Stepmother who killed girl in bath detailed long life of crime as drug dealer ‘Mama J’ in memoir

A woman convicted of killing her five-year-old stepdaughter[1] in a scalding hot bath was once a major drug dealer[2] dubbed "Mama J". Janice Nix, 67, was found guilty on Tuesday of the manslaughter[3] of Andrea Bernard by forcing her into the bath in south London[4]'s Thornton Heath on 6 June 1978. Nix, of Clapham, was also convicted of cruelty to Andrea's brother Desmond between 1 October 1975 and 6 June 1978, when he was aged between seven and nine.

Following the jury's verdicts, full details of Nix's past - as detailed in her memoir - can now be reported. During her life of crime, Nix would carry a gun, make drug deals worth tens of thousands of pounds, drive around the south London[5] suburb of Brixton in a white-leather-interior Vitara jeep with "Nasty Girl" written in red and silver on its side - and once served a nine-year prison sentence. Andrea's death was treated as an accident for nearly 50 years until her brother Desmond Bernard contacted police with new information in September 2022, Nix's trial at Isleworth Crown Court heard.

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Janice Nix, 66, leaving Uxbridge Magistrates' Court in February 2025 (PA Archive)

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

She had been in a relationship with the children's father, also named Desmond Bernard, and was in effect their stepmother[6]. 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 that Nix was shoplifting while helping to raise Andrea and Mr Bernard.

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. "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.

But Nix managed to turn her life around, and describes entering Parliament to give evidence to MPs on ex-offenders seeking employment, then winning the Probation Service's diversity and engagement award in 2015. The book says: "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 mother and she said their relationship was fractious: her mother once threw a flower pot at her which Nix then threw back. "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", the book said. 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.

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Andrea Bernard died in July 1978, nearly six weeks after arriving at hospital with severe burns to 50 per cent of her body (PA)

"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," the book said.

She was 16-years-old when they met, her Isleworth Crown Court trial heard, and 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. Mr Bernard Snr and Nix fought after he discovered she had started stealing again.

Nix and Mr Bernard Snr had their own child, named 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.

Her and Mr Bernard Snr'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 and Leicester, and connections in the Midlands, the West Country, Wales, and even Guyana, according to the book.

In one episode 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, she believed, around a hundred kilos of drugs. She sold the Captain's drugs including in one initially botched deal in Northampton.

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Janice Nix detailed her life of crime in her memoir (PA Archive)

The trade led to her travelling back to London and 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 reveals. 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 and 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 release and 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 describes 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. ^ convicted of killing her five-year-old stepdaughter (www.independent.co.uk)
2. ^ drug dealer (www.independent.co.uk)
3. ^ manslaughter (www.independent.co.uk)
4. ^ south London (www.independent.co.uk)
5. ^ south London (www.independent.co.uk)
6. ^ stepmother (www.independent.co.uk)