April Jones murder: Sister tells how her world fell apart
The sister of murdered schoolgirl April Jones has described how her entire world fell apart when she found out the five-year-old would not be coming home.
Jazmin Jones was 16 when April was snatched from outside her home in Machynlleth, on October 1, 2012, and murdered by Mark Bridger.
Miss Jones said she “kind of figured” April was not coming home within hours of her disappearance.
Of finding out that the 47-year-old paedophile had been charged, she said: “You want to scream, you want to shout, you want to cry, you’ve got all these emotions running through you and you have no idea what to do with them.
“When you lose someone anyway, it’s an emotional time but losing someone like this where you don’t know what’s happened, you haven’t got anything to bury, you haven’t got anything to say goodbye to, your entire world just falls a part.”
Bridger, who was convicted of the murder of April, child abduction and perverting the course of justice, refused to tell police what he had done with April’s body – although officers did recover fragments of her skull from his fireplace. In the interview, Miss Jones said she had “kind of come to terms” with the fact that Bridger was never going to reveal where April’s remains are.
“At first I was really angry because I just wanted to say goodbye,” she said.
“But then, I got to the point when I was like, he’s never gonna say anything so I don’t know why I’m keeping my hopes up ... there’s no point in giving ... my time or energy about it. It’s just not worth it.”
During his trial, Bridger claimed he could not remember what he had done with April. He was sentenced to a whole life term, meaning he will die in jail.
Miss Jones said she thought it was easier for the family not to know what happened to April on the night she died.
“I think as a family, finding out what happened and what truly happened that night, I think in a sense that could destroy it, that could destroy us,” she said.
“We all have our own sort of beliefs that this happened or that happened but finding out what really happened, that could wreck anyone, because it’s not something you’d want to know in such a brutal way as that. I think it’s easier for us not to ever know.”
Miss Jones also told candidly answered questions including revealing how she started drinking when she turned 18 as a way of dealing with what happened to April.
She said of that time: “I didn’t care who I hurt, what I said, I didn’t care who I was with, I didn’t care where I was, I was having a drink.”
Miss Jones added: “But it was just my release and I wouldn’t want to change it because it’s what made me a strong person today.”
The Jones family still struggles with what happened, she said, adding: “April was the centre of our family but we’ve learned that we’ve got each other and we’ve got to carry on, we can’t stop because it’s not what she would want.”
Tragedy led to campaign calling for change in law
The death of April Jones five years ago shocked the close-knit community of Machynlleth.
Her family, who were well known on the town’s Bryn-y-Gog estate, where April was abducted by Mark Bridger, used her death as a springboard to launch a campaign for April’s Law.
It called for tougher sentences for sex offenders and was debated in Parliament. April’s Law was discussed in March after a petition reached more than 100,000 signatures.
It calls for sex offenders to remain on the register for life. It also wanted internet service providers and search engines to be better policed over images of child abuse, and for harsher sentences for those caught with indecent images.
The then-Home Office Minister Sarah Newton said a Supreme Court ruling meant they had the right to appeal against staying on the register for life. Earlier this year, April’s mother Coral Jones said they might have had April back if Bridger had been flagged up.
“With the law, we’re hoping if anything happens like this again, it’ll flag up and save a child from going through what April did and a family from going through what we did,” she said.
Montgomeryshire MP Glyn Davies told Parliament at the time how the community responded after April went missing in Machynlleth in 2012 and demanded that ‘rigour and certainty’ is brought to the system for managing sex offenders.
Mr Davies told MPs that “no name should ever be removed from the sex offenders’ list until and unless there is total certainty that the offender is reformed and is not going to repeat offend”.
