Carole Packman: 'Dad, tell me where you buried mum before you die'
A woman whose dad murdered her mum has pleaded with him to reveal what he did with her body before he dies.Samantha Gillingham said she feared Russell Causley – who is now 82 – would never reveal the truth about what happened to Carole Packman after he killed her in Bournemouth in 1985.Mrs Gillingham had argued for a "no body, no parole" principle to be applied ahead of Causley's parole hearing in 2022 – but he was released on the grounds he no longer posed a threat to wider society.Addressing him directly 40 years after her mother was last seen, she urged him to finally tell the truth.
"Come on. What's wrong with you?" she said. "You're free now. She's not."
The couple both worked in the aviation industry but despite appearances - a sports car in the driveway of their large detached house, Rolex watches and regular trips abroad - needed extra money.And behind closed doors Causley subjected his wife and then-teenage daughter to violent abuse before moving his lover Patricia Causley, whose name he took, into the family home.He covered up her murder by faking a goodbye note and then creating a paper trail that made it seem as if she was still alive.Mrs Gillingham was convinced her mother had left simply because she was unable to cope with her domestic situation - she had been to see a solicitor about getting a divorce a day before she was last seen. "It made perfect sense for her to do that," said Mrs Gillingham. "She wasn't wanted - that's it."
His crime was only exposed after he made a botched attempt to fake his own death in the early 1990s - pretending to have fallen off a boat near Guernsey - as part of an elaborate insurance fraud. The same day Causley went missing, a mysterious "Mr Russell" had booked a hydrofoil from St Peter Port back to the mainland, prompting detectives to follow his girlfriend and finding them together in a pub after a £790,000 claim was made on his life insurance. "I can remember after he was found alive and well after the faking of his death that I spoke to him very briefly," Mrs Gillingham told the BBC. "And he said 'well I'm not dead am I Sam? So just get over it'."And it's just like Jesus man you've got no idea what you did to me mentally and emotionally. You've got no idea."
Causley was questioned by police about Carole's disappearance after they investigated the insurance scam, and he later admitted to killing her to cellmates while serving his jail sentence for fraud. However, detectives have previously told the BBC how he allegedly repeatedly changed his story in "a game of cat and mouse", claiming to have disposed of her body in acid and then that her remains were hidden in drainpipes in the New Forest. At his parole hearing - where he admitted to being a "habitual liar" - Causley said he burned her body in his garden.
'Hate it'
During his original sentencing for murder, judge Mrs Justice Haslett described him as a "wicked" person."Not only did you kill your wife and somehow dispose of her body," she told him. "You left your daughter in a permanent state of ignorance as to her mother's fate."Decades later and Mrs Gillingham feels that the judge's assessment is as true now as it was then. "It could be so easy," she said and, addressing him directly, added: "I don't care how you do it. Do it. Just do it."She said she "hates that I am still asking him". "I hate it in some ways for him to see me like this," she added. BBC News has tried to make contact with Causley – so far without success.Dorset Police has said it will continue to respond to any new information that comes to light to achieve the goal of finding Carole's body.
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