Murder of Lisa Hession

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

Hession was an attractive, academic schoolgirl who ran cross-country for Leigh Harriers and was a keen gymnast.[3] She lived in Boneywell Road, Leigh, attended Bedford High School, and was a popular, outgoing child.[3] She was raised by her mother Christine and grandmother Eleanor.[3]

In the four months before the murder, three women had been victims of separate, sexually-motivated attacks within a one-mile radius of where Hession would go on to be killed.[3] The third attack had occurred only the night before Hession was murdered.[3]

On 8 December 1984, Hession's mother let her go to a friend's house party, on the agreement that she had to be home by 10:30pm.[3] The only girl at the event, Hession attended the party at Leigh Road, and left at 10:15 after saying goodbye to her boyfriend.[3] 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.[3] She had walked the route home many times and it was well used by locals.[4]

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.[3] Her assailant then attacked her sexually and killed her.[3] She was indecently assaulted.[5] 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.[6] Her clothing had been disturbed, with her skirt pulled up over her waist and her underwear ripped.[6] 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.[6] The coroner later observed that he may not have meant to kill Hession.[6]

Hession's mother reported her daughter missing at 10:45pm after she did not return home as expected at 10:30.[3] She went out herself to look for her, actually passing the alleyway where Hession had been attacked three times.[3] Five minutes before midnight, a man out walking with his son discovered Hession's body in a recess in the alleyway, by a garage.[3] She had severe bruising to her lips and to her face.[3]

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.[3] 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.[3] 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.[3] Threats to kill were also a feature of the two other attacks on women.[3] The offender in these cases was described as about 20 years old, good-looking and wearing jogging gear.[3] 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.[3] She stated that he told her in their conversation about how he "could not get a girlfriend".[3]

Inquiries also determined that a man had been seen watching Hession by witnesses on the Monday and Tuesday of the week she was killed.[3] It was discovered that the man had then followed her home on the Wednesday.[3]

Police were optimistic that the case could be quickly solved.[3] A man was soon arrested on suspicion of her murder, but he was released without charge.[3] He remains the only individual ever arrested on suspicion of the murder.[3] This man died in 2005, having been ruled out of involvement in Hession's murder by police.[7] 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.[3]

In May 1985 there was another sexually-motivated attack in the area which may have been linked to the previous cases.[3] A man grabbed a woman and held her up against a wall but fled while trying to take the woman's clothes off after a car's headlights disturbed him.[3] This attack occurred only a few hundred yards from where Hession's murder had taken place.[3]

The site of Hession's murder is only 250m (273 yards) away from Christ Church, Pennington, and 600m (656 yards) from Leigh Sports Village, where Manchester United Women play their football.

The cold case has continued to receive significant publicity in the years since. 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.[8][9][5][10] 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.[4]

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.[11][12] 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".[11] 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.[7] 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.[7] The strategy used in that case, the swabbing of large numbers of local men, was the same later used in the Hession case.[7]

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.[13] 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.[14][15]

A well-known community Facebook page was set up in the 2010s devoted to helping solve the Hession case.[3] 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".[3] 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.[3][1][11][7][12] In 2018 the paper paid for the printing of hundreds of appeal posters for the police to distribute across Leigh shops and businesses.[12] 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 (this reward remains on offer).[16][3] As of 2023, the Hession case continues to be regularly featured in the media.[16][3][2][1][17]