Child killer’s secret life as ‘Mama J’ drug dealer in Birmingham

Janice Nix has been convicted of manslaughter

16:58, 26 May 2026Updated 17:02, 26 May 2026

Janice Nix

A killer step mum was once a major dealer dubbed 'Mama J' who peddled drugs across the UK - including in Birmingham.

Janice Nix killed five-year-old Andrea Bernard by forcing her into a scalding hot bath in Thornton Heath, south London, on June 6, 1978.

The 67-year-old was convicted by jurors of manslaughter on Tuesday, May 26.

Nix, of Clapham, south London, was also convicted of cruelty to Andrea's brother Desmond between October 1, 1975, and June 6 ,1978, when he was seven to nine-years-old.

After the jury's verdicts, full details of Nix's past - as detailed in her memoir - can be reported.

During a life of crime, Nix would carry a gun and make drug deals worth tens of thousands of pounds.

She would drive around Brixton, south London, in a white-leather-interior Vitara jeep with 'Nasty Girl' written in red and silver on its side.

Nix also once served a nine-year prison sentence.

Andrea's death was treated as an accident for almost half-a-century until her brother Desmond Bernard contacted police with new information in September 2022, Isleworth Crown Court heard.

The year before a police investigation was launched, Nix published a book on her life called Breaking Out and written with Elizabeth Sheppard.

Nix had been in a relationship with the children's father, also named Desmond Bernard - and was in effect their stepmother.

The two victims and Mr Bernard Snr were given different names in the memoir and there is no mention of one of the children dying.

The book indicates Nix was shoplifting while helping to raise Andrea and Mr Bernard and suggests her criminal career escalated after her stepdaughter's death.

It details multiple convictions including her first prison sentence - nine months in 1985 - for shoplifting, resisting arrest and failing to attend probation appointments.

While inside, she reflected: "Shoplifting? Dipping? What kind of pettiness was that?

I was ashamed of the smallness of my crimes.

Janice Nix leaving the Old Bailey

"I'd certainly learned from my mistakes, but what I'd learned was that I wanted to go harder - much harder.

"I made a big decision: as soon as I had done my time inside, I was stepping it right up. I was ready to rise to the next level."

In 1992, she was jailed for nine years for possession of Class A drugs with intent to supply.

Yet Nix managed to turn her life around and became a probation officer.

She entered Parliament to give evidence to MPs on ex-offenders seeking employment and won the Probation Service's diversity and engagement award in 2015.

The book reads: "Instead of sending people to prison, I'd like to see far more opportunity for community resolution for women.

"The police could then record a resolved crime, but these women would not spiral off through the criminal justice system, getting more and more hurt at every stage."

During her childhood, Nix lived in Leicester with her mum.

She said their relationship was fractious - her mother once threw a flower pot at her which Nix then threw back.

The book read: "Worst of all were the times when my uncle's friend tried to stroke my knee with his hot, dry hand and push himself against me when nobody else was around."

In March 1976, she left for London without telling her mother.

There, a woman taught her to steal and she joined a posse stealing luxury goods from the West End.

Nix described meeting Mr Bernard Snr, named Emmanuel in the book, in a nightclub.

He was a chauffeur for the High Commission of Trinidad and Tobago, it said.

The book read: "He was streetwise and he knew what I did for a living, but he was following the straight life now - working his hours at the job then heading home each evening to his house in south London."

She was 16-years-old when they met, the trial at Isleworth Crown Court heard.

Nix wrote in her book that he and the children were a 'ready-made family'.

But 'life was quiet, uneventful' and she started to miss 'the excitement' of shoplifting.

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Mr Bernard Snr and Nix fought after he discovered she had started stealing again.

They had their own child Nadia in November 1979 - a year after Andrea's death.

The book describes Nix leaving baby Nadia sleeping and Mr Bernard Snr watching TV to visit a house with her fellow shoplifter friend.

There, she took crack cocaine for the first time and started sharing 'a quiet pipe at the end of a working day' with her friend.

The couple's relationship started to break down and eventually ended.

Nix started low-level drug dealing before starting to shift thousands of pounds worth of cocaine to dealers themselves.

She expanded her syndicate in 1988 with bases in Northampton, Birmingham[4] and Leicester.

Nix had connections in the Midlands, the West Country, Wales, and even Guyana, according to the book.

One time, she travelled to the South American country and struck a deal with a major dealer named the Captain.

There, the Captain showed her his strongroom containing tightly wrapped packages totalling what she believed was around a hundred kilos of drugs.

She sold the Captain's drugs including in one initially botched deal in Northampton.

The trade led to her travelling back to London.

Nix described helping Nadia ready her items for school while navigating it.

After her associate and lover was robbed, she started carrying a Beretta Bobcat semi-automatic pistol, the book read.

Nix described finding the perpetrator in a casino, saying: "He couldn't speak a word. I placed my red Yves Saint Laurent bag in the middle of the table, and opened the clasp.

"My Beretta Bobcat gleamed blue-black against its blood-red lining, baring its perfect little teeth."

Nix said 'sweat was forming on his forehead' but she let him go, saying: "'If this ever happens again, I won't deal with it so lightly.

You check?"

Her property, as well as other properties linked to her, were raided by police and burgled by competitors, according to the book.

As she served a lengthy prison sentence in Holloway prison, Nadia moved to America to live with her father.

Nix recalled Nadia asking 'No more jobs, mom. No more drug deals. You've got to promise" and her replying "I promise".

But her old lifestyle resumed after she was released - Nix was arrested on the M1 for being concerned in the supply of cannabis.

In September 2001, while in HMP Morton Hall, Lincolnshire, she took a sixteen-week course to start work as a 'listener', comforting struggling prisoners.

In 2004, after applying from prison, Nix got her first job - a ward clerk in the local community hospital where she would go on to work for five-and-a-half years.

The following year, she was released on licence to find her flat had been repeatedly burgled.

Nadia flew to London to see her and brought money from her father to replace Nix's possessions.

After various jobs and volunteer roles, Nix joined the London Probation Trust in 2014.

The book tells of her trying to help people on probation despite the limited resources available.

A women's group she ran stopped in 2016 as a result of Government funding cuts and her role again changed in 2017 after the Probation Service was part-privatised, it said.

She said: "I knew what it was like to have no solid ground at all beneath your feet.

More than I had ever wanted anything before, I wanted to help these women rebuild their lives."

References

1. ^ The disturbing digital trail left by racist monster who raped Sikh woman he thought was Muslim (www.birminghammail.co.uk)
2. ^ Secret to getting the best of BirminghamLive's stories (www.birminghammail.co.uk)
3. ^ Don't miss the biggest and breaking stories by signing up to the BirminghamLive newsletter here (www.birminghammail.co.uk)
4. ^ Birmingham (www.birminghammail.co.uk)