Ex-wife 'did not brainwash girls'

The court heard evidence from Lois Jenkins (left) at the appeal

The ex-wife of convicted murderer Sion Jenkins has said she did not tell their daughters what to say about the crime.

Jenkins, 45, was convicted of killing Billie-Jo at their home in Hastings, East Sussex, in 1997.

At the Court of Appeal, Lois Jenkins said she never talked about Billie-Jo's death to Charlotte and Annie prior to the trial in 1998.

Mrs Jenkins, who has since divorced her husband, is giving evidence for the prosecution at his appeal.

'Absolutely not'

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

The 43-year-old said she had told the girls, who had been with their father on the day the 13-year-old was battered with a metal tent peg, that anything they said would be passed on to the police.

One of the grounds for the appeal by Jenkins was that his former wife gave misleading evidence to the police which made the girls hostile to their father and prevented them being called as witnesses in the original trial.

Jenkins was found guilty of murder at Lewes Crown Court in 1998

But at the Court of Appeal on Monday, Richard Camden Pratt QC, for the Crown, asked Mrs Jenkins if she had ever deliberately misled the police to which she replied "absolutely not."

Mr Camden Pratt also asked: "It has been suggested you brainwashed Annie and Lottie into believing their father was a murderer. Did you try to do this?"

Mrs Jenkins replied again and said "absolutely not" and said since her ex-husband's trial their daughters "had come out with things I never knew".

'Own opinions'

She said: "I realised the children needed to form their own opinions as did I."

During cross-examination, defence counsel Claire Montgomery QC, asked: "You never set to persuade the children Sion Jenkins murdered Billie-Jo?"

To which Lois Jenkins said: "No, I did not."

Mrs Jenkins lives with Charlotte and Annie, who are now 18 and 19, in Tasmania.

She was called as a witness by the Crown in the second attempt by Jenkins, a former deputy head teacher, to clear his name.

The hearing continues.