Bonfire night murder is one of two unsolved killings involving Sheffield sex workers still baffling detectives

Michaela Hague, aged 25, was stabbed to death on November 5, 2001. While families across the city were enjoying bonfires and firework displays, Michaela, a mum-of-one, was being subjected to a horrific attack which saw her stabbed 19 times. She was knifed in her back and neck and left for dead on a secluded city centre car park.

Michaela had been working as a prostitute to fund a drug habit when she was seen getting into a car on Bower Street, off Corporation Street. She was driven to a dark nearby car par – opposite a pub known then as The Manchester, but which is now The Harlequin.

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It was there where Michaela was subjected to a frenzied attack and her body was found slumped on the ground by another sex worker, who raised the alarm.

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An old-style blue Ford Sierra was spotted driving away from the car park – triggering a nationwide hunt for the car and its driver but to no avail. Police officers made national appeals for information, with Michaela’s murder featured on Crimewatch. Officers also travelled the length and breadth of the country following up leads, but the killer has never been identified.

The investigation is one of the largest ever carried out by South Yorkshire Police, with thousands of interviews undertaken over the years

The first police officer deployed to the crime scene spoke to Michaela and managed to retrieve valuable information from the young woman, who was found in a pool of blood and died in hospital three hours later.

It was hoped that the clues provided – that her attacker was white, clean-shaven and wore a wedding ring – would help detectives track him down.

Michaela, of Lopham Street, Pitsmoor, also said he was around 38 years old, 6ft tall and was wearing a blue fleece and glasses.

A police E-fit was later produced and shared on the BBC’s Crimewatch programme in case the killer was from elsewhere in the country but he was never traced

Michaela, who had a five-year-old son at the time of her death, worked as a prostitute to fund a heroin habit. She had started working on the streets just six months earlier, an inquest into her death was told.

The murder came seven years after 19-year-old Dawn Shields was killed while also working as a prostitute in Sheffield.

She was picked up in a car in Broomhall – Sheffield’s red light district at the time – and her body was later found in a shallow grave on the slopes of Mam Tor, Castleton.

Dawn was last seen alive on Friday, May 13, 1994 and her remains were discovered one week later.

The naked body of the mum-of-one, from Pitsmoor, was found by a National Park ranger.

She had head injuries and had been strangled.

Possible links between the two cases have been investigated but there is nothing to suggest the same killer was responsible.

Anyone with information about either of the murders should call South Yorkshire Police on 101.