'My stepmum killed my sister and made me lie about it'

One Sunday in September 2022, a man walked into Croydon police station and told officers he needed to reveal a terrible secret he'd carried for almost half a century. Desmond Bernard described how, in 1978, his stepmother had killed his five-year-old sister Andrea by scalding her in a hot bath at their home in Thornton Heath, south London. Her death had always been treated as an accident, but Bernard, who had been just eight at the time, told officers that Janice Nix had ordered him to lie about what really happened. #crime #police #london #bbclondon