Helen McCourt was a 22-year-old British insurance clerk who disappeared on 9 February 1988 in the village of Billinge near St Helens, Merseyside, shortly after getting off a bus less than five hundred yards from her home. Her body has never been found. Ian Simms, a local pub landlord was charged with and convicted of her murder.
The case is a rare example where a murder conviction has been obtained without the presence of a body, and was one of the first in the UK to use DNA fingerprinting. In 2015, Helen McCourt's mother, Marie, began a campaign to change the law regarding the conviction of killers such as Simms, requiring them to reveal the whereabouts of their victim's remains before being considered for parole. The campaign led to the announcement of plans to introduce a "Helen's Law" in May 2019. On 5 July 2019, David Gauke, the Secretary of State for Justice confirmed the law would be adopted in England and Wales. A Parole Board hearing on 8 November recommended Simms for release, the decision coming before the legislation could be introduced. The McCourt family launched a bid to keep Simms in jail but it was rejected by the High Court in February 2020, and Simms was subsequently released on licence.
Helen's Law is now embedded in statute and will bring at least some consolation to other families cruelly denied closure following the murder of a loved one whose body has yet to be discovered.
Monster
He killed my Helen,
far worse a crime
his refusal to reveal
her final resting place.
The monster is free
to torture me.
Release for him.
But none for me.
Thanks for reading. Adele
3 comments:
Truly shocking. I hope Helen's Law actually does force murderers to divulge such information. Keith Bennett's mother tried for nearly 50 years to discover where Brady and Hindley had buried her son in 1964. Her only release from a lifetime of torture (as you rightly describe it in your poem) only came with her own death in 2012. Even on his deathbed 5 years later, the monster Brady refused to give any clues.
Poignant :(
It must be such a terrible thing to lose a child. But not to know what happened to them is almost worst. I was on tv a few weeks ago that German police think they have the man who might have abducted (and killed?) Madeleine McCann. I hope her poor parents finally get some answers.
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