Academic Lisa Lines arrested in Palau and charged with attempted murder over a 2017 ax attack on her ex-partner Jonathon Hawtin, which left him confined to a wheelchair and missing for three years
An Australian academic has been arrested on a small Pacific island two years after she disappeared following a love triangle massacre that left her ex-partner tetraplegic.
Dr. Lisa Lines, 43, is being held on the small, four-kilometer-long Koror, a lonely piece of land that is part of the Palau archipelago, with a population of 18,024, 1,000 kilometers east of the Philippines and 1,000 kilometers north of Indonesia in the western Pacific. .
The mother-of-two disappeared in 2021, prompting an Interpol warning and an international manhunt until her arrest this week.
Her former tenant and secret lover, Zacharia Josef Bruckner, 36, was also arrested in Queensland on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
The arrests follow an attack on Dr. Lines’ ex-partner Jonathon Hawtin in 2017. He was repeatedly struck in the neck and head by an axe, suffering devastating injuries.
Mr. Hawtin, the father of Dr.’s children. Lines, was paralyzed from the neck down and is now permanently confined to a wheelchair and requires 24-hour care.
He was found in a pool of blood outside Dr.’s home in 2017. Lines in Littlehampton in South Australia’s Adelaide Hills, next to Mr Bruckner, who had been shot in the stomach.
Australian academic Dr Lisa Lines has been arrested on the tiny Pacific island of Palau, two years after she disappeared following a love triangle massacre that left her ex-partner tetraplegic.
Jonathon Hawtin (pictured), the father of Dr. Lines, was paralyzed from the neck down and is now permanently confined to a wheelchair and requires 24-hour care
Both men blamed each other for the attack.
Bruckner had lived with and worked for Dr. Lines before the ax attack on Mr Hawtin, with whom she had split three months earlier.
Mr. Hawtin was later charged with attempted murder for shooting Bruckner, but was acquitted of all charges in 2019 in a trial involving Dr. Lines witnessed.
During the four-week trial, it was found that Dr. Lines sought a divorce from Mr Hawtin in June 2017, and two months later she began a relationship with Bruckner.
She denied wanting Mr Hawtin “out of the picture” to avoid continued shared custody of her children. She also no longer dates Mr. Bruckner, she said during the trial.
Jonathon Hawtin was later charged with the attempted murder of Zac Bruckner, Dr.’s tenant and secret lover. Lines (pictured above), but a jury found him not guilty.
Dr. Lisa Lines, 43, is being held on the small, four-kilometre-long Koror, a lonely piece of land that is part of the Palau archipelago
Dr. Lines also refuted suggestions that she was in a relationship at the time with a woman she met on a dating app.
The High Court heard that Mr Hawtin went to his ex-partner’s home to show Mr Bruckner his gun collection before he was allegedly shot with a rifle.
The court was told that Mr Hawtin suspected Bruckner was having an affair with Dr. Lines after living with the couple for ‘years’.
The couple insisted they only began a sexual relationship in August 2017 and believed they had kept it a secret before the attack in October.
Dr. Lisa Lines, 43, is being held on the small, four-kilometer-long Koror, a lonely piece of land that is part of the Palau archipelago, with a population of 18,024, 1,000 kilometers east of the Philippines and 1,000 kilometers north of Indonesia in the western Pacific.
The South Australia Police Major Crime Investigation Branch launched an investigation into the case in 2020 and revealed in 2021 that Dr. Lines had disappeared abroad with her children.
A warrant was issued for her arrest in August 2022 and investigators used foreign police and federal authorities to track down Dr. Lines to her remote hideout in the Pacific Ocean.
The arrest warrant alleges that a second murder attempt on Mr Hawtin took place in January 2018, and that there was a plot with Bruckner to kill Mr Hawtin between December 2019 and August last year, police said. Adelaide Advertiser.
The warrant also alleges another murder plot to kill Mr. Hawtin’s mother, Rhonda.
A prohibition order banning the publication of details of the case was withdrawn on Thursday.