Days after convicted killer Ian Simms took the location of his victim’s remains to the grave, a bereaved mother says ‘Helen’s Law’ doesn’t go far enough.
‘Helen’s Law’, named after Merseyside murder victim Helen McCourt, was passed in 2020 to ensure that killers like Simms, who refuse to disclose information about their victims’ whereabouts, face longer behind bars.
Jackie Summerford’s daughter Bonnie Barrett was murdered in 2007, aged 24, by Rotherhithe resident and ‘Ripper copycat’ Derek Brown. He too has never said where her remains lay.
Bonnie’s grief-stricken mother, who lives on the Aylesbury Estate, Walworth, spent years campaigning for a law like ‘Helen’s Law’. But two years after it was passed, she says “it ain’t working”.
“If it was the 60s he would never come out – when they got life, they got life. Ten or fifteen years for taking a life is nothing at the end of the day.”
Bonnie, a vulnerable mother-of-one who was addicted to crack cocaine, was living as a sex worker in Whitechapel when Brown, having already done time for rape, killed her.
Having also murdered a Chinese woman named Xiao-Mei Guo, 29, who sold DVDs, he was eventually caught and sentenced to thirty years for the two killings in 2008.
Fourteen years later, he still won’t tell police what he did with Bonnie’s body, prolonging the heartache for Jackie.
If he said where Bonnie’s remains are, Jackie says it would make “such a difference” – “If I had just one bone, I would bury it”, she says.
Jackie would like to see the law changed so that killers who don’t give up information are never released.
https://www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/tell-me-where-my-daughters-body-is-or-die-in-prison/
However, some human rights groups say indefinite detention is incompatible with Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
Instead, ‘Helen’s Law’ makes it a legal requirement for parole boards to consider withholding release if a killer refuses to reveal a victim’s location.
But even without revealing the location of Bonnie’s remains, Brown could be released as soon as 2038, by which time he would be in his late 70s.
https://www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/10-years-daughter-murdered-jackie-no-nearer-finding-bonnies-body/
“I hope he doesn’t get out because if he comes out he could do the same again”, says Jackie. “I’m not worried about what happens to me I’m worried about what happens to other people.”
Until he reveals where Bonnie is, Jackie says “he’s still in control”. “He’s still in control now. He’s got what he wants. He’s only got thirty years at the end of the day, he’s got three meals a day, hasn’t got to pay rent”, she says.
The scars of the tragedy run deep in the family. Jackie says her ex-husband can’t even put up a photo of his daughter and that Bonnie’s siblings struggle to speak about her.
Jackie says she sees crime unfold all around her neighbourhood and worries that young men are dying because of soft sentences.
“I see about these murders and stabbings. With all this knife crime that’s going on, we’ve got to sort something.”
https://www.southwarknews.co.uk/news/southwarks-most-crime-ridden-wards-in-april-the-full-list/