On the very last day of 1998, on the South Island of New Zealand, a young woman would disappear while out walking her dog. Her body would not be found until weeks into the new year.
Fifteen-year-old Kirsty Bentley lived in the town of Ashburton with her parents, Jill and Sidney, and her older brother John. She was a creative, fun-loving teenager with a flair for poetry and drama, a girl who, according to her mother, had “only two speeds—top gear and stop.”
On December 31st, 1998, Kirsty had been spending the day with a close friend; the two girls had been at the Ashburton library all morning, then proceeded to do some shopping before dropping into a local McDonald’s for lunch. Kirsty was excited to celebrate New Year’s Eve with her boyfriend Graeme Offord, who was planning to come over to have dinner with her family that evening.
At around two-thirty p.m., Kirsty’s friend’s sister dropped her off at home, at which point her nineteen-year-old brother John was the only other person in the house. John told Kirsty that Graeme had called while she was out; Kirsty called him back at about two-thirty-eight, but he wasn’t home, so she left a message. She then decided to take the family’s black Labrador mix, Abby, out for a walk.
John later told police that he had not seen or heard Kirsty leave the house with the dog, but a neighbor did spot the girl walking Abby down the street at about five minutes past three in the afternoon. After that, though, Kirsty Bentley’s movements are unknown.
At around four-thirty p.m., back at the Bentley household, Graeme called back, at which point John realized that his sister had not returned. When their mother Jill came home at a quarter past five, both she and John began searching the neighborhood for her, to no avail. As soon as Kirsty’s father arrived home at six p.m., and after several more searches had failed to turn up any sign of his vanished daughter, Kirsty was reported to police as a missing person.
Police and volunteers combed the streets all night, but found nothing until ten a.m. on January 1st, 1999. At that point, Abby the dog was found alive, tied to a tree by her leash. The area where the dog was abandoned had been searched the previous night, though Abby had not been there at that time.
Even more hauntingly, in the same location, authorities recovered a pair of underwear and a pair of boxer shorts that belonged to Kirsty; her mother had given Kirsty the items for Christmas, as a matter of fact. Now certain that their worst fears were likely to be realized, the family and investigators continued the hunt, but would not get a definitive answer to the mystery of Kirsty’s whereabouts until much later in the month.
On January 17th, 1999, two men out looking for a cannabis patch stumbled across a decomposed body in Rakaia, about twenty-five miles from the town of Ashburton. Dental records identified the remains as belonging to fifteen-year-old Kirsty Bentley, who had vanished while walking her dog on the afternoon of December 31st, 1998.
The body was found fully clothed—save for the underwear and boxer shorts previously recovered—and posed in a fetal position. Cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the right side of the skull.
The case caused a media frenzy in New Zealand, and many leads and suspects were ultimately investigated. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the case was the naming of Kirsty’s father Sid and her brother John as persons of interest in her murder. Authorities were initially suspicious because Sid could not provide a concrete alibi for his whereabouts on the day his daughter disappeared, and seemed reluctant to tell police where he had been and what he was doing. Likewise, John was considered a suspect because he had been the only person home in the time before Kirsty vanished. Both men were interrogated and a thorough search of the family home was undertaken, but no solid evidence was found to link either of them to the crime. Sid Bentley died in 2015, and in 2018, investigators confirmed that neither he nor John were suspects any longer.
Another man named Russell John Tully was also the focus of intense scrutiny. Tully had been convicted of two counts of murder for slaying two employees of the Ashburton Work and Income office in 2014, and further was known to sometimes camp out in the area near where Kirsty Bentley’s body was found. However, police later dismissed him as a suspect after his alibi was confirmed.
Investigators also sought the driver of a mysterious blue or blue-green van seen by multiple witnesses both in Ashburton and in the Camp Gully area near where Kirsty’s remains were dumped. The vehicle—a very distinctive model believed to be one of only two examples in the whole of New Zealand—was described as a 1961 Commer FC, kitted out as a camper and bearing the license plate number EP9888. It was last registered with the New Zealand Transport Agency in 1995. Despite its unique appearance, however, neither the vehicle nor its driver has ever been located.
The inquiry into the death of Kirsty Bentley remains an open and active investigation, and in the summer of 2022, authorities announced a $100,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Kirsty’s killer.
Crime Immemorial 