Billie-Jo: wife asked for confession

The ex-wife of convicted murderer Sion Jenkins wrote to him demanding he plead guilty to bludgeoning their 13-year-old foster daughter Billie-Jo, to death the Appeal Court heard today.

Mrs Jenkins tried to convince her then husband, Sion, he should confess "for the sake of the children", the court was told.

She sent he letter in April 1997, two months after Billie-Jo had been killed with a metal tent peg at their family home in Hastings.

Extracts of the letter, read to the court today, stated: "The girls would be relieved of enormous burdens if they felt that human beings had the capacity to own up to things."

In sometimes tearful exchanges across the court on the fifth day of the appeal, Mrs Jenkins, who has since divorced and remarried, said: "I always put my four girls first."

Clare Montgomery QC, defending, responded: "That's what it's all about, to stop them giving evidence."

Mrs Jenkins stormed back: "If you ever had to write a letter to a husband charged with murder and it was referred to as a ploy - that would be very difficult."

Mrs Jenkins also had a theory that her then husband had murdered the foster daughter because of a row she was having with his favourite daughter.

Mrs Jenkins has already told the court that her husband had "doted" on Annie, their eldest daughter and "loved her deeply".

After the murder, she told police she thought the motive for the murder was Jenkins's anger over a dispute between the girls over painting patio doors.

Annie had wanted to do the painting but her father decided that Billie-Jo would do it.

Cross-examining Mrs Jenkins, Mrs Montgomery told her: "There was Billie-Jo smugly painting, something Annie desperately wanted to do, winding Annie up and Annie was hangdog and depressed.

"Sion suddenly thinks, 'Why am I allowing this?' and a gesture from Billie to Annie is enough to make Sion snap."

Mrs Jenkins earlier broke down as she spoke of the pressure her children have suffered. She said she had taken her daughters to a post-traumatic stress disorder counsellor. The Appeal Court has heard that daughters Annie and Lottie, aged 12 and 10 at the time of the murder, had vital evidence which could have helped clear their father, who was jailed for life for the murder, which took place in February 1997.

But they were not called as defence witnesses in the trial because Mrs Jenkins had told police they changed their minds.

Mrs Jenkins denied she had lied about her then husband pressurising Annie about her evidence.

She also denied ever speaking to the children about what happened on the day Billie-Jo was killed. "I had tried to set up a situation where they could talk to a counsellor about it and not to their mother, who would have to say to them, 'Children, I can't talk to you,'" she said. Then, as tears filled her eyes, she added: "I'm still in that situation now, seven years later."

Mrs Jenkins earlier told the court she had seen her then husband take Annie to one side at a neighbour's house on the night Billie-Jo was murdered.

But Clare Montgomery QC, defending, told Mrs Jenkins that the neighbours had not reported any such conversations and had told police Jenkins had gone to bed at 11pm on the night of the murder.

The case continues.