Father's quest over nurse death

By Alex Moss
BBC News, Leeds

Ron Smith has always maintained his daughter's death was covered up

The Helen Smith case is best known because for 30 years her body has lain in a Yorkshire mortuary.

Stored in the grounds of Leeds General Infirmary, it is thought to be one of the longest time periods that a corpse has not been buried or cremated in the UK.

Helen was a 23-year-old nurse working in Saudi Arabia when she died on 20 May, 1979.

Official investigations claimed she, along with Dutch sea captain Johannes Otten, had accidentally fallen 70ft from a sixth-floor balcony during a party given by a British couple.

A long personal crusade then began by her father Ron based on a conviction that his daughter had been murdered.

With demands for a fresh inquiry, Mr Smith refused to bury Helen because her body would one day provide forensic evidence.

Coupled with ailing health from kidney disease and a written plea from his ex-wife Jeryl, Mr Smith has finally allowed Helen's body to be released from cold storage with a cremation to be held in Wakefield.

I'm not really concerned about people's emotions or about my emotions, I'm concerned about facts Ron Smith

It may be the end to the 83-year-old father's dogged refusal to allow a burial, but his quest for "the truth" continues.

The Helen Smith case is an obsession that has drained away the normality of Mr Smith's life.

By his own admission, his daughter's death and the events that followed brought crashing down the expectations he had when growing up.

A previously practising Christian, Mr Smith has now converted to Islam.

Speaking to BBC News from his home in Guiseley, Leeds, he said: "A young person grows up, is conscripted into the Army, then when he comes out he is full of the joys of spring.

"You then go into the police force, you get married, you do the right thing and fight for yourself.

"You have four children, all who are educated well, and there you are thinking, this is what it's all about, and then all of a sudden my daughter dies."

Entangled politics

For Mr Smith, emotion is secondary - as a former policeman, facts come first.

"I'm not really concerned about people's emotions or about my emotions, I'm concerned about facts, about being pragmatic, I don't even think about the emotion.

"I'm not built that way, I was in the police force and the Army for six years."

Saudi investigations concluded that Helen and Johannes had fallen from the balcony while having sex and concluded that the deaths were accidental.

The decision was accepted by the Foreign Office and British Embassy in Jeddah but Mr Smith has battled against this version of events.

He believes his daughter was murdered and that the deaths were covered up against a backdrop of entangled British-Saudi politics.

He has alleged the truth surrounding her death has been covered up by the British establishment at the highest level.

Helen Smith had been working in Jeddah for four months

He has always claimed he has collected a mountain of evidence to support his suspicions.

One unarguable success of his campaign was to bring about a change in British law after winning the right for an inquest into her death to be heard in the UK.

In 1982 the Court of Appeal ruled that inquests should be held into Britons who who died abroad in violent or unnatural circumstances once their bodies were returned.

The jury inquest into Helen's death returned an open verdict and Mr Smith's campaign to find out the truth continued.

The events have taken a toll on the family - he has no contact with his ex-wife or children and leads a solitary life interspersed by dialysis treatment in hospital four times a week.

"I pursued this relentlessly for 30 years and in the process alienated myself from all my friends and family, because you just don't keep a body in a public mortuary for 30 years or for 30 days."

Helen's body may have finally been laid to a rest in a funeral solely organised by her mother, but there is no closure for her father.

"It is not the end for me. I have no intention of giving up my quest that I started 30 years ago. I'll pursue it until the end of my days."