I didn't poison girls' minds

Taking the witness box at the Court of Appeal in London, just a few feet from her former husband, Lois Jenkins was asked if she had tried to brainwash their surviving children against him once detectives had convinced her of his guilt.

She replied without hesitation: "Absolutely not. Never."

Lawyers acting for Sion Jenkins have made this allegation key to the challenge.

They claim Mrs Jenkins, 43, was so scared Sion Jenkins would return to the family home if the true account emerged she began to poison the minds of her daughters Charlotte and Annie - who were with their father on the day of the murder - against him.

It is claimed she gave misleading information to police suggesting the two girls were hostile to their father. This deterred defence lawyers from calling them as witnesses whose evidence in the trial could have led to his acquittal.

Yesterday, she said she was confused in the days after 13-year-old Billie-Jo's death. She was frightened and felt her family was under siege.

But she said she had never tried to brainwash the children.

She said: "I was absolutely itching to ask them questions but I never asked them questions in that first year and hardly ever since, really."

Hesitating and stifling sobs she glanced several times to the public gallery during two-and-a-half-hours in the witness box.

Wearing a black linen top and grey trousers, she looked nervous as she testified in Court Four.

But she avoided her ex-husband's constant gaze and never once made eye contact.

Mrs Jenkins divorced her husband within two years of his conviction.

She now lives in Tasmania with new partner Vincent Ives, by whom she has a three-year-old son.

She was called as a witness by the Crown in its opposition to a renewed attempt by Jenkins to clear his name.

Former school head Jenkins has been serving life in jail since his conviction at Lewes Crown Court in 1998 for battering foster daughter Billie-Jo to death with a metal tent spike at their home in Lower Park Road, Hastings, in February 1997.

It was alleged that, during a three-minute visit to the house, Jenkins had an argument with Billie-Jo, lost his temper, hit her over the head up to ten times and then drove off on a shopping trip to a DIY store with Charlotte and Annie.

Jenkins sat in the Court of Appeal dock as Crown counsel Richard Camden Pratt QC put to his former wife: "It has been suggested that in the period between the death of Billie-Jo and the trial you chose deliberately to mislead the police. Is there any truth in that suggestion?"

Mrs Jenkins, a registered general nurse, replied: "Absolutely not."

"Have you ever lied to police?" asked counsel.

"No." "It has been suggested you brainwashed Annie and Lottie into believing their father was a murderer. Did you try to do that?"

"Absolutely not. Never."

Mrs Jenkins told Lord Justice Rose, Mr Justice Curtis and Mr Justice Wakerley that during the trial she took the two girls to be interviewed by a psychologist, Dr Valerie Mellor, who told her she was handling them very well by trying to live normally.

"But she felt the girls were struggling because I was not giving them any information at all or giving my opinion and she suggested that was not really fair. This threw me a bit," she said.

The court heard how Mrs Jenkins found it tough to deal with making everyday life as normal as possible for her children in the aftermath of Billie-Jo's murder.

"The media were crawling up the walls, we had cameras in the windows and we were trapped in the house," she told the judges.

"We really had to have police officers with us all the time. Everywhere we went we had to have someone because we were being hounded."

Following the death, the Jenkins family lived for ten days with their friends the Gaimsters, who lived nearby.

Mrs Jenkins said: "For some reason they didn't know where to find us. They were going to places like Dorset where my parents lived and all over but they didn't manage to find us at the Gaimsters.

"We dealt with the whole thing by keeping a sense of normality.

"It was ten days in the house where no one knew where we were yet all the attention was on us. It was quite surreal.

"We had to have police with us at all times, even to do the shopping. When we returned home I tried to find somewhere to rent but there didn't seem any point in us moving.

"I spoke to other people and they urged me not to let it all get to me. When we returned to the house it was covered in dust from forensic scientists. The children and I slept in one room for about three or four weeks.

"We had masses and masses of support. We would spend each morning reading letters we had received. For every 99 supportive letters there would be one nasty one."

"It's unbelievable how scary it was."

Mr Pratt QC put to her: "It's suggested that you were so frightened that your husband would return to the house that to protect your children you made up accounts and put words into their mouths."

She said this was untrue and added: "I was really frightened of the children telling me things. I realised the children needed to form their own opinions as did I."

Mrs Jenkins was asked whether the girls were hostile to their father after Billie-Jo's death.

She said: "No, they weren't hostile. They chopped and changed. Sometimes they would want to see their father and other times they wouldn't.

"All of our emotions were on rollercoasters and I don't think one of us felt one thing with conviction for more than an hour."

Later, during cross-examination, defence counsel Miss Clare Montgomery QC, repeatedly quizzed Mrs Jenkins on whether or not she had tried to coach her daughters into believing their father was guilty.

Miss Montgomery read out part of a statement Mrs Jenkins allegedly made after police revealed to her spots of blood had been found on her husband's clothes.

It read: "Steve (the police officer) sat with his face three feet away from me for about 25 minutes looking me in the eye just convincing me that Sion had committed this crime without a shadow of a doubt and that he would be charged."

Mrs Jenkins said she could remember them telling her about the blood but that she could not specifically remember saying this.

She said: "I just remember the phone ringing and them giving me this information and it was just too much too quickly.

Miss Montgomery pressed her on whether or not she believed her husband to be guilty following an interview with police.

Mrs Jenkins replied: "I was not 100 per cent convinced. I fluctuated... I knew by then it was a distinct possibility but I was not sure.

"I was quite difficult with the police because I was quite determined that I made up my own mind. In fact I was bordering on being rude because I just wanted to take the findings and judge for myself what really was the truth.

However, Mrs Jenkins said there was "a process of dawning" as she began to accept that her husband of 14 years was Billie-Jo's killer.

Miss Montgomery asked: "You never set out to persuade the children Sion Jenkins murdered Billie-Jo?"

She replied again: "No, I did not."

Mrs Jenkins was asked by Miss Montgomery about a statement she made that Annie felt it was "unusual" for Billie-Jo to have been left alone at the house.

She told the court it was unusual because, about a week before, Billie-Jo had become so "paranoid" about her belief she was being phoned and followed by a man that a family agreement had been reached that she would never be left alone.

"I was shocked about her being left in the house on her own," she said.

Mrs Jenkins denied knowing the girls' evidence would be helpful to their father's defence. Her only concern was that two girls, then aged 11 and 12, should not be pressurised.

She said: "It was my hearts desire the children would not be called to give evidence at the trial."

She agreed that, on the evening of the day of the murder, she had told her husband to stop questioning Annie about what had happened.

But she said that, in doing so, she was not accusing him of trying to tell her what to say.

She said: "At this time it had never even entered my head Sion was the murderer.

"It was just his quizzing her about every moment of the day on the day her sister had died. It seemed wholly inappropriate."

The hearing continues.