Lisa Jane Hession

Status:

Open

Jurisdiction:

Greater Manchester (POLICE)

Offense Location:

Leigh, Greater Manchester

Summary:

Lisa Jane Hession was a 14-year-old British schoolgirl who was sexually assaulted and strangled as she walked home from a party in Leigh, Greater Manchester, on the evening of 8 December 1984. Her body was discovered in an alleyway 200 yards (180 m) from her home approximately ninety minutes after her murder. More than four decades later, nobody has been charged with her murder.

Vital Statistics

Circumstances of Offense:

14-year-old Lisa Jane Hession left her home in Leigh shortly before 7pm on Saturday 8 December 1984. The only child of Christine Hession, Lisa was a popular Bedford High School pupil and a gifted athlete who competed in netball, cross-country, gymnastics and for Leigh Harriers. She loved music, particularly David Bowie, and had spent the previous afternoon having gold and blonde highlights put in her hair for the weekend's events. That night she went to a small gathering with her boyfriend, Craig Newell, and four other friends. Her usual 9pm curfew had been relaxed until 10.30. Friends said she set off for home at around that time, beginning a journey of roughly two miles through the town centre and towards Bonnywell Road. Newell would later inform police that he and Hession engaged in consensual sex that evening, and that Hession left the party to walk home at approximately 10:15 p.m., first kissing him goodbye at the garden gate. 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 at approximately 10:35 p.m. This final sighting of Hession occurred at a location approximately one minute's walk from her home. In a sexually-motivated assault, the killer placed a hand over Lisa's mouth and pulled her T-shirt around her neck. She fought for her life, suffering a black eye in the struggle. Shortly before midnight, Ronald Parry and his 13-year-old son found Lisa in a recessed garage entrance within the alley.

Additional Details:

She was the only daughter born to Christine Hession and was raised in a single parent household on Bonnywell Road, Leigh, by her mother and widowed grandmother, Ellen "Nellie" Hession (née Draper). Hession's murder followed a recent spate of local sexual assaults on women and girls suspected to have been committed by the same perpetrator. Cold case review officers are not discounting links though with a series of indecent assaults on girls and young women which all happened in streets on the southern side of Leigh town centre between August and December 1984 but which suddenly stopped when Lisa died. Police say the modus operandi did differ to a degree from what happened to her and they were never able to make forensic links with the murder, but there were certainly enough similarities not to discount them. One man was arrested on suspicion of Lisa's murder soon after she was killed. He was bailed, and no action was taken against him. He died in 2005 but 'remains of interest' to officers holding Lisa's murder file. Despite police efforts and obtaining a DNA sample, which could lead them to a detection and the conviction of Lisa's killer, they have never found a match, and no-one has ever been charged with Lisa's murder. In 2011, police carried out a mass swabbing exercise among men in Leigh and neighbouring Wigan, again without finding a match. Sadly, Lisa's mum, Christine, passed away in 2016 without the knowledge of who killed her daughter. More than a hundred people walked her route by candlelight on the fortieth anniversary in December 2024, leaving flowers at her former home and the alley. This case has been subject to a number of reviews since 1984. The reviews have concentrated on using advances in forensic techniques and investigating all information provided to GMP by members of the public.

Case Last Updated:

Sep 09, 2026