Still, combined, the evidence was ‘absolutely overwhelming’, said prosecuting counsel Mr Leveson.
While opening for the prosecution, he had asked the jury to open up their folders and place the transparent sheets for hair and blood on top of the other diagrams, i.e. the pub, the car and the sites where clothes were found. Then he explained: ‘Both blood and hair were found in the back bedroom of the George and Dragon, in the boot of the car and on Ian Simms’ grey jacket found at Irlam.
‘Blood group has nothing to do with hair colour. Can there be any doubt that it was Helen McCourt’s blood and Helen McCourt’s hair? Can there be any doubt that it was she who rested on the floor of the George and Dragon, bleeding, and her body which was carried away in the boot of Ian Simms’ motor car?’
From these extensive discoveries, experts were able to build up a disturbing but accurate picture of what happened that night.
One newspaper reported how forensic scientist Dr Eric Moore ‘concluded from the way her blood had been splattered that she [Helen] had probably been assaulted with fists or an implement’. The report continued: ‘Dr Moore said he thought Helen had also been hit with the rear door of the licencee’s flat in the pub then dragged by her arms along the landing carpet into the rear bedroom, where further bloodshed took place’.
Unless the first blow is of ‘unbelievable ferocity’, blood splashing occurs when part of the body already bloody is hit again, Mr Leveson had already explained.
I closed my eyes, thought of flowers, beaches . . . anything to block out the image of my daughter being struck.
‘The victim of this attack is likely to be Helen McCourt because of the unusual nature of the fibres found in the flat,’ continued Dr Moore. ‘The victim may have been dragged along the landing and into the back bedroom, which would account for the large number of fibres and dog hairs found on that clothing and the damage. Possibly the victim was dragged along by the arms, which could explain why the lining of her coat was torn and split at the seams.’
Hearing these words, my whole body started to tremble.
Was she unconscious? Out cold? Or was she semi-conscious . . . wondering, ‘Where am I? What are you doing? Why are you hurting me?’
When Dr Moore commented that both carpets were in a ‘dirty condition’ with ‘thousands of dog hairs on them’, I felt repulsed. The thought of my daughter being dragged, barely conscious, along a grubby carpet in the last moments of her life was unbearable.
‘She was then placed in the boot of Simms’ car and at some stage a piece of electric flex had been used as a ligature around her neck.’
Whoever committed the assault also drove the car, he added.
A hush fell as Dr Moore showed the flex to the court. The hairs, identical to those recovered from Helen’s rollers, were broken, he said. Some had roots, indicating they had been pulled out by force.
Dr Moore had testified: ‘This hair matches Helen’s hair and this electric cable looks to me as though it has been used as a noose. The knot was tied with the hairs in situ as if it had been used as a ligature around someone’s neck.’
As the flex was passed to the jury, some members broke down and cried. I wept too. Oh Helen, I thought, shaking my head sadly. From the moment she was born, people had commented on her crowning glory.
I remembered that beautiful mop of downy, newborn hair that the midwives had admired – ‘Our own Bootle Beatles baby,’ they’d called her. It had slipped softly between my fingers as I’d rocked her to sleep. Over time, it had grown into thick, glossy tresses that I’d tie in neat ribboned bunches for school photos. I’d shown her how to use a hair dryer herself, bought her heated rollers for Christmas. Now, a few sorry strands, yanked brutally from her scalp, were all that was left of her.
Like Helen’s coat, Simms’ jacket also showed signs of damage. There were thin smears of mud on the outside and inside – plus one large tear down the left side seam. Had this been caused by Helen fighting for her life?
The blood found inside the premises, in the car boot and on the clothes recovered at Hollins Green all originated from the same person.
At one point in the trial, the jury passed Justice Caulfield a note asking if they could visit both sites where clothing had been recovered – from Hollins Green (where Simms’ clothes had been dumped) and the riverbank in Irlam.
Photographers snapped Justice Caulfield standing by the canal at Hollins Green and the jury studying their maps and overlays as they walked along paths. Journalists reported Simms apparently laughing and joking with wardens.
Finally, scientists had focused on the pale brown mud found on Simms’ car, clothes and jewellery.
‘Smears of mud were found on the lower inside part of the driver’s door, on the driver’s seat, sidesill, footwell and pedals. Mud was also found on the steering wheel, gear lever, fascia, inside the boot, boot lid and catch,’ they said.
Dr Moore concluded that the mud was consistent with the car being driven forwards and backwards over muddy ground and with the driver being heavily mud-stained.
Simms’ clothes had both mud and blood on them but scientists concluded the blood was definitely there first. The mud, which matched the mud found on the car, suggested the ‘wearer had stood in liquid mud up to several inches deep and, at some stage, had either knelt or fallen in’. There were also four adjacent smears on the top of the driver’s door – consistent with mud-stained hands pulling the door shut.
The colour of the mud found on his jewellery was similar to that found in his car and on his clothing and the distribution of mud on his bracelet and two rings, said scientists, was ‘consistent with contact with wet mud of sufficient depth to cover all the surfaces’, explained Mr Leveson, in his opening argument. ‘In other words, Ian Simms has at least been up to his wrist in pale mud.’
I winced.
What have you done with her? Where have you put her?
Mr Leveson concluded: ‘Simms’ clothing and the car was “very, very muddy” – no doubt, alleges the Crown, because Helen McCourt had to be buried or lost where no one would find her.’
All in all, said the prosecution, the evidence was over-whelming. ‘The Crown alleges that she [Helen McCourt] has been murdered and her body hidden so well that it has not been found, although very considerable effort has been put into looking,’ Mr Leveson had said in his opening argument.
‘The Crown further alleges that the person responsible for murdering her and then trying to cover up that murder is this man – Simms.’
The evidence was overwhelming. Yet Simms, who turned thirty-three during the trial, had pleaded not guilty. He was about to deny everything.
Chapter 8
The verdict
O
n the thirteenth day of the trial, Mr John Kay, barrister for the defence, rose to his feet. ‘I call the defendant,’ he declared.
The response was immediate. Journalists shifted in their seats. There was a brief flurry of paper as they flipped to fresh pages in their spiral notebooks. Behind me, I could sense the nudging of elbows, hear the wave of whispers and murmurs . . . until they stopped suddenly.
One journalist reported how ‘a stern glance’ from Justice Caulfield was enough to restore absolute silence in court as Simms left the dock and was escorted to the witness box.
In opening the prosecution, Mr Leveson had said ‘He [Simms] has never shifted from a resolute denial that he ever had anything to do with Helen McCourt’s disappearance: the Crown submit that having at least to date successfully disposed of her body, he has created a story for himself which he has stuck to.’
Now we were about to hear it, straight from his own mouth.
Apparently, Simms’ own counsel had advised against going into the witness box at all, but he’d insisted.
Bizarrely, dozens of people – including Helen’s friends and colleagues – received an eleventh-hour summons to present at court the following morning as witnesses for the defence. They turned up, unhapp
y and bewildered. A handful were called to testify but it was clear that their testimony wasn’t supporting Simms in the slightest.
Afterwards, it became very clear why Simms’ ‘good character’ hadn’t been laid before the court by the defence: it would have been ripped to shreds.
Finally, he was taking the stand, promising to tell the truth. A tiny part of me hoped that he would, finally, even at this late stage in proceedings, do the decent thing. So many times, I’d imagined him holding his hands up, looking across at me and confessing, ‘It was a terrible accident. I didn’t mean it to happen. Yes, I killed Helen. And here’s where you can find her.’ That’s all I wanted; that’s all I ever wanted. In time, I might even have been able to forgive him.
Within seconds, it was clear this wasn’t going to happen.
We’d already heard from various police officers’ testimonies that Simms had lied from the outset. The police report which went to the Crown Prosecution Service referred to Simms’ accounts for the evidence being ‘improbable to the point of absurdity’ and ‘repeatedly tainted with lies’ so heaven only knew what he was going to come out with.
When first questioned at St Helens police station, Simms had signed a very lengthy witness statement insisting he had spent the entire evening of Tuesday, 9 February with Tracey. He claimed that after picking up his son from nursery and taking him home, he had returned to the pub, where he remained for the rest of the afternoon – doing his books in the first-floor office and ‘getting his head down’. Later, after washing, he’d gone out, filled his car with petrol and returned to the pub at about 8pm. He and Tracey had dozed until nearly 11pm. After Simms checked on the pub, he’d asked staff to lock up. He and Tracey had gone to bed and she’d left in the early hours.
He denied visiting the garage at 8am the next morning – insisting he’d only got up at 9am to let the cleaners in. But examination of his car revealed a slow puncture in the very tyre that he’d been seen filling.
He said he had then left fifty minutes later for the cash and carry warehouse, before returning for lunch at the pub with Tracey.
After a break in questioning, however, detectives had returned to the interview room and said Simms was lying. He then changed his story, later complaining that police had bamboozled, tricked, threatened and confused him. He also insisted that he didn’t realise it was a murder inquiry to start with – as if that makes lying to the police acceptable.
In his revised account he said that when Tracey revealed people had been overheard gossiping about their affair, he had decided to confess all to his wife before she heard it from someone else. He’d called at the family home with every intention of coming clean. But after playing with his young children, he couldn’t do it. After five minutes he had left and driven to Southport – a special place for him and Tracey. There, if you remember, he had parked on the prom and cried over his marital situation for three-quarters of an hour – not telling the police, supposedly, for fear of being laughed at. Yet, he became confused about the routes he had taken and whether trees were down or not. And, as we’d already heard, despite the gale force winds, forensic examination of the car didn’t reveal a single grain of sand from the beach.
What about the allegations of him reversing his car to the side gate at 5.45pm? First, Simms denied leaving the pub at all at that time. Then later, in police interviews he conveniently ‘remembered’ moving his car from his usual parking spot underneath the pub sign swinging precariously in the high winds as he was worried it would fall onto his car.
Yet, Simms never parked underneath the sign. His usual parking spot was at the front of the restaurant. And a concerned customer had only alerted him to the dangerous sign much later that evening – after 9.30pm. He had seemed surprised and concerned to hear about it, jumping onto a windowsill to peer out at the sign and declaring he would sort it.
In interviews, Simms denied panicking when police visited the pub on Thursday, 11 February – two days after Helen went missing. ‘I was nervous because I said in my mind, “Well, this is it. Nadine is going to find out about me and Tracey,”’ he’d insisted.
He denied point-blank that, on Tuesday evening, the snip was on the front door to the flat, preventing Tracey from gaining access: ‘There was no difficulty getting into the flat through the door,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t put any snip on the lock.’ As part of their thorough investigations police had checked the lock on the door and it was in good working order.
His car, he claimed, was muddy from walking the dog at Carr Mill Dam, a local beauty spot, on Monday, 8 February – the day before Helen disappeared. But his car had been mud-free on Tuesday afternoon when he gave a lift to someone and forensic examination revealed that the mud on his car didn’t match that location.
As for the earring found in his boot? Simms claimed several people had keys to his car and if, as alleged, it was seen at Hollins Green the morning after Helen went missing, someone must have taken it from the pub the night before and returned it the following morning. The jewellery, he said, had been planted there by someone or dropped by a legitimate passenger.
At one point in interviews he had said, ‘There’s something funny going on at the pub’, implying others were gaining access with keys.
When police said blood had been found in the boot, Simms insisted it was caused by his Rottweiler injuring a paw while out on a walk. He said he put the dog in the boot to prevent him bleeding on the seats. When told the blood was human, Simms was unable to offer an explanation. It was at this point that he was arrested and his ‘explanations’ became more and more far-fetched.
Simms had resolutely denied all knowledge of the clothes found at Hollins Green – saying Tracey must have been mistaken in identifying them as his or the identification was as a result of ‘police malpractice’ or ‘fear of’ the police.
Then, after twenty-four hours, he admitted, out of the blue, that they were from his flat, but he’d been framed by someone who had gained access to the flat and stolen his clothes to deliberately incriminate him. This would have involved removing his jeans from where they were draped over a radiator and rifling through his bag of dirty washing for the sweater, socks and pants.
He used the same explanation for the flex and jacket which were found at Irlam: someone had planted them. He also told detectives that if he knew where Helen was he would have said because ‘as a father himself’ he knew what I was going through. He also hoped that her body would be found soon so that forensic experts could say that he had nothing to do with the killing.
Simms insisted the scratches on his body were caused by running with his dog at Carr Mill Dam on the Monday – even though he’d admitted he’d been wearing waders. The other scratches, he insisted, were caused by Susan when he pulled her away from Helen on the Sunday night.
But Susan denied this vehemently. Witnesses hadn’t seen a single blow or scratch from her and no one saw any marks, scratches or injury to his neck and lip.
As we’d already heard, an expert who examined her fingernails declared them brittle and weak and unable to have caused those scratches. Helen, on the other hand, had long, strong fingernails.
Simms had slept with Tracey, as usual, on Sunday and Monday night and she hadn’t spotted a single mark on him until the Tuesday evening – hours after Helen vanished.
Simms’ answer? He didn’t want Tracey to know about the row in the ladies’ toilets as she couldn’t stand Susan. Instead, he’d used her make-up (he had used Tracey’s foundation to cover a black eye after being punched by a customer three weeks earlier) to cover the marks since Sunday and had forgotten to apply the make-up after his bath on Tuesday evening.
And the blood found in the pub? Simms had claimed to police that blood had been spilt in his pub during various disturbances since he took over as landlord in March 1987. But police had traced those people and taken samples. None matched.
With regards to his feelings towards Helen, Simms denied hating her and said he had agreed
he hated her to calm Susan down. He said he had got on well with Helen, they would confide in each other and he had never barred her.
I knew that Simms’ attraction to Helen would be raised at some point – and dreaded hearing what he’d come up with. Some of his friends testified that he had boasted of once sleeping with a Helen. They hadn’t asked him to clarify but all assumed he’d meant my daughter – even though there were three Helens who visited the pub regularly.
As a parent, I can’t even begin to tell you how awful it was listening to this. There was no way she’d have looked at him. But you can’t know everything about your grown-up children, can you?
During a break in proceedings a young woman in her twenties approached me. ‘Mrs McCourt?’ she began. ‘You don’t know me but I worked with Helen at the Royal,’ she said. ‘She was such a nice girl. I just wanted to say how sorry I am.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. Then I took a deep breath. I had to ask. ‘Alison,’ I said, lowering my voice, ‘can you tell me something? I’d rather hear it from you here than in there.’
She nodded.
‘Was there ever anything going on between Helen and that man?’ I asked. ‘I know he liked her, but is there anything I need to know?’
Disgust washed over her face and she almost spat the next words out. ‘Never!’ she said, vehemently, shaking her head. ‘Never, Mrs McCourt. He was always pestering her and she didn’t want anything to do with him. One night in the pub after he’d been talking to her, I could tell she was upset. I said to him, “Why don’t you leave Helen McCourt alone? You know she hates you.”’
In response, Simms had told her to mind her own f*****g business and get out of his f*****g pub.
I sighed with relief and reached out to touch her arm. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell you how much that means.’ It was a huge weight off my mind.
Helen’s friend, Brenda, also told me about a night out at a club when she and Helen had bumped into Simms. He’d kept asking Helen out, but the answer was no.
Justice for Helen Page 13
