Charity Allows Murderer To Design Christmas Cards

A charity was criticised today after allowing a killer who worked for the Duchess of York to design its Christmas card. Social welfare charity Miracles, which offers “crisis funding, positive thinking and practical support to those with nowhere else to turn”, invited Jane Andrews to come up with the image.

Andrews, 39, – who was the Duchess’s personal dresser – is currently serving a life sentence at HMP Send in Surrey for murdering her boyfriend Thomas Cressman.

She battered him with a cricket bat while he slept before stabbing him with a kitchen knife at their Fulham home in 2001. Trustees at Miracles decided she was the ideal choice to design the card. She is a friend of the charity’s founder, who said she “deserved another chance”.

But Barbara Cressman, Tom’s mother, said: “I’m shocked. I would hope that no one would want a card made by her.

“I’m tired of do-gooders like this charity, which treat my son’s murder as if it was an accident.” The design features a golden flame above a candle with the Miracles logo imprinted on it. On the back of the card, it reads: “Made by Jane Andrews in prison.”

Chief executive of the charity Robert Linley-Munro said the design was part of her rehabilitation. Andrews, who worked for the Duchess for nine years until she was sacked in 1997, was jailed for life after a jury at the Old Bailey found her guilty of murdering Mr Cressman.

She went on the run for three days. Family and friends, including the Duchess of York, left messages on her mobile phone in an attempt to persuade her to give herself up.

She was eventually found slumped in her car in Cornwall after taking an overdose.