Mother who died of heroin addiction after being wrongly jailed for triple arson ‘couldn’t live with herself’ after being ‘treated like a dog’, her devastated daughter tells BBC podcast
The daughter of a woman wrongly accused of causing the deaths of a mother and her two young children in an arson attack says the miscarriage of justice has plunged her mother into drug addiction and deteriorated her mental health. what caused her death.
In a new BBC Sounds podcast: Wrongly Accused: The Annette Hewins Storymother-of-one Nicole Jacob discusses the family tragedy that changed the course of her and her siblings’ lives forever – after they were forced into care while their mother was wrongfully behind bars.
In October 1995, Diane Jones, 21, and her two daughters, Shauna, two, and Sarah Jane, one, died in an arson attack on Jones’ home in the crime-laden residential area of Gurnos in Merthyr Tydfil in Mid Glamorgan, Wales.
A new BBC Sounds podcast chronicles the miscarriage of justice that blighted Annette Hewins’ life after she was wrongly convicted of causing death by arson in 1997 – before her conviction was overturned two years later
Jacob’s mother Annette Hewins was arrested at the time with two other women and two years later she was convicted at Cardiff Crown Court in June 1997 of arson with intent to endanger life and jailed for 13 years.
The original trial heard that Hewins, 31 at the time of the murders, had supplied the petrol that started the fatal fire that led to the triple murder.
Annette’s niece, Donna Clarke, also received a 20-year prison sentence. She was romantically linked to Diane Jones’ boyfriend, Shaun Hibbard, who was the father of her two daughters, which investigators considered a motive for the fatal attack.
A third woman, Denise O’Sullivan, was found not guilty of the murders but convicted of perverting the course of justice – and served almost four years.
Annette, who was pregnant with her fifth child at the time, served 18 months of her sentence – spending a total of two and a half years in prison.
She was released by the Court of Appeal in 1999 after it concluded there was no evidence against her.
The four-star leaded gasoline she purchased was not the same one used to start the fire, the forensic investigation concluded.
Annette Hewins’ daughter Nicole Jacob hosts a new podcast exploring what happened to her mother – including delving into her happier years, and how wrongly imprisoned had devastating consequences on her life
Diane Jones was just 21 when she and her two daughters Shauna, two, and Sarah Jane, 13 months, were killed in the devastating deliberate fire at her home on the Gurnos estate in Merthyr Tydfil in Mid Glamorgan, Wales.
Shauna Jones was just two years old when she died in a house fire in October 1995
After the triple murder in 1995, empty bottles, believed to be filled with gasoline, were found outside Diane Jones’ home.
In the new podcast, Nicole says her mother’s innocent trip to the garage the night before the murders took place led police straight to their door – and misled a jury into the first guilty verdict.
Audio footage shows her, surrounded by friends and family, addressing the press after her release at the Royal Courts of Justice and during her time in prison.
Annette urged police to “find the real killers” and was heard saying on the tapes: “They took my baby from me.” They wouldn’t do to a dog what they did to me.’
Her niece Clarke’s sentence was also later overturned after judges deemed the original sentence ‘unsafe’.
Annette’s niece, Donna Clarke, was also convicted, with judges handing her a 20-year prison sentence. Her conviction was later overturned after it was deemed ‘unsafe’
The podcast also describes in the hours before how Annette tragically died in February 2017, at the age of 51, after a long battle with heroin addiction and mental health issues, which left her with hallucinations and paranoia.
She was admitted to the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Llantrisant and in her final moments was heard still trying to prove her innocence and saying her baby had been taken from her.
An inquest later concluded that she died of heart failure and that there were ‘areas of concern’ about her care, including the failure to carry out an ECG test.
Annette’s daughter says the conviction haunted her mother until the end of her life, and even after her death.
She remembers how a nurse in the hospital said to her after her mother’s death, “Your mother couldn’t live with herself, could she?”
Hewins (centre) pictured after leaving the Court of Appeal in London with friends and family in 1999; she gave birth to her youngest son while in prison
Annette had never used hard drugs before her time in prison, but the mother of five fell into a heroin addiction after her wrongful conviction
Nicole talks about her difficult childhood that she was only four when her mother was arrested. She said Annette had felt judged by the wider community in Merthyr Tydfil and feared revenge attacks on her family.
Annette’s heroin addiction began in prison, she says, explaining that her mother had never used “hard drugs” before she was incarcerated.
In the first episode of the podcast, Nicole also visits her father, who now lives in a nursing home after an accident twenty years ago.
He thinks back to happier times for the family, including their wedding and the early years of marriage before their divorce, and says Annette would spoil her children “rotten.”
Describing the impact on her and her siblings’ childhoods – all of whom ended up in the care system – due to the miscarriage of justice, Nicole said: ‘that whole world came crashing down for all of us after her arrest’.
Annette’s daughter says she lived for a ‘happy ending’, saying: ‘When she died it was the ultimate blow, it really hit me that this dream I had since childhood would now not come true.
“It’s bittersweet when you think back on those years and what we had because it never really came back.”
Wrongly Accused: The Annette Hewins Story is now available on BBC Sounds