Found with her family, royal aide who escaped from prison

Convicted killer returned to secure jail after being apprehended at Premier Inn

(PA)

After two days on the run following her escape from an open prison, the former royal aide and convicted murderer Jane Andrews is back behind bars.

Andrews, who once worked as a dresser to the Duchess of York, was found by police at the Premier Inn, just off the M20 in Kent, at 3am yesterday. The hotel is just a few miles from where she was being held at East Sutton Park open prison.

She was with three family members but a police spokesman said they were not thought to have played a role in Andrews' escape on Sunday evening. They were interviewed by police, but not arrested. Police believe Andrews had been sleeping rough since absconding from the jail, and had only been in the hotel for a short time before she was found by officers.

Andrews, 42, was jailed for a minimum of 12 years in 2001 after bludgeoning and stabbing to death her boyfriend, Tom Cressman, at their home in Fulham, west London, when he refused to marry her.

Police said Andrews had been medically checked and her care and future detention had been handed back to the Prison Service. A Prison Service spokesman confirmed she would be placed in a closed prison.

He said re-captured absconders were returned to a more secure closed prison where they faced either a criminal prosecution for escaping or an internal adjudication in jail in front of a visiting judge. Andrews could now receive additional time in prison on top of her existing sentence.

Tom Cressman's family condemned the decision to allow her to be kept in an open prison in the first place, only eight years into her sentence. And they demanded that her eligibility for release on parole in 2012 now be re-examined, adding that the affair exposed "incompetence" in the Ministry of Justice.

Mr Cressman's brother, Rick, 58, said: "I would like to meet [the Justice Secretary] Jack Straw because I think there are deeper questions and issues which come out of this... Jack Straw should be hanging his head in shame. It's absolutely appalling."