Justice for Helen

by Marie McCourt

  In Loving Memory of Helen McCourt, died 9 February 1988, aged 22 years.

  Loved Every Minute Missed Every Day.

  The company made no charge for the delivery or installation all the way from China. The young man who ran the firm remembered Helen from his school days. It was such a touching gesture.

  The seat was both a memorial to my daughter and a thank you to the villagers who had searched for her and supported me. Now, when they visited the graves of their loved ones, they would have somewhere to sit and think about them.

  Hundreds came to the unveiling and blessing ceremony. As the sun shone down from an azure sky, we released forty-three balloons, one for each of her birthdays, and five white doves to symbolise her spirit soaring to the heavens.

  Twelve years on, I’m still touched to see parishioners pat the marble fondly on their way into or out of mass.

  Flowers and tributes would appear on its smooth, cool surface on special occasions. John and I started putting up a little Christmas tree each year with fairy lights next to it.

  Coming out of midnight mass, the first thing I’d see was her tree twinkling in the darkness. ‘Happy Christmas, Helen,’ I’d say, leaning down to kiss her photo.

  That service gave me courage to prepare for the biggest parole hearing, yet, at Garth Prison, Leyland, Lancashire, in April 2009 – twenty-one years after Helen’s murder. Changes in parole laws meant that I could now attend and read out a Victim Impact Statement (VIS) to parole judges – one of the first people to do so.

  ‘I’m going to confront him and ask, “Where is my daughter?”’ I told reporters.

  Of course, I didn’t get the chance. Simms refused to attend. ‘He’s a coward and a bully,’ I declared afterwards. As far as I know, Simms could have been present whenever I spoke. He has always chosen not to be there.

  Despite having my statement for weeks, his legal team objected to one passage in my statement – just ten minutes before I was due to read it. I had to strike it out or face not being allowed to give my statement at all. Even now, I’m shocked and disgusted that they did this.

  Reading out a VIS is already incredibly traumatic. It revives all that pain. Reopens that wound. Objections and upsets are the last things you need. Two weeks later, I was notified he’d been turned down.

  Thank God.

  The year 2009 was also the year we lost Mum. She died, broken-hearted, that her adored granddaughter had still not been laid to rest. Only recently a medium told me that Helen had been there, smiling with arms outstretched, to welcome her as she passed over. That thought comforted me.

  Still, all I wanted was to bring my daughter home. Occasionally, we’d have flashes of hope. In February 2011, on the very anniversary of losing Helen, I turned on the radio to hear a woman’s body had been found by workmen on a building site.

  Greater Manchester Police confirmed that Helen McCourt was on their list of possible names.

  My hopes soared even higher on learning the body had been wrapped in carpet. Isn’t that what Rita Rogers had said? What that car passenger had seen?

  This could be it, I thought. Finally, we could be bringing her home.

  I’d still carry on with my voluntary work supporting other families but now I could lay my daughter to rest. Tend her grave, start to live again . . . sleep soundly.

  DNA tests and dental record comparisons seemed to take forever, involving trips to Scotland Yard.

  Finally, the phone call came.

  ‘Yes?’ I asked.

  I held my breath and closed my eyes.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Marie,’ said the voice. ‘It’s not Helen.’

  I doubled over, winded. It felt as if an ice-cold vice had been clamped around my heart – and now it was squeezing . . . slowly and cruelly.

  ‘Thank you for letting me know,’ I managed to whisper. Gently, I placed the handset back in the receiver. Then I cried. I cried for myself and that poor girl’s family. Yes, they’d be distraught. Grief-stricken. But they had her back, she was home.

  Over the years, more families had joined Winnie Johnson and me in this purgatory. We knew our loved one had been murdered but we couldn’t lay them to rest.

  When I learned Winnie had cancer, I urged her to have a memorial service for Keith, as I had done for Helen. ‘It will help you and keep publicity going,’ I said.

  I was among the 300 people who attended the service at Manchester Cathedral. We watched as she was helped to the cathedral lectern to light a candle next to her son’s photograph. Then she wept as she told us: ‘I’m Keith’s mother. I’ve lived through this life knowing he is on those Moors. I just want him back.

  ‘I’ll do anything, go anywhere for him. As long as I know one day, I’ll be grateful. I hope he’s found before I am dead. All I want out of life is to find him and bury him. I just wish he is found before I go.’

  Every heartbreaking word resonated with me.

  Afterwards, I asked cold case police (officers who focus on an unsolved criminal investigation that remains open) to focus on finding Keith before focusing on Helen: Winnie’s need was greater. Meanwhile I continued to mention Winnie and Keith in every interview I gave.

  On Saturday, 18 August 2012, while on a country walk with friends in Yorkshire, my mobile rang. It was a reporter asking for a quote, ‘following the sad death of Winnie Johnson last night’.

  John heard me gasp and caught me as my legs gave way.

  ‘No, no,’ I moaned softly.

  I knew she was gravely ill but the news knocked me for six. ‘That poor, poor woman,’ I cried. Going to her own grave without finding her murdered child had been her greatest fear. And now, forty-eight years after Keith was murdered, it had happened.

  I cried even harder when I realised: ‘That’s me. That’s my fate.’

  I hope Winnie and her family can understand that I simply wasn’t strong enough to attend her funeral. Instead, I lit a candle and prayed fervently that both she and her little boy had found peace together. I cried on reading that Keith’s broken NHS glasses, patched up with blue tape, were buried with her in her coffin – it was all she had of him.

  Reading some of her quotes in the newspaper obituaries was heartbreaking – I could have written them myself.

  ‘I will never give up looking for him,’ she told author Bernard O’Mahoney in letters that he published in a book titled Flowers in God’s Garden before she died. ‘I can’t let Keith lie in the unmarked, grotesque grave his murderers chose. Can’t people understand the pain that causes my family and me?’

  Yes, Winnie, I can.

  ‘I just keep hoping Keith is found before I go to my own grave. I want to go knowing my son has been taken from the place his murderers buried him. I want him laid to rest in a grave of my family’s choice.

  ‘I need my Keith to be returned from those bleak, cold and windy moors that look down on me from almost everywhere I turn in my home town of Manchester.

  ‘My heart is torn from me . . . I can’t die yet. I have to find my boy.’

  * * *

  The following year, 2013, marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Helen’s murder – a quarter of a century without my daughter. It didn’t seem possible that she’d now been dead longer than she’d been alive. Yet the grief was still so raw, like having an open wound that never heals.

  I organised a memorial mass followed by the emotional release of lanterns outside St Mary’s Church. I watched them float into the sky. ‘We’re still looking, Helen,’ I assured her. ‘Hold on, love.’

  Next, we braced ourselves for another oral parole hearing – again at Garth Prison. No sooner had we got over one than we had to prepare for the next, it seemed. It was due to take place in March but it was another six months before a date was set – for 23 September 2013. (Meanwhile, there had been yet another paper hearing in 2011.)

  I was told that this time my submission would be via video link.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ was my steely response. ‘I will be ther
e in person to read out my statement.’

  I won that battle only to fight another on the day itself when the panel announced that John couldn’t come in with me. I stood my ground: ‘I need my husband beside me,’ I insisted. ‘There are a lot of reporters all waiting to speak to me and this will be the first thing I’ll be telling them,’ I added, pointedly.

  After a few minutes’ discussion they said he could sit behind me. My eyes flashed angrily. ‘My husband will sit beside me,’ I repeated through gritted teeth.

  Finally, I was giving my statement – with John beside me. But how many others were forced to go through that ordeal alone – with no one beside them?

  But the worst was yet to come. For a full two weeks, I was on the edge of my seat – unable to eat, sleep, or concentrate on anything.

  What will they decide? What will they decide?

  Finally, on the fourteenth day, the phone rang.

  ‘Yes?’ I replied. Anticipating bad news, my throat was tightening by the second. It was like a boa constrictor was silently, stealthily, wrapping itself around me, then slowly crushing my windpipe and voice box.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs McCourt,’ the representative said. ‘But Simms didn’t attend for his part of the hearing so it didn’t go ahead.’

  My grip on the phone tightened. ‘What?’ I asked. ‘What did you say?’ I was shaking so much, my voice wobbled uncontrollably. ‘I haven’t slept in two weeks, I haven’t eaten in two weeks and you’re telling me now that his hearing didn’t go ahead? This is wrong, this is appalling. How can they do this?’

  I was told that Simms’ parole hearing would now go ahead in January 2014 – while John and I were building our strength up in India.

  Before then I needed to focus on another vital matter. For the last thirteen years, the issue over the grave had been eating away at me. Occasionally, when no one was around, I’d head up there with my dowsing rods. And I always got a positive reading.

  It wasn’t just me who felt that this was unfinished business. That summer, Detective Chief Superintendent Tim Keelan, who was now looking after the case, had approached me.

  ‘Marie, we’ve been looking at the grave situation again,’ he said. ‘The family don’t want to leave this for their children to sort, they’d like to know one way or another.’

  I asked my priest for advice. ‘I can’t understand why they don’t allow it,’ he said. ‘Let me talk to the vicar.’

  Not only did the vicar support us but a new Chancellor, known for being compassionate, had been appointed to the diocese – it was worth another go.

  This time, things couldn’t have been more different. We put all the papers together and sent them off, along with a fee of £250 to cover costs.

  Within days, we had our answer. Permission was granted – not just for cameras but for a full exhumation on Wednesday, 16 October 2003. The feeling was unanimous: this needs to be settled once and for all and an exhumation is the only way of doing it.

  * * *

  The night before the exhumation, I lit my candle and said my novena. Finally, were my prayers about to be answered? I don’t think I’d ever felt so hopeful, so positive, of getting a definite result.

  I never slept a wink that night. My stomach churned, my hands trembled uncontrollably.

  The day of the exhumation dawned wet and windy. I felt so sorry for the forensic teams working in those horrendous conditions. The police explained they would seal the area off with tents and work within them. They were as discreet as they possibly could be, but of course, it didn’t stay quiet for long. Someone must have tipped off the papers as, suddenly, reporters and photographers poured into the village. My phone rang off the hook, but I let the answer machine kick in.

  Michael and John headed up there but everyone agreed it was best if I stayed at home until there was news.

  A friend from the gym volunteered to come and sit with me. (I’d taken up yoga then Pilates in my quest to stay fit, well and healthy for Helen.) Outside the rain had become torrential. I followed the sound of ominous drips to find the porch was leaking.

  Hours crawled by. John promised he’d come back as soon as he could with news. It was dark when he finally pulled onto the drive.

  Choked by hope, I ran to the door. Was this it? Was our nightmare finally over? Was our girl coming home?

  It took a few moments for me to register that his head was shaking, that an expression of sheer, abject misery had settled across his features.

  Gently, he took my arm. Dazed, I allowed myself to be steered to the settee. My friend slipped away. A deep sigh emanated from every fibre of his being.

  ‘She’s not there, Marie,’ he said.

  My brain was whirling with questions – what? WHAT? Are they sure? Definitely sure?

  I let out a long, shaky exhalation of breath. Beyond shocked, I was stunned. Devastated. Crushed.

  How? How could we have all got it so wrong?

  We sat in miserable silence, listening to the sound of the rain thundering onto the roof of the conservatory. Then I stood up.

  ‘I want to go down there,’ I said.

  Uncertainty clouded John’s face. ‘Marie, I’m not sure it’s a good idea,’ he began. But I interrupted him.

  ‘I need to go down there and thank every one of the officers who have worked on this,’ I told him.

  The wind was brutal as we struggled along the footpath into the churchyard. It was just like that night twenty-five years ago when this nightmare first started. I pulled the hood up on my purple raincoat to shield my face from cameras and rain and clung to John.

  Michael steered me into a tent out of the biting wind and someone put a hot chocolate into my shaking hands. Around us, the canvas tent frame was being whipped relentlessly by the wind. ‘This is going to go,’ someone shouted above the noise of the poles rattling.

  We’d just moved into a police caravan when the tent collapsed. DCS Keelan came up the steps, dripping with rainwater. He looked bereft – they all did. ‘Mrs McCourt,’ he began. ‘As you know, we’ve completed the exhumation. The grave matches official burial records. Only two skeletal remains have been found – Helen’s not there.’

  My heart went out to him. I nodded to show I’d understood.

  ‘Thank you,’ I told them. ‘Thank you . . . for everything. I’m so grateful.’

  The windscreen wipers thrashed back and forth as John drove us home. Neither of us spoke. Occasionally, I shook my head as the disbelief hit me all over again. Three mediums had led me there, for heaven’s sake – not to mention the young man who dreamed Helen was there.

  But she wasn’t, she never had been.

  It was over.

  Plodding wearily inside, I fought back an overwhelming urge to violently kick the porch buckets into next week. Rage and spite rose within me as my eyes fell on the statue of St Martha. ‘Well, St Martha,’ I hissed. ‘You’re sacked! I will never light a candle to you again. And I will never ever pray to you again.’ Blinded by tears, I stormed from the room.

  After the trial, the local paper had printed the novena that had kept me going, in full, in response to requests from readers. But where had it got me?

  I spent the next two days swallowing my heartache and answering the phone to reporters.

  ‘Yes, it was horrific to think she could have been in someone else’s grave, but this disappointment is even harder. Sadly, our torment goes on. We’re right back where we started – at the bottom of the barrel.’

  I also expressed my thanks and gratitude to the family for allowing us to check. I felt so sorry that they’d been put through this, but at least we now knew for definite: there was no more doubt.

  That weekend, we’d been due to stay with friends, Katrine and Ian, in Garstang. ‘We can cancel if you want, love,’ John said. ‘I’m sure they’d understand.’

  But I shook my head. ‘I have to get away from this house – and that phone,’ I said firmly, as it rang yet again.

  It was a relief to
slip away from Billinge. On Saturday night, Katrine asked if John and I would mind slipping out quietly for mass next morning.

  ‘I’ll have a nice breakfast when you’re back,’ she said.

  I stiffened in my chair. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said bitterly. ‘We won’t be going tomorrow.’

  She looked from me to John, bewildered.

  ‘But, Marie,’ she said, ‘you always go to mass.’

  ‘Used to,’ I corrected her through clenched teeth. ‘Not anymore.’

  I meant every word. I’d had it with God and St Martha and the whole lot of them. For more than a quarter of a century I’d prayed and prayed and it had got me nowhere. They weren’t listening. My faith had been the only thing keeping me going all this time, but now I felt abandoned. I’d never felt so let down and alone.

  Turning out the bedside lamp, I was still adamant. Tomorrow morning, I’d have my first Sunday lie-in – the first of many. But 4am found me wide awake, staring at the ceiling. My mind was reeling.

  How could I deliberately not go to mass? It was a mortal sin.

  At 6.30am, John stirred.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I confessed. ‘I’m still angry, but how can I not go to church? How can I not pray to St Martha anymore?’

  He smiled as he kissed my cheek – he’s become used to my U-turns over the years. As mass started there we were, at the back. I gazed up at the crucifix of Jesus on the cross.

  I’m back again, God.

  After the readings, then the Gospel, the priest stepped up to the pulpit for his homily.

  ‘Haven’t we all prayed for something we have dearly, dearly wanted?’ he began.

  My ears pricked up immediately.

  ‘We’ve all done it, haven’t we?’ he asked, looking around earnestly at the congregation. He seemed to be looking straight at me.

  ‘Sometimes our prayers are answered. But sometimes they are not,’ he continued, softly.

  I listened, transfixed. His words wrapped themselves around me, comforting me, soothing me, like a soft blanket.

  ‘It can be so painful when that happens. When you’ve prayed so hard for something and don’t get it.’