On the evening of 8 December 1984, Lisa Hession was found strangled to death in an alleyway only 200 yards from her home, with the murder occurring after a spate of sex attacks on women and girls in the area.

The murder continues to receive a large amount of publicity, and in 2017 a particularly high £50,000 reward was offered by police for information leading to the capture of the killer.

[3] She lived in Bonnywell Road, Leigh, attended Bedford High School, and was a popular, outgoing child.

[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 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.

[3][8] 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.

[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.

[10] 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] 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.

[13] 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.

[14][15][6][16] 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.

[10] 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.

[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".