A man imprisoned for the murder of his wife committed in 1985 refuses, even today, to reveal to his family what he did with the body. He is expected to be heard by the parole board in a public hearing.
He has been silent for more than 30 years. Russell Causley, now in his 70s, is incarcerated for the 1985 murder of his wife, Carole Packman. Despite his many years behind bars, the man has never wanted to reveal what he had made of the latter’s body. A frustration for Samantha Gillingham, the couple’s daughter, now 47, and her son, Neil, who are struggling to find out the truth. But the two descendants of Russell Causley hope to shed light on what really happened to Carole Packman through a parole hearing, which can now be made public at the request of victims or the public, following the modification of the law last June. Thus, Neil Gillingham, the grandson of Russell Causley, wishes to draw attention to what he considers to be a lax legal system regarding the release of killers who refuse to reveal the location of their victim’s body. FYI, Russell Causley had already been released in 2020, but he was sent back to prison in November 2021 after violating the conditions of his release. He is expected to appear before the Parole Board again in October, where he will be heard by the public. Will he then reveal what he did with his wife 37 years earlier?
A murder that dates back to 1985
The story begins in 1985. Russell and his daughter, Samantha, then 16, return home to Bournemouth, after a day out, to find a letter lying on the kitchen table with Carole Packman’s wedding ring. “I’ve had enough, I’m leaving. And I won’t come back“, indicates the word. Russell Causley then tells anyone who will listen that his wife has set sail with “a man who drove a red Porsche”. Ironically, it was rather on his side that it was a question of infidelity. He had also moved his last mistress, a colleague named Patricia, into the family home a year before Carole’s disappearance., claiming that the latter had nowhere to sleep. Be that as it may, the story of the scorned wife who leaves her family to start a new life manages to convince, and ten years pass before Russell Causley is again worried by justice. Indeed, in the mid-1990s, the man was arrested and convicted of insurance fraud after trying to fake his own death. An offense that prompted the authorities to take a closer look at the mysterious disappearance of Carole Packman ten years earlier, and which ultimately led to the conviction of the father of the family for murder in 1996. Due to the absence of a body, his sentence was lifted in 2003 but he was found guilty at a new trial a year later, which sentenced him to life.
A confession 30 years after the facts
Officially, Russell Causley has long said that his wife ran away with another man, but in prison, he would have confessed to three prisoners that he had killed the latter. He would have revealed to one of them that he had gassed Carole Packman, before dissolving her body in acid. Finally, in 2014, nearly 30 years after the events, Russell Causley confessed in a letter to the police that he burned his wife’s body, without specifying where he had put the remains. Continuation of the case in October…