Legal fight over tragic nurse may be turned into film

Mr Smith, 83, died earlier this month and yesterday his youngest son, David, speaking on the eve of his father’s funeral, said he had discovered two film offers among his fathers records and now might be the time to tell his story.

His son, who has been clearing through his father’s belongings at his flat in Leeds said: “It really startled me when I came across a file from MGM – one of the film requests. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“But he didn’t agree to it for some reason. I don’t know why and I’ll never know why. It’s almost like he felt there had to be a start and a finish to the film and his death would be the end.”

He said his father deserved recognition for being the “little man” who won the right for an inquest into her death to be heard in the UK – which led to coroners being able ever since to investigate deaths abroad where the subject is returned to this country.

Mr Smith refused to bury the 23-year-old nurse, leaving her body at the morgue at Leeds General Hospital, as he tried to prove her death in a fall from a balcony was not accidental.

Her corpse earned a macabre place in the record books for the longest period of time a body had been kept without burial or cremation in Britain.

Mr Smith accepted she had died at an illegal drinks party in the Muslim city of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on May 20 1979, but was adamant that she had been pushed from a balcony.

A 15-day inquest was held at Leeds Town Hall in 1982 and recorded an open verdict.

Mr Smith, who had lived alone in Leeds, never got the public inquiry he wanted for what he insisted had been a national cover up. It was in 2009 the grieving father finally bowed to pressure, having received a letter from his ex-wife. Jeryl, who has since remarried and is living in a retirement community on the east coast of the United States.

He reluctantly allowed Helen’s burial on November 9 that year.

Mr Smith said at the time: “My ex-wife has suggested that a funeral service would take place and I have reluctantly agreed with her, because of the children and my grand children.”

He never accepted that Helen had fallen accidentally 60ft from a sixth floor balcony and was disgusted at the suggestion that she might have had sex that night with a Dutch tugboat captain whose body was found close to hers.

Mr Smith died penniless at St James’s Hospital, Leeds.

He leaves children Graham and Beverley, who live in the United States, and David, who lives in Wakefield.

A funeral service will take place today in Wakefield.