Kirsty Marianne Bentley

FOR 17 years a murder case has haunted New Zealanders. A teenage girl murdered, her body discarded like trash in the bush, and a killer who has — so far — escaped unpunished. The Kirsty Bentley case has baffled investigators ever since the 15-year-old walked out of her home in Ashburton, on the east coast of the South Island, on New Year’s Eve 1998. She left that day with her dog Abby for a walk but was never seen alive again. Source: https://www.news.com.au/national/crime/murder-of-teenager-kirsty-be...

Bentley was killed by blunt force trauma to the right-side of the back of her head. The blow or blows was inflicted with enough force to severely fracture her skull. The pathologist determined she would have died shortly after the wound was inflicted. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirsty_Bentley

December 31, 1998, had been a balmy day in town. Kirsty — a well-rounded, sensible, giggly girl who loved drama studies, poetry, choir singing, the Backstreet Boys, her boyfriend and friends — had been lounging in the library. She then did some shopping with best friend Lee-Anne Jellyman, grabbing lunch at McDonald's, and popping in to see a friend at the dairy. She would never know it, but she'd done better than she expected in her fifth-form exams and was loving what was turning out to be a long, hot summer. A pool party was being planned for her 16th birthday on January 18. She was bursting with excitement at the prospect of boyfriend Graeme Offord coming for dinner that night, with plans for him to stay over. At about 2.30pm, she arrived back at the family's South St home before taking her black labrador-cross Abby for a stroll while her brother John, then 19, listened to music in his bedroom. He remembers thinking Kirsty had been gone for a while but didn't think too much of it. "These sorts of things aren't supposed to happen, so the idea of something bad happening to Kirsty was not even in my mind," he says. "Mum came home and I asked her about it, expecting her to know. When she had a puzzled look on her face, I was a bit surprised." But on arriving home, mother Jill felt something was wrong. Over the previous few months, she'd felt an unexplained dread that "somehow my little girl was at risk". Quizzing John, she noticed Abby's dog lead was missing from the stool by the back door where Kirsty usually dropped it. Jill headed towards the river, and as panic swept over her, she started running. But as she got near Abby's favourite swimming hole, she turned around and ran home. When Kirsty's father arrived home at around 6pm, things were not looking good. He immediately thought they should phone the police and lodge a missing person report. The Bentleys, along with friends and police staff, started searching the neighbourhood, building yards, the northern riverbank and its paths. As darkness fell, so did the mood. Kirsty had left home only wearing light clothes — a black tank top with a white butterfly-patterned blue sarong and black Colorado shoes with white soles. She was nowhere to be found. At 8am the next morning, an official search and rescue operation was launched. They scoured the Ashburton riverbank and after just two hours, they heard barking. A dehydrated Abby was found tied to a tree by a lead in an area of dense bush just off one of the walking tracks favoured by Kirsty. Later that morning, they came across two items of clothing — underwear and boxer shorts — on top of blackberry bushes, which was identified as belonging to the missing teen. Detective Senior Sergeant Lance Corcoran, who led the original Ashburton CIB investigation, felt from day one that the crime scene was staged by the killer to throw police off his trail. His view would be endorsed a decade later by top international criminal profiler, retired British police inspector Chuck Burton, who reviewed the files in a bid to shed new light on the cold case. "It's an offender protecting his own identity by changing and altering the crime scene," Burton tells the Herald on Sunday. It just didn't add up. There were no signs of the underwear having been torn or forcibly removed, and the Bentleys didn't think the lead was the same one Kirsty left home with. Nobody heard barking the night before either. There were no other clues down by the river. Over the next fortnight as the hunt for Kirsty widened across Ashburton and the wider Canterbury district, rumours began swirling and fingers began to point. Hundreds of local men were spoken to by police. On January 17, 1999 — 18 days after Kirsty disappeared, and with news coverage diminishing with every passing day — her body was found. Two men searching for an illegal cannabis plot in the Camp Gully area of Rakaia Gorge — some 55kms by road inland from Ashburton — stumbled across a badly decomposing body partially covered with sticks and scrub at the bottom of a steep embankment. Placed in the fetal position, she was fully clothed in what she'd left home in but was missing the underwear found by Ashburton River. A post-mortem examination conducted two days later by forensic pathologist Dr Martin Sage concluded that given there was undigested food in her stomach — and it was known she'd eaten French fries with Lee-Anne at around midday on the day she disappeared — it was "most likely" she died that same day. In the months after her death, police asked the public for information about a green Commer van which was reportedly seen in the area at the time of Kirsty's disappearance — and over the following days in the Mid Canterbury town as well as Camp Gully area. It's never been traced. Source: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/dna-could-crack-open-kirsty-bentley-c...

“On the way to bed, I walk past Kirsty’s urn on the mantlepiece and say, ‘Night- night, darling,’” she tells. Jill was only reunited with Kirsty’s ashes last year, when the urn was dug up from the garden of her ex-husband, Sid Bentley, after his death. “Oh, how I hugged and kissed that flask,” says Jill. “We just wanted to get Kirsty home, where she belonged.” Today, the steel urn sits proudly on Jill’s mantelpiece, engraved, “Kirsty Marianne Bentley, 18th January, 1983 – 31st December, 1998.” For Jill, the passing of time has helped to lessen the anguish. Jill had always harboured a secret fear that something bad would happen to Kirsty. Not long after she was born, Kirsty stopped breathing – Jill had been on epilepsy medication during her pregnancy, and her newborn was in withdrawal and fighting for her life. Kirsty proved to be a battler, but years on, Jill still couldn’t shake a feeling of foreboding. Despite this, Kirsty had grown into a vivacious young lady who loved drama and the arts, and who drew people towards her. Source: https://www.nowtolove.co.nz/news/real-life/20-year-murder-mystery-k...