Mother of Missing Sailor Urges Jailed Suspect to Say Where He Is
For 40 years, a family has not known what happened to Simon Parkes, a teenage Royal Navy sailor who disappeared in 1986. His mother, Margaret Parkes, is now asking the man suspected of killing him to say where his body lies.
A hearing in Gibraltar next year
The family has one more door to try. An inquest into Simon's disappearance is due in Gibraltar next year, after a campaign by a local journalist, Ros Astengo, who is writing a book about the case.
Margaret Parkes and her husband have health problems. They would travel if they can manage it, she said. Asked whether she expects answers, she said "Who knows?" and added that they might not be here next year.
Grimson's new 22-year sentence
Allan Grimson, 67, a former navy petty officer, was sentenced on Friday for sexual offences against four victims; the youngest was 14. A jury convicted him in July. Judge Paul Dugdale added 22 years to the time he is already serving.
Grimson has spent more than 25 years in jail for killing two young men who had served in the navy in Portsmouth in the late 1990s. The judge who sentenced him in 2001 called him a "serial killer in nature if not by number". Dugdale told him that he remains dangerous.
Under the new sentence he cannot be considered for parole until he is nearly 80. The judge noted that, because of the life term for the two murders, he might never be released.
The path to freedom had looked open before. In 2020 the Parole Board recommended a move to an open prison to prepare him for release. Parkes says he was very close to walking out. The accounts of the four men, covering offences between 1994 and 1999, ended that.
Simon's disappearance on 12 December 1986
Simon Parkes vanished in Gibraltar on 12 December 1986, when the ship he served on docked there. He was 18, almost 19. His mother says he was looking forward to getting back to England and had been due to join a navy air station in Somerset. Grimson served on the same vessel. He is long suspected of killing Simon but denies it.
The date drew police attention years later. In 1999, Grimson led officers to the bodies of Nicholas Wright, 18, and Sion Jenkins, 20, whom he had murdered in Hampshire on 12 December in 1997 and 1998. Police told Parkes that the shared date was the first link to her son's case.
Searches in Gibraltar over the years have not found Simon's remains. Without them the family cannot get a death certificate.
Decades of waiting
Parkes, 80, said time was running out for her and her husband David, 84. "It never goes away, it never will," she said. They have never held a funeral. She doubts Grimson will ever admit what he did, and says he should never be released.
Parkes once wrote a letter to Grimson in prison, asking what happened to her son. Nothing came of it.
The navy rang the family and said only that Simon had gone awol. For about 10 or 12 years afterwards, she said, nobody gave them support or contact. Now and then the press raised the case.
Source: the Guardian