"And suddenly everything I'd strived for, status and money and friendships… it just became very unimportant somehow. Whether it was I who worked it through, or God who worked it through me, I don't know. But it was a kind of dismantling effect, and I ended up a little different to before I went in. I have been put together differently. I feel that." SIÔN JENKINS spent six years in prison for the murder of his foster daughter Billie-Jo, a murder that after three trials, the state finally accepted he did not commit. We sit in his comfortable Southsea home. He has his back to the light that is pouring through the open door of the sitting room from the conservatory, the shafts of sunlight highlighting cushions and throws in shades of rich red and gold. I am facing the light, and it's blinding. I would move except I think it will soon fade. Only it doesn't, and so I hear Jenkins' powerful words in a kind of isolation, unable to see his eyes because the sun has become like those yellow, electrical floodlights. I keep thinking, I need to see his eyes, because his former wife Lois described them as cold, "slate grey", after Billie-Jo's murder. But then, so much was said about Jenkins, and some of it was like powerful light: it seemed illuminating but became merely blinding. Truth, you would think, should be so obvious and easy to discern, shining like a beacon in the surrounding fog, but it doesn't work that way.
How do you know a person – a husband, a wife, a friend, a colleague? Really know them – not just their likes and dislikes, their public strengths or even their private foibles, but know what they're made of, what they are capable of, what they'd dream of in a prison cell; know what they look like when they're turned inside out? And if someone told you the person you thought you knew to that degree was guilty of a heinous crime, would you believe it? For an hour? Not even a minute. Perhaps a second? And if you were then told forensic evidence proved their guilt, how long would your faith last? Because perhaps the truth is that we instinctively recognise there is a part of all of us that is unknowable, sometimes even to ourselves.
Billie-Jo Jenkins died in February 1997, bludgeoned to death with a metal tent peg while painting the patio doors of the family home in Hastings. Ironically, sometimes Billie-Jo gets a bit overlooked in this story, like the murder victim on page one of a thriller that the reader never really gets to know. She was nearly 14, with long dark hair, pretty and vivacious. Loud sometimes. She'd had a troubled background, and joined Siôn and Lois Jenkins' existing family of four girls in 1992, but she was doing well, really well. She had a zest for life; liked horse riding, skating, running and riding her bike. She threw snowballs and water bombs, lost her dinner money daily, and wasn't averse to sticking teachers to their chairs with super glue. She was fun and she was loved.
Billie-Jo's murder did not just snuff out the life of a teenage girl. It destroyed the family around her. The week after she died, Jenkins, a deputy head teacher at a local boys school, was arrested. Lois did not just reluctantly come to accept her husband was a murderer when the police told her; she believed instantly. Whatever fault line already ran with silent menace through the family, the murder was the earthquake that caused the normal, interlocking bonds of familial love and loyalty to be violently ripped apart. The reasons why this happened are complex. On the surface, to outsiders, the Jenkins family had been prosperous, happy and successful. But what can you tell from appearances?
LIFT THE ROOF on number 48 Lower Park Road in Hastings in 1997, and it is a very feminine household that you see. There's mum Lois, a social worker who works several days a week in London. Then there's Billie-Jo and her sisters Annie (12), Charlotte (ten), Esther (nine) and Maya (seven). There's also an au pair, Regine. You can hear the Spice Girls playing in the house unless you're with Annie, because she likes Oasis, though her sisters scoff that Oasis is a boys' band. The only males in the house are dad Siôn and Buster, the Staffordshire bull terrier.
Jenkins worked long hours at William Parker Boys' School and had just been appointed head, subject to reference checks. But there was a problem. He had exaggerated qualifications on his CV when appointed deputy, and had felt compelled to make the applications the same. It was claimed he was under strain, that he feared being found out. Reports also claimed he was unqualified, but in fact he had a teaching qualification and a masters degree in education.
Billie-Jo died on a Saturday. The house had been a bit chaotic that morning, with Lois going to the supermarket but forgetting her purse and having to call Siôn. Lois would later accuse him of being remote from domesticity, but he says he was a hands-on dad by necessity, and he certainly was that day. Lois took Esther and Maya shopping and to the beach, while Siôn supervised Billie-Jo and Annie, who wanted to do chores for extra pocket money. He also had to pick up Charlotte and a friend from a clarinet lesson at 3pm.
Billie-Jo Jenkins, murdered in 1997
Billie-Jo was to paint the patio doors, Annie to wash the car, and then they would swap over. The doors needed painting because an intruder had tried to break in. In fact, Billie-Jo herself had noticed a man watching the house, and the family had reported incidents involving a prowler, and silent phone calls, to the police. When Siôn went to pick up Charlotte, he took Annie, but Billie-Jo remained, painting. When they returned, Charlotte put her clarinet in her bedroom, Annie spoke briefly to Billie-Jo, and then Siôn said they should get back in the car because he needed to get white spirit if Annie was to have her turn painting.
What happened in the next two minutes became the focus of the whole case. In their original interviews, Charlotte and Annie were absolutely clear: they left the house with Siôn. Transcripts show Annie insisting there was no time gap between her and Siôn leaving. When the question is repeated, she says, "He came out just after me and shut the door." How long after? "A few minutes – about two minutes, one minute." Even when the police timed all the afternoon's events, they concluded that Jenkins had only two to three minutes in which to explode with temper, kill Billie-Jo, clean himself of blood and join the girls in the car.
When they returned – without the white spirit because Jenkins had left without money – Charlotte noticed the side gate, which had been closed, was now open. Inside, the girls discovered Billie-Jo bleeding and dying. Jenkins knelt down beside her, lifted her, saw he could do nothing and phoned an ambulance.
On paper, the case against Jenkins was non-existent. Having examined the girls' statements, the Crown decided not to prosecute. But when the family's clothes were taken for examination, microscopic spots of blood were found on the lower left leg of Jenkins' trousers, and lower left sleeve of his jacket. They were invisible to the eye and put together constituted a mere drop of blood. In Jenkins' first trial, he was convicted because it was argued that the spots were spray from the attack. By the third, defence scientists were able to show that the blood was consistent with Billie-Jo's expiration as Jenkins leaned over her. Her injuries had caused pulmonary interstitial emphysema. This meant her airways were blocked so when Jenkins moved her, a fine spray of blood was likely.
Just touching Billie-Jo caused Jenkins' hands to be covered in blood. Had he been the attacker, more than microscopic spots of blood might have been expected on his clothes. He might also have been expected to have blood on his back, caused by spray when the weapon was lifted back and forth. He didn't.
But perhaps even more important than the forensic confusion was the behaviour of Lois. When the police suggested Jenkins was guilty, she changed her statement and so did her friends. One friend claimed he had once seen Jenkins kick Billie-Jo (a lie, says Jenkins). And Lois claimed she was the victim of domestic violence. It was devastating testimony. Who knew a man better than his own wife?
Jenkins talks slowly, deliberately, but with no apparent sign that he thinks it beneath himself to defend his character. He has written a book about the case and, anyway, he has spent nine months of his life in courtrooms. He is used to questions. How would he describe his marriage before Billie-Jo's murder? "Up and down." He was "too ambitious for his own good", and like many professional couples, their relationship suffered under the weight of career and family.
But there is a misunderstanding, he says. "People often have the idea that the minute Billie was murdered, the police went to Lois and she said yes, I think it might be Siôn. In the course of that week, I slept with Lois. When I was giving a witness statement, Lois made complaints to the police about the fact that I wasn't being fed properly, that I was coming home exhausted. We discussed where we would live… when the girls would go back to school." The night before his arrest, they watched a film together and discussed how awful the week had been. "Then I was arrested and Lois fell apart."
But he admitted that he once slapped Lois, didn't he? (His 'admission' appeared in several newspaper articles.) "No," he says instantly. "No, that's not true. I read in one paper that I was supposed to have pushed Lois down stairs. I'm not sure even Lois said that." Has he ever hit her? "I've never hit Lois." Does he have a volatile temper? "No, and in all the situations I've worked, I've never had a volatile temper." (It's true that colleagues testified to him being a very even-tempered, teacher.)
It is also true that Lois said some strange things. She claimed Jenkins had a conviction for car theft. She also claimed that he had once perforated her eardrum and she was admitted to hospital. Then there was a mysterious injury – a pin in his knee. The implication was that he had a shadowy side, a side she did not fully know. But the claims were easily disproved. Jenkins has no pin in his knee. And he had no previous convictions. "I had never had a conversation with a police officer. I had never been in a court. I had never even been into a police station except to hand in a wallet."
As for the eardrum, it was he who was in hospital with that injury, which happened when he was fooling about with Esther. "Lois and the girls came to visit me. And suddenly Lois had used this incident and turned it round, but if the police had wanted to know, all they had to do was go to the hospital in Hastings and find out when Lois was hospitalised for the event. And, of course, they wouldn't find anything because it didn't happen."
The strong light behind Jenkins has faded a little now. I see surprise flit through his eyes when I ask about his supposed adultery with one of the family's au pairs. Not even he knew about that accusation. He explains the complicated but innocent background to another tabloid story about a 'relationship' with a local teenager, then insists, "I have never committed adultery. I have never slept with any woman other than Lois in the years I was married to her. I've never taken any woman out. I've never had sexual relations…" He breaks off. "I sound like Bill Clinton… But people were desperate for me to be an adulterer."
Headlines blinding like headlights. One read, 'Murderer, liar, wife-beater, adulterer'. "That's the package. They needed me to be a real monster, a real brute." But none of this explains the behaviour of Lois, who moved to Tasmania with the girls and a new partner. Why would she say what she did? "I suppose you have to analyse what the police did. If someone tells you that your husband is guilty, not just, 'We have a gut feeling', but, 'We have forensic evidence that says he is'… and bear in mind that she was still in the throes of recovering from Billie's murder. If you are saying things to the police and they are saying well done… Lois actually said to the police that she had been hallucinating and couldn't be held responsible for anything that she had done or said."
Over the years, Lois refused to permit the defence access to the children. But she gave statements to the police saying their stories had changed, and the defence, unable to establish what the girls' evidence would be, didn't call them at the first trial. Jenkins believes that sealed his fate. "Lois made many comments but it was her comments relating to my children and what they were supposed to have said – bearing in mind they were my alibis – that was to have a terrible and tragic effect on how proceedings went. I was saying I was with my children all the time, yet at my trial they didn't give evidence. I'm not surprised the jury convicted me. I'd have convicted me too. Without a doubt."
Years later, the girls were interviewed again. Transcripts reveal Annie repeatedly denying she remembers ever saying what her mother claimed she did. The first time Lois spoke publicly was in a newspaper article she wrote, railing against the 'justice industry', which wanted to re-examine her husband's case. So does Jenkins think Lois really believed he was guilty? "What does Lois think?" muses Jenkins. "I'm not sure Lois knows what she really thinks."
There is a long pause when I ask what he feels about her now, an obvious internal struggle. "If Lois was hanging over a cliff face, would I walk by or lift her up? I'd lift her up. Without question. But do I want to spend time with Lois? No, I don't. Do I like what she has done? I am very angry. To say I am upset is an understatement. But do I want harm to her? No." Firstly, because that's not his way, he insists. But his second reason is more noteworthy because it's the reason warring couples often forget. "Because she's the mother of Annie, Charlotte, Esther and Maya."
FOR THE FIRST couple of years in prison, Jenkins literally banged his head off doors, off walls. "I was just in a rage, really. I was very angry, just a sense of injustice." He was middle class with a reputation for being status-driven. Was losing respectability an issue? "No. Maybe if I'd been convicted of stealing a coat from Marks and Spencer… But when I lost my job, it was peanuts. I had lost Billie. I was being charged with her murder. I feared I would die in prison, that I would never see my children again, and grappling with such profound real-life issues changed, I think, the way my heart is put together. When I was in my 20s and climbing up that pole, I wanted money and a better car and more holidays. But you learn what is important in life. Some people learn that when they are young. I wasn't one of them."
His father worked for Kwik-Fit (whose founder, Sir Tom Farmer, put up some of his bail money), and most of his life had been comfortable. But inside, he heard tragic stories, began to understand loss, and gained compassion for people with mental illness. He spent a lot of time alone, prayed a lot, shouted at God a lot. Nobody official wanted to talk to him unless he confessed. "Tell us about your guilt and come in – until then, the door is closed." Would he – eventually – have admitted guilt to get parole? "Never," he says immediately, vehemently. "Never, never, never. They could have said you will die in here, and I would have spat in their faces. Without question."
He developed survival skills. "Strategies of heart and intellect, physical strategies to deal with violence, but I never came across a strategy for dealing with the loss of my daughters. I was naked to that. And the pain was raw and not healable."
He hopes his daughters read his book, that they remember the man he was, not the man others said he was. He last saw them in Wakefield prison in 2003. Before that, there were a few supervised visits, and he still treasures a scrap of paper that seven-year-old Maya slipped him when the social worker wasn't looking. "I love you," it read.
"I cannot be at peace until I am at peace with my daughters," he says. "And the tragedy is that I do not believe it works one way. I have always loved them and I know they have loved me, and to have this trauma in our lives… It needs to be brought to a conclusion. But Lois is like a gatekeeper who won't admit what has happened and won't recognise what she has done, and protects her own character by believing that none of this has anything to do with her."
He is determined to see the girls again. When he imagines that, how does it play out? "I want to talk about everything and for it to be everything," he says quietly. "I want it to be private and gentle. I want it to be kind. I don't want to talk about the case. If they want to ask questions later, to understand more, I will be the first person willing to talk to them. But I don't want recriminations. I won't be spending my time telling them what I think of their mother. I'm sure Lois probably thinks if I passed her in the street I'd be ranting and raving, but I wouldn't. I'm tired. I'm tired of it all."
There will be those who read this article and say, "What a terrible miscarriage of justice." And those who read it and say, "I still think he did it." That's human nature. And this case absolutely turns on the axis of human nature and behaviour. A whisper that becomes a bellow, a suspicion that becomes a certainty. The subtle acceptance or rejection of fact to fit prejudice. Lois's honesty was assumed and Siôn's wasn't – but then he did lie on his CV. (A misdemeanour now so apparently trivial that Sir Alan Sugar chose the contestant who lied in his CV as his TV apprentice.)
What conclusion should people reach about that? Jenkins' reply is even. "People should draw whatever conclusion they want. They should look to themselves and ask if they have ever exaggerated a CV, and if they haven't, and want to judge me harshly, then so be it. It was not one of my finest moments. I regret it. I don't defend myself over it. I'm not suggesting that it wasn't a very bad thing to do. I upset myself and other people, and I wish I hadn't done it."
He may have been a liar, but the law accepts he was not a murderer. Siôn Jenkins is officially an innocent man. Whether he is a completely free man is another matter. You can never get a life back. Yes, he has moved on. He is about to graduate with a degree in criminology, will then undertake a masters in criminal justice, and wants to work to improve the system. He has married Tina, who wrote him a four-line letter of support in prison because, as a nurse, she did not believe he could have killed Billie-Jo with so little blood on him. "I'm in love with Tina," he says. He smiles. "Always helps." Tina, he says, knows him, which begs the question, didn't Lois?
He's happy, but it's relative. Billie-Jo is dead. He has lost five daughters. And he wants her murderer caught. There were two other suspects arrested apart from Jenkins – Felix Simmons and Mark Lynam, both living locally, both suffering from mental illness. Jenkins says his prison experiences make him loathe to finger the vulnerable. But questions still need to be answered. Billie-Jo's body was found with a plastic bag lodged in her nose. Lynam was behaving alarmingly that day and in custody, clutched a scrap of plastic to his face and had other pieces secreted on his body.
But the man Jenkins really wants traced is a new suspect. When Billie-Jo died, Jenkins spoke to someone he thought was a plain-clothes officer in his hall. This is mentioned in his original statement. Many details were challenged but police never questioned Jenkins about this man. While preparing for the third trial, Jenkins realised there was no witness statement for him. Inquiries confirmed that there was no plain-clothes officer. Jenkins now wonders if this was the smartly dressed man Billie-Jo reported watching their house. Had he been there when Jenkins and his daughters returned, hidden, then come out during the melée of ambulance men? "She'll be all right," the man told Jenkins – then disappeared.
Surely believing a man could kill, have no apparent blood on him and behave so rationally requires the same psychological leap as believing Jenkins is the killer? It does, Jenkins agrees. But until he is given an alternative explanation, he can only assume him to be a suspect. Jenkins has written to Sussex police. They have issued a statement saying they are "considering the contents of the letter".
When Jenkins was in prison, people told him he would never get out. But he believed he would walk under a starry night sky again; that what he truly was would become known, because he would never stop fighting. He has a similar instinct now. "I believe," he says, "that Billie's killer will be found."
•
The Murder of Billie-Jo (£18.99, Metro Books), by Siôn Jenkins, is out now
The full article contains 3829 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
