Billie-Jo Jenkins aged 13
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| Hastings Social Services 15 February 1997 Wikipedia Billie-Jo Jenkins (March 29, 1983 - 15 February 1997) was a 13-year-old girl from East Sussex in the United Kingdom, who was murdered on 15 February 1997. She was brought up in east London and fostered by Lois and Siôn Jenkins from the age of nine. She attended Helenswood School in Hastings. Her murderer has never been caught. Billie-Jo came from an unfortunate family background. Her natural father, Bill Jenkins, was in jail and her mother was unable to cope on her own, so she was placed in foster care with an unrelated family, coincidentally having the same family name. Her foster father, Siôn David Charles Jenkins, at that time unqualified deputy headmaster of William Parker School, was originally wrongly convicted of her murder in 1998. The first appeal against his conviction in 1999 failed, but a second appeal in August 2004 was successful. The Court of Appeal quashed his original conviction as unsafe and ordered a retrial, with Jenkins being released on bail. The juries in two retrials were unable to reach majority verdicts and at the Old Bailey in London, on February 9, 2006 Jenkins was officially declared not guilty. The Crown Prosecution Service indicated that no further retrials of Siôn Jenkins would be sought, and he was formally acquitted. The Murder of Billie-Jo Jenkins Wikipedia |
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