Michaela Hague

Michaela Hague was stabbed during an attack in Sheffield on 5 November 2001.

She was a prostitute and had been working the streets around Bower Street in Sheffield. She was picked up around 7pm and then stabbed 19 times in the neck and back. She was found lying in a pool of blood not far off at about 8pm in a mostly unlit car park on some waste ground off Spitalfields.

An old style blue Ford Sierra was seen driving away.

She was found semi-conscious shortly after 8pm and the police were called.

When Michaela Hague was found by a policeman she managed to describe the man that had attacked her. She said that the man had been white, about 6ft tall, 38 years of age, was clean shaven, wearing a blue fleece jacket and had had glasses on and been wearing a wedding ring on his finger. The policeman was noted for having written some of the details down on his hand which was later photographed as evidence.

Michaela Hague was taken to the Northern General Hospital, arriving at about 8.30pm, and later died there at 11.05pm.

However, later, at her inquest, it was heard that although she had been stabbed 19 times, she might have survived if she had undergone immediate surgery. It was said that none of the stab wounds where more than 30mm deep and that only six had punctured her lungs and the rest had missed vital organs such as her heart, aorta artery or liver. It was said that she had been at the hospital for several hours during which time there had been plenty of time for her to have undergone emergency surgery. The pathologist that carried out her post-mortem said that he had seen people with much larger vascular structures damage who had survived with surgery.

However, he added that there was no argument that the stab wounds were not 100% the cause of her death.

After her murder, a woman came forward to say that she had been in Spring Street in her Citroen car at around 9pm when she had taken a wrong turn on her way to a friend’s place, and said that a strange man, who it was suggested might have been Michaela Hague's killer, stood in front of her car and wouldn't let her drive off. She said that whenever she moved her car about he moved to stand in front of it. She said that she thought that he wanted her to wind her window down and said that a few minutes later she managed to get away.

The police said that they did manage to get some DNA evidence but had not been able to identify whose it was.

A man from Worksop was arrested shortly after her murder but released.

In March 2009 a convicted rapist was also questioned over her murder, however, no developments were made.

In 2021 it was suggested that Christopher Halliwell, a convicted double murderer, who was thought could have been behind 21 other murders, might have killed Michaela Hague. Amongst evidence found relating to Christopher Halliwell was a hidden cache of 60 items of women’s clothing that he had kept as trophies, with only two items of clothing being matched to anyone, those being the two women that he was convicted of murdering, Sian O'Callaghan and Becky Godden. However, his connection with Michaela Hague's murder was only one of many and no further developments have been made.

It was said Michaela Hague had been a heroin addict and had turned to prostitution to earn money to buy more drugs. It was said that she had been working the streets for about six months. The area that she had been working in, around Corporation Street, was a well-known red-light district.

It was thought that she had been picked up in Bower Street, a small connecting road between Cotton Street and Cotton Mill Row but the car park she was found in, which has since been redeveloped, was further along Corporation Street towards Derek Dooley Way.

Michaela Hague had lived on Lopham Street in Pitsmoor, Sheffield, and had had a partner and a son.