Lisa Jane Hession | |
---|---|
![]() Lisa Hession, c. 1984 | |
Born | Leigh, Greater Manchester, England | 12 April 1970
Died | 8 December 1984 14) c. 10:27 p.m. Rugby Road, Leigh, England 53°29′27″N2°31′06″W / 53.490723°N 2.51826°W (approximate) | (aged
Cause of death | Strangulation |
Resting place | Howe Bridge Cemetery and Crematorium, Wigan, Greater Manchester 53°31′11″N2°30′49″W / 53.51971°N 2.51354°W (approximate) |
Nationality | British |
Occupation | Student |
Known for | Victim of unsolved child murder |
The murder of Lisa Hession in an unsolved British child murder that occurred in Leigh, Greater Manchester, on the evening of 8 December 1984 in which a 14-year-old schoolgirl was sexually assaulted and murdered as she walked home from a party. [1] Her strangled body was discovered in an alleyway 200 yards (180 m) from her home approximately ninety minutes after her murder. [2]
Hession's murder followed a recent spate of local sexual assaults on women and girls, and the coroner who conducted her autopsy noted her murderer may not have intended to actually kill her. [3] [4] The perpetrator is not known to have committed any subsequent sexual assaults or murders. [5]
Despite extensive contemporary and subsequent police efforts, which have included a renewed nationwide appeal on BBC One's Crimewatch UK , Hession's murderer has never been identified, and the case remains unsolved. Advances in forensic analysis have enabled investigators to establish a partial profile of her murderer's DNA, [6] and Greater Manchester Police have stated that obtaining a DNA swab or other sample of the perpetrator's DNA would identify the culprit. [7]
Although officially a cold case, Hession's murder is subject to periodic review, [8] and a £50,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the murderer remains on offer. [9] [10]
Lisa Jane Hession was born on 12 April 1970 in Leigh, Greater Manchester. [11] She was the only daughter born to Christine Hession (b. April 1946) [12] and was raised in a single parent household on Bonnywell Road, Leigh, by her mother and widowed grandmother, Eleanor Hession ( née Draper). [13]
Hession grew into a popular, confident, outgoing and academically achieving girl with a flair for athletics and gymnastics and a keen interest in both fashion and music. Although friends later described her as being a "massive fan" of David Bowie, her favourite song was "You Really Got Me" by the Kinks. [14] She attended Bedford High School, and also ran cross-country for the amateur athletics club Leigh Harriers. [15] A classmate and close friend named Anita Webb would later recollect of Hession: "She had a perfect physique ... Lisa had got it all, but she didn't know it, and that was the real inner beauty with her that I cherished." [5] One of her male classmates would also later reflect: "I remember Lisa very well—she sat in class at the front. Every time I came into class, Lisa would say to me, 'Who you gawping at?' I was tall and lanky at the time." [16]
By the time Hession began her Year 10 academic year in September 1984, she had grown to 5 ft 4 in and wore her wavy brown hair fairly short and with a prominent kiss curl over one eye. [17] She also had a boyfriend two years her senior named Craig Newell and although the couple had recently separated following an argument, they had reconciled and recommenced dating in early December. The two were close, and spent much of their free time together throughout their courtships. [18]
On the afternoon of Saturday 8 December 1984, [19] Hession spent several hours preparing for a party she and her boyfriend planned to attend at a friend's house which several of their school friends had organized as a pre-Christmas celebration. The party was to be held at the home of their 16-year-old friend Andrew Heaton on Leigh Road, approximately two miles from Hession's own home. [20] Hession's mother agreed to allow her daughter to attend this party on the condition she would be home by 10:30 p.m. [15] [n 1] For the occasion, Hession wore a white, knee-length skirt, white ankle boots, a striped T-shirt, a red cardigan, and a blue jacket. As she had recently had her hair streaked with highlights of gold and blonde in anticipation for the party, she carried a light-blue collapsible umbrella in the event of rainfall. [17] Hession left her home to attend the party at approximately 6:45 p.m. [22]
By all accounts, Hession, Newell and the other attendees of the party enjoyed themselves. Possibly due to the fact Hession was the sole female to attend the party—plus the fact she and her boyfriend had recently reconciled their relationship—she and Newell spent most of the evening in each other's company, although they did socialize with the other attendees. Newell would later inform police that he and Hession engaged in consensual sex that evening, [23] and that Hession left the party to walk home at approximately 10:15 p.m., [n 2] first kissing him goodbye at the garden gate. [15]
Several eyewitnesses would later inform investigators they had observed Hession walking home from the party. These sightings occurred as she walked through the town centre and onto St. Helen's Road, then subsequently turning into Buck Street. This final sighting of Hession occurred at a location approximately one minute's walk from her home. [25]
The subsequent sequence of events to occur after Hession entered Buck Street are unknown; however, she was evidently lured or forced into a nearby alleyway between Newlands Road and Rugby Road by a lone male. [15] The location to where Hession was lured or forced was out of sight of all the house windows facing the alleyway. [5]
At this location—in a recess leading to a set of locked garage doors and a garden gate—her assailant placed his hand over Hession's mouth with one hand as he fatally tightened her T-shirt around her neck with his other hand—intentionally or otherwise. [5] Hession was also sexually assaulted, though not raped, before her assailant fled the scene. [15] [26] The location of Hession's murder was just 200 yards (180 m) from her own home. Subsequent police house-to-house inquiries revealed no nearby residents had seen or heard anything untoward. [27]
Within minutes of Hession's curfew passing, her mother became concerned for her daughter's well-being; after telephoning the homes of several of her school friends only to learn they had not seen her daughter that evening, then "[standing] on a corner watching for her white boots to come along the pavement" [28] before briefly scouring local streets, she reported her daughter missing to local police at 10:45 p.m. before again frantically searching the streets for her only child. [27] Christine Hession's searches saw her inadvertently pass the alleyway where her daughter had been murdered on three occasions. [15] [29]
Five minutes before midnight, a local man named Ronald Parry and his namesake 13-year-old son discovered Hession's body in the alleyway recess while walking their dog. She was lying on her back, and her clothing had been disturbed, with her skirt pulled up over her waist and her underwear torn. [30] [23] Ronald Parry Jr. ran to a nearby phone box to dial 999 as his father remained with Hession's body. A local funeral director named William Hayes soon arrived on the scene and attempted to resuscitate Hession. He would later recollect that upon arrival at the garage recess: "The little girl was lying on her back. [Her body] was very cold. There was a thin black mark around her neck and she appeared to have a black eye." [21]
Despite the efforts by Hayes and paramedics to resuscitate Hession, she was pronounced dead on arrival at Leigh Infirmary. Her mother was initially informed a teenage girl matching her daughter's description had been "assaulted" and was receiving emergency care at this facility; she was accompanied by police to the infirmary only to learn upon her arrival that her daughter had died. [21]
Hession's autopsy revealed her cause of death had been due to the acute pressure inflicted to her neck, and that this pressure was consistent with her T-shirt being tightened around her throat with one hand as her assailant had clasped his other hand over Hession's mouth to silence her screams. [30] Bruising to her face and lips and numerous scratches upon her neck indicated Hession—who suffered from asthma— [31] had fought desperately with her attacker before she had died. [20] [n 3] Pathologist Dr. Geoffrey Garrett also concluded that the bruising on her lips was consistent with Hession having been punched in the mouth at least once throughout her ordeal. [32]
Although Dr. Garrett ruled Hession's death an unlawful killing, he did note that her murderer may not have intended to actually kill her. [30]
The murder of Lisa Hession shocked and outraged the public, and Greater Manchester Police immediately launched an intense manhunt to apprehend the perpetrator, [33] with Detective Superintendent Terry Millard assigned overall command of the investigation. [34]
In the weeks following Hession's murder, police questioned over 6,000 members of the public, conducted house-to-house inquiries at over 1,300 homes across Greater Manchester, and pursued over 4,800 potential leads of inquiry. Numerous suspects, including several known sex offenders and a young man seen leering at Hession in the days immediately prior to her murder, were questioned but eliminated from the inquiry. [35] A reconstruction of Hession's movements on the evening of her murder was also broadcast nationally, and over 180 items of potential physical evidence underwent forensic testing. [36]
At a press conference for national and regional press helf three days after Hession's murder, police noted the three previous sexual attacks on women in the area. [15] In the first of these incidents, in August, a woman had been attacked when walking home to Rugby Road, which was behind the very alleyway where Hession was assaulted. [15] The victim in this case had reported that the attacker had come up from behind her, put his hand over her mouth to stop her screams, and threatened to kill her. [15] Threats to kill were also a feature of the two other attacks on women. The offender in these cases was described as being approximately twenty years old, good-looking and wearing jogging gear. [15] The victim of the August attack had managed to escape by calmly talking to the assailant and walking with him for 300 yards before he left her alone and left. [15] She stated that he had informed her in their conversation about how he "could not get a girlfriend" and that was why he had resorted to sexually assaulting young women. [15]
Inquiries also determined that a man had been seen watching Hession by witnesses on the Monday and Tuesday of the week she was killed. [15] It was discovered that the man had then followed her home on the Wednesday. [15]
Initially, police were optimistic that the case would be quickly solved. Within days of Hession's death, a local man was soon arrested on suspicion of her murder; however he was released on bail, and no further charges were ever filed against him. [15] He remains the only individual ever arrested on suspicion of Hession's murder. [15] This individual died in 2005, having been cleared of any involvement in the case. [37]
Another individual was questioned in prison in Merseyside two and a half years after Hession's murder, being held there for a separate offence, but no further action was taken. [15] This 32-year-old Merseyside man had first been interviewed by Hession investigators after they had been alerted by a Liverpool detective to comments he had made when being questioned and charged for the separate murder of an 84-year-old woman. [38] [39] The prisoner was interviewed a second time about Hession's murder two weeks after first being spoken to about it, being questioned at Risley remand centre. [39]
In the four months prior to Hession's murder, three local women between the ages of 16 and 20 had been subjected to separate, sexually motivated attacks—all of which had occurred within a one-mile radius of the site of Hession's murder and which were described by Detective Superintendent Terry Millard on 11 December as being potentially committed by the individual responsible for her death. [40] In each instance, the attacker had threatened to kill his victim if she failed to comply with his demands. [34]
The third of these sexual assaults had occurred the night prior to Hession's murder, and in this instance, the victim—a 17-year-old girl—had been threatened, then sexually fondled and pushed to the ground before escaping her assailant. [41] In each instance, the perpetrator had been a young, slender and dark-haired Caucasian male, approximately eighteen to twenty years old and with markedly youthful features and a local accent. A composite drawing of this individual was released to the media in January 1985. Although this identikit produced several new leads of inquiry, all failed to bear fruit. [15] [42]
In May 1985, a further sexually motivated attack occurred in Leigh which may have also been committed by the perpetrator of the previous sexual assaults and potentially Hession's murder. [15] In this instance, a young man grabbed a woman walking along Buck Street and held her against a wall, although in this instance, the assailant fled while attempting to remove the woman's clothes when disturbed by the headlights of an approaching car. This attack also occurred only a few hundred yards from where Hession's murder had taken place. [15]
Shortly after Hession's murder, staff and pupils at Bedford High School resolved to plant a tree with the school grounds in her memory. Funds for the memorial tree were raised via donations from pupils and staff alike, and a cherry tree was chosen to be purchased. The tree was purchased from a Worsley garden centre, and planted in a quadrangle garden within the school grounds in early 1985. The plaque installed at the base of the tree reads: 'In Memory of Lisa Hession. 1970 - 1984'. [30]
Although now officially a cold case, Hession's murder is subject to periodic review and fresh leads of inquiry are actively pursued. [43] The case continues to receive significant publicity, and a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her murderer remains active. [44]
In February 2005, Hession's murder—one of several of cases then-recently reopened by Greater Manchester Police's cold case unit Operation Genesis [26] —was featured on BBC One's Crimewatch UK . [45] Both Christine Hession and Detective Inspector Jeffrey Arnold of Greater Manchester Police appeared on this programme to directly appeal to the public for information, and this nationwide appeal resulted in twenty-seven new leads of inquiry—some of which sourced from women regarding abrupt changes in their partner's overall behaviour at the time of the murder. Several callers also named the same two suspects. [25] [46] [47]
By the 2000s, advances in DNA analysis enabled investigators to obtain a partial DNA profile of Hession's murderer and in 2011, Greater Manchester Police conducted a mass swabbing exercise of men in both Leigh and Wigan in an effort to identify the perpetrator. [22] [48] [49] Although this exercise failed to identify Hession's murderer, the DNA profile isolated is sufficient to identify the suspect should he be independently swabbed or his DNA be entered into the UK National DNA Database upon an unrelated matter. Investigators have stated that "all [they] need" is the perpetrator's name to compare against this DNA sample, and any public tip naming the individual responsible would result in his being identified as the perpetrator. [37] [n 4]
"Someone out there knows who murdered Lisa — I am convinced of that. Forensic techniques are improving all the time and we need that someone to give us a name, which can eliminate suspicions or lead us to the killer ... We owe it to Lisa's memory and her late mum, to ensure justice is done and no one else comes to harm."
Christine Hession died in January 2016 at the age of 69 following a brief battle with cancer and having campaigned incessantly for over thirty years to identify and apprehend her daughter's murderer. [50] Until her death, she remained convinced the perpetrator was a local man. [40]
Several years prior to her death, Christine Hession reflected on not knowing the identity of her daughter's murderer: "Every man I see I think, 'Did he do it?' I can't help it, and I won't be able to stop until he is found." [36]
In 2018, Hession's murder was included on a map of cases on Mark Williams-Thomas's series The Investigator: A British Crime Story which he suggested could not be ruled out as possibly linked to serial killer Peter Tobin. [51] However, Tobin's DNA is already on the national DNA database and the police investigation into whether Tobin claimed further victims ended in 2011 as there was no evidence to link him to further cases such as Hession's. [52] [53]
A well-known community Facebook page was set up in the 2010s devoted to helping solve the Hession case. [15] Current chief reporter of the local Manchester Evening News Neal Keeting said that it revealed "The strength of feeling in the Leigh community, they've not forgotten Lisa". [15] The case has further received notability as chief reporter of the Manchester Evening News Keeting's first murder covered happened to be the Hession case, reportedly "haunting" him ever since and leading to a significant amount of continued coverage of the case by this local paper. [2] [48] [37] [49] In 2018 the paper paid for the printing of hundreds of appeal posters for the police to distribute across Leigh shops and businesses. [49] Hession's murder has been described as one of the most notorious unsolved murders in the region, [3] and a particularly high £50,000 reward was offered by police from 2017 for anyone who can provide information leading to the conviction of Hession's killer. [24] [15]
The most recent nationwide appeal for information leading to the apprehension of Hession's murder was broadcast upon Crimewatch Live in March 2025. [54] [55] One of the individuals interviewed in this episode was the current chief reporter for the Manchester Evening News—in 1984 a junior reporter with the Bolton Evening News — who recollected: "This case has remained with me for forty years ... There's just a handful that you never forget, and this is one of those." [29]