My murderer mother tried to ruin my life from behind bars: Daughter of the 'Black Widow' who was jailed for killing her husband reveals her torment
- Jacqueline Crymble, 41, is serving 20 years in jail for killing husband Paul
- Suffocated husband with lover's help then pretended they had been attacked
- Daughter Danielle, 21, said Crymble tried to manipulate her children from jail
- She stills denies murder and used parental rights to trick them into visiting
8
View
comments
The daughter of the Black Widow murderer has revealed how her mother has continued to 'ruin her life' from prison.
Jacqueline Crymble, now 41, was jailed for 20 years in 2007 for killing her husband Paul, 35, with her lover Roger Ferguson, with whom she was having an affair.
Dubbed the 'Black Widow', Crymble has always denied the murder and claimed a gang of masked men had attacked and tied up her husband on Father's Day 2004 after breaking into the family home.
But the judge said she was 'guilty of the ultimate act of treachery', adding: 'Like an executioner you and Roger Ferguson put a black bag over his head, sealed it around his neck, watched as he struggled to breathe and waited for him to die. The cruelty implicit in what you did defies belief.'
Her daughter, Danielle, now 21, said her mother always had a short temper and continued to manipulate her children from behind bars.
Jailed: Jacqueline Crymble (left) was sentenced to 20 years in jail for murdering her husband Paul (right) with her lover Roger Ferguson
Speaking to the Sunday Mirror, she said Crymble, who she refers to as Jackie, used the fact that she had kept parental rights over Danielle and younger brother Adam to control them - and attempt to bully them into accepting she was innocent.
'She’d try to bribe me into visiting her by saying she’d sign a (consent) form (for school trips) if I came to see her,' Danielle told the newspaper.
'Then when I went she’d protest her innocence. When I said I didn’t believe her, she’d refuse to sign the form. It meant I was the only kid in the class to be left behind.
'While she protested her innocence, she never showed a shred of remorse or upset at losing Daddy.'
She told how the family, who lived in a three-bedroomed bungalow in Co. Armagh, were always wary of her mother's 'terrible temper'.
RELATED ARTICLES
'He thought it was his only way out': Father in Costa... 
Spurned husband who bludgeoned his wife to death with...
Share this article
ShareDanielle was only 11 when she became aware of her mother's affair with Ferguson, which began in the months before the murder, and said he was always around the house when her father was out.
Weeks later her mother told her that the couple were planning to separate in a year but were staying together for the children.
On the night of the murder, the siblings had gone to stay with their paternal grandmother so their parents could go out for a meal. As Father's Day was the next day, the children made cards - but Mr Crymble never saw them.
Police called in the morning to say a gang of masked men had confronted their parents in the early hours, tying up their mother and taking their father away in his car.
Officers later found Mr Crymble dead in the car not far from the family home.
Convicted: Jacqueline Crymble and her lover Roger Ferguson were found guilty of murder at Armagh Crown Court
But Danielle was not convinced by her mother's tears.
'Rather than being grief-stricken and haunted as I was by the thought of how Daddy had died, she was still seeing Roger,' she told the Sunday Mirror.
The final insult came when Crymble burnt all of her husbands belongings and all photographs of him weeks after his death. Danielle only managed to rescue one picture of her and her father, which she treasures now.
Eventually Crymble and Ferguson's DNA were discovered at the scene and after a four-month trial the pair were convicted.
Crymble was sentenced to 20 years while Ferguson, who was 31 at the time of the murder, got 18 years. Third defendant Colin Robinson, who was 17, was convicted of assisting an offender and jailed for three years.
The children were forced to go into care as Crymble wielded her parental rights to say they could not live with their grandmother.
Danielle struggled to settle and had difficult teenage years until she moved to Basingstoke aged 17, and was finally free from her mother's clutches at 18.
Now she is a nursery school assistant and has found a supportive partner, acoustic engineer Simon Brice. But she is haunted by her mother's actions.
She said: 'She wasn’t a mother, she was a monster, someone who not only killed my Daddy, but ripped away my childhood.'
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7pa3IpbCmmZmhe6S7ja6iaKaVrMBwrdGtoJyklWJ%2FdIGQcWptZ32ueq7B0Z2cq52iYrqwwMeeqWasop6ypXnRrqCnZZyes6Z5wZqprGV0lsKotNOeqWZ6nJawrHm2opuor16dwa64