Janice Nix guilty of manslaughter in 1978 child bath death case

A jury at Isleworth Crown Court convicted Janice Nix of manslaughter after the death of five-year-old Andrea Bernard, a case that had been treated as an accident for nearly half a century. The verdict on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, brought a long-delayed reckoning over a child’s killing in Thornton Heath, south London, in 1978.

Jurors heard that Andrea was forced into a very hot bath on June 6, 1978, when Nix was in her late teens and known then as Janice Thomas. Court evidence said the burns covered about 50% of Andrea’s body. She was first taken to hospital in Croydon and later transferred to a specialist burns unit in East Grinstead, West Sussex, but died in hospital on July 13, 1978, from complications related to the burns.

The prosecution said the death was left to stand as an accident for nearly 50 years until Andrea’s older brother, Desmond Bernard, contacted police in 2022 with a new account of what happened. Nix, from Clapham, south London, had the main responsibility for the children’s care while their father, also named Desmond Bernard, was often away working as a chauffeur.

At trial, prosecutors described a household marked by a “cycle of violence” and said Andrea had been blamed for something, kept out of school, beaten and then forced into the bath after Nix became furious when she returned home. Jurors also heard allegations that Nix was violent toward Desmond Bernard, including beating him with a belt, burning him with a cigarette, biting him and making him eat cat food.

Nix denied manslaughter of Andrea Bernard and cruelty to her brother, but the jury rejected those denials. The case highlighted how a child’s death could remain formally unchallenged for decades when the first account went untested and the family’s account was not revisited until a later witness came forward. Here, that shift began only when Desmond Bernard went to police in 2022, turning an old file into a live criminal case and ending with a conviction that reclassified an apparent accident as fatal abuse.