Sion Jenkins launches £500,000 compensation claim after being cleared of killing step-daughter Billie-Jo

The former deputy headmaster has applied to the Home Office for damages and believes he fits 'all the criteria'.

He has been buoyed by the £700,000 recently awarded to Colin Stagg, who spent a year in custody after being wrongly charged with the murder of Rachel Nickell.

Sion Jenkins has launched a compensation claim after he was cleared of murdering his 13-year-old foster daughter Billie-Jo (right)

Mr Jenkins was initially found guilty of 13-year-old Billie-Jo's murder but won an appeal against his conviction.

He was formally acquitted in February 2006 following two retrials when neither jury could reach a verdict.

Mr Jenkins's claim follows the publication of his book The Murder Of Billie-Jo in which for the first time he mentions his own prime suspect  -  a man he says he saw in the hallway of his home in Hastings, East Sussex, on the day of attack.

The teenager was battered to death with a heavy metal tent peg on the patio of her foster family's home in February 1997.

Mr Jenkins, 50, was arrested for Billie-Jo's murder in the days after her death.

After he was convicted in 1998, his wife Lois divorced him and moved with their four young daughters to Tasmania, severing all contact.

Mr Jenkins said: 'I believe the Government should compensate me for taking away my liberty for six years which also meant I lost the childhood of my daughters.

'Family members have died while I was inside. I had a kicking while I was inside.

'I have been very unhappy and very sad and have raged inside because I have not been able to cope with what happened to me. I believe the Government should
pay for that.'

He added: 'I have just filled in the forms. I am waiting for a decision. I fulfill all the criteria.

'The amount is not the important thing.' The move is certain to be met with anger by Billie-Jo's natural family and his ex-wife Lois.

Billie-Jo's father Bill Jenkins, who by coincidence shared the same surname as Sion Jenkins, died of cancer at the age of 54 in August 2006, six months after Mr Jenkins was cleared at the Old Bailey.

His widow Elizabeth said of the damages claim: 'Bill would not have liked that at all. I didn't know anything about him claiming compensation.

'I should imagine that the family would be angry if he ends up getting it.'

Sion Jenkins has already been paid tens of thousands of pounds for interviews since his acquittal.

After his release, he married his second wife Tina, a nurse and mother of one, who wrote to him while he was in prison.
The couple sold her £ 1million mews home in Belgravia and moved to Southsea, Portsmouth.

Mr Jenkins will complete an MA in criminology and criminal justice at Portsmouth University next month.

In his book, he claims Billie-Jo's potential murderer was a well-dressed, articulate man who he assumed was a police officer standing in the hallway.

He was incensed when Denise Lancaster, a neighbour he called for help, recently said she thought the man was 'a fiction'.

A previous suspect was a mentally ill vagrant living in Hastings who was obsessed with plastic.

He was detained by police after part of a bin liner was found deep in Billie- Jo's nostril but no evidence linked him to the murder and he was never charged.

Mr Jenkins's solicitor Neil O'May refused to comment on the compensation claim yesterday.

In the case of Colin Stagg, the judge threw out the case after lambasting a 'honeytrap' employed by the police in trying to get a confession out of him using an undercover female officer.