Murder of Lisa Hession

Lisa Jane Hession
Lisa Hession, c. 1984
Born	(1970-04-12)12 April 1970 Leigh, Greater Manchester, England
Died	8 December 1984(1984-12-08) (aged 14) c. 10:30 p.m. Rugby Road, Leigh, England 53°29′27″N 2°31′06″W / 53.490723°N 2.51826°W / 53.490723; -2.51826 (approximate)
Cause of death	Strangulation
Resting place	Howe Bridge Cemetery and Crematorium, Wigan, Greater Manchester 53°31′11″N 2°30′49″W / 53.51971°N 2.51354°W / 53.51971; -2.51354 (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. Her strangled body was discovered in an alleyway two hundred yards from her home approximately ninety minutes after her murder.^[1] Hession's murder following a recent spate of local sex attacks on women and girls, and the coroner who conducted her autopsy noted her murderer may not have intended to actually kill her.^[2][3]

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 murder remains unsolved. Nonetheless, advances in forensic analysis have enabled investigators to establish a partial profile of her killer's DNA,^[4] and Greater Manchester Police have stated that obtaining a DNA swab or other sample of the perpetrators DNA would identify the culprit. A £50,000 reward for information leading to the apprehension of the murderer remains on offer.^[5][6]

Central Leigh, the town in which the murder and the previous sex attacks had taken place

Lisa Jane Hession was born on 12 April 1970 in Leigh, Greater Manchester.^[7] She was the only daughter born to Christine Hession (b. 1946) and was raised in a single parent household on Bonnywell Road, Leigh, by her mother and widowed grandmother, Eleanor Hession (née Draper).^[8]

Hession grew into a popular, confident, outgoing and academically achieving girl with a flair for athletics and gymnastics. She attended Bedford High School, and also ran cross-country for the amateur athletics club Leigh Harriers.^[9] One of her male classmates would reflect in 2024: "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."^[10]

By late 1984, Hession was 14-years-old and a Year 10 student. She also had a boyfriend two years her senior named Craig Newell. The two were close, and spent much of their free time together.^[11]

Shortly before Christmas 1984, on 8 December, Hession's mother let her go to a friend's house party, on the agreement that she had to be home by 10:30 p.m.^[9] The party was held at the terraced home of 16-year-old friend Andrew Heaton in Leigh Road, and attending was also her 16-year-old boyfriend Craig Newell.^[12] Newall later said at the inquest that he and Hession had sex at the party that night, having restarted their relationship two days earlier.^[13] The only girl at the event, Hession left the party at 10:15 after saying goodbye to Newall.^[9] She was then to walk the two mile journey home, and witnesses saw her walk through the town centre on St. Helen's Road and then spotted her walk along Buck Street, which was only about a minute's walk away from her home.^[9] She had walked along the route home many times and it was well used by locals.^[14]

What occurred next is not entirely clear, but an attacker managed to lure or force her into a nearby alleyway between Newlands Road and Rugby Road.^[9] Her assailant then attacked her sexually and killed her.^[9][15] The pathologist later concluded that her death had been due to pressure on her neck, probably due to her t-shirt being tightened around her neck by her attacker.^[16] Her clothing had been disturbed, with her skirt pulled up over her waist and her underwear ripped.^[16][13] The conclusion was that the killer probably pulled her t-shirt hard in one hand and used the other to clasp his hand over Hession's mouth.^[16] The coroner later observed that he may not have meant to kill Hession.^[16]

Hession's mother reported her daughter missing at 10:45 p.m. after she did not return home as expected at 10:30.^[9] She went out herself to look for her, actually passing the alleyway where Hession had been attacked three times.^[9] Five minutes before midnight, a man out walking with his son discovered Hession's body in a recess in the alleyway, by a garage, only 200 yards from Hession's home which was on Bonnywell Road at the junction with Eton Street.^[9][17] It was evident that Hession had fought desperately with her attacker; she had severe bruising to her lips and to her face, and also scratches on her neck.^[9][18][12] It was concluded that the bruising on her lips was likely to have come from her being punched in the mouth, and lead detective Terrence Millard described her as being "very roughly handled".^[18]

At a press conference for national and regional press three days after the murder, police noted the three previous sexual attacks on women in the area.^[9] 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.^[9] 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.^[9] Threats to kill were also a feature of the two other attacks on women.^[9] The offender in these cases was described as about 20 years old, good-looking and wearing jogging gear.^[9] 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.^[9] She stated that he told her in their conversation about how he "could not get a girlfriend".^[9]

Inquiries also determined that a man had been seen watching Hession by witnesses on the Monday and Tuesday of the week she was killed.^[9] It was discovered that the man had then followed her home on the Wednesday.^[9]

Police were optimistic that the case could be quickly solved.^[9] A man was soon arrested on suspicion of her murder, but he was released without charge.^[9] He remains the only individual ever arrested on suspicion of the murder.^[9] This man died in 2005, having been ruled out of involvement in Hession's murder by police.^[19]

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.^[9] 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.^[20][21] 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.^[21]

In the four months prior to Hession's murder, three local women had been subjected to separate, sexually motivated attacks—all of which had occurred within a one-mile radius of the site of Hession's subsequent murder. Furthermore, the third of these sexual assaults had occurred the night prior to Hession murder. In each instance, the perpetrator had been a young, slender and dark-haired Caucasian male, approximately twenty years old, and with markedly youthful features. 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.^[9][22]

In May 1985, there 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.^[9] In this instance, a young man grabbed a woman and held her against a wall, although in this instance, the assailant but 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.^[9]

The cold case has continued to receive significant publicity in the years since. In 1988 the Manchester Evening News highlighted the case as one of the high-profile unsolved murders in the region that still hadn't been solved.^[23] Hession's case was featured on the 1 February 2005 episode of Crimewatch, which led to 27 calls to the programme offering potential information and a fresh wave of publicity.^{[24][25][15][26]} Police revealed that they had two new leads to follow after the calls, some of which were from women who were concerned with the behaviour of their partners at that time, and several callers named the same two suspects.^[14]

In 2011, the Manchester Evening News revealed that Greater Manchester Police had taken the "radical" step of swabbing groups of men in the Leigh area, after investigators had managed to isolate a partial DNA profile of Hession's killer.^[27][28] The head of Greater Manchester Police's cold case unit confirmed that the swabbing was taking place, saying that "this is one of the cases we won't let go of".^[27] Later, in 2019, it was revealed that the DNA profile isolated is good enough for a direct comparison to a suspect, and the public simply providing the name of an individual could solve the case by just allowing a comparison of their DNA to the sample.^[19] Only two years after Hession's murder the importance of DNA in possibly solving the case had been highlighted by the apprehension of Colin Pitchfork for two sexually motivated murders around 100 miles away in Leicestershire, in what was the first time DNA was used in the UK to convict a murderer.^[19] The strategy used in that case, the swabbing of large numbers of local men, was the same later used in the Hession case.^[19]

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.^[29] 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.^[30][31]

A well-known community Facebook page was set up in the 2010s devoted to helping solve the Hession case.^[9] 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".^[9] 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.^{[9][1][27][19][28]} In 2018 the paper paid for the printing of hundreds of appeal posters for the police to distribute across Leigh shops and businesses.^[28] Hession's murder has been described as one of the most notorious unsolved murders in the region,^[2] 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.^[32][9]

The Hession case continues to be regularly featured in the media, such as on the 40-year anniversary of the murder in December 2024 when it was re-stated that the £50,000 reward was still on offer and that the DNA could lead to the detection and conviction of her killer.^{[32][9][2][1][33][5][6][34]} A new appeal was also made on Crimewatch Live.^[35][36]

• Marriner, Brian (1994). "Murderer of Childhood". True Crime Detective Monthly (August 1994 ed.). Magazine Design & Publishing Ltd. pp. 10–14. ISSN 0261-264X.
• Newton, Michael (2004). The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes. New York: Facts on File. ISBN 978-0-816-07818-9.

• The BBC have broadcast a documentary focusing on the murder of Lisa Hession as part of their Crimewatch documentary series. Titled Every Parent's Nightmare, This 44-minute documentary was first broadcast on 4 March 2025.^[37]

• Appleyard, Nicholas (2009). Life Means Life: Jailed Forever: True Stories of Britain's Most Evil Killers. London: John Blake Publishing. ISBN 978-1-476-60808-2.
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• Basannavar, Nick (2021). Sexual Violence Against Children in Britain Since 1965: Trailing Abuse. Macmillan Publishers Ltd. ISBN 978-3-030-83148-6.
• Cawthorne, Nigel (2007). The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large. London: Constable & Robinson Ltd. ISBN 978-1-845-29631-5.
• Drake, Phillip (2024). Unsolved Murders of the UK: Cold Cases from 1951 to Present Day. Barnsley: Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1-399-03259-9.
• Dunning, John (1987). Mindless Murders. London: Mulberry Editions. ISBN 978-1-873-12333-1.
• Evans, Colin (1996). The Casebook of Forensic Detection: How Science Solved 100 of the World's Most Baffling Crimes. New York City: John Wiley & Sons Inc. ISBN 0-471-07650-3.
• Greig, Charlotte (2016). Cold Cases: Astonishing investigations from The Green River Killer to JonBenet Ramsay. London: Arcturus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-785-99858-4.
• Hayhurst, Alan (2012). Greater Manchester Murders. Cheltenham: History Press. ISBN 978-0-752-48385-6.
• Holmes, Ronald M.; Holmes, Stephen T. (2002). Profiling Violent Crimes: An Investigative Tool. Los Angeles: Sage Publications. ISBN 978-0-761-92594-1.
• Innes, Brian (2000). Bodies of Evidence. London: Amber Books Ltd. ISBN 978-1-856-05623-6.
• Lawless, Christopher (2022). Forensic Science: A Sociological Introduction. New York: Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-000-54343-8.
• McRery, Nigel (2013). Silent Witnesses: A History of Forensic Science. London: Random House Books. ISBN 978-1-847-94683-6.
• Pettem, Silvia (2013). Cold Case Research: Resources for Unidentified, Missing, and Cold Homicide Cases. Boca Raton: CRC Press. ISBN 978-1-466-57053-5.
• Wilson, Colin (1995). Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection. Glasgow: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-58620-842-7.
• Wyre, Ray; Tate, Timothy (1995). The Murder of Childhood: Inside the Mind of One of Britain's Most Notorious Child Murderers. Hampshire: Waterside Press. ISBN 978-1-909-97662-7.
• Yount, Lisa (2007). Forensic Science: From Fibers to Fingerprints. New York City: Chelsea House Publishing. ISBN 978-1-604-13061-4.

• Unsolved-murders.co.uk case file pertaining to Lisa Jane Hession
• Every Parent's Nightmare: A 44-minute BBC Crimewatch Live documentary focusing on the unsolved murder of Lisa Hession
• 8 December 2024 Guardian newspaper article published on the fortieth anniversary of the murder of Lisa Hession