Don’t let my Dad out of jail until he says where he’s hidden Mum’s body

A WOMAN whose father murdered her mother demanded yesterday that he remain behind bars until he reveals where he dumped her body.

Russell Causley, now 76, butchered his wife Veronica Packman in 1985 and has spent the past 23 years in jail.

But he will go before the Parole Board in the new year in a bid to secure his release.

Yesterday, the couple’s only child, Samantha Gillingham, backed proposals for Helen’s Law – a Bill that would see killers remain in prison until they tell where victims’ bodies are buried.

The planned legislation is named after Helen McCourt, who was murdered in Merseyside in 1988 by Billinge pub landlord Ian Simms.

He has always refused to reveal the location of the 22year-old insurance clerk’s body.

It was included in last month’s Queen’s Speech following a long campaign by her mother Marie, supported by the Daily Mail.

Simms himself goes before the Parole Board tomorrow but MPs have called for the release of such killers to be paused until the law can be changed following the General Election.

‘When I heard my father was due a new hearing I was devastated,’ Mrs Gillingham, 51, said yesterday. ‘Despite being aware, this sits festering like an old wound which once again is flaring up to give me more pain and anxiety. I ask myself, “Why can’t this stop?” I’ve had enough of this so- called justice system that we have to work through.

‘For me, each hearing just brings back every single part of pain that this has given me over the last three decades. It’s like a slow torture – and the Parole Board is part of that.’

In June 1985, Mrs Gillingham, then 16, returned from school to her Bournemouth home with her father to find a note, supposedly written by her mother, on the kitchen worktop with her wedding ring. It said she had had enough and was leaving.

Mrs Gillingham found her mother’s clothes, jewellery and watch still in the bedroom. Mrs Packman – known as Carole – was never seen again.

A year earlier, former electron

Devastated: Mrs Gillingham, left, and with her parents Russell and Veronica in 1983 ics engineer Causley had moved his much younger mistress, Patricia Causley, into the family home on the pretence that she needed somewhere to stay. To remove Mrs Packman’s name from the deeds, he later took his lover’s name to make them seem married. A decade later Causley was jailed for two years after he tried to fake his death in a boating accident as part of £1million insurance scam.

While behind bars he boasted to cellmates about killing his ‘b**** wife’ with an axe.

Police reopened their probe into Mrs Packman’s disappearance and he was convicted of her murder at Winchester Crown Court in 1996.

That conviction was later quashed on appeal but he was found guilty again at a retrial in 2004 and has remained behind bars since.

Mrs Gillingham, of Northampton, is being backed by her 29year-old son Neil, who became a father last year.

He said: ‘My grandfather is evil, I take no pride in saying that about a family member.

‘I don’t want this to go on to my son. He will not grow up living with panic alarms in his bedroom. This is why I’m so personally invested in Helen’s Law.’

Causley is to be assessed by the Parole Board in the first half of next year.

A board spokesman said: ‘The panel will carefully look at a whole range of evidence, including details of the original evidence and any evidence of behaviour change. We do that with great care, and public safety is our priority.’

‘It’s like a slow torture’