‘Just one more sleep, mummy’
Christmas was just over a week away.
Lisa Hope and her younger brother Tim were tucked up in bed.
It was the siblings’ last night with their dad and their nana and poppa at their home in Addington, Christchurch. The next day, they were to fly to Auckland to live with their mum, who had just regained custody of her children.
But it turned out to be Lisa’s last night alive.
About midnight between December 16 and 17, 1998, the eightyear-old was murdered in her bed by her father, Ian Hope.
The house where the three generations of the Hope family lived was in a quiet street. Neighbours described Lisa as a warm-hearted, bright young chatterbox who was looking forward to her trip north.
At first, when their parents split after 10 years of marriage in 1996, Lisa and Tim lived with their mother. After a protracted legal battle, Hope won custody of the children the following year and they returned to live with him and their paternal grandparents.
Lisa was a pupil at nearby West Spreydon primary school. A teacher who went to her funeral said she had been doing ‘‘exceptionally well’’.
But by 1998, Lisa had become frightened of her dad.
Hope was 34 years old. He was mentally ill, suffering delusions, off his medication, and using cannabis. He had a spell as an inpatient in Sunnyside Hospital.
The Family Court ordered a Children and Young Persons social welfare report and a psychiatrist’s report on Hope. Sharon Stephenson fought to regain custody of the children, and won. The papers were signed.
On the day of December 16, Stephenson spoke to her children on the phone. Lisa’s last words to her mother were: ‘‘Just one more sleep, mummy, and I’ll be with you forever.’’
Her mum replied: ‘‘I love you, baby.’’
That night, Hope entered the children’s bedroom. He tried to suffocate Lisa with his hands but she awoke, and asked her dad not to hurt her. He then stabbed her with a kitchen knife.
Seven-year-old Tim, in the same room, later said he ‘‘froze’’ and pulled the covers over his head during the attack. He was not injured. He called his sister’s name over and over but there was no reply.
Hope later told a police officer he thought he was the third son of God, and had received a message from God to kill his daughter but not his son. A month later, while remanded on a murder charge, he took his own life in Sunnyside Hospital.
Lisa Hope’s funeral was held four days before Christmas. Family and friends from throughout New Zealand travelled to attend, to say goodbye to the little girl they had lost.
Lisa’s ashes now sit in a wooden box in a glass case in her mother’s lounge.
Stephenson and Tim live together in Wellington and talk about Lisa often. Stephenson says it feels like them against the world. They’re trying to to return to the Wairarapa to be closer to friends.
‘‘We were a normal family,’’ she says. ‘‘My heart is broken for my daughter, I miss her every single day, I just want my baby back.’’
Lisa was a quick birth and an easy baby. She grew into a bright, bubbly girl, always determined to do her best.
‘‘She would give anything a go,’’ Stephenson says. ‘‘If the high jump was too high she would just keep going until she got it. She was a determined little thing.
‘‘She would play pranks on Tim. She said she was going to make him Fruit Loops. She made them out of playdough. He actually ate it.’’
Most of the time the siblings got along well. If they were arguing, Lisa would slip notes under Tim’s bedroom door.
‘‘She just loved life. ‘‘She was funny, she was beautiful, she was mature, she was everything a mother could ever ask for in a child. She looked after Tim.’’
She wonders what kind of woman her daughter would have become.
‘‘There’s only so much you can pack into eight years. I worked out the days, once . . . around 3000.
‘‘It’s not long.’’