Claire ‘Lisa’ Hills

On April 28th, 1998, CLAIRE HILLS, a 30 yr old known as ‘Lisa’, was discovered in the back seat of her black Mazda Hatchback, in an isolated Mangere car park. She had been tied up, doused with petrol and burnt alive.

Māngere Mountain in Māngere Domain is one of the largest volcanic cones in the Auckland volcanic field, with a peak 106 metres (348 ft) above sea level. It was the site of a major pā (Māori fortified settlement) and many of the pā’s earthworks are still obvious. It has extensive panoramic views of Auckland from its location in the suburb of Mangere.^[1][2] It is also known as Te Pane o Mataaho.^[3]

Claire Elizabeth Hills was born in England and emigrated to Australia with her parents and siblings when she was just two years old.

The family lived in a hostel for around 5 months before buying a house in Wollongong where they settled. Wollongong is a coastal city of Sydney.

Claire had 5 siblings, and she was the third child. When Claire was 15, she took off from the family home with her boyfriend, a young man her father did not approve of. Claire spent time working on fishing boats in Melbourne before she took off again, this time to Auckland, New Zealand, using a fake passport under the name ‘Lisa”. She went on to use the name ‘Lisa’ after this. We will use the name Lisa, however some others still refer to her as Claire.

At the age of 21, Lisa became a Jehovah’s Witness, and later went on to marry a man named Peter. Lisa went on to work various jobs throughout the years.

Around 18 months before she died, Lisa’s marriage to Peter broke down. She moved into a small flat of her own in Herne Bay. map

Her sisters, Lynda Hynson and Allyson Harris spoke to reporters. They said that Lisa had been estranged from the family, but eventually reconciled with them. “she seemed to have a happy life in New Zealand, she quite liked it” Harris said, she didn’t think she would ever come back, she had really settled”.

Lisa was working for McDonald’s as a manager and only a week before she was murdered, she moved to the Airport branch. She was the manager of the day shift, which started at 3.30 am. Lisa would usually set her alarm for 2.30am, shower, dress and drive her black Mazda Familia hatchback 28km to the airport.

The day that Lisa was killed, she was going back to work after two rostered days off.

At 6.31am on the 28 April 1998 firefighters responded to a car fire at Mangere Mountain. Their response was initially delayed by a police officer who took the initial 111 call failing to action it.

Fire crews managed to put out the fire in just over 5 minutes. When a senior fire officer approached the car, he could make out a charred body in the back seat.

Police were called and they launched a homicide investigation. Lisa was identified as the victim through dental records and police found her McDonald’s staff name tag in the back of her car. The investigation from then on was called Operation Hills.

A post-mortem was performed on Lisa’s body. It revealed that Lisa was alive when her car was set on fire, but “most probably” was unconscious. The pathologist found that her lungs were heat damaged and full of soot. She also had numerous fractures to her skull and the bones around her throat. The pathologist was unable to determine if these injuries were caused by the fire or as a result of an earlier assault. There was also evidence that Lisa had been sexually assaulted.

Lisa’s cause of death was listed as carbon monoxide poisoning.

Police appealed to the public for any sightings of Lisa’s black Mazda Familia between 3am and 6am. They revealed that the fuel used to ignite the fire must have been sourced by the killer. There had been nothing found in or around the car that could have been used to set the vehicle on fire. That means that the killer probably had gone to a service station to buy fuel in a container, or stolen it.

Police also revealed that Lisa had a steering wheel lock that she used regularly to secure her car and it was missing. Police believed the killer took it and if they found it they would find the killer. The steering wheel lock was never found.

WITNESSES

A woman who had witnessed the incident spoke publicly for the first time in an article for the Herald on Sunday. (link Below).

” I won’t forget it” she said. “I was going to the mountain at about 5.45 am, and as i got closer, I saw a man moving around a car at the soccer club. The next thing i saw the thing go up in flames”. “I just stood there and watched it; it was like an inferno”. I remember as i stood there thinking, if someone was in that car, there’d be no way anyone could get near it to help them. The whole thing was engulfed in flames, like a furnace.

“The person ran away, he didn’t know i was there, he ran straight towards me. Then he realised i was there, he just stopped, and we eyeballed each other for a minute, then he turned and ran back the same way he had come.” She said “He definitely got a fright to see me”.

The woman went to a nearby property and asked a man there to ring 111. The woman said that later that day about 3pm, that man called her at work to tell her that there had been a body in that car. She said “when he told me that, i felt sick. It wasn’t nice, I tried to keep the vision of that man in my mind, just in case”.

Three other people reported seeing a man of similar description not long after Lisa’s car was in flames. There was a jogger at the domain that saw the man run away. There was a taxi driver on the motorway, he said a man ran out in front of his car and another motorist saw a man walking towards the Mangere Bridge shops.

The descriptions from the witnesses helped police to create a sketch of the killer.

hills sketch

Mr Muaulu who was 18 at the time was the duty manager at McDonald’s the night before Lisa’s murder. He spoke to the Herald on Sunday.

He said that he had called Lisa the night before to discuss stock. “I called her about 9.45pm, I forgot that she was supposed to be starting work at 3.30am” he said. “I needed permission to give this other store our stock. We had a quick conversation and that was it. Everything seemed normal.

“I knew her as Lisa” he says “she wasn’t there long before the incident happened, I remember that day very clearly.”

Muaulu was woken up at 3.30am on the 28 April,1998, by a phone call. “it was the store calling to say Lisa hadn’t shown up. I was getting in trouble because they thought she must have called in sick and I’d forgotten to leave a message “, he said.

“Later that morning the cops arrived at my house. They had found Lisa’s car burned out at Mangere Mountain; they were trying to find out what conversation I’d had with her the night before.”

Police updated Muaulu that day, first they told him that they had found something of interest in the burnt-out car, then later they confirmed the “something” was Lisa’s body. Muaulu says ” I was really upset; I just couldn’t believe it.”

SUSPECTS

There have been suspects named over the years and have been investigated. Lisa’s estranged husband Peter was looked at.

Police also looked at a recidivist rapist called William Mokaraka. Mokaraka was known to attack women in their homes in South Auckland while brandishing a knife.

Despite a lack of evidence, police initially believed that rapist William Mokaraka was responsible for her death and shelved the case for nearly ten years, in the hope that Mokaraka would confess.

Years later after a DNA profile created with new technology in 2007, both men were eliminated as suspects when their DNA failed to match a sample taken from Lisa’s body, believed to belong to her killer.

Margaret Green, Lisa’s Mum said “When we found out it wasn’t him, we felt annoyed and let down. We were back where we started in that it hadn’t been solved,”

“It alarms me that someone’s got away with murder. That’s a great injustice. It shouldn’t be allowed to happen.”

After a meeting with New Zealand police, the family now believe the killer will not be found – as too much time has passed and they believe too many errors were made early in the investigation.

Although they hold no malice against the detectives, Green in particular, feels the focus on Mokaraka, Lisa’s’ involvement with the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the use of her Christian name may have hindered the investigation.

“People thought William Mokaraka killed a girl called Claire, but people didn’t know her as Claire except if they read the newspaper or watched TV. They knew her as Lisa,” Green said.

Her family’s growing pessimism comes as police revealed the DNA profile developed from the crime scene has made no match with their criminal database, which holds 123,000 profiles.

At the time, he officer in charge of the case, Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Lynch, said the task now was to go back through the file and hopefully unearth new suspects.

Shortly after Lisa’s death, Police posted a $50 000 reward. At the time it was one of the biggest ever offered in New Zealand, but it produced nothing significant.

A second $50 000 reward was posted in 2009,

A reward of $50,000 will be paid for material information or evidence which leads to the conviction of any person or persons responsible for the murder of Claire Hills.

The Commissioner of Police will determine the amount of the reward and will apportion it if there is more than one claimant.

An immunity against prosecution will be considered for any accomplice – not being the principal offender – who shall first give such information or evidence.

This offer shall remain in force until October 1, 2009.

police said they got around 70 calls but again it failed to produce any information.

This was one of New Zealand’s most barbaric cases at the time, and even more disturbing was that police believed that Lisa had been held for several hours before she was burned alive.

They suspect she was abducted from her vehicle as she drove to the McDonald’s airport restaurant from her home in Herne Bay about 3 am.

The officer in charge of the case, Detective Senior Sergeant Dave Lynch, said at the time, although the reward produced nothing significant, there was still a lot of work for the inquiry team to finish.

Mr Lynch said although the reward had formally expired, if anyone had significant information, a payout could be negotiated.

“There would certainly be an opportunity for someone who was financially motivated to collect it in the future.”

Ms Hills had nothing bad or criminal in her past and Mr Lynch said her family deserved the peace and comfort they would get by solving of the crime.

Any accomplice offering information would not be prosecuted providing he or she was not the principal offender.

In June 2000, it was revealed that police had told Lisa’s family that they knew who killed her but did not have enough evidence for an arrest.

Lois Green, Lisa’s mother, who lives south of Sydney, said she thought of her daughter every day. She had taken hope from a frank letter from the officer in charge of the inquiry, at the time Detective Senior Sergeant Dayle Candy of Otahuhu, who had taken a fresh look at the case.

Lois says “I know it sounds a bit weird but it is some consolation that they know who has done it and can keep their eye on them … [they’re] just waiting for a slip-up or some more evidence to come in.

In the letter, Detective Senior Sergeant Candy said a team of experienced detectives had reviewed every facet of the investigation to establish its competency.
“In all of the inquiries completed to date by the homicide team and the review team, I am confident that the inquiry has unravelled our offender,
she wrote.

“Unfortunately, evidentially we are a long way removed from being able to a) become focused solely on that offender or b) constructively calling the offender to account for their actions.

“The restrictions unfortunately faced by staff on this inquiry rate amongst the highest on any homicide experienced in New Zealand.

She told the New Zealand Herald that the letter was meant for the family as a message of hope.

Candy stated “After a year’s investigation we have a good understanding or suspicion of what has occurred … but we are clearly not in a position to lay a charge, otherwise we would, she said.

“The family are victims … I think it’s important for them to understand that we haven’t given up hope, that we’re optimistic and that I feel the crime is able to be solved.

Detective Senior Sergeant Candy said she believed the killer was a stranger to Claire Hills, that he had some link to the Mangere area and that others may have been involved in the initial abduction.

She believed it was an opportunistic crime and her biggest fear was that the killer or killers would strike again.

One of Lisa’s close friends, Leanne Mitcheson, said she suspected Lisa had been abducted either as she arrived at the airport or possibly after being flagged down by the offender pretending to be a stranded motorist.

In April 2018, an article was published by the Herald on Sunday. In this article, Detective superintendent Dave Lynch who originally worked on the case in 1998 spoke with a reporter, Anna Leask.

When Lynch was asked about the DNA they had, he wouldn’t disclose more about the sample, saying “It’s something only police and the offender know about. He wants to keep that card close to his chest, along with a couple of other aspects of the investigation.”

But everything else the police know about the murder has been shared publicly, numerous times, in a bid to flush out the person responsible.

Det Lynch says “From the time Claire got up around 2.30am to when her car caught fire up at the mountain, those two to three hours are an unknown for us. A key to advancing the investigation is filling in that window of time.”

“That sighting by the witness is the only solid piece of information we have around who is directly connected with Claire’s murder.”

“there’s a range of scenarios, one is that Claire was known to her killer, and the other is that she was the subject of a random attack; and how that attack occurred and where is obviously very much a focus of the investigation.”

Detective Lynch still wants to solve this murder.

He says “I’m still convinced there’s a person or small group out there that know or have some very strong suspicions around what happened, I always hold out hope that one day someone will pick up the phone.”

“we don’t need much; all we need is names. We do have the DNA profile to work with and we are able to give assurance of confidentiality around information people are prepared to give us.”

That DNA profile has failed to match anyone in the New Zealand database, made up of people who have given samples after being arrested for criminal offending. Police have also searched the Australian database and are now investigating what other overseas databases might be available.

“Twenty years is a long time. We’ve got a family living in another country, really still looking for answers around what happened to Claire. It’s not too late – give us a call.”

Lisa’s family have given up hope that her killer will ever be found.

Lisa’s two sisters, Lynda Hynson and Allyson Harris spoke to reporters at the Herald on Sunday.

Harris said, ” the chances of it ever getting solved are really slim.”

“It makes us really upset that someone’s walking around who has gotten away with murder.” The impact, you can’t even describe, that much violence and no answers.”

“I don’t think you ever accept it, You know it’s happened and you get on with it, but it’s always there. Why did you do this? Why did my sister suffer such a horrific death?”

Lisa’s sisters believe that she was killed in a random attack.

Hynson said “Claire was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’ ” “she was a good human being, she didn’t deserve that, for whatever reason, they decided to murder her, she didn’t deserve to die like that.”

Lois Green, Lisa’s mother said, “It would have been very scary”.

Harris said “her mother doesn’t like to talk about it too much, she thinks that it has happened, nothing is going to change, she has resigned herself to the fact that she is not going to find out what happened to Claire in her lifetime. “we’ve got no hope at all that it’s going to be solved.”

“Anniversaries, birthdays and Christmas, I think about her then. The horrificness of the crime is always in the back of my mind, our family is not complete. There won’t ever be any closure. She was 30 yrs. old, she didn’t have children, she hadn’t even lived yet.”

The sisters are thankful that the police file remained open and would until there was an arrest or resolution.

Harris says, “It helps to think they’re still thinking about her, even though there is no one actively working on the file. Twenty years is a long time, unless someone confesses, we will never know.”

If you know anything about this case and who is responsible for this heinous crime, please contact your local police station.

You can contact Crimestoppers anonymously: 0800 555 111

crimestoppers-nz.org

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