From the Archives: When Fergie’s royal aide became cold hearted killer
Oct 6 2010 By Mark Cowan
IN the first part of new mini series, Crime Files looks into the murders that have shocked society – because the cruel, calculating and cold-hearted killers were women. In the first part of Women Who Kill, Crime Files looks at the case Royal Aide Jane Andrews.
SHORTLY before his death, Tom Cressman had been bare-chested behind the wheel of his beloved classic Riva speedboat, with Jane Andrews by his side.
He piloted them across the sparkling waters of a north Italian lake during a watersport festival.
His mother, Barbara, later described the moment, saying she had never seen her son happier than during that holiday.
But within days he was dead and his devastated family would have to endure the trial in which Andrews attempted to blacken his reputation.
After he shattered her dreams of becoming a bride, she embarked on a revenge plot to rival that of Glenn Close’s obsessed character in the hit Hollywood movie Fatal Attraction.
Dashing Mr Cressman was a popular and successful businessman.
The son of Birmingham businessman, former Bristol Street Motors boss and one-time Aston Villa director Harry Cressman, he had developed his own successful empire. His brother Rick is owner of Nailcote Hall Hotel in Berkswell, Warwickshire,
Born in America, raised just outside Birmingham and educated in the Midlands and in the United States, he was the director of several firms including a car polish business which he had set up with racing legend Stirling Moss.
To many women, he was also looked at as quite the catch.
He started a relationship with Andrews in 1998.
The daughter of a builder, she had worked as a dresser and personal assistant to the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, for nine years until 1997 and at the time of the tragedy she had been working for jewellers Theo Fennell in Fulham, west London.
Andrews told friends she was devastated about losing the glamorous job with the Duchess of York and said she now yearned for children because she missed the Duchess’s daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.
She hoped marriage to Mr Cressman would give new meaning to her life but became possessive and jealous.
As he tried to make the relationship work, his family believed she looked on him as a meal ticket back to the grand life she enjoyed with the Duchess.
Eventually, those dark traits in her character proved too much. She had been hoping for a marriage proposal but when it didn’t come she responded with extreme violence.
A business colleague found the 39-year-old’s body on a September afternoon a decade ago.
He was lying in a pool of blood in the bedroom of the £400,000 flat in Fulham, west London, he shared with Andrews.
As he lay asleep at the home they shared in Fulham, it is thought he was smashed him over the head with his cricket bat before an eight-inch knife was plunged into his chest.
He was found still to be holding the knife in his right hand between his thumb and forefinger almost as if he had tried to take the knife out, prosecutors were later to reveal.
There was no trace of 34-year-old Andrews and suspicion instantly fell on her.
As she drove from London to the West Country, police contacted her family, friends and acquaintances, including the Duchess, to see if they could contact Andrews on her mobile phone.
