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.
