THE hunt for a sex offender wanted by police investigating a prostitute’s murder is over – and a man is now being questioned about the brutal killing.
The nationwide alert was sounded after Peter McDonagh vanished from a bail hostel in West Yorkshire.
But the manhunt ended on Friday after he walked into a police station almost 250 miles away in Canterbury, Kent.
Over the weekend, South Yorkshire detectives have been questioning him over the death of 25-year-old Michaela Hague, who was killed in Sheffield in 2001.
There had been sightings of McDonagh as far apart as Manchester, Carlisle and Aberdeen since he went missing on February 11.
Police wanted to speak to him after new evidence had come to light about Ms Hague’s death.
McDonagh had been in a hostel in West Yorkshire.
The manhunt had been co-ordinated by West Yorkshire Police, but McDonagh was taken back to a police station in Sheffield for questioning by South Yorkshire detectives.
Mother-of-one Miss Hague was stabbed 19 times in her back and neck in a secluded car park on Bonfire Night 2001.
She was found dying at Spital Fields and spoke to the police officer who found her before dying a short time later at Sheffield’s Northern General Hospital.
Pc Richard Twigg radioed details of the man back to base as he cradled the woman.
He later wrote the description down on his hand as Ms Hague was taken to the Northern General Hospital where she died that night.
She lived with her partner and five-year-old son in the Pitsmoor area of Sheffield.
She had been picked up by a man on Bower Street and was attacked after going with him to a secluded spot near the city centre.
Another prostitute found her in a pool of blood and called the police.
Pc Twigg was one of the first officers on the scene. He wrapped his jacket around Ms Hague to keep her warm.
He said: “I could see she was in a bad way, but she was able to give me a very brief description of the man and his car.”
A reconstruction of eventswas shown on BBC’s Crimewatch series.
