An Antiguan woman has been found guilty of manslaughter and child cruelty in connection with the death of a five-year-old girl nearly 48 years ago in the United Kingdom, with sentencing scheduled for a later date.
According to Antigua.news, Janice Nix, 67, was convicted at Isleworth Crown Court in London over the death of Andrea Bernard, who died in July 1978 after suffering extensive burns from a scalding bath weeks earlier. Nix was also convicted of cruelty to a child relating to Andrea's older brother.
The decades-old case was revived after Andrea's brother approached police in September 2022, urging investigators to revisit circumstances that had long been treated as an accident.
Prosecutors alleged that Andrea suffered severe burns on June 6, 1978, after being forced into dangerously hot water as punishment. The injuries covered more than half of the child's body, and she died weeks later from an infection linked to those burns.
Court proceedings heard that Andrea's brother recalled his sister expressing fear about returning home from school after failing to follow instructions to stay home and clean. He later remembered hearing screams from upstairs and discovering Andrea unconscious, with skin peeling from her legs.
Investigators faced significant obstacles in reopening the case, including the destruction of medical records and the deaths of both the original pathologist and coroner involved in the 1978 inquiry. The Crown Prosecution Service relied on surviving coroner's records, witness statements, and expert testimony to reconstruct the events surrounding the child's death.
A fresh pathology review concluded that Andrea's injuries were inconsistent with an accidental scalding, determining that the water temperature would have caused severe burns within seconds.
Prosecutors also pointed to inconsistencies in Nix's own accounts over the years. In her original statement to the coroner in 1978, she reportedly claimed Andrea had gone upstairs alone to bathe while she was in the garden. Decades later, she allegedly told police she had heard Andrea screaming and found her struggling to escape the bath.
Nix was arrested at Heathrow Airport on February 18, 2025, shortly after arriving on a flight from Antigua, and was formally charged the same day.
Aisling Hosein of the Crown Prosecution Service described the matter as a deeply disturbing case and credited Andrea's brother for his role in bringing the prosecution forward after so many years.
The court is expected to hand down its sentence at a future hearing.
