dress sense, accent and even her hair colour.
"I was a country bumpkin," she admits. "Suddenly I was at Balmoral mixing with the royals, having long chats with Princess Diana. I was 21 years old and of course I enjoyed it. If my accent changed it was only because people made fun of the way I said 'bath' and 'grass'. Fergie was headstrong, but she was good to me."
In April 1989, Andrews met Christopher Dunn-Butler, an IBM executive who was 21 years her senior. Within three months of meeting her, he proposed and they married in August 1990. "He was a very happy-go-lucky guy. I so wanted to be loved. Even though I was self-sufficient - I had my own car, my own money, everything - I just craved someone to take care of me."
But after a few years the marriage foundered. "There was no physical relationship any more and we were more like good friends. I had a couple of flings. I'm not proud of it." Then, at a charity function organised by the Duchess, she met Dimitri Horne, a Greek shipping magnate. They fell in love and Andrews finally left her husband to live in a flat that the Duchess had rented for her.
The bond between the two women was strengthened by the breakdown of Sarah Ferguson's own marriage. Andrews was one of her few remaining servants, and took on extra responsibilities. She travelled around the world with her and became privy to her affairs and confidences. In the introduction to one of her travel books, the Duchess included a warm thanks to her assistant "whose loyalty and kindness knows no bounds".
Meanwhile, Andrews' relationship with Horne had also run into difficulties. Horne gave a statement to the police claiming that Andrews had trashed his flat when he told her that he wanted to end their affair. Andrews admits that her behaviour at the time was erratic. "I was so angry, I took our photographs down. On the mantelpiece in the living room was a cup and saucer that I knew was very special to him and I smashed it. I went through his journal with a black marker pen and blanked out all the references to myself. I picked up his telephone and smashed that as well. I'm ashamed of what I did. I've never done that to anyone else's possessions." She also admits that she cashed a cheque from his brother's chequebook, although she insists that this was in recompense for a sum that Horne had borrowed from her.
Andrews took another overdose, but again survived without medical intervention. Her feelings of worthlessness found a new focus when, in November 1997, she was unexpectedly made redundant. There was some speculation that she was sacked after an Italian admirer of the Duchess expressed an inappropriate interest in her, although palace officials insisted that there was no truth in this and that her departure was part of a cost-cutting exercise.
Andrews was devastated and sank into a deep depression, losing a substantial amount of weight. She felt that she had been badly treated by the Duchess, who did not tell her the news in person and who, she alleges, only a few weeks before had told her, "I'll never get rid of you, you're with me for life." She had some difficulties finding other employment, but eventually secured a position working in the silver department of the Knightsbridge jewellers Annabel Jones.
Andrews was introduced to Thomas Cressman by a mutual acquaintance in August 1998. The 39-year-old former stockbroker ran a successful business selling car accessories, and mixed in the upper echelons of London society. One of his partners was Stirling Moss, and his American father, Harry, who had built up the biggest chain of Ford dealerships in Europe, was a former director of Aston Villa football club. Andrews found Cressman charming and charismatic. He drove her home and insisted on seeing her the following night. She had arranged to go to Greece with some girlfriends, but he called her every day she was abroad, sending her a huge bunch of red roses on her return. She was, she laughs, swept off her feet.
In court, Cressman was described as an urbane and well-connected character, a confirmed bachelor who loved fast cars, boats and Tintin cartoons. It was suggested that Andrews saw her relationship with him as a means of halting her slump back into obscurity, and became obsessed with eliciting a proposal of marriage from him.
But Andrews contends that the relationship became increasingly volatile, characterised by physical violence and domination, and sexual demands - including anal sex, bondage and role-play - that she found abhorrent. During their blazing rows, threats - to expose one another's secrets to the press or the police - seem to have become common currency. She admits that she had told Cressman more detail than was appropriate about her time with the Duchess. He would threaten to go to the papers with this information. Andrews would retaliate by threatening to tell his business partners and parents about "his dirty habits". The question of marriage - its offer or rejection - appears to have become a shorthand between the pair for a raft of issues around security and commitment.
"It was such a complex relationship that we had," says Andrews. "I was the ultimate in insecurity. He was the ultimate in commitment-phobia. I would threaten to leave. He would tell me to leave. Then he would reel me back in. He knew which carrots to dangle. He knew which strings to pull."
In the winter of 1998, Andrews broke her wrist after Cressman - she believes deliberately - let go of her hand while dancing with her aggressively. Afterwards, she says, he insisted that she stay with him at his home in Fulham so that he could look after her. Friends of Cressman contend that she used her injury as an excuse to move in.
But why move in with someone who had been violent towards her? "I so wanted this relationship to work. I never knew when his moods were going to change. He could be so incredibly nice one minute and then with absolutely no reason whatsoever he would hit me with this wooden brush he kept. He always made me feel it was my fault. He would say I was weak and he was trying to toughen me up."
"I sensed that her broken wrist had a story behind it," says Lucinda Ellery, a businesswoman based in west London, who first met Andrews at Ascot in 1995. "He talked over her rather than to her. He would be quite capable of humiliating someone he was with." During the final year of their relationship, Ellery socialised frequently with Andrews and Cressman, and grew close to both of them. Cressman telephoned her the morning of the day he died to discuss Andrews' latest suicide threats. After the killing, Ellery was instrumental in locating Andrews in Cornwall.
"She was very sweet, quite shy, just lovely. Janey reminded me of a delicate bird. You wanted to pick her up carefully so as not to damage her wings. But she could put on a good show - happy-go-lucky, confident, relaxed - and of course she wasn't any of those things."
She was terribly beautiful, she adds, with a much-admired figure, a recollection that jars with the wan, wasted individual who hunches in the visiting room of Bullwood Hall. "The reports that she was a gold-digger were rubbish. She could have taken her pick. She had a lot going for her. I think she genuinely fell for Tommy big time, and unfortunately her feelings were stronger than his."
Ellery liked Cressman, too. "I'm sure he was quite spoiled, a wilful chap, but very interesting, always with a laugh in his throat about something. He was very charming, very much a little boy. He could be manipulative, but bottom line, he didn't deserve to die."
Ellery contends that she recognised that the relationship was a deeply destructive one, although Andrews never spoke of this to her directly. She says she believes Andrews' allegations that Cressman was physically and sexually abusive towards her. Why didn't she talk to her about it? Andrews was a very closed person, says Ellery, familiar with keeping secrets. "Don't forget she spent 10 years with the royal family. She was intensely loyal. She trusts no one."
It was a dangerous relationship, she says, although she always thought it would be more dangerous for Andrews. "I thought it would push her over the edge and that she would take her own life, not his. There is no doubt in my mind that Janey had cracked up at the time [of Cressman's death]. She wasn't well in body or in mind. It was an accident waiting to happen and unfortunately those closest to her weren't able to see the signs, because she did put on such a good show. There must have been a great deal of anger there. Tommy just pushed the buttons."
Ellery is by no means blithe about her friend's actions, but is passionate about her need for rehabilitation. "There can never be justice for Tommy. He's dead, and there is nothing you can do that will bring him back or make his family feel better. But now we're dealing with the living. And how do you deal with someone who is so clearly damaged? She needs proper psychiatric help. How do you come to terms with killing anyone, let alone someone who you're crazy about? There were two people involved in this and they were both responsible for what happened."
But for Cressman's parents, Andrews' allegations simply formed a tissue of lies. At the time of the trial, both his father and his mother, Barbara, denounced her claims about her relationship with their son. "She tried hard to destroy his reputation but, thank the Lord, she didn't do it," said Harry Cressman. His former wife added that she had no sympathy for Andrews. "Tom was a kind, affectionate and devoted son." When contacted this month, Harry Cressman reiterated his family's dismissal of Andrews' claims, pointing out that a number of his son's ex-girlfriends had insisted that he had never subjected them to any physical or sexual abuse during their relationships with him.
The verdict of murder by the jury suggests that they rejected Andrews' account of the background to the killing, including the abuse, which she has described to the Guardian in greater detail than she did in court.
Andrews says that she had been aware of Cressman's broad sexual tastes from early on in their relationship, when she discovered some women's thigh-length boots and leather bondage accoutrements in his wardrobe. She says that she told him then that their relationship could not continue, but that he begged her to stay. She took the boots to a charity shop. When Cressman found out, she says he hit her.
Cressman was an avid collector of militaria, including German army uniforms and SS weaponry. One of his most prized possessions was a chunk of wood reputed to be from Hitler's desk. On one occasion, Andrews recalls he asked her to dress up as a schoolgirl, in a short pleated skirt and one of his old school ties. He donned a mortarboard and cloak, and tied her to the bed with another tie. He brought in a short curved dagger. "We'd both had quite a bit to drink that night. While I tend to go numb and lifeless when I'm drunk, Tom would become loud and careless. He was shouting at me to spread my legs, doing this stupid German voice. He was wielding this knife. What he meant to do was spread my legs by touching them with this knife, but I struggled and he caught the back of my right leg and cut me. It wasn't deep but it was sore.
"I was so frightened I spread my legs at that point. He just buggered me. I didn't resist because if I did it hurt like hell. Nine times out of 10 he used to come inside me, which really disturbed me, or he would come out and ejaculate over me, and rub it all over me, even my hair.
"There was one occasion when I was having problems and couldn't go to the loo. He'd had anal sex with me and when he came out he'd got excrement on his penis. He grabbed hold of my hair and screamed at me and yanked me down and made me lick it off."
What makes Andrews' story even more troubling is the fact that she seldom explicitly told Cressman that she found his behaviour distasteful. But she never said no to anybody.
"Why did I stay? There isn't a short answer. I stayed with Tom for a thousand and one reasons, because, every time he was violent or abusive, apologies came and he said he would change. Because he made me feel I was the one that was causing him to do it. I came to the point of not knowing what was right and what was wrong. He played mind games with me. Why did he take me to the Cotswolds to look for houses before we went to Italy [in September 2000, just before the killing]? All his friends and family say it's a figment of my imagination. That's why I made my original solicitor track down the estate agent in Chipping Norton where they discovered he'd registered us as Mr and Mrs Cressman. It's silly things like that that it's important for people to believe."
In her report, which forms the main grounds for the appeal, psychiatrist Dr Fiona Mason argues that Andrews would have found behaviour such as Cressman's extremely difficult to cope with. "She became unable to remove herself from the relationship, and was increasingly hopeless. She also became depressed, anxious and fearful - such a pattern of symptoms is not uncommon in women involved in violent, abusive, traumatic relationships. It is also common that those suffering from such symptoms do not seek medical attention or help, for a number of reasons, including guilt and shame."
It was in this state that Andrews took her final trip with Cressman to a boat show in Italy, then on to his family's villa on the French riviera. At her trial, the court heard that during this holiday, from which they returned the day before the killing, Cressman had told Andrews that he had no intention of marrying her. Andrews disputes this. "I'm never going to be able to prove it," she says. "I'm sat here now and I've got absolutely nothing to lose. If it was true that he said he wasn't going to marry me, then I'd say so. He may very well have said it to other people."
But why then did she make several calls on her mobile phone on the return journey to Nice airport, with Cressman and his mother in the car, saying that the relationship was over and he'd told her he'd never propose? "I was trying to goad him. I was being a complete bitch. It was the thing I said whenever we fought: 'You don't love me any more, you don't want to marry me.' I'm not making excuses for what ended up happening, I'm just trying to get across that there was no planning to kill him, no premeditation."
Andrews' memories of the day of Cressman's death remain extremely fragmented: she has given different accounts. This is her best recollection of it. On the plane back from Nice, Cressman had agreed to go for counselling for what Andrews describes as "his sexual perversions and his black moods". The next morning he had changed his mind. Andrews responded angrily. Cressman told her he "wanted her out". A physical fight ensued and Cressman throttled her.
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