Murder of Helen McCourt

Common card · No. 264923

On 9 February 1988, Helen McCourt, a 22-year-old British insurance clerk from Bootle, Merseyside, disappeared in the village of Billinge, Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, Merseyside, shortly after disembarking from a bus less than 500 yards from her home. Her body has never been found. Ian Simms, a local pub landlord, was convicted of her murder. The case is a rare example in which a murder conviction has been obtained without the presence of a body, and was among the first in the UK to use DNA fingerprinting. In 2015, McCourt's mother Marie began a campaign to require convicted murderers to reveal the location of their victims' remains before being considered for parole. The campaign led to the introduction of the Prisoners (Disclosure of Information About Victims) Act 2020, popularly known as "Helen's Law" in May 2019. The bill passed into law in November 2020, after Simms's release in February 2020. Simms died in 2022 without revealing the location of McCourt's body.

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