FOR more than 7,250 days, Rick Cressman has been waiting for an apology from the woman who slaughtered his brother.
Jane Andrews, a former aide to the Duchess of York, murdered her millionaire boyfriend Tom Cressman just days after learning he did not want to get married.
In the 20 years since her conviction, Andrews – who is now free – has never said sorry to Tom’s grieving family.
But the callous killer did apologise – not to her victim’s family, but to Prince Andrew, for bringing shame on her old employers the Royal Family.
In an exclusive interview with The Celeb Report, Tom’s hotelier brother Rick, 69, says: “It shows absolute contempt for the real victim and our family.
“She hit him over the head with a cricket bat and then rammed a bloody great kitchen knife through his heart.
“It was a pre-meditated, cold-blooded brutal murder because if she couldn’t have Tommy no one else was going to.”
‘After 20 years it is too late now’
Rick, from Soilihull, West Midlands, is amazed that she apologised to the disgraced Prince, who is caught up in the Jeffrey Epstein paedophile scandal.
He says: “An interesting person to say sorry to. It’s a bit near to the knuckle to say the least.
“But she has never apologised to our family and frankly after 20 years it is too late now.
“It has gone past the time of making apologies. If you loved the person and you felt sorry about taking their life away it should have come out in a relatively short period of time after committing the murder and realising that you have made the most awful mistake in your life.”
Rick was speaking ahead of a controversial new documentary on Fergie’s killer aide, to be shown tonight on ITV.
Killer Andrews has complained to ITV bosses about how she is portrayed in the programme, which was originally made by shamed journalist Martin Bashir.
Through legal representatives, she whinged that Bashir repeatedly knocked on her door to try and get her to talk about the murder, a claim ITV deny.
But when scandal erupted about how Bashir, 57, had faked documents to trick Princess Di into filming her controversial Panorama documentary in 1995, ITV bosses removed him altogether from the programme.
The BBC is still investigating Bashir, who is recovering from a heart operation and Covid.
‘This man was scared of what she might do’
On the eve of the its screening, the killer moaned that the marketing of the new documentary asks ‘whether Jane Andrews is a danger to all men’.
A statement from her legal team claims ‘no man, other than Cressman has been put in any danger by Jane over the last 20 years since her conviction’.
But Tommy Cressman’s brother says she is still a dangerous person.
Rick told The Celeb Report how he was phoned by a married man who had an affair with Andrews when she was released on licence from prison in 2015, after serving just 14 years.
Three years later she was ordered back to prison when the man became terrified of her threatening behaviour.
But in the summer of 2019, Andrews was again up for parole and her ex-lover pleaded with Rick to speak out at the hearing and try to stop her being released.
Rick says: “This man was scared of what she might do if she was released.
“He was begging me to do anything I could at the parole hearing to help because he was so concerned about her being released again.
“Why was he scared enough in the first place to have reported her to the police?
“There must have been a reason she was returned to prison and remained there for a year.”
‘I think Tommy was the one being abused’
The killer’s legal team also say ‘the real question is why yet another documentary is being made about the Jane Andrews story’ which ‘serves no purpose but to provide cheap entertainment and damage the cause of women who are victims of abuse’.
Rick Cressman says: “I’m horrified. She’s regurgitating accusations she concocted against Tom that were dismissed by two judges, first at her trial in 2001 and then at an appeal two years later.
“She claimed Tom threatened and battered her. Nobody ever saw that girl with a bruise or anything from being beaten.”
The documentary begins with video footage of millionaire car company boss Tom, 39, and Andrews, who worked as Fergie’s assistant for nine years, in a vintage powerboat on Lake Iseo, northern Italy.
Rick says: “When you see the pictures of Tommy on board the boat in the sunshine a week or so before he was murdered, I don’t think there was any suggestion of abuse.
“The two of them were out on a boat having a good time.”
On that holiday, Andrews fully expected that, after two years of going out together, Tom would pop the question.
But when pressed by Andrews, he told her there would be no marriage.
Rick says: “I think Tommy was the one being abused.
“He was abused mentally because he was being pressurised by her. I think that was a reason Tommy reached the point where he had to say I can’t marry you.
“I know that for quite a lot of months he’d been feeling a bit alienated from his friends because of her possessiveness and I think that’s why the relationship broke down.”
‘It would have saved us all a lot of trouble’
On the way back from Italy, the couple stayed at Tom’s family holiday apartment in the south of France, where Rick kept an open-topped red Chrysler car.
Rick says: “For some reason Jane Andrews grabbed the keys to my car and disappeared off up the mountainous coast road where pieces of land literally drop into the sea.
“She pulled over, called up Tommy and told him she was going to drive my car over the cliff edge and kill herself.
“It would have saved us all a lot of trouble. But she didn’t because Tommy said to her, ‘You can’t do that. You’re in my brother’s car’.
“I can still picture him saying it because that is so typical of Tommy to make light of something even in a difficult situation.
“Knowing what I know now I would have definitely raised no objection whatsoever.”
‘If the police attended it may have prevented Tom’s murder’
The following Saturday, back in London, Tom phoned the police to report he was ‘having a major fight with my other half’ at his luxury home in Fulham, west London.
But the cops did not respond to his plea to come and split them up. Two days later, Tom’s blood soaked body was found in the house. Jane Andrews had fled.
Ex Detective Chief Inspector Jim Dickie, who led the murder hunt, says: “These days that would be dealt with straight away by the police. And if the police attended it may have prevented Tom’s murder.”
In the documentary, Rick says: “I could never have imagined I’d be asked by the police to go and visit a mortuary and see my brother laid out, cold, grey, totally lifeless. I’d say it was the hardest day of my life.”
Jane Andrews went on the run and was caught four days later after Fergie left two voicemail messages pleading with her to hand herself in to police.
She was jailed for life in 2001 but served just 15 years in all and even went on the run in 2009 after absconding from East Sutton Park open prison in Maidstone, Kent.
She is back living in Cleepthorpes, Lincs, and blames the prison service for refusing to let her write to her victim’s family.
But Rick Cressman says: “I don’t think Jane Andrews has had anything but a pretty good deal. She should still be behind bars as far as I am concerned. A life sentence of 25 years should mean just that.
“She has been telling her supporters how she wishes it had never happened. My God, we wish it had never happened. In fact, I wish my brother had never met her.”
Fergie’s Killer Dresser: The Jane Andrews Story is on ITV at 9pm on Wednesday.
Additional reporting Robin Perrie and Paul Sims.
