Lockerbie 25 years on: ‘My Helga’s last day on earth’

Dad relives teen daughter’s last moments in UK’s biggest terrorist attrocity and air tragedy

John Mosey will never forget the day he said goodbye to his daughter. How can he? It was her last.

Helga Mosey was just 19, a gifted musician and singer with the world at her feet. She was enjoying a gap year in the US and had come home to Britain in the week before Christmas to collect a music prize.

Her devoted dad John, now 73, drove her to Heathrow for her return flight. The happy pair had no idea of the horror that lay in wait.

Speaking from his home in Lancaster where Helga had been accepted to study music at university the still grieving dad relives those last hours and their torturous aftermath.

“It was great when Helga was home,” he recalls with a smile. “We had a lovely time. I took her back to Heathrow from our then home in the West Midlands.

“We had an orange juice at terminal three and chatted. When it was time to go she walked away but stopped, put down her bag and ran back to give me a hug. I don’t remember what she said I wish I did. But I do remember the smell of the apple shampoo on her hair. Every time I smell apples I remember that” his voice trails away.

Pan Am 103 to JFK Airport took off at 6.30pm. Thirty minutes later, Helga was dead.

A total of 259 men, women and children on the plane died that night, including Flora Swire, daughter of Dr Jim Swire who was to become the grieving UK families’ spokesman and the highest profile campaigner.

The dead included 14 children travelling with their families and excited about Christmas. The youngest, tiny Johnathan Thomas and Brittany Williams, were both just two months.

As John drove home, he had no idea of what was unfolding. He says: “I got home to my wife Lisa and our son Marcus, who was 16 at the time. It was just before 9pm when a friend phoned to ask if Helga had got away OK. She said there had been a plane crash in Scotland.

“I put on the TV. There was a newsflash with pictures of Lockerbie in flames. I remember watching it saying, ‘How awful for those poor people’.”

“On the screen, the words Pan Am flight 103 appeared,” he says.

“My wife said,‘That’s Helga’s plane’. There was a stunned silence. It was broken by Marcus yelling, ‘No, no, no’, and my wife, the words hardly creeping out of her mouth, ‘Helga, Helga, Helga’. Later she said that at the time her little girl needed her the most, she wasn’t there.”

John says: “We put our arms around each other and asked God to help. Within minutes our phone started ringing. The calls were from Helga’s friends. In no time there were about 40 people in the house who came to be with us. We got great strength from that.”

The following day the family heard a bomb was suspected. It was a suspicion John, a Pentecostal pastor who had worked in aeronautical engineering, already held. He says: “747s don’t just fall out of the sky. I was asked if the disaster had destroyed my faith, but this proved the reality of what we had believed all our lives.”

Does he forgive the bombers?

“As far as our family are concerned, they were forgiven. Unforgiveness is not an option for a Christian,” he says.

Five days after the crash, John found himself at Helga’s desk reading the Bible.

“It was Romans: Chapter 12 Verse 21” he remembers. “‘Don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by doing good’. I vowed then to get that message out.”

John believes the truth behind the murders has yet to be revealed.

He claims: “I went to the trial with an open mind but it became clear something was going on and Megrahi was a scapegoat. I, along with many others, think there’s a dark secret that some powerful entity doesn’t want the world to know.”

Through the Helga Mosey Memorial Trust, John and his family have used some compensation payments to help needy children around the world. They also built a home in the Philippines for abused and abandoned children.

He has spent the decades since Helga’s death preaching forgiveness.

John will speak at a Memorial Service in Westminster Abbey next week.

When asked what he’ll preach, he smiles: “Romans: 12, 21.”