Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop. It was an uncontrollable reflex, like the way your abdominal muscles contract over and over during a bout of food poisoning until there is nothing left to expel. Finally, the waves subsided. I’ve no idea how long I sat there, exhausted and drained, as dusk fell. Up on the road, behind me, street lights snapped on, one by one.
‘Hello?’ someone called, breaking the silence. ‘Are you all right down there, love?’
A few minutes later, there were more voices. My concerned good samaritan had gone to the nearby fire station for help.
‘Come on, love,’ a man’s voice said, kindly. ‘You’ve been here a while now, your family’s going to be worried.’
I think they must have recognised me from pictures in the papers. They knew exactly why I was sitting there, crying.
Tentatively, they approached. I allowed them to lift me to my feet and help me up the bank and into the station. The bright lights made me wince. A hot cup of tea was placed in my hands, a blanket draped around me.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I mumbled. ‘Putting you to this trouble.’
Despite their protests, I managed to persuade them that I was OK to drive home. As I pulled onto my drive, the front door was flung open. They all poured out – Mum, with her arms outstretched, followed by Pat, Margaret, John and Michael. I could see the terror tinged with relief etched on their pale faces.
‘She’s here, she’s here!’ I could hear them calling to others in the house.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I whispered. ‘I had to get out. Our David’s having a funeral . . . ’
She rocked me gently. ‘I know, love. I know,’ she soothed.
I’ve no idea how we got to the church for the service but I know that there was never a cross word over funeral planning, or any sort of gathering ever again.
To this day, I can’t abide hearing about fall-outs over who’s going to attend, sit where or inherit this or that trinket. Being able to lay a loved one to rest is a privilege not all of us are fortunate to have. Please don’t ever take it for granted.
The only place I could go that day, to feel close to my beloved daughter, was the dirty, litter-strewn riverbank where the rats run. I had nowhere else to go. Nowhere.
Chapter 12
Twisting the knife
S
till the searches went on. It was relentless, exhausting, soul-destroying.
Sometimes, the urge to sell up, move somewhere new and start afresh where no one knew us was overwhelming. Shortly after the trial, I’d gone as far as putting the house on the market. We’d had valuations done and brochures designed before I suddenly thought, Wait, how can I move? Helen loved this house. And I want to bring her home.
I told the estate agent I’d changed my mind. Moving wouldn’t change a thing. In fact, it would make the searches even harder.
‘This is my job, my duty as Helen’s mum,’ I told journalists when they asked how I could bear to keep going. ‘I brought her into the world and I need to see her out of it, too.
‘Besides, she’d be upset at the thought of no one looking for her.’
Winnie Johnson and Ann West, mothers of the Moors’ victims I had befriended, were the few people who really understood.
Yes, we would always be within painful distance of the murder site. I grew used to averting my eyes whenever I had to pass it. It was like wearing invisible blinkers.
Time crawled by. We had the fifth, then sixth anniversary. With no grave to tend, to buy flowers for, all I could do was light candles and place them around her portrait.
One day, Helen will have her own resting place, I’d tell myself. One day . . .
Until then, all we could do was carry on looking for her.
Occasionally, John would insist on a few hours out, a drive somewhere. But even then, I would scan fields as we passed.
‘Wait! Stop!’ I’d urge. ‘Did we check there? Or what about there?’
* * *
In 1994, police found the body of a man in a sewage pipe in Blackburn. It was awful news and my heart went out to his family, but in a macabre way those discoveries revived me, kept me going, gave me more ideas. I’d urge the public: ‘If you know of any disused pipes on your land, any remote hiding places, please let me know.’
We always knew that 1995 was going to be a difficult year. Helen should have been looking forward to her thirtieth birthday in July. We should have been celebrating with a huge family party, maybe even a wedding – she’d planned to marry at thirty. Instead, I was arranging another memorial mass, with her portrait gazing back at us all from the front of the church.
On the last Sunday in January, a local journalist rang: ‘Erm, I wondered if you had any thoughts on the article in today’s Independent on Sunday magazine?’ he asked, tentatively.
‘What article?’ I wanted to know.
Intrigued, John ran to the shop to buy a copy. And there it was, a lengthy four-page article by journalist Bob Woffinden, who specialised in investigating possible miscarriages of justice. He had examined the cases of A6 Murderer James Hanratty, Sion Jenkins, who was eventually acquitted of murdering his step-daughter Billie-Jo, and White House Farm murderer Jeremy Bamber, to name but a few. And now he had taken on Simms.
Under the headline: ‘Burden of Proof’, he asked, ‘Is Simms Innocent?’
With a growing sense of horror, I read how, for the last four years, Woffinden had been visiting Simms in Full Sutton Jail in York – ever since he’d contacted him insisting his case was, that’s right, a miscarriage of justice. And this article was the result.
Woffinden questioned the forensic evidence that had convicted Simms and suggested that an ex-drinking crony of Simms, or someone with a grudge, could have framed him for the murder. He argued that Helen would drape her coat over the bar stools, on visits, and occasionally pet Simms’ dog (in an attempt to explain fibres and dog hairs) and also claimed that, according to passengers on the bus, her coat was already torn under the armpits.
Most shocking of all was the line: ‘Although one would not wish to offer Mrs McCourt empty hopes, Helen may not even be dead. After all, hundreds of people in this country simply disappear.’
He recounted a statement from a witness (there were hundreds in response to police appeals) who said Helen had sat opposite him on a train heading south and pointed out that an entry in her diary read ‘February: Barcelona’.
‘I don’t believe it,’ I whispered. The police had already scotched this ridiculous rumour before the trial. Yes, Helen had been planning a holiday to Spain with her friend Hilary. They might have been considering Barcelona. But her passport was still in her desk, for heaven’s sake.
At one point in the trial the defence had played up the word ‘Inasun’ that had also been written in her diary, pronouncing the name Inasuan, to make it sound like a person. Had she run off to meet a man by this name, they questioned. I’d wrung my hands in frustration. She meant Intasun, a low-budget holiday company – Helen was looking to book with them.
To imply that Helen had abandoned her family and run off to Spain with a non-existent lover was preposterous, hurtful and downright cruel.
Woffinden described a ‘gathering groundswell of support among the community in Billinge, where former friends and associates are openly sceptical about whether justice was done’.
What?
‘In prison,’ he said, ‘Simms felt the pressure of being a constant target of vilification. Twice, when arriving at a new prison, he was beaten up by fellow prisoners who believed the court verdict – routinely regaled by the tabloids – that he was the vilest of murderers’. However, ‘it seems that, once he has established himself, he is a popular inmate, known for his straightforwardness’.
Woffinden himself found Simms ‘when not unutterably depressed, good company, forthright, opinionated and engagingly droll’.
He described how I’d spent several weekends digging up the countryside looking for her.
Several week
ends? Try seven years!
Incandescent with rage, I contacted my MP John Evans. He had been supporting me for many years. In fact, it was thanks to him that I’d received a letter from Home Secretary Michael Howard assuring me that Simms would never be freed without showing remorse.
Local TV news channels covered the story. They came to the house to film me reading the article. ‘There is nothing here any different to when he was found guilty and convicted of my daughter’s murder,’ I said flintily. ‘The best thing that could happen is for Simms to say, “Yes, I did it – and this is where Helen is.”’
That evening, I tuned in. There was John Evans stressing that he hadn’t been approached by a single person raising concern about the conviction – and arguing that this action was unfair both to Simms and, even more so, to myself.
‘He is giving false hope to Simms that he is going to be released from prison or have a new trial,’ he told the interviewer. ‘He has twice been refused leave to appeal. I don’t think it would be granted on the third application either.’*
Forensic experts at Chorley said they had complete confidence in the evidence given to the court.
And then, suddenly, there was Bob Woffinden himself on a screen speaking to the presenter in the studio.
‘I have no wish at all to increase the burden of Mrs McCourt’s grief,’ he said. ‘I realise that this is a very distressing day for her. What I would like to do is to alleviate her grief.’
My mouth fell open in disbelief.
‘I am aware of the campaign she has conducted over the last few years and how determined she is to discover the whereabouts of her daughter’s body, if indeed her daughter has been murdered, which we must presume.
‘I would like to help her in her quest. And it seems to me, that, at the moment, she is not going to discover the truth about this case because, quite frankly, everybody has been headed down the wrong road.’
I gasped. The audacity of the man! I longed to pick something up and hurl it at the TV screen.
On and on he went: ‘Ian Simms wrote to me from prison and said, “Could you look at my case. It’s a miscarriage of justice.”’
Yes, Simms wrote to me as well – pages and pages of abuse and threats.
‘I had a superficial look at it and wrote back saying, “Well, I’m sorry there seems to be an awful lot of evidence here.” But to his credit, he persisted and I looked at the case more closely and was indeed convinced because I then realised that however convincing the forensic framework was, when you scrutinised it closely, it actually fell apart because it didn’t make sense. There was no coherent scenario there for what was supposed to have happened.’
The interviewer interjected: ‘Or is it that Simms is a convincing liar?’
Bob Woffinden bristled. ‘I’ve met Simms on several occasions. I think he is a generous, warm-hearted person. . . .’
‘You have got to be joking!’ I retorted.
‘ . . . I’ve got a great deal of time and affection for him and quite frankly, the idea that I’ve been duped is just ludicrous. I have been following these cases for some years now and I can assure you that no cases are taken up where there is any doubt about the rightness of the appeal.’
I couldn’t take any more. Grabbing the remote, I jabbed a button and the screen went blank. I was shaking like a leaf.
‘How dare he?’ I raged.
For seven years we had lived with this torture only for a do-gooder to come along and claim the conviction was unsafe.
And so began an upsetting and exhausting four-year legal roller coaster which I could have done without.
Astonishingly, a week later, the day before the seventh anniversary of Helen’s murder, I received a letter from Woffinden. Not only was his timing appalling but he sent it to an address in a road where Simms used to live. It was forwarded by a resident.
In it he wrote: ‘I was deeply saddened to read your remarks but sometimes you have to make a judgement whether to contact the bereaved or not.’
So, in one sentence he acknowledged I was indeed bereaved. And in the next, questioned if my daughter was actually dead.
He offered to meet me.
I did not reply.
After Mr Watts raised the issue in the Commons, the Home Office banned Woffinden from visiting Simms without giving an undertaking not to write anything. Woffinden refused. Simms argued the ban breached Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (which was being incorporated into British Law): ‘the right to freedom of expression’. He applied for legal aid (which was granted, naturally) and, jointly with another prisoner who had been denied visits by a BBC producer, sought a judicial review of the decision.
They won their case in December 1996. I was so sickened, I was unable to organise a mass on Helen’s anniversary the following February.
The Home Office appealed. John and I travelled down for the hearing in December 1997. Due to train delays, we arrived too late to hear the case but it was all over: Simms had lost. I punched the air! The court had ruled that prisoners, as part of their punishment, lost the right to freedom of expression. It was a victory for common sense.
‘Justice has been done and the right result was gained today,’ I told reporters. ‘Ian Simms claimed [ . . . ] an infringement of his human rights. But what rights does a murderer or rapist give to the victim?
‘I am so relieved that this chapter is over and hopefully one day Simms will show remorse by telling us where Helen’s body is and giving us the human right of giving our daughter a Christian burial.’
Heading into a nearby café for a much-needed cuppa, I stopped in my tracks. There, just a few feet away from me, was Mr Woffinden himself. John spotted him too – a fraction too late to stop me marching towards his table.
I’d have loved to have known what was going through his head as this furious middle-aged woman bore down on him, the ominous click-clack of heels on the hard floor growing ever louder.
Reaching into my handbag, I pulled out Helen’s passport and slapped it onto his table. ‘Mr Woffinden,’ I said in an icy tone. ‘Here is Helen’s passport. It was one of the first things the police looked for when she went missing. So now you can stop writing that her passport was missing and she has gone abroad. Because if you do,’ I said through clenched teeth, ‘I will take it further.’ Snatching up the passport, I turned and marched away.
He never said a word. I can still picture the stunned expression on his face.
Yet again, Simms appealed (again, funded by legal aid, no doubt), taking his case to the House of Lords. In July 1999, more than four years after this debacle had begun, they found in his favour – concluding the ban was unlawful and a contravention of basic human rights. Watching from the public gallery, I became so distraught that our new MP David Watts had to take me into a nearby office so I could calm down.
I was livid and hurt, but realised I had more important things to focus on. (Interestingly, even though he’d won the right for Woffinden to visit him in prison, I’m not aware of a single further article being published about Simms’ supposed innocence.)
First, Simms had asked the newly founded Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC, which was set up to investigate possible miscarriages of justice) to examine his conviction.
Once again, I had to hand over every bit of evidence relating to the case – from Helen’s soiled clothes to her private diary.
Second, we were still focusing on the searches and appeals to the public. The discovery of a body always had me sitting bolt upright. Each time, my heart leapt with hope and then broke for those poor girls and their families.
* * *
In August 1997, we came agonisingly close to thinking our quest was about to end when amateur divers discovered the body of a woman in Coniston Water, Cumbria. Aged between twenty and thirty, with dark hair, she had been wrapped in bin bags and weighted down.
Could it be Helen?
Merseyside Police sent off Helen’s dental records. All I coul
d do now was wait.
The papers ran stories about my hope: ‘Mother Waits for Lake Body Probe . . . “Is My Agony Over?”’
When the phone finally rang, I snatched it up. Closed my eyes. Prayed. And then slumped at the words, ‘I’m sorry, Marie . . . ’
It was as if someone had punched me in the solar plexus. For a few seconds, I felt completely winded and had trouble breathing. My heart felt like a dead weight hanging in my chest, pulling me down, making me stoop.
‘I don’t know how much more I can take,’ I wept to reporters. ‘I really thought this time it would be Helen.’
The case, however, did raise awareness of the plight of missing murder victims. The woman was identified as mum of three, Carol Park, thirty, of Barrow-in-Furness, who had disappeared in 1976. Her husband, Gordon, hadn’t reported her missing for six weeks – claiming she had run off with another man.
Initially charged with murder, the case was dropped in 1998 – only to be revived in 2005. Gordon Park was found guilty. He lost an appeal in 2008 and killed himself in prison, two years later.
Those poor children, I thought. Even then, that still wasn’t the end. One of the children launched a posthumous appeal to the CCRC on behalf of their father, but a judge dismissed it in May 2020.
Until now, everyone had argued that such cases were extremely unusual. They rarely happened, they were an anomaly.
‘Don’t you see?’ I told reporters. ‘They do happen. It’s just that the killers hide the body so well they, literally, get away with murder.’
Once again, I thanked my lucky stars that I’d raised the alarm so quickly on Helen’s disappearance. With another few precious hours, Simms might have covered his tracks completely. Helen would, forever, have been another missing person.
The more we discovered, the more compelled we felt to keep shouting and help others caught up in our misery.
It had all started at the mass for what should have been Helen’s thirtieth in July 1995. Her friends and colleagues had all poured into the church. I took bittersweet delight in their engagements, their weddings, their pregnancy bumps and babies in buggies while a thought, on a loop, went round and round in my head:
Justice for Helen Page 20