'When Missing Turns To Murder' Starts Next Week

True crime lovers, set your timers for When Missing Turns To Murder.

One of several hit investigative series returning to Crime+Investigation, the 10-part docuseries will air on 18th May at 1pm.

Incredibly, someone is reported missing every 90 seconds. In the UK, that equates to 250,000 people who go missing every year.

Of those missing people, some are found alive, some may have taken their own lives, and others mysteriously vanish without a trace.

This series intimately explores the fourth avenue, looking at cases where a hunt for a missing person becomes the worst thing imaginable: a murder investigation.

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Exploring this investigative shift, which changes a family forever, each episode brings together powerful and emotional first-hand testimonials from the police, family members and authorities.

Take the 1988 case of Helen McCourt, who disappeared after getting off a bus in Billinge, a village in Merseyside, on her way home from work as an insurance clerk.

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Helen only had a 500-yard journey between her house and the bus stop, but when she didn't make it home, police launched a missing persons appeal.

Her family made desperate appeals, but a discovery 15 miles away from their house turned the case into a murder investigation.

The discovery consisted of two blood-stained towels and several items of discarded clothing, found by a dog walker.

Local pub landlord Ian Simms was implicated. The clothing found was branded with a beer logo connected to the father-of-two's pub, the George and Dragon in St Helens.

Simms had already raised suspicions among police because of his nervous response to questioning.

Police then found blood and one of Helen's earrings in his car.

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Simms was arrested and charged with Helen's murder - but her body was never found.

Though Simms was jailed for life in 1989, he was freed from jail in February this year without ever having disclosed the location of Helen's remains.

Helen's mother, Marie McCourt, campaigned for Helen's law, a bill denying parole to killers who refuse to disclose a body's location, which was passed by the House of Commons in March 2020.

When Missing Turns To Murder will air on 18^th May at 1pm on Crime+Investigation.

Topics: TV and Film, True Crime, TV News, Documentary, Murder

Mary-Jane Wiltsher

Mary-Jane Wiltsher is a freelance lifestyle and culture journalist. Elsewhere she writes for Stylist, Euronews, PHOENIX and What We Seee.