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16
Aug
'You just walk alongside the grief', says sister of woman stabbed to death in Harrogate
Warning: this article contains details some readers may find very distressing.
This story is the first in a two-part series. Gemma Simpson was considered to be a missing person for more than a decade. Her case went unsolved for 14 years, until her killer walked into a police station and confessed. Today, we speak to Gemma's sister, Krista, about what life is like for the family of the victim.
The second part will be published tomorrow.
“It scars you for life, in your heart and your mind”, Krista Simpson said.
Losing a family member is something we all experience. But having a family member killed and dismembered, and not knowing what happened for more than a decade, is something most people could never begin to imagine – yet that’s Krista’s reality.
Martin Bell bludgeoned and stabbed Gemma Simpson, Krista’s older sister, at his Harrogate flat in 2000.
The Stray Ferret last week revealed Bell’s bid to move to open prison conditions – the lowest security prisons in the UK – was denied.
This was a small victory for Gemma’s family, Krista told us, but what has life really been like since her sister was brutally killed?
It’s gone on for so long you actually just walk alongside the grief.
Gemma was just 23 when she died. She was two years older than Krista and one of seven siblings. Krista says:
She was my big sister – she always looked out for us. She was a bit of a rogue! She always did stuff for us and family always came first.
Bell was seven years older than Gemma and became obsessed with her after they met – even sending her roses on her 16th birthday.
Krista knew little about Bell before Gemma’s death, but other family members were wary of him. She told the Stray Ferret:
He turned up at my uncle and auntie’s house with Gemma one day – straight away they thought something wasn't right about him. Naomi [Gemma and Krista’s older sister] also told Gemma to stay away from him.
Krista said Gemma came out as gay in her teens and made both her sexuality and the platonic nature of their relationship clear to Bell from the start.
“Nowadays, it would be seen as grooming”, she added.
Martin Bell
The killing
Gemma visited Bell at his flat on May 5, 2000 – some six weeks after he had been released from a stint in psychiatric care.
Bell told the court the two argued that night, claiming Gemma asked where his children lived, which he “interpreted it as a threat to his children”.
He struck Gemma repeatedly over the head with a hammer, before stabbing her in the back and the back of the head.
Bell then dragged her into a bath, laid her face down, tied her hands behind her back and filled the bath with water.
He left her lifeless body for several days, before finally dismembering her body and burying it at Brimham Rocks. Bell returned to the burial site several times in the years following.
Gemma was declared missing a few weeks later.
Krista told the Stray Ferret:
I realised I hadn’t seen her for a while, and then Naomi reported her missing because she had been trying to find her and couldn’t. Naomi rang me and said, ‘we’ve had to report her as missing'.
It wasn’t unusual for the sisters to go weeks at a time without speaking, especially as Krista had recently had children. She said:
I’d just had babies and, for example, I don’t see some of my cousins but I see my auntie regularly. But then we thought, hang on a minute, no one has seen her.
There was no social media back then – none of that.
‘We’ve got her back – she's ours’
Gemma was considered a missing person for the next 14 years - but what did Krista think happened to her?
I always thought she’d never leave our family, so I had this underlying fear. I lived in Liverpool for nearly 10 years and I’d drive around and see somebody with long, dark brown hair, and think, ‘is that Gemma?’.
There’s still that hope. My dad always believed she’d come home one day, but she wouldn’t. I think you always have that underlying fear that something had gone wrong, because I didn’t think she would’ve left us for that long and run away.
In the 14 years that followed, Bell was never on the family’s radar. They believed he hadn’t been in Gemma’s life for some time before her death and that he may even still be in psychiatric care.
She added:
We thought Gemma had nothing to do with him – we had no idea he’d been around at all. He’d been down in London and in psychiatric care. If his name had come up in 2000, if someone had just mentioned his name, we’d have confronted him then.
Gemma (centre) with her sisters and mum.
Fourteen years later, Bell walked into Scarborough Police Station and confessed.
Krista said it took three months for Bell to reveal where Gemma’s body was, while the family were “drip-fed” the details of her death by the police.
She found some sense of peace when the family finally got Gemma’s body back, but Krista told the Stray Ferret Gemma’s mum, Linda, wishes she’d never known what had happened to her daughter:
Linda says she wishes she’d never known. I think I’m glad to know because we got her back. He visited Brimham Rocks a few times and he had control over her. My thing is we’ve got her back – she’s ours – and we’ve put her to peace.
But, do you really want to know what happened? We all had to sit there whilst the police told us what he did to her. Like I say, her mum wishes she didn’t know, but I feel Gemma’s more at peace and I’m more at peace now, not looking for her.
Bell was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 12 years in December 2014.
After time spent on remand in the lead up to the trial, he was ordered to spend 11 years and 205 days in prison.
You can read more about the aftermath of Gemma's death in tomorrow's piece.
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