Murder of teenager Kirsty Bentley has haunted New Zealand for 17 years
KIRSTY Bentley walked out of her home on New Year’s Eve in 1998 never to be seen alive again. And what happened is still a mystery.
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.
Her brother John Bentley was at home that day, but said she never returned home. She had planned to have dinner that night with her boyfriend Graeme Offord, and was excited he was coming over.
NEW YEAR’S EVE MURDER
There was no sign of anything being wrong. Her mother Jill last year remembered the last time she’d seen her, earlier that day, as being happy and excited.
When she didn’t return Jill and husband Sid went in search of her. They passed an area of riverbank where Abby was found tied to a pole the next day, suggesting the dog had been put there some time later than New Year’s Eve as the parents searched the neighbourhood frantically.
Disturbingly, her underwear was found nearby, about 20m away.
Unconfirmed sightings had Kirsty walking with two men near the river but that sighting was never confirmed. After a massive search it was two men checking their cannabis plot who made the grisly discovery 18 days after she vanished. Kirsty’s body was found in thick bush, 40km away, hidden under branches.
Her family had feared the worst and now they had it. Kirsty had died violently, from a blow to the back of the head from a heavy object.
Who killed Kirsty Bentley became a national talking point. Murder is relatively rare in New Zealand and a teenage girl slain in a quiet community like Ashburton was enough to dominate front pages and news bulletins for weeks.
At one stage police announced a green Commer van was central to their inquiries. Witnesses reported it close to where Kirsty was last seen, and where her underwear where found. Despite being a rare vehicle — and despite a nationwide appeal — the owner of the vehicle never came forward which only fuelled the suspicions of police.
Other witnesses later told of seeing a car with a blond girl “cowering” in the front seat, near where a green van was left abandoned, while other sightings were apparently ignored by police, reported the Ashburton Guardian.
But the breakthrough investigators were hoping for never came. There was no forensic evidence on the body that linked anyone to the crime and with no further sightings the case went ‘cold’.
PERSONS OF INTEREST
In 2010 police confirmed they had narrowed their list of potential persons of interestto about 20 people. On that list were Sid Bentley, Kirsty’s father, and John, her older brother. Both have denied any involvement.
Not long after Sid died, John expressed his concern that the killer may never be found.
He told stuff.co.uk he had always spoken to police when asked and always would.
In public homicide detectives gave typical responses when asked by journalists if the father and son were being investigated, as you would expect. But behind the scenes that was one of a number of theories they were considering.
In an interview with Fairfax last year Jill Peachey, who separated from Sid in 2000 and remarried, recalled when a detective inspector put it to her that her statistically a family member could have been involved.
“He kept quoting the statistic 80 per cent of these crimes were caused by a family member.
“I said – ‘so? What about the other 20 per cent?”.
She was shocked to hear that, among a number of theories, they were considering the possibility John and his father had some involvement in the disappearance of his sister.
But police have produced no evidence to back up that theory.
“I didn’t see it coming, all I could think about was finding Kirsty. Even when her body was found it didn’t come to mind that either could be involved,” she told stuff.co.nz
She told her son “innocent people” had nothing to fear even as police activity ramped up — watching the pair carefully and bugging their home.
Sid’s own behaviour was problematic for him and those trying to find his daughter’s killer. Initially, he said he had been in Christchurch, some distance from Ashburton, but later changed his story to say he had been in the town after all. But he was unable to say what he had been doing.
In various interviews both Jill and John said they felt he was hiding something. But neither ever believed he was the killer, something he strenuously denied throughout the years.
He died of cancer last July, the uncertainty of the case still swirling around him.
John Bentley and his father hadn’t spoken for many years before his death, and the son never went to the funeral.
Now living in Australia, John Bentley said last July he believed his father was too embarrassed to admit the truth what he was doing that day.
“Whatever he was doing on that day, he would be embarrassed to admit it. By a bit of warped logic, since he knows it doesn’t have anything to do with the case, he thinks the police don’t need to know,” he told the Sunday Star-Times.
He worried the killer would never be found because people wrongly assumed it had been his father.
NEW EVIDENCE
In 2010 police asked a retired British expert to review the case. Top international criminal profiler Chuck Burton was of the view whoever killed Kirsty staged the crime scene to throw off police.
He told the New Zealand Herald whoever did it was an “offender protecting his own identity by changing and altering the crime scene”.
They most likely knew the area well, suggesting it was local person.
Most startling of all though were his interpretation of the way the teenager had been found. He was convinced the killer had some kind of link with Kirsty, because of the way her body had been arranged.
She had been carried through thick thorn and placed on the ground, not thrown down a bank, and her body was placed in the foetal position. Her clothes had been laid on top of her body, respectfully covering her, he told TVNZ’s Sunday program.
ANOTHER THEORY
Last July after Sid Bentley died, and amid renewed interest in the case, a woman came forward to say she wanted to change her police statement.
She’d been interviewed at the time of Kirsty’s disappearance but told stuff.co.nz she could have “different answers” for them now.
Her claims hinged on the behaviour of her then-partner
The woman told Stuff when he became drunk he would joke about being the killer.
“He used to say it jokingly, well, I suspect it was jokingly, when he was drunk.”
Police will not comment on the woman’s claim other than to say the man in question had been fully investigated.
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