In 2001, Jane Andrews went on trial for the murder of her boyfriend, Tom Cressman.
She took the stand amid a storm of media interest: she was a former dresser to the former Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, who had been let go from the palace and had struggled to find employment in the weeks that followed.
After working at Claridge’s, she eventually got a job in the silver department at the Knightsbridge shop Annabel Jones, where she met Cressman. But the relationship was volatile, and after one particularly heated argument, she hit him with a cricket bat and stabbed him with a kitchen knife, before going on the run.
Now, her story has been made into an ITV drama, starring Natalie Dormer as Sarah Ferguson and Mia McKenna-Bruce as Andrews – though, as Harriet Wistrich, the CEO of the Centre of Women’s Justice, Andrews herself wasn’t actually consulted or involved in it at all.
“Jane has not contributed to ‘The Lady’ despite it purportedly being about her life, nor has she contributed to any of the previous multiple TV documentaries made about her,” Wistrich said. “The public are thus presented with a one-sided view that fails to explore why a vulnerable woman in her circumstances may have been driven to kill."
The series has certainly been stirring up interest in an old case – but what actually happened to the woman at the centre of it all?
After a four-week trial, the jury eventually convicted Andrews of murder rather than manslaughter. “In killing the man you loved, you ended his life and ruined your own,” the judge told her, and sentenced her to life in prison.
She started her sentence in HMP Bullwood Hall in Essex and was apparently known during her stay as “Fergie’s bird.”
At one point, she was transferred to an open prison called HMP East Sutton Park, where she actually ended up escaping in 2009 after jumping over the walls. After making a break for it, Andrews apparently holed up in a nearby Premier Inn with her family until she was caught and brought back.
Despite repeated attempts to appeal the sentence, Andrews remained incarcerated until her release in 2019. In 2015, she was released on licence following an appeal, but in 2018, that licence was revoked, and she returned to prison after allegations surfaced that she had harassed a former partner.
The police did investigate, but no charges were brought, and she was finally released for good in 2019.
Upon her release, she found work in a supermarket, but lost the job when her identity was revealed. Now 57, she lives a reclusive life and apparently works at a charity-funded animal hospital.
The Lady is currently streaming on ITVX
