In a 17-minute ceremony before a handful of mourners the funeral of a British nurse finally took place yesterday — more than 30 years after her mysterious balcony-plunge death during a late-night drinks party in Saudi Arabia.
Helen Smith’s remains had been held in a Leeds mortuary since her death in Jeddah, aged 23, in May 1979. It is believed to be the longest period that a corpse has remained unburied in the UK.
The man responsible for the lengthy delay was her father, Ron Smith, now aged 83 and in poor health, who spent much of the past three decades on an obsessive quest to prove that his daughter’s death was not the result of an accident, as the Saudi authorities maintained, but of foul play.
He refused to allow the release of his daughter’s body for burial because he believed that forensic evidence would one day establish that she had not drunkenly fallen 70ft (20m) with her lover from the balcony of an expatriate doctor’s apartment.
The legacy of the former police officer’s determination to establish that his daughter was raped and murdered with the killing covered up by the Saudi authorities led to a change in the law that results in a UK inquest for all Britons who die violent or unnatural deaths abroad.
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Miss Smith’s inquest was held in Leeds in 1982. The jury returned an open verdict.
Her father finally agreed to release her body after he was contacted earlier this year by his former wife, Jeryl Sheehy, 72, who pleaded with him to allow the funeral to be held before they both died.
Yesterday’s brief service at Wakefield Crematorium, in West Yorkshire, was attended by Mr Smith, who stooped and leant heavily on a stick, Ms Sheehy and a small number of relatives.
The coffin, topped by a wreath of pink flowers, was carried into the crematorium by four pallbearers. Miss Smith’s ashes will be scattered on Wednesday on Ilkley Moor.