’We will never give up hunt for Lisa’s killer’
DETECTIVE SAYS HE’S CHASING NEW LEADS IN UNSOLVED MURDER OF 14-YEAR-OLD LISA JANE HESSION
ON this day in 1984, a father and son made a horrendous discovery.
The pair were out walking with their dog, at five minutes to midnight that Saturday, when they found the body of a young girl in a ginnel. She was just 14 years old, and had been strangled.
Thirty-four years on, and the case remains unsolved. But Martin Bottomley, head of Greater Manchester Police’s Cold Case Review Unit, remains determined to find out who killed Leigh schoolgirl Lisa Jane Hession.
After all this time, the detective says, the case remains close to his heart. A £50,000 reward is on offer. And, as he appeals for information that could finally snare the killer, new leads are being chased up by his team.
“There are investigators still in GMP today that worked on the case originally,” he said. “We want to find justice for Lisa. Although Lisa’s mother has died, Lisa was a much-loved young girl and it is a case we will not give up on.”
People in Lisa’s hometown have never forgotten what happened. They’ve set up a website to help police find breakthrough evidence. That, and coverage by the M.E.N., has resulted in new information being passed to police.
Photos, shared with the M.E.N. by Lisa’s old friend, Anita Webb, show her just a few months before she died.
The talented gymnast can be seen going through her paces.
She is slightly older than others taking part in a PE lesson at Bedford High School in Leigh. As she flips over the ‘horse’ and glides through her routines the younger pupils seem to be learning from her.
“She had a perfect physique, with cross country for Leigh Harriers and gymnastics at school,” Anita told us. “Lisa had got it all, but she didn’t know it, and that was the real inner beauty with her that I cherished.
“She had depth, she was authentic, she was special.”
All that was cut short when Lisa was attacked on Saturday, December 8 1984, just 100 yards from her home. She had been to a party at a friend’s house on Leigh Road, about two miles from her home.
Her mother, Christine, had allowed her to go on condition she was back at 10.30pm. She left the party at about 10.15pm, kissing her boyfriend, Craig Newell, then 16, goodbye at the gate.
But as she walked to her home in Bonnywell Road, she was snatched and marched into an alley to the rear of Rugby Road, away from the windows of the estate’s houses.
The killer put one hand over her mouth and tightened her T-shirt around her neck with the other.
At 10.40pm Lisa’s worried grandmother, Ellen, had called Anita’s mother asking if Lisa was at their house. Lisa’s mother, Christine, went out to look for her, and walked past the bottom of the alley where her daughter was lying three times. Less than an hour-and-ahalf past the time she had been due to return home her body was found.
In the three months before Lisa was murdered three young girls were attacked in the same area of Leigh by a ‘baby-faced’ assailant – one the night before Lisa was strangled.
In each attack sex was the motive. But police say there is no direct link between Lisa’s murder and the three attacks.
Police also say no sex attack since has been linked to Lisa’s killing.
Lisa’s mother died in January 2016, aged 69, after a short battle with cancer.
No one has ever been convicted of Lisa’s murder.
Only one person was arrested on suspicion of killing her. He was bailed and no action was taken against him. He died in 2005.
Anyone with information can call the Cold Case Review Unit on 0161 856 5978.