20/20 Britain's Most Notorious Crime Investigations (2026) s01e05 Episode Script

1
[Jim Dickie] This was a brutal murder
that got to the very heart
of the British Royal Family.
[news anchor] Less than a week
after this home video was made,
Tom Cressman was dead.
[Lucy Atherton]
Thomas Cressman was a playboy.
He had a boat, he had these fancy cars.
He seemed to live this amazing lifestyle.
[reporter] Jane Andrews has disappeared
from her West London home
following the murder of her partner,
Thomas Cressman.
[reporter 2] Jane Andrews worked
as an aide to the Duchess of York.
This was gold dust to the media.
[Paula Marshall] When it became clear
that Jane Andrews
had this connection to the Royal Family,
it went stratospheric.
It was on the front page
of every newspaper.
[Allan Starkie] The entire British press
was against her.
"Look at how screwed up
the House of York is
"that even their servants kill people."
[Dickie] Sarah Ferguson told me
on the telephone,
she'd do whatever she could
to assist the police.
[reporter] She attacked him
with a cricket bat, fracturing his skull,
and then stabbed him with a carving knife.
Jane Andrews murdered Thomas Cressman.
All we need now is a motive.
Was it jealousy?
Was it 'cause of money?
Was it sexual?
[Marshall] But when Jane did step
into the witness box,
what she said was an absolute bombshell.
-[operator] Is anyone injured?
-[Thomas] Not yet.
[Thomas] I would like the police
to come and split us up.
I would like somebody to stop us
from hurting each other.
It wasn't just spur of the moment,
"Let's stick a knife in him." No.
I do know that there was
more to this than meets the eye.
A hundred percent more.
-[man] Hello.
-[operator] Hello?
[man] I need the police.
Urgent, urgent, urgent.
Okay? I've just found my--
[operator] Sir, what's happened?
[man] I've just found my boss dead
in his house.
[Dickie] I was the on-call
senior investigating officer
for homicide in Central and West London.
I received a phone call
about a suspicious death in Fulham.
I was told the victim
was a successful businessman
by the name of Thomas Cressman.
I went in with another officer
and there, wedged
between the bed and the bedroom wall,
was Thomas Cressman's body.
What I was seeing was a murder scene.
We needed to harvest
every possible clue immediately.
On the floor, there was a cricket bat.
Very close to it, there was a knife.
It looked like a kitchen knife
which had blood on it.
That clearly was the murder weapon.
[Marshall] When I went into
the crime scene,
it almost felt as like time stopped,
because you appreciate
that something dreadful
has happened in there.
There was a lot of blood.
There was a bloody dressing gown cord
that was tied to the banister.
It was something
that was extremely unusual.
[Dickie] Whoever had tied it
to the banister
and to the bedroom doorknob
had put it on there to stop
somebody inside possibly getting out.
[Marshall] As we were going through
the crime scene,
one of the things we did discover
was some Post-it notes.
[reading]
And it was signed "Jane," with a kiss.
[Dickie] Speaking to the neighbours,
they told us
that he had a live-in girlfriend
who wasn't there called Jane Andrews.
[Marshall] It was really not clear
what had actually occurred,
whether this was a result of violence
occurring towards her.
Was this a suicide note?
We had to find out the whereabouts of Jane
and, indeed, whether she was safe.
But the first piece of information
that I had to pass
to the Cressman family
was the circumstances
of Tommy Cressman's death.
[Rick Cressman] It was, without a doubt,
the worst experience of my life.
To go into a little room
and have a curtain pulled back
and see Tommy with his forehead
battered by a cricket bat,
and to see him looking very cold and grey.
That's something
that's etched in my mind forever.
Mum was just in tears
on the end of the phone.
She wanted to know how he looked.
And I couldn't help but tell her a lie.
I just told her, "He looked fine, Mum.
"He still looked
"looked like your baby boy."
Yeah.
Jim just said, "We'll be back in touch
when we know more."
I said, "What's happened to Jane Andrews?"
And he said, "We haven't found her yet."
It was absolutely unreal.
I just could not believe
she was nowhere to be seen.
Where is she? Why isn't she there?
[Atherton] My editor came over to me
and said,
"There's been a murder in West London.
"The girlfriend has disappeared.
"Could you look into it?"
Nobody actually had heard of Jane Andrews.
And this was a time
when Google didn't exist,
so the only way to get information
was going to the Cuttings Library.
The information I got back
was so interesting.
We discovered photographs of Jane.
Jane Andrews, turned out,
was incredibly close
to the Duchess of York.
She'd been her dresser,
her personal assistant.
Once all the newspapers got wind of it,
it was this huge story.
[reporter] Jane Andrews has disappeared
from her West London home
following the murder of her partner,
Thomas Cressman.
[reporter 2] Jane Andrews worked
as an aide to the Duchess of York.
[Dickie] Jane Andrews
and her connections to the Royals
raises the stakes significantly.
This investigation
would be under the media spotlight.
She was due to go to work on Sunday,
never turned up.
Due to work on Monday,
and never turned up.
[Marshall] At that early stage,
we don't know what's occurred.
We don't know who's a suspect.
A line of inquiry was that Jane Andrews
may have been abducted herself.
Was she a victim?
[Marshall] It was really imperative that
we track her down as soon as possible.
[reporter] Thomas Cressman's body
was found yesterday afternoon
at the home he shared
with Jane Andrews on this estate.
The Duchess of York
was deeply shocked and concerned
to hear the news surrounding her friend.
[Marshall] Because we hadn't managed
to locate Jane,
we decided to contact
Sarah Ferguson herself.
The fact that she had worked
for Sarah Ferguson for nine or ten years,
we felt that Sarah Ferguson
could give us an insight
and maybe be the one
that Jane Andrews
would actually respond to.
Sarah Ferguson did agree to help us,
and so she did put the calls in.
But unfortunately, her calls
went through to the answerphone.
She asked Jane where she was,
to let her know that she was safe,
and to contact her.
[Dickie]
We were under a lot of pressure.
Not just me, the whole team,
because, you know, it's a high-profile,
fast-moving murder investigation.
Prince Andrew rung up demanding to know
why Sarah Ferguson
was being bothered by the police.
And he'd been told
it was a murder investigation
and the police speak
to whoever they need to speak to.
Prince Andrew was basically told
to get back in his box
and it had nothing to do with him.
[Marshall] The voice messages
that Sarah Ferguson left went unanswered,
but text messages
started to come in from Jane Andrews.
The responses were along the lines of,
Tommy had been absolutely fine
when she'd left the house.
She couldn't understand why anybody,
including the police,
would be looking for her.
It became clear to us that Jane
wasn't giving herself up to the police.
It was at that stage
that she became wanted
and she was on the run.
[Dickie] We got authority
to cell site her phone,
and it became clear to us
that she was on the move.
We know it's moving
towards the Southampton area.
We've tracked CCTV and find out
that she's in shops
and looks like she's buying clothes.
So we know she's alive.
And I was thinking,
why is she going to Southwest England?
We were looking at seaports and airports.
We were actually thinking,
is she looking to flee the country?
That's why we issued
the all-ports warning.
Should she seek
to leave the country and flee,
every airport and port
in the United Kingdom
had been alerted to her
and she was to be arrested on sight.
[anchor] Jane
[anchor 2] Ms Andrews disappeared
from her home on Sunday.
[anchor 3] It's revealed that 40-year-old
Thomas Cressman had been stabbed to death.
Police immediately
launched a nationwide search
for the Duchess of York's former dresser.
[mobile beeping]
[Ellery] I started getting text messages
from Janey,
-[mobile ringing]
-and phone calls.
She was like,
"I don't know what's happened.
"I'm worried about Tommy," and
She'd just completely lost the plot.
I remember saying, "Please come in, Janey.
Please come back.
"Please talk to the police,
tell them what's happening."
And at some point, she told me
she had taken a whole load of tablets.
I felt it was touch and go for her
'cause she was slurring,
saying she couldn't feel her feet,
couldn't feel her legs.
I thought she could
definitely be slipping away.
I'm saying, "Come on, Janey. Wake up.
Have you got anything to drink?"
You know, bombarding her with questions.
-[siren wailing]
-My daughter rang the police
and I just spoke to Janey,
trying to ascertain
where she came in from, what direction.
It was imperative that we find her
as soon as we possibly could.
We had the local police
on the lookout for her
because it looked as if
her life was in real danger.
A police sergeant
from Devon and Cornwall Constabulary
finds the car parked in the lay-by,
and slumped at the driver's wheel,
semiconscious,
is Jane Andrews.
[reporter] Jane Andrews was found
by police in her car
in a lay-by in Cornwall.
She'd taken an overdose of painkillers,
but was still conscious.
She receives treatment at the hospital
and she's kept in
for observation for a couple of days.
Then finally,
officers are dispatched from my team
to arrest her down in Cornwall.
[reporter] The Duchess of York
was said to be much relieved
that her former aide
had been found safe and well.
When Jane Andrews was found,
we felt, well,
maybe we will get some answers now.
Maybe we will find out
the truth of what's happened.
It's easy to make an assumption.
And even though a lot of suspicion
surrounded her,
we still needed the answers to questions.
[Dickie] Jane's interviewed
at Belgravia Police Station.
Jane Andrews, basically,
in the first interview,
didn't say very much.
It was virtually "no comment"
to everything.
And she gave the demeanour that,
"What's this got to do with me? What
am I doing here? Why am I under arrest?"
So it didn't lead us anywhere really.
[Marshall] We needed to know as much
as we could about Jane Andrews' background
to help us establish what had happened,
and her state of mind.
We needed more of an insight
into who Jane was.
We found out that Jane Andrews
had a very fast rise, going from,
what, in essence,
was a working-class background
to working for royalty
at Buckingham Palace.
[Atherton]
Jane Andrews was born in 1967 in Grimsby,
in the north of England,
to a working-class family.
Not very much money,
grew up in quite difficult circumstances.
She didn't do very well at school.
She really struggled.
She had quite a troubled childhood,
including an unwanted pregnancy
and an abortion
when she was just 17.
But she put this behind her.
She'd gone to a fashion college locally
and got a job
in Marks and Spencer's clothing store.
But she wanted
something better for herself,
and so often looked at magazines,
looking for jobs.
And Jane got incredibly lucky.
She answered a job advert
in The Lady magazine
for a personal assistant
to a working mother in London.
She was called for an interview
and it wasn't until she got to London
and was given an address
that it turned out
it was at Buckingham Palace.
She got on well instantly with the Duchess
and was given the job.
And now suddenly,
Jane's life is completely transformed.
For a working-class girl from Grimsby,
it must have felt like
she was living a fairy tale.
She has been propelled
to the rarefied atmosphere of the palace.
Jane was the Duchess of York's dresser,
which essentially is a personal assistant,
helped her to select her wardrobe,
helped her to go shopping and buy clothes.
And she's also very much part of her life
and this incredible life
that the Duchess of York had.
Travelling and going to
very expensive parties and balls,
and Jane was there, Jane was with her.
She actually started speaking
in a more of an upper-class accent.
She transformed herself.
She became a completely different person
in order to fit into this new,
rarefied, and quite wealthy world
that she'd been propelled into.
[Ellery] I met Janey at a picnic
at Ascot.
When I first met Janey,
her background really didn't come into it,
other than the fact that she lived
up north and in Grimsby.
And I remember thinking at the time,
"That's a ghastly name."
But I liked her immediately.
We really became friends
very quickly and very fast.
Janey travelled
in very illustrious circles.
She was incredibly stylish,
very attractive,
and had a huge amount of contacts.
And she just had a very sweet,
nice disposition, you know.
Subsequently, obviously,
things became different,
and her life changed dramatically.
Not at all as I would have
thought it would be.
It was a ghastly situation.
[Marshall] The more that we found out
about Jane Andrews
and her connection to the Royal Family,
it was clear that it became
such a big part of Jane's life.
They spent a lot of time with each other,
and it seemed as if they had established
a very, very close relationship.
[Dickie] As part of the investigation,
we spoke to one of the characters
that actually witnessed that relationship,
Allan Starkie.
The Duchess and I
had a business relationship
that spanned a little bit over four years.
The first time
I laid eyes on Jane Andrews,
she was extraordinarily
courteous and deferential to the Duchess,
curtsying every time she saw her.
But as time went by,
Jane cleverly developed a very close
relationship with the Duchess of York.
By the early '90s,
the Duchess was in an extraordinarily
vulnerable period in her life.
She was separated from Prince Andrew
and was trying to expedite a divorce.
She was sad, vulnerable, nervous
at how the public looked at her.
Jane recognised these weaknesses
and parlayed it into being her confidante.
Sarah's lifeline, really, was Jane.
I would categorise Jane
as a very ambitious, Machiavellian person.
Savvy, really. Street-smart, in a way.
[Atherton] You could see
that Jane Andrews started to copy her
in the way that she dressed.
She became, like, a little mini-me.
It was a very useful
symbiotic relationship for both of them
because it was the Duchess
getting this sort of inbuilt best friend
who's there for her the whole time,
who listened to her
and empathised with her.
And there was Jane
who was getting this entrée
into this incredibly wealthy,
upper-class world.
The Duchess of York said,
you know, "Jane is with me forever."
As far as she was concerned,
she was non-negotiable.
Unfortunately, that did change.
In 1997, Jane lost her job.
The palace made a statement
that Jane had been terminated
as a cost-cutting exercise.
But I think Jane's relationship
with the Duchess
made her awfully powerful,
and it really went to her head.
Rumours started flowing
that Jane developed
a friendship with an aristocrat
from Tuscany that the Duchess was fond of,
named Count Gaddo.
The Duchess is very territorial
about her personal relationships.
I would speculate
that this might have been
something that upset her a great deal.
I don't think anyone will ever really know
what precipitated Jane losing her job,
but I will say something.
Jane defined herself,
her essence,
by virtue of being associated
with the British Royal Family.
It was a big deal.
Whatever self-worth she had,
whatever pride she had,
emanated from her success in that role.
I can't imagine
how horrible it was for her.
When Janey lost her job
with Sarah Ferguson,
she was just blindsided
and completely crushed.
Oh, my goodness, totally devastated.
I think it rocked her world,
and I think it really sent her
into a bit of a depression.
I mean, she was,
you know, she struggled
to get back on her feet.
Without a shadow of a doubt,
she struggled.
The job had come to such an abrupt end,
it left her quite bereft.
She clearly loved the life.
She'd absolutely embraced that world.
It must've been like
something out of a fairy tale.
She certainly wouldn't want
to be going back home
to what you would call a normal life.
You know, it did have a huge impact on her
because, I guess, she saw
that whole world come crashing down.
[producer]
Talk to me about how you first heard
about Tom Cressman.
Mmm. Oh.
The first time I heard about Tom
was Janey calling me,
saying how she had met this amazing man.
She became besotted very, very quickly.
I think he gave her
a huge amount of attention.
He was a very nice, very, very nice chap.
He was bright and intelligent,
and I think he had
good family connections.
[Atherton] Thomas Cressman
lived this really amazing lifestyle,
lots of holidays and dinner parties,
and very much the sort of lifestyle
that Jane Andrews
really aspired to having.
[Dickie] Thomas Cressman
was a very successful businessman.
He came from a well-to-do family.
Parents were both American,
very upper middle class.
He liked boys' toys,
he had a classic car himself.
He lived an affluent and good life.
[indistinct party chatter]
[Catriona Kerruish]
Uncle Tom was the fun uncle.
I loved him so much
because he got behind us
with everything that we did.
Uncle Tom supported us with the ponies.
He used to stand out in the rain
and watch us.
We're a tight-knit family
and we are there for each other,
and we're close.
I must have been about 15
when I first met Jane.
She seemed very nice,
she seemed very sweet,
and Uncle Tom was very fond of her.
And she was clearly
very fond of Uncle Tom.
She loved the holidays. She loved--
She loved the lifestyle
that Uncle Tom could bring to her.
But the more and more we saw
Uncle Tom and Jane together,
erm, there was something
that never felt right with me about her.
I didn't trust her.
She was too fiery.
She could fly off the handle
at the smallest things.
She'd always be screaming and shouting,
swearing at him,
calling him every name under the sun.
And one time,
I said to Grandma on the phone,
"I don't trust her. She's gonna
turn around and kill someone one day."
[device beeps]
[Dickie] Jane was in custody
at Belgravia Police Station.
She was then interviewed a second time.
[Marshall]
Her story did change quite drastically.
She did make an accusation
that Tommy had been physically violent,
that he had been cruel towards her.
That obviously had a big impact
on the investigation.
We needed to get a background
on their relationship,
how they acted together.
Get that picture together of what
has led up to such a catastrophic ending.
[Ellery] There probably weren't that
many people that saw them as a couple
as much as I did, really.
It was a long,
protracted time of knowing them,
and obviously, they were all loved up
and that was in the beginning,
and it was only towards
the latter part of their relationship
that the cracks began to appear.
[Richard Gore]
I used to see Tommy quite a lot,
probably every couple of weeks.
Whenever we were socialising, you know,
we'd be sitting down,
having dinner or lunch, and
She would have these digs at him,
"Are you gonna marry me?
Where's the commitment?"
We'd try and just move
the conversation on quickly.
But it was that uncomfortableness
that we were all beginning to experience.
Just wasn't normal.
He and Janey had been rowing
and he had said to her something
along the lines of, "No way I'd marry you.
"You're unfit to be
the mother of my children."
And I remember saying,
"Tommy, that's just so cruel.
"Why would you say something like that?"
[Marshall] We discovered something that
had a big impact on their relationship.
It appeared that Jane
had found some emails
that Tommy had written
to a lady in America.
The emails were quite explicit
sort of sexual fantasies.
Obviously, Jane had found these,
and obviously,
it was very upsetting for her.
Particularly, I think there was a line
where he referred to Jane
as a pair of old slippers.
[Ellery] Towards the end
of their relationship,
which I, by now, thought
was very toxic and dangerous for them,
I remember her hair,
so much of it had fallen out.
I said, "Come to the studio.
"I'll fix it, I'll make it
look wonderful," which we did.
But when I spoke to her next,
she said, "Tommy hated it."
And she said
that he grabbed her by the hair
and dragged her upstairs
and told her not to come out
until she had removed it.
And I remember thinking,
"That's a hell of a job to do."
You'd have a heat machine
to take those connections out.
She would've had no nails left.
I remember thinking she had no nails,
but she'd picked them out.
She'd have picked a lot of hair out.
It would've been very painful.
Very, very uncomfortable and painful.
I'm sure I said to her that they needed
to go their separate ways.
And she always, always said,
"No matter what, I really love him.
I love him so much."
They just can't be separated.
They still go back to each other.
[Jane] Can't see anything.
[Thomas] All you have to do
is press that button there, darling,
and that zooms in and out.
[Jane] I see.
[Richard] Tommy and Jane were very excited
before they started their Italian trip.
She sort of assumed
that this was gonna be the place
that Tommy was gonna propose to her.
That's what she got into her head.
[Jane] Coming around to Tommy.
-Morning!
-[man] How are you?
[Thomas] Hello, Bunny.
Hi, there. Bunny.
[indistinct chatter]
He said, "She gave me an ultimatum
"when we were on holiday about commitment,
"and she wanted to know there and then,
"was I gonna propose to her,
and I said no."
And she just exploded.
[Kerruish] It wasn't a nice holiday.
There was a very tense atmosphere.
I just remember her shouting a lot.
We were quite alarmed
at the degree of aggravation.
I remember Jane
taking my Chrysler LeBaron,
driving off up the hills,
threatening suicide
and threatening to drive the car
over the edge of the cliff.
[Marshall] When they came back to the UK,
she was accusing Tommy
of wasting her life.
Things really started to escalate.
[line ringing]
[Thomas] I'm having a major fight
with my other half.
-[operator] Is anyone injured?
-[Thomas] Not yet.
-[operator] And where is your other half?
-[Thomas] Right here.
[operator] And what are they doing?
[Thomas] Staring at me.
[operator] Right. So has anybody
assaulted anyone, sir?
-[Thomas] Not really.
-[operator] Mr Cressman,
[operator] if there's nobody threatening
or anything else,
what do you want the police to do?
[Thomas] I would like the police
to come and split us up.
I would like somebody to stop us
from hurting each other.
Because if we don't have
somebody here soon, somebody is.
The 999 call that Tommy made to police,
it was quite clear that Tommy
wanted somebody to come and help.
[Rick] It was my brother's--
Tommy's plea for help.
A plea for help that was ignored.
These days, if there's even
a suggestion of domestic violence,
the police will attend immediately.
Who knows what would have happened
if the police had attended then.
[Richard] Tommy called me and he said,
"Richie, we've had a
we've had an argument. She's--"
He said, "I've called the police."
And, erm, he just said,
and I remember it vividly,
he said, "They're not interested.
"They're only going to be interested
if there's a body bag."
And that was the last time I spoke to him.
[Dickie] Forty-eight hours
after the call to the police,
Thomas Cressman was found dead
at his house in Fulham.
[Marshall]
A real violent assault had occurred.
With the injuries to his hands,
in particular,
it was clear that Thomas had tried
to remove the knife from his chest.
That was so difficult
to tell a family.
[Kerruish] It's horrific.
There was no way that that would have been
quick or painless.
Erm
Yeah, it makes me feel sick.
[Dickie] We had fingerprint evidence
linking Jane Andrews
to the knife and the cricket bat.
She's not given a story
that would change any of that.
We had sufficient evidence
to charge Jane Andrews with murder.
Jane Andrews' defence was,
she did it in self-defence
because she was subject
to domestic violence, so she says.
[Marshall]
A trial date was subsequently set
at the Old Bailey in Central London,
and you can never
really predict the outcome.
It was really apparent
that this was going to be
an absolutely huge murder trial.
[reporter]
The Duchess of York's former dresser
arrived at court this morning
looking tired and drawn.
I've never known a trial like it.
There was a huge media scrum outside.
[Marshall] Every day, I attended the court
with the Cressman family.
It was absolutely stratospheric.
It was in all the newspapers.
They were just
salacious gossip and rubbish,
how badly demonised she was.
It was, you had a victim
and you had a villain, and that's it.
There's a lot, lot more
to the story than meets the eye.
[reporter 1] Jane Andrews was described
as a woman who murdered
out of anger and jealousy.
[reporter 2]
Jane Andrews made half-hearted attempts
to try to rig the crime scene,
according to the prosecution.
When Jane did step into the witness box,
what she said was
an absolute bombshell.
Ms Andrews told the jury
her boyfriend
had put a pillow over her head,
tied her up, and raped her.
Asked why she hadn't told police,
she said, "I was so ashamed,
so embarrassed,
"I just couldn't talk about it."
One of the stories she gave was that
Tommy, apparently, had woken up
in the middle of the night,
and decided that he was going to
beat her and rape her.
And as a result of that,
she was so scared,
she lashed out at him with a cricket bat.
It was just absolute nonsense
to suggest that she was raped.
Pardon?
What you would normally see
in every investigation
is a history of abuse.
When we looked into Tom's background,
we found nothing.
We looked hard,
we spoke to ex-girlfriends,
as many people as we possibly could.
Nobody said anything
that would lead us to believe
that Tommy had a hidden side.
[Atherton] Later on during the trial,
Jane Andrews had yet another bombshell
dropped into the court
that nobody was quite prepared for.
She alleged that she had been
sexually abused as a child.
She said that it had
a huge impact on her life
and it had affected her mental health.
Erm, and then not long after,
she collapsed.
[reporter] But it was after
the prosecution asked Ms Andrews
about sexual abuse
which she had suffered as a child
that she started crying.
She said she was assaulted
when she was eight.
She then welled up, broke down,
and was led out of court.
[siren wailing]
The prosecution and the police,
they felt that she was playacting.
But sitting in court and watching her,
I did find that quite compelling,
and I did find it quite believable.
And to me,
it showed some sort of,
if not motivation, but some of the insight
into her character and into the fact
that she was probably
a very broken person.
[reporter] The trial was building
to its dramatic conclusion,
and the defence called
a key expert witness to the stand.
I'm Doctor Trevor Turner.
I'm a consultant psychiatrist.
I did a report for Jane Andrews. I was
approached by her defence team.
The purpose of the assessment
was to clarify
whether she suffered from mental illness
and her mental state
at the time of the alleged offense.
She presented as quiet, nervous,
erm, rather thin and pale.
With her symptoms,
I'd say they were typical of someone
suffering from chronic anxiety
and depression.
Jane's description of events,
muddled as they were,
I found perfectly plausible.
Jane told me
she became in fear of her life
because of the change
in Tom's sexual behaviour to her.
For example, forceful anal sex
and tying her up at times.
In my view, Jane was a very frightened
and scared individual
in the light of a man
who's physically bigger than her,
and I think that she felt bullied by him.
I was asked in the witness box
as to whether or not she had awareness
of what she was doing,
and my view was that she was
so troubled by anxieties and fears,
she couldn't quite make out
what was going on.
All she knew is she was in a state of
terror and she wanted to defend herself.
[Marshall] Doctor Turner clearly believed
what Jane had said
about being in a
abusive relationship,
and that she wasn't of her right mind.
The prosecution called
our forensic psychiatrist,
who said totally the opposite.
And the judge warned the jury
that these people are expert witnesses,
but it's their opinion.
[reporter] In the witness box,
a close friend who's known her
for several years.
[Ellery]
There is no excuse to kill anybody,
but I do believe what Janey said.
I had seen that
that Tommy could be quite dark.
I really felt that.
There was a reason for what Janey did.
It wasn't spur of the moment,
"He won't marry me,
I'll stick a knife in him."
I do know that there was
more to this than meets the eye.
A hundred percent more.
[reporter] The jurors were told
they must consider whether Andrews,
leaving court with her parents,
killed her lover in an act of fury,
rage, and disappointment,
or whether what happened
was a terrible tragedy.
[Marshall] After three weeks,
the trial came to an end.
You're obviously then
at the mercy of the jury.
There was a real fear with the family
that Jane's version of their son
would be believed.
And I think that was felt that
that would just be unbearable.
[Atherton]
The jury were out for a total of 12 hours.
So it felt like a very long time.
Tension was so high.
[Kerruish] The longer that they were out,
as a family,
we were terrified that the jury
were gonna believe the lies that she told.
The jury were then asked
if they've reached a verdict
that all of them agree on, and they had.
Suddenly, the news hit the world.
Jane Andrews had been found guilty
of murdering Thomas Cressman.
[reporter]
Sentencing Jane Andrews to life,
the judge, Michael Hyam, said,
"Nothing could justify what you did.
"You ended his life and ruined your own."
I was sat up in the gallery
with my grandma, my granddad,
when we heard that the verdict was that
she had been found guilty of murder.
My granddad just let out
the biggest "Yes."
And my grandma just clutched her hands,
and it
For me, sat there, it--
They had got justice for their son.
[reporter] Celebrations for the family
of Tom Cressman tonight
as his murderer is jailed.
We're lifting a glass to Tom
and to the Metropolitan Police
for getting the right verdict today.
And in spite of
all of the lies that that woman
was able to try to throw to that jury,
they saw through every one of them
like true people. [exclaims]
Cheers to that jury.
I think that justice has been done.
But sadly, for all of my family,
we would all like
to still be living life with him,
and that's something that we can't change.
[man] The evidence in this case
was overwhelming,
despite the fact that Jane Andrews
tried to sully the good character
of the man she murdered
throughout this trial.
My personal view, based on the evidence,
Jane Andrews is very manipulative,
doesn't like rejection,
capable of extreme violence,
has been proven.
And that's why Jane Andrews
was found guilty of murder as charged,
and the judge sentenced her
to life imprisonment
with a recommendation
to serve no less than 12 years.
I do not believe
that she planned any kind of revenge.
I have a feeling in my heart
that she snapped.
[reporter] Whatever her motive, Andrews
will have plenty of time to reflect on it,
as tonight she was driven away
to begin her life sentence.
I was very disappointed
because they never asked me
anything about her state of mind.
I didn't feel that it was
a good questioning or fair.
I felt there was so much unanswered
and it was all sort of
simplistic and very out of balance,
as far as I was concerned.
It's really interesting
looking back at this case.
At the time, it did feel black and white.
And a lot of people
talked about her being pure evil.
And there's no doubt that she was guilty
and it was an awful, awful crime.
But you do see it
from slightly different eyes now,
and you do see that there were,
potentially, mitigating factors
in what happened.
[Ellery] I went to see Janey
quite a few times in prison,
and to see her
was like a fish out of water.
One of the times, I must have
said something to make her laugh.
I can't remember what it was,
but she laughed.
And then suddenly, her whole face
crumpled up and she shrank down.
I said, "Janey," you know, "what is it?"
She said, "I don't know, how can I laugh?
"I killed Tommy, the love of my life.
How can I laugh? How dare I laugh?"
Said so many times
how much she loved Tommy
and she can't believe herself,
you know, what she'd done.
Jane's never shown our family
any form of remorse whatsoever,
or even tried to reach out to apologise
for what she did
and what she took from us.
She's done nothing but hurt my family,
and I'll never forgive her for that.
[Marshall] Due to the Royal connection,
this story is one
that just never goes away.
A drama was released this year
examining the volatile relationship
between Jane and Tom
and Jane's close relationship
with Sarah Ferguson.
[Sarah] Jane.
It's Sarah, the Duchess of York.
The police need to talk to you.
It's just something
that keeps on being brought up.
And for the Cressman family,
it has never allowed them to just grieve
for their son, for their brother.
[Rick] Reflecting on it now,
after all these years,
I sometimes feel
that the interest
in the perpetrator of the crime
of killing my brother
starts overwhelming
the actual victim of the crime.
This is just because
the girl who's killed him
has worked for Sarah Ferguson
for nine years.
And the emotional distress
that you're faced with,
then and now,
has never gone away
because of that Royal Family connection.
I think it's time
for me and the rest of the family
to have some peace.
I really do.