Killer father ‘must stay in jail if he won’t reveal where wife’s body is’
A DEVASTATED daughter has spoken of her outrage that her murderer father could be released from jail without revealing what he did with her mother’s body.
Russell Causley, 74, has spent 21 years in prison for the 1985 murder of his wife Carole Packman after becoming the one of the few killers in British legal history to be found guilty without the victim’s remains being found.
Abusive Causley was convicted 11 years later after boasting to cellmates about the ‘perfect murder’ of his ‘bitch wife’ while in prison for fraud.
He has provided and withdrawn differing accounts, including that he killed her to be with his mistress and burnt her body.
In 2014, Samantha Gillingham, 47, who had been told by Causley that her mother had walked out on them, successfully pleaded with the parole board to keep her father behind bars.
Mrs Gillingham is now braced for a fresh hearing that could be held as early as September and is horrified at the possibility he could free within months. She said yesterday: ‘It feels like the justice system is seriously pushing now for his release regardless of the fact he has not let me know where my mother is.
‘A big part of what prison is about is rehabilitation and the first part of that is admitting that what you have done is wrong. He has never done that.
‘He is not remorseful or repentant. He should not be released back into society.
‘I just want to be able to lay my mother to rest. While he refuses to tell us where my mother is my son and I can’t move forward.
‘I have to remain strong but it feels like I’m on the edge of a cliff and the land is slipping beneath my feet.’ In June 1985, Mrs Gillingham, then 16, arrived home from school with her father to find a note supposedly by her mother on the kitchen worktop with her wedding ring. The letter said she had had enough and was leaving.
Mrs Gillingham found her mother’s clothes, jewellery and watch still in the bedroom. Mrs Packman was never seen again.
A year earlier, former electronics engineer Causley had moved his much younger mistress, Patricia Causley, into the family home in Bournemouth on the pretence she needed somewhere to stay. To remove Mrs Pack- Broken family: Russell Causley with Carole and Samantha man’s name from the deeds, he later took his lover’s name to make them appear married.
A decade later Causley was jailed for two years after he tried to fake his death in a boating accident as part of millionpound insurance scam.
The case prompted police to look into the disappearance of his wife and he was convicted at Winchester Crown Court in 1996. This was later quashed on appeal but he was found guilty again at a retrial in 2004.
Causley has been eligible for parole for the last five years.
Mrs Gillingham, who lives in Northampton, is a vocal supporter of the Helen’s Law campaign, which aims to bar parole until killers reveal where their victims’ bodies are.
The campaign was launched by Marie McCourt, mother of Helen McCourt, who was killed by pub landlord Ian Simms in Billinge, Merseyside, in 1988.
A petition in favour has gathered over 300,00 signatures.
‘I want to be able to lay her to rest’