A grieving mum still goes out and searches for her daughter's body 33 years after she was murdered.
The evil killer of Helen McCourt died this weekend, taking her final resting place to the grave. Pub landlord Ian Simms was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 16 years in prison, for the murder of 22-year-old Helen in February 1988.
Simms strangled Helen as she walked home from work in Billinge but has never revealed where her body is. He was released from prison in February 2020 despite Helen's mum Marie endlessly campaigning to keep him locked up until she could lay her daughter to rest properly.
READ MORE: Helen McCourt's mum issues plea to family and friends of daughter's killer
This Morning, Marie appeared on BBC Breakfast where she said she still had hope that her daughter's body would one day be found. Although her daughter's killer is now dead, Marie refuses to give up hope and continues to search for Helen's body at the weekends.
She said: "We still go out searching for Helen. We don't go out every Sunday like we did for about eight years but just John and I will go out."
The mum believes that Simms will have told at least one person while in prison and that person may one day reveal his secret. She said: "I don't believe that Ian Simms ever kept his secret when he was in prison. I hope that maybe now he's dead that maybe one of the inmates, he may have said what he did or where he put Helen. So that's my hope now."
Speaking of Simms, she described him as "dangerous." Marie said: "He was a very very dangerous man. In St Helens and in Wigan people were frightened of him. He was a bully."
She also has plans for further campaigning so that no other families have to go through the heartbreak that hers has experienced. Marie said: "Now I have Helen's Law but now I'm working on having something else different from Helen's Law. It's over having the desecration of the remains. I want that to be a law. The desecration of a body and the preventing of a burial. That is so important."
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