Sad father of death-fall nurse Helen Smith dies at 83

He 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 as being 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, impaled on a spiked fence.

The living room of his Leeds flat had been converted into a study where he kept the all consuming 62-page dossier that summarised his life’s work and the evidence he had gathered.

In an interview given several days before his daughter’s funeral, he told how he had been spending more time in hospital on kidney dialysis than anywhere else.

Along with the oedema swellings and aches he said he was tired and struggling to concentrate.

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

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