“We question her stability of character, but are hopeful there is a way for her to find that remorse and, perhaps, eventually rejoin society. As far as I know, she’s not being moved to an open prison.”

Andrews, 43, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder, which took place in 2000. Cressman had refused to marry her.

In 2009, she absconded from HMP East Sutton Park. The Crown Prosecution Service said that, having considered psychiatric reports on Andrews, she would not face charges for walking out of the open prison. She was returned to custody two days later after being found at a hotel a few miles away.

A Parole Board spokesman would not comment on Andrews, but said: “Once a life-sentence prisoner’s minimum tariff has been served, the only legal question which has to be answered is whether or not the prisoner is a risk to the public.

Jane Andrews: Naked Ambition

By Peter Stubley

CourtNewsUK.co.uk

Jane Andrews was the Cleethorpes girl who wanted to be a princess.

From humble origins as the plain daughter of a carpenter and social worker she would eventually move in the highest social circles in the land.

But ultimately her all-consuming desire to forge a permanent role in the upper class world would destroy everything she cherished.

One of two children, Andrews was born in the sleepy seaside Humberside town and later moved to Grimsby with her family.

By the time intelligent and promising Andrews took her 'A' levels at the local grammar school she was already desperate to escape south.

She began work designing children's clothes for Marks and Spencer but spent her time spare time flipping through upper crust women's magazines, dreaming of rubbing shoulders with royalty.

At the age of 21, her dreams came true when she became the Duchess of York's dresser after replying to an advert in 'The Lady' magazine.

It provided her with a marriage in 1989 to Christopher Dunn-Butler, who also worked for Sarah Ferguson.

The end of her first marriage

Five years later she divorced the computer expert citing 'pressures of work.'

In1995 Andrews first hit the headlines when £250,000 worth of jewellery was stolen from suitcases belonging to the Duchess, which were supposed to be in her care. 

The following year she was sacked - ostensibly as part of a cost-cutting exercise.

Her life with the Duchess would remain an obsession and she would endlessly tell family and friends of the hotels she had stayed in - the grand suites at the Four Seasons in New York or the Cippriani in Venice.

Deprived of the job she loved, Andrews was soon on anti-depressants and her golden brown hair, once died red in imitation of her former boss, began to fall out in clumps.

The failure revealed that underneath the designer clothes and exclusive make-up Andrews was an unstable and intensely insecure woman now desperate to escape spinsterhood.

She was also seeing a psychotherapist after she made allegations of abuse as a child.

On New Years Eve, 1998, Andrews met dashing millionaire's son Tom Cressman - the ultimate eligible bachelor.

His parents had made a fortune through the Bristol Street Motors group and father Harry was a former director of Aston Villa football club.

Playboy Tommy Cressman

Tom Cressman was becoming a wealthy man in his own right, with a bespoke car cover business and a partnership with former Formula One ace Sir Stirling Moss in a car polish enterprise. 

The playboy hadthe image to match his wealth - one of his eight cars was a classic 1963 scarlet Alfa Romeo Spider and he kept a gorgeous 1960 Riva speedboat.

His status and group of friends would guarantee Andrews the place the tables of the rich and famous she craved after the loss of the Royal job.

Andrews tried to prise herself back into high-profile career by taking the post of PR manager for London's world famous Claridge's hotel in October 1999.

Inexperienced Andrews was a flop and forced to leave after only two months to become a shop assistant.

Increasingly she became dependent on her 'Darling Tommy' for financial assistance with the mortgage on her apartment in Battersea as well as her social life.

But Mr Cressman had his own problems. The court heard he was extremely close to mother Barbara after the divorce of his parents.

Although he had other women in his life, the jury heard she was the only woman he felt completely comfortable with.

Sexual fetishes

Mr Cressman also harboured an interest in 'adventurous' sexual fetishes, including bondage, spanking and anal sex.

He could also be cruel - he would make no secret of the physical and emotional imperfections he found in Andrews.

Despite his arrogance, Andrews saw him as her only chance of securing her future happiness in high society and constantly pestered him to commit himself to her above everything else.

She was desperate to prove wrong those who said Tommy would never settle down and gave himan ultimatum of six months to propose to her.

Mr Cressman later confided in a close friend that Andrews was 'a pair of old slippers I cannot throw away.'

The months leading up to Mr Cressman's death were their happiest times together.

Andrews fondly remembered how they went to look at houses together in the Cotswolds.

She sounded like an excited schoolgirl as she told the Old Bailey jury: 'Everybody kept on calling us Mr and Mrs Cressman.'

'He thought it was very funny and said "I like the sound of that.'

But friends noticed how the 'ideal couple' swung moodily from apparent devotion to pure spite against each other.

Dramatic love affair

There were also clues to the impending tragedy in the hysterical answerphone message she left for her boyfriend complaining about his lack of affection.

'Oh it's loonybin Janey, you don't give a toss if I'm walking home at 1am.' she sobbed.

Another glimpse of her instability came at a dinner party when Andrews made a crude remark about Tom's fondness for kinky dressing up after drinking too much wine and he later had to make an apology to her hosts.

Even her reserved ex-husband Mr Dunn-Butler, the first person she called after the killing, admitted she was 'melodramatic' and 'liked to go on a bit.'

When fragile Andrews discovered Tommy had lied to her about getting married and she found steamy e-mails to a woman in America on his computer she saw her plans for the future in ruins.

Mr Cressman had dithered too long and Andrews suddenly realised he was 'dangling  a carrot in front of me and pulling the strings.'

An idyllic holiday in Italy and the South of France ended with a blazing row at the airport with Andrews refusing to board the plane.

She tearfully called friends telling them 'Tommy' had finally told her he was not going to marry her.

'Somebody is going to get hurt'

They returned home to Maltings House in Bagley's Lane, Fulham but another furious argument erupted the following day and Mr Cressman called the police at 11.35am telling the operator: 'Somebody is going to get hurt.'

Police advised him to keep calm and no officers were sent.

As her boyfriend slept that night, Andrews stripped naked to avoid staining her clothes with blood and stood before his bed clutching a knife and his cricket bat.

She smashed him across the head with the bat then stabbed her unconscious and helpless lover in the chest.

As Mr Cressman lay dying she returned to the room, pulled out the knife and stabbed him in the chest again to finish him off.

Prosecutor Bruce Houlder, QC, said the killing was a 'classic case of the jilted woman wanting revenge.’

'Anger and jealousy rose up in her and led her to take a terrible revenge on the man she clearly loved.

'She was a friendly and decent woman who was so transformed and frankly burnt up inside by her anger that she killed him.’

Andrews walked from the room covered in blood and drove towards Plymouth after scrubbing the blood from her skin.

She callex ex husband minutes after murder

The first person she contacted was Christopher Dunn-Butler at 3.10am on Sunday,September 17, just a few minutes after the stabbing.

She then sent messages to friends denying all knowledge of her lover's death and claiming he had been blackmailed.

Police found her at a lay-by on the A38 near Liskeard, Cornwall after she had taken 40 headache pills in an apparent suicide bid.

Andrews dressed in black from head to toe for every day of her Old Bailey trial as if in mourning for the man with whom she had so desperately wanted to share her life.

But faced with a life sentence, Andrews murdered her dead lover's reputation just as surely as she plunged the knife into his chest.

She wailed to the jury how she 'was the only one who ever saw the other side of Tommy.'

Andrews claimed he forced her to have anal sex 'many times' in their affair - despite her abhorrence of the act.

On the night of his death she said he had tried to rape anally and she had left the bedroom twice.

Each time she returned, first with a cricket bat and then a knife to defend herself.

'He sais he was going to kill me'

She told the jury: 'He started hitting me and said I had ruined him. He said he was going to f****** kill me.

'I just froze. He got hold of my hair and was trying to hit me. I picked up the knife because I didn't want him anywhere near me.

'We came together and the next thing I knew he was on top of me.

'It must have gone into him. I crawled from underneath him and ran out of the room.'

Her barristerJohn Kelsey-Fry QC claimed she was not guilty of murder due either to provocation, diminished responsibility because of her mentalillness, self-defence or a bit of all three.

On May 16 2001 the jury convicted Andrews on a majority decision after 11 hours and 44 minutes deliberation.

The late Recorder of London, Judge Michael Hyam said: 'In killing the man you loved you ended his life and ruined your own.

‘It is evident that you made your attack upon him when you were consumed with anger and bitterness.

‘Nothing could justify what you did. It was a brutal attack and even if you felt yourself wronged you were attacking an unarmed man who had possibly been asleep a few minutes before you attacked him.

‘After you had struck him first with a cricket bat and then stabbed him with a knife you left him to die without remorse.'

After the verdict Mr Cressman's father Harry said: 'I feel she is going to have the holiday she deserved.'

Andrews appealed against her conviction, claiming she would not have murdered Mr Cressmanhad she not been repeatedly sexually abused as a child.

Her claims were rejected.

CourtNewsUK.co.uk

Was it really murder?

Next month, former royal aide Jane Andrews will appeal against her conviction for murdering her lover. Relentlessly portrayed as a callous social climber, here she gives her account of their tortured relationship and the hours that led up to the killing.

Report by Libby Brooks - The Guardian

August 30, 2003

The women on the wing already call her "Fergie's bird", and now it's only going to get worse. It is October 9 2001, two days before the transmission of Dressed To Kill, Channel 4' s investigation into the trial of Jane Andrews, the former dresser of Sarah Ferguson who was, five months previously, convicted of murdering her boyfriend, Thomas Cressman, and sentenced to life imprisonment. In the boisterous visiting room at HMP Bullwood Hall in Essex, where she is currently serving her sentence, Andrews is perched at one of the plastic table-and-chair sets, working her fingers anxiously. Her hair is limp, her face pinched and pallid. She is in a state of extreme agitation at the prospect of further media exposure.

Since her trial, a number of former friends and lovers have given interviews, offering lurid addenda to the popular account of the girl from Grimsby who rose to become one of the Duchess of York's closest confidantes, before the loss of her job on the royal staff precipitated a decline into romantic obsession and murder. Some of her letters written from prison have already been passed on to the Mirror by a former inmate. "Now every time I write a letter, even to my mum, I have to think about each word and how it would look in a newspaper." An unauthorised photograph of her attending a concert in Holloway prison appeared in a number of tabloids. The film is a nightmare, she says distractedly. She is worried about how her parents will react. She talks about loyalty. "I could have given you a list of all the people who would talk about me on camera." She says she knows what people think of her. "I don't want sympathy. I just want understanding."

The headlines at the time of Andrews' conviction were unequivocal. Dubbed "the Fatal Attraction killer", she was portrayed as an unstable and emotionally manipulative individual, who beat her boyfriend with a cricket bat and stabbed him through the chest with a kitchen knife in a vengeful rage after he refused to marry her. She was a gold-digger, it was said, who went on to lie in court. Furthermore, she attempted to destroy Cressman's reputation by detailing his interest in sadomasochistic sexual practices, and claiming that, on the morning of the day he died, he had tied her up and beaten and anally raped her.

Jane Andrews has never before spoken to the press. But since our first meeting, through numerous visits and letters, and through her solicitor, Andrews has provided the Guardian with a detailed account of her life that may go some way to achieving the understanding that she craves. Yet even the construction of this account has been fraught with difficulties.

Inmates are normally forbidden to give interviews to journalists under prison service regulations but, following a 1999 House of Lords ruling, they have a right to a visit from a media outlet of their choice in exceptional circumstances. Having made a number of informal visits, the Guardian applied for such an authorised press interview, but the prison service deemed that our request did not satisfy the criteria, because Andrews' appeal is ongoing (the appeal against conviction, to be heard on September 23, is based on "fresh" psychiatric evidence, strengthening the plea of diminished responsibility). The prison service added: "In this case, Ms Andrews has received a large amount of press exposure already and I am sure you will agree that we cannot allow such a visit merely in order to overcome any negative publicity."

But the fact is that all the publicity about Andrews has been negative, and whenever she has attempted to press for corrections she has been prevented - by the press complaints commission, the prison service and the broadcasting standards commission. She has had no opportunity to answer the significant allegations made against her following the trial by those who claimed to have known her. As a convicted murderer, the law of libel offers her little protection. It would seem that a woman in Andrews' position can be demonised at will, with no redress through the normal channels. It is in this context that Andrews has decided that her only option to correct some of this highly prejudicial coverage is to tell her side of the story to the Guardian. She does so at considerable cost to herself, since the prison authorities have now effectively barred her from speaking to the press; punishment or loss of privilege may result from the appearance of this article.

This is not a simple story, and Andrews herself is not always a sympathetic witness. She appears a deeply damaged woman who was, last year, diagnosed by a psychiatrist as suffering from a borderline personality disorder. She can be a neurotic and frustrating interviewee. And on other occasions, I witness a flash of the stylish, engaging and independent young woman she once was. "She was so good to know," one close friend told me. "You can't imagine how great it was to be with her. But she never believed that she was loved."

Towards the end of her final dispatch from prison, Andrews recounts an incident which, she says, occurred one afternoon a few months before Cressman's death. The couple had yet to resolve an argument from the previous night, in which Cressman had accused Andrews of flirting with a friend of his. "I came in from work and the dishwasher door was open. I remember thinking, 'About time, too, he's started clearing up.' The next thing I knew I got hit from behind and I went flying. He started kicking me round the kitchen. I was covered in cuts and bruises.

"I had to go into work the next day. I said to Tom: 'What am I going to tell them?' and he laughed and said, 'Tell them you fell off your bike, you stupid cow.' I must have sounded pathetic. Why didn't I say anything to anybody? For the simple reason I didn't think I'd be believed, I was ashamed, I felt a failure. People at work would laugh and say, 'Tommy picks Jane up from work every night, isn't it sweet?' No, it wasn't. It was so I couldn't go out with anyone else. That's why I used to say, 'You push me back and forwards, Tom.' I never knew where I stood with him. In front of other people he was charming, but behind closed doors he wasn't."

Over the past 16 months, Andrews' resolve both to take responsibility for her actions and to tell what she believes to be the truth about her life with Cressman has strengthened. She insists that she does not consider herself an innocent victim. "I've caused all this heartache and grief to so many people and there is absolutely nothing I can do about that. To even say the word 'sorry' is so feeble, insignificant. But I am. I'm a much stronger person now, and if I was given the chance I could talk about things that I was incapable of talking about at the trial. That doesn't mean I'm trying to blame anyone else for Tom's death. I was responsible and I have to live with that every second of my life. I just want people to understand what has happened and hopefully make some sense of it."

Jane Andrews was born in north Lincolnshire in 1967, the youngest child and only daughter of the family. Her brothers were five and three years older than her. Jane's father worked as a joiner, but was seldom in full-time employment. Her mother first trained as a social worker, then as an infant school assistant, and was the main breadwinner for the family. The marriage was not a happy one, a situation compounded by their frequently dire financial straits. By the time Jane was eight, debt had forced the family to sell up and move to a small townhouse in Grimsby with no bathroom and an outside toilet.

"From an early age I was aware that things were not right at home. My parents were always arguing. I remember shouting. But they were very proud. I remember one day we didn't have enough to buy a loaf of bread and Mum had us looking down the sides of the settee and in our coats for money to scrape together. I was brought up in an environment of keep it in the family. Don't let the relatives think that we're anything other than comfortably off."

When she was 15, Andrews took an overdose, consuming the contents of the bathroom cabinet after social services informed her mother that she had been playing truant. Her mother found her collapsed in bed. "I was fading in and out of consciousness, but they didn't call for help or take me to the hospital. Keep it in the family, another thing."

As a teenager, Andrews' psychological state became prone to severe fluctuation, as she struggled with bouts of depression, panic attacks and a recurrent eating disorder. From the age of 15, when she embarked on her first sexual relationship, Andrews established a pattern that she says has sustained throughout her life. "I would sleep with someone, possibly on the first date, because I was frightened if I didn't they would go. I allowed men to do anything they wanted to me." Her chronic fear of abandonment, abysmal self-esteem and extreme insecurity resulted in a dependence on intimate relationships, a number of which she says were characterised by incidents of violence and sexual practices that left her feeling degraded and worthless. Such a pattern is a core feature of borderline personality disordered individuals.

Andrews' continual truancy had taken its toll on her school work, and she left with three O-levels to study fashion at the local technical college. At 17, she fell pregnant and had an abortion, which traumatised her greatly. Then, at the age of 21, while working as a sales assistant for Marks & Spencer in Grimsby, she answered an anonymous advert for a personal dresser in the Lady magazine. Six months later, out of the blue, came a summons for an interview with the Duchess of York. The pair struck up an immediate rapport and Andrews was offered the position. She started in July 1988.

"I was running away from all the horrible things in my past that Grimsby represented. I arrived at King's Cross with a suitcase and £10 in my pocket. I got in a taxi and said, 'Side door of Buckingham Palace' and the driver made a joke. One of the housemaids met me and took me up to my room, and there was a little posy of flowers from Fergie and a card that said, 'Welcome to the team, the Boss.'"

The Duchess was heavily pregnant with her first daughter, Beatrice. Andrews loved the job, though she found it increasingly demanding. During her trial she was depicted as a devious social climber, in thrall to the glamorous and sophisticated circles she now found herself mixing in. It was suggested that she became besotted with her royal employer, mimicking her dress sense, accent and even her hair colour.

"I was a country bumpkin," she admits. "Suddenly I was at Balmoral mixing with the royals, having long chats with Princess Diana. I was 21 years old and of course I enjoyed it. If my accent changed it was only because people made fun of the way I said 'bath' and 'grass'. Fergie was headstrong, but she was good to me."

In April 1989, Andrews met Christopher Dunn-Butler, an IBM executive who was 21 years her senior. Within three months of meeting her, he proposed and they married in August 1990. "He was a very happy-go-lucky guy. I so wanted to be loved. Even though I was self-sufficient - I had my own car, my own money, everything - I just craved someone to take care of me."

But after a few years the marriage foundered. "There was no physical relationship any more and we were more like good friends. I had a couple of flings. I'm not proud of it." Then, at a charity function organised by the Duchess, she met Dimitri Horne, a Greek shipping magnate. They fell in love and Andrews finally left her husband to live in a flat that the Duchess had rented for her.

The bond between the two women was strengthened by the breakdown of Sarah Ferguson's own marriage. Andrews was one of her few remaining servants, and took on extra responsibilities. She travelled around the world with her and became privy to her affairs and confidences. In the introduction to one of her travel books, the Duchess included a warm thanks to her assistant "whose loyalty and kindness knows no bounds".

Meanwhile, Andrews' relationship with Horne had also run into difficulties. Horne gave a statement to the police claiming that Andrews had trashed his flat when he told her that he wanted to end their affair. Andrews admits that her behaviour at the time was erratic. "I was so angry, I took our photographs down. On the mantelpiece in the living room was a cup and saucer that I knew was very special to him and I smashed it. I went through his journal with a black marker pen and blanked out all the references to myself. I picked up his telephone and smashed that as well. I'm ashamed of what I did. I've never done that to anyone else's possessions." She also admits that she cashed a cheque from his brother's chequebook, although she insists that this was in recompense for a sum that Horne had borrowed from her.

Andrews took another overdose, but again survived without medical intervention. Her feelings of worthlessness found a new focus when, in November 1997, she was unexpectedly made redundant. There was some speculation that she was sacked after an Italian admirer of the Duchess expressed an inappropriate interest in her, although palace officials insisted that there was no truth in this and that her departure was part of a cost-cutting exercise.

Andrews was devastated and sank into a deep depression, losing a substantial amount of weight. She felt that she had been badly treated by the Duchess, who did not tell her the news in person and who, she alleges, only a few weeks before had told her, "I'll never get rid of you, you're with me for life." She had some difficulties finding other employment, but eventually secured a position working in the silver department of the Knightsbridge jewellers Annabel Jones.

Andrews was introduced to Thomas Cressman by a mutual acquaintance in August 1998. The 39-year-old former stockbroker ran a successful business selling car accessories, and mixed in the upper echelons of London society. One of his partners was Stirling Moss, and his American father, Harry, who had built up the biggest chain of Ford dealerships in Europe, was a former director of Aston Villa football club. Andrews found Cressman charming and charismatic. He drove her home and insisted on seeing her the following night. She had arranged to go to Greece with some girlfriends, but he called her every day she was abroad, sending her a huge bunch of red roses on her return. She was, she laughs, swept off her feet.

In court, Cressman was described as an urbane and well-connected character, a confirmed bachelor who loved fast cars, boats and Tintin cartoons. It was suggested that Andrews saw her relationship with him as a means of halting her slump back into obscurity, and became obsessed with eliciting a proposal of marriage from him.

But Andrews contends that the relationship became increasingly volatile, characterised by physical violence and domination, and sexual demands - including anal sex, bondage and role-play - that she found abhorrent. During their blazing rows, threats - to expose one another's secrets to the press or the police - seem to have become common currency. She admits that she had told Cressman more detail than was appropriate about her time with the Duchess. He would threaten to go to the papers with this information. Andrews would retaliate by threatening to tell his business partners and parents about "his dirty habits". The question of marriage - its offer or rejection - appears to have become a shorthand between the pair for a raft of issues around security and commitment.

"It was such a complex relationship that we had," says Andrews. "I was the ultimate in insecurity. He was the ultimate in commitment-phobia. I would threaten to leave. He would tell me to leave. Then he would reel me back in. He knew which carrots to dangle. He knew which strings to pull."

In the winter of 1998, Andrews broke her wrist after Cressman - she believes deliberately - let go of her hand while dancing with her aggressively. Afterwards, she says, he insisted that she stay with him at his home in Fulham so that he could look after her. Friends of Cressman contend that she used her injury as an excuse to move in.

But why move in with someone who had been violent towards her? "I so wanted this relationship to work. I never knew when his moods were going to change. He could be so incredibly nice one minute and then with absolutely no reason whatsoever he would hit me with this wooden brush he kept. He always made me feel it was my fault. He would say I was weak and he was trying to toughen me up."

"I sensed that her broken wrist had a story behind it," says Lucinda Ellery, a businesswoman based in west London, who first met Andrews at Ascot in 1995. "He talked over her rather than to her. He would be quite capable of humiliating someone he was with." During the final year of their relationship, Ellery socialised frequently with Andrews and Cressman, and grew close to both of them. Cressman telephoned her the morning of the day he died to discuss Andrews' latest suicide threats. After the killing, Ellery was instrumental in locating Andrews in Cornwall.

"She was very sweet, quite shy, just lovely. Janey reminded me of a delicate bird. You wanted to pick her up carefully so as not to damage her wings. But she could put on a good show - happy-go-lucky, confident, relaxed - and of course she wasn't any of those things."

She was terribly beautiful, she adds, with a much-admired figure, a recollection that jars with the wan, wasted individual who hunches in the visiting room of Bullwood Hall. "The reports that she was a gold-digger were rubbish. She could have taken her pick. She had a lot going for her. I think she genuinely fell for Tommy big time, and unfortunately her feelings were stronger than his."

Ellery liked Cressman, too. "I'm sure he was quite spoiled, a wilful chap, but very interesting, always with a laugh in his throat about something. He was very charming, very much a little boy. He could be manipulative, but bottom line, he didn't deserve to die."

Ellery contends that she recognised that the relationship was a deeply destructive one, although Andrews never spoke of this to her directly. She says she believes Andrews' allegations that Cressman was physically and sexually abusive towards her. Why didn't she talk to her about it? Andrews was a very closed person, says Ellery, familiar with keeping secrets. "Don't forget she spent 10 years with the royal family. She was intensely loyal. She trusts no one."

It was a dangerous relationship, she says, although she always thought it would be more dangerous for Andrews. "I thought it would push her over the edge and that she would take her own life, not his. There is no doubt in my mind that Janey had cracked up at the time [of Cressman's death]. She wasn't well in body or in mind. It was an accident waiting to happen and unfortunately those closest to her weren't able to see the signs, because she did put on such a good show. There must have been a great deal of anger there. Tommy just pushed the buttons."

Ellery is by no means blithe about her friend's actions, but is passionate about her need for rehabilitation. "There can never be justice for Tommy. He's dead, and there is nothing you can do that will bring him back or make his family feel better. But now we're dealing with the living. And how do you deal with someone who is so clearly damaged? She needs proper psychiatric help. How do you come to terms with killing anyone, let alone someone who you're crazy about? There were two people involved in this and they were both responsible for what happened."

But for Cressman's parents, Andrews' allegations simply formed a tissue of lies. At the time of the trial, both his father and his mother, Barbara, denounced her claims about her relationship with their son. "She tried hard to destroy his reputation but, thank the Lord, she didn't do it," said Harry Cressman. His former wife added that she had no sympathy for Andrews. "Tom was a kind, affectionate and devoted son." When contacted this month, Harry Cressman reiterated his family's dismissal of Andrews' claims, pointing out that a number of his son's ex-girlfriends had insisted that he had never subjected them to any physical or sexual abuse during their relationships with him.

The verdict of murder by the jury suggests that they rejected Andrews' account of the background to the killing, including the abuse, which she has described to the Guardian in greater detail than she did in court.

Andrews says that she had been aware of Cressman's broad sexual tastes from early on in their relationship, when she discovered some women's thigh-length boots and leather bondage accoutrements in his wardrobe. She says that she told him then that their relationship could not continue, but that he begged her to stay. She took the boots to a charity shop. When Cressman found out, she says he hit her.

Cressman was an avid collector of militaria, including German army uniforms and SS weaponry. One of his most prized possessions was a chunk of wood reputed to be from Hitler's desk. On one occasion, Andrews recalls he asked her to dress up as a schoolgirl, in a short pleated skirt and one of his old school ties. He donned a mortarboard and cloak, and tied her to the bed with another tie. He brought in a short curved dagger. "We'd both had quite a bit to drink that night. While I tend to go numb and lifeless when I'm drunk, Tom would become loud and careless. He was shouting at me to spread my legs, doing this stupid German voice. He was wielding this knife. What he meant to do was spread my legs by touching them with this knife, but I struggled and he caught the back of my right leg and cut me. It wasn't deep but it was sore.

"I was so frightened I spread my legs at that point. He just buggered me. I didn't resist because if I did it hurt like hell. Nine times out of 10 he used to come inside me, which really disturbed me, or he would come out and ejaculate over me, and rub it all over me, even my hair.

"There was one occasion when I was having problems and couldn't go to the loo. He'd had anal sex with me and when he came out he'd got excrement on his penis. He grabbed hold of my hair and screamed at me and yanked me down and made me lick it off."

What makes Andrews' story even more troubling is the fact that she seldom explicitly told Cressman that she found his behaviour distasteful. But she never said no to anybody.

"Why did I stay? There isn't a short answer. I stayed with Tom for a thousand and one reasons, because, every time he was violent or abusive, apologies came and he said he would change. Because he made me feel I was the one that was causing him to do it. I came to the point of not knowing what was right and what was wrong. He played mind games with me. Why did he take me to the Cotswolds to look for houses before we went to Italy [in September 2000, just before the killing]? All his friends and family say it's a figment of my imagination. That's why I made my original solicitor track down the estate agent in Chipping Norton where they discovered he'd registered us as Mr and Mrs Cressman. It's silly things like that that it's important for people to believe."

In her report, which forms the main grounds for the appeal, psychiatrist Dr Fiona Mason argues that Andrews would have found behaviour such as Cressman's extremely difficult to cope with. "She became unable to remove herself from the relationship, and was increasingly hopeless. She also became depressed, anxious and fearful - such a pattern of symptoms is not uncommon in women involved in violent, abusive, traumatic relationships. It is also common that those suffering from such symptoms do not seek medical attention or help, for a number of reasons, including guilt and shame."

It was in this state that Andrews took her final trip with Cressman to a boat show in Italy, then on to his family's villa on the French riviera. At her trial, the court heard that during this holiday, from which they returned the day before the killing, Cressman had told Andrews that he had no intention of marrying her. Andrews disputes this. "I'm never going to be able to prove it," she says. "I'm sat here now and I've got absolutely nothing to lose. If it was true that he said he wasn't going to marry me, then I'd say so. He may very well have said it to other people."

But why then did she make several calls on her mobile phone on the return journey to Nice airport, with Cressman and his mother in the car, saying that the relationship was over and he'd told her he'd never propose? "I was trying to goad him. I was being a complete bitch. It was the thing I said whenever we fought: 'You don't love me any more, you don't want to marry me.' I'm not making excuses for what ended up happening, I'm just trying to get across that there was no planning to kill him, no premeditation."

Leaving Andrews upstairs, Cressman went to telephone 999. He told the operator, "We are rowing and someone is going to get hurt. I would like somebody here to stop us hurting each other, because if we don't have somebody here soon, somebody is." In the background, a woman's voice can be heard faintly, screaming for help, although this was not noted at the trial.

Andrews attempted to call her ex-husband, but as the call connected, Cressman returned upstairs and threw the phone across the room. According to Andrews, Cressman pushed her down, tied one hand to the bed and anally raped her, saying, "I'm really going to hurt you and nobody will believe you."

On being freed, Andrews ran into the dressing room. Cressman followed and sat on a stool in the doorway, blocking her exit and pushing her back when she tried to leave. He was acting as though nothing had happened, flicking through some papers. Andrews was by now completely hysterical. "I was calling him every name under the sun, then I started assassinating my own character. I told him everything people had done to me, that I'd allowed other people to have anal sex with me. I think he was very shocked. What he had just done was the final insult, the final injury. I had no intention of ever marrying him. I didn't want this man any more, who for the past two and a bit years had belittled me, abused me, pushed me backwards and forwards."

Around lunchtime, Andrews finally persuaded Cressman to let her leave. As she drove away, she called him on her mobile to say, "I've tricked you, you bastard, I'm never coming back." But, of course, she did. Over the next few hours, the couple exchanged a number of telephone calls, trading insults and accusations, both seemingly incapable of disengaging from the dangerously volatile situation. Andrews was threatening suicide once again. Cressman refused to take her seriously, even going so far as to suggest the method she should use - a fact corroborated by his mother's statement to the police.

While Andrews was out of the house, she posted to Cressman's parents some pornographic emails written by their son to an American woman named Deborah DiMiceli whom he had met at a conference in Las Vegas earlier that year. During the morning she had also faxed copies to DiMiceli's employers. Much was made at her trial of one email in which he wrote, "The girlfriend is getting a little like that pair of slippers I can't throw away! In some ways this is good, in some it is bad." Andrews had originally discovered them six months earlier, in March. Unbeknown to her until many months after Cressman's death, a ream of other emails had been exchanged between the pair. These were recovered by the police from Cressman's hard disk. What is certain is that these graphic emails, seen by the Guardian, do bear out some of the sexual issues that Andrews talks about, including the use of certain clothing, domination and anal sex.

Incredibly, Andrews eventually returned to the house. "Of course a part of me still wanted to go back. I couldn't believe what had happened in the morning. I remember watching him through the window. He was sitting in an armchair watching television. I was scared, and when he heard me he leaped up. I thought he was going to be angry but instead he threw his arms around me and said 'welcome home'. It was all mind games."

Within 10 minutes, she says, Cressman's mood had changed and he shouted in anger when Andrews dropped a glass of water on the floor. Further arguments ensued over the evening. Later, Cressman retired to bed while Andrews remained downstairs, confused and distressed. Eventually Cressman asked her if she was coming to bed. "Where do you want me to sleep?" she asked. "With me, of course." However, when Andrews got under the covers, she says, he attempted to penetrate her anally again. She resisted and Cressman started shouting, "You know you like it," and hitting her with his hands. Andrews went downstairs, but later returned to her sleeping lover. She recalls feeling panicky and frightened.

She remembers possibly drifting off and then being awoken by Cressman hitting her, shouting, "I'm going to fucking kill you." She had fetched a cricket bat and knife upstairs, though her account of when and what triggered her to do so remains confused. Cressman was injured by a heavy blow from a cricket bat to his head and Andrews says she has a memory of "freaking when I realised I had hit him". She recalls her hair being pulled and Cressman bearing down on top of her, the knife having entered his chest.

The next thing she recalls is being on the other side of the bedroom door, hanging on to the door handle, believing that Cressman was coming after her. She tied the door handle to the bannister. She does not recall showering, but does remember being cold and then being warm. She remembers looking in the mirror in the dressing room and knowing that she "had to go".

Cressman's body was found by an employee on Monday afternoon, two days later. Two days after that, the police found Andrews in a layby in Cornwall, curled up under a blanket in the back of her VW Polo. She had taken an overdose. In the intervening days she had made no report to the police; she had sent a number of bizarre text messages, claiming that she did not know what had happened to Cressman. "I was texting absolute gibberish. Why did I say I didn't know what had happened? I can sit here now and say I didn't want to believe what had happened. At the time I was feeling sheer terror, absolute disbelief. There was no pretending. There's a big difference. People think I tried to cover things up. Every single day I want to remember everything."

In advance of the appeal, the crown prosecutor is preparing a detailed schedule of inconsistencies in Jane Andrews' account of the death of Cressman. If one accepts that blanks remain in her recollection of events, through trauma and dissociation, then it is not surprising if she is inconsistent. If not, one must conclude that she deliberately misrepresented what happened.

At her trial, the jury plainly thought that Andrews was a liar. Her initial denials at the time of the offence seemed calculating. She appeared muddled and contradictory under cross-examination. Andrews would argue that a number of factors contributed to this unsympathetic impression: her reluctance to mention anything negative about the deceased; her preoccupation with protecting her family; that she was basing her account on events she simply could not remember with sufficient clarity. The jury may have found it hard to comprehend why a victim of anal rape would return to her attacker on the day of the assault. Minimal psychiatric evidence was brought before the court during the trial. Unusually, Andrews had not been interviewed by a police psychiatrist when she was found in Cornwall, despite the fact that she had made an attempt on her life, although she was seen by a female doctor.

Julie Bindel of Justice For Women - the organisation that was instrumental in the freeing of Sara Thornton, Kiranjit Ahluwalia and Emma Humphreys, and which is supporting Andrews' appeal - acknowledges that Andrews' case is a difficult one. "But we don't think that being a victim makes you a nice or easy person, nor do we take on every woman who approaches us with a sob story. What was sounding loudest in my ears throughout the trial was what she wasn't saying. I have never encountered a woman who killed her partner because he wouldn't marry her. I kept an open mind when I first met her, but felt quite profoundly that she had a story to tell."

Bindel is particularly concerned about the ongoing impact of the manner in which Andrews was portrayed during her trial. "The sensationalism about her lifestyle was strange, given that she was actually a servant... Jane Andrews is someone who bows to authority, so she came across as very formal and cold. We believe that she endured the abuse and violence because she wanted to be loved and fit into a world that she could never really be a part of. Cressman knew that he had immense power over her. She could take no more."

Jane Andrews would have it that, throughout her life, loyalty, discretion, servility and shame have kept the truth at bay. During some of our first meetings, she would continually assert that she wasn't willing to be "good old Janey" any more. She insists that she is agonised by the devastation she has wrought upon her own family, and that of Thomas Cressman. But she is equally insistent that the time has come to tell her story in full.

Former royal aide is found guilty of love rage murder

By Michael Seamark and Richard Kay - DailyMail.co.uk

May 17, 2001

Jane Andrews was jailed for life yesterday after being found guilty of murdering her lover in a rage of thwarted hopes.

Sentencing the Duchess of York's former dresser, an Old Bailey judge told her: 'In killing the man you loved, you ended his life and ruined your own.'

Andrews beat businessman Thomas Cressman with a cricket bat and stabbed him in the chest with a kitchen knife after he refused to marry her in September last year.

Then she left him dying in his bed as she went on the run, contacting friends on her mobile phone to pretend she knew nothing of his fate.

Last night 34-year-old Andrews, the builder's daughter from Cleethorpes who clawed her way to a job at Buckingham Palace, was on 'suicide watch' at Holloway Prison in North London.

As a spurned lover, she had embarked on revenge to rival that of Glenn Close's obsessed character in Fatal Attraction.

And as she began her prison term last night, fresh revelations emerged about the true nature of the woman who tried to persuade the jury she was a fragile victim of a domineering man.

Royal aides believe Andrews 'fleeced' the Duchess of £10,000 in the nine years she spent travelling the globe with her.

A former lover, Dimitri Horne, the stepson of a Greek shipping magnate, told how she also plundered £8,000 from a family bank account when he ended their affair.

And when police searched the house where Andrews killed Mr Cressman, they found £12,000 of silverware and jewellery belonging to the London jewellers for whom she worked.

Yesterday Andrews was allowed to remain seated as the jury of ten women and two men returned their 11-1 majority verdict after deliberating for almost 12 hours.

Mr Cressman's mother Barbara and father Harry clasped each other in tears. Andrews's father David gasped in disbelief and her mother June wept in despair.

Andrews, clutching a white handkerchief and dressed in black, sat silently as the Recorder of London, Judge Michael Hyam, recalled the horror of what she had done.

'It is evident when you made the attack upon him you were consumed with anger and bitterness. Nothing can justify what you did,' he told her.

'It was a brutal attack and even if you felt yourself wronged and you were, as your counsel has said, emotionally vulnerable, you were attacking an unarmed man who had possibly been asleep only a few minutes before you attacked him.

'After you had struck him with a cricket bat and then stabbed him with a knife you left him to die without remorse.

'It is true that your flight was obviously unprepared and the attack had taken place perhaps only with a few minutes premeditation. As your counsel recognises, there is only one sentence I can pass upon you and that is one of life imprisonment.'

Moments earlier Andrews's QC, John Kelsey-Fry, told the court: 'Whatever is said, there is one aspect of this case which has always been beyond any doubt at all. That is that this defendant clearly adored Tom Cressman, so much as to be beyond her own control.

'There can be little doubt this defendant is emotionally vulnerable.

'This killing was born more from that emotional vulnerability rather than any inherent evil or wickedness.

'This appalling crime was driven by passion and any suggestion that it was clinically planned or premeditated beyond a few minutes before the killing itself does not bear close analysis.'

But the manner of Andrews's defence, in which she accused Mr Cressman of anally raping her hours before she killed him, dismayed his family and the detectives who investigated his death.

Detective Chief Inspector Jim Dickie, who led the murder inquiry, said: 'She murdered him in life and murdered him again in death by trying to ruin his reputation.'

In a statement, the Cressman family said: 'Although the verdict we have just heard will not bring Tom back, we now have a conclusion. Our faith in British justice has been rewarded.

'The jury has confirmed the view of the family and the police that this was a case of premeditated murder, and that Jane Andrews's lies to cover up her actions were not believed.'

Speaking later, Mr Cressman was asked whether he had any sympathy for Andrews.

He replied: 'Having lost a son at her hands, how can I have sorrow for her really? I feel the holiday she is going to have is the holiday she deserves.

'She tried hard to destroy his reputation but, thank the Lord, she didn't do it. At this time we would like to say we feel sorry for Jane's family who have effectively lost a daughter.'

The Duchess of York, who was in Seattle yesterday promoting Wedgwood pottery, made no comment on the verdict.

The discovery that her former aide had helped herself to up to £10,000 from her private accounts only came to light after she left royal service.

Although technically Andrews was Sarah's dresser, her main task was to shop for the Duchess.

'Jane was accountable to no one,' says a royal source. 'She held the credit cards, she had her own cash card. She defined the budget.

'It was in that period when the Duchess was hugely in debt and there was no proper accounting. It was during the dark days, the mad days when the Duchess's overdraft was in the millions.'

Andrews was then living in a flat in exclusive Prince of Wales Drive, overlooking Battersea Park.

'We always wondered how a girl on £22,000 a year could afford to live in such style,' said the source.

The same questions arose over the years at how Andrews managed to maintain such a lavish wardrobe, for she was always impeccably dressed when she accompanied the Duchess.

According to aides, when she acquired clothes for Sarah she divided them between herself and the Duchess. 'It was the "one for her, two for me" approach, the kind of pilfering that if they know about it, royals always turn a blind eye to.'

Friends of the Duchess have been dismayed by claims in court that Andrews was 'close' to Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.

They maintain this was simply not true. They also deny her claims in court that she worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

'Her day was over at 5pm,' says a former colleague.

'Jane was a highly strung girl, you were always on your guard around her.

'Nothing was ever what it seemed with her.

'On the surface she could be very naive, almost benign. Underneath it was the reverse. She was very two-faced and people didn't trust her.

'There was always something brooding about her, she was emotionally obsessive. I never saw Jane laugh much. She was quite calculating but not particularly bright. And there were histrionics too.'

During a brief period on remand while she awaited trial, Andrews declared her rather grand tastes to a prison warder: 'I only drink bottled water,' she said.

But as the trial went on, she apparently became resigned to a fate in which the finer things would be relegated to memory.

In a phone call to a friend during the hearings, she said: 'I'm facing life imprisonment but it doesn't matter what the sentence.