A former academic was arrested Wednesday over allegations of repeatedly plotting with her lovers to kill her ex-husband in Australia.
Lisa Lines, 43, was detained on the Pacific Island of Palau and remanded in custody ahead of an expected extradition to South Australia. The former history lecturer is accused of a yearslong campaign of violence against her ex, Jonathon Hawtin, involving the lovers with whom she began romances following the breakdown of her marriage.
In October 2017, 36-year-old Hawtin was left paralyzed from the neck down after being repeatedly struck in the neck with an ax in an incident at his home in Littlehampton, South Australia. Zacharia Bruckner, 30, who had been lodging with the couple after being recruited to Lines’ publishing company, suffered a gunshot wound to his abdomen.
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Hawtin was charged with attempted murder for shooting Bruckner, with local authorities assuming that Bruckner had acted in self-defense. But at trial, the jury acquitted Hawtin after just three hours of deliberation in 2019. The court had heard that Lines—who has two kids with Hawtin—told her husband in June 2017 that she wanted to separate. The jurors were also told that she’d started a romantic relationship with Bruckner in August that year.
Queensland Police prosecutor Eddie Fraser on Thursday told a court that police now believe Bruckner “shot himself in the hip” during the incident, and that he and Lines “staged a crime scene to make it look like Mr Hawtin was the offender,” according to local media.
At the same time as her tryst with the lodger, Lines also allegedly started another relationship with a woman. While Hawtin was recovering at a rehabilitation center from his injuries sustained in the ax attack, the woman was spotted on New Year’s Day in 2018 looking into his room. According to 9News, the woman had allegedly been sent to the facility to suffocate Hawtin with a pillow, but she was stopped by security guards at the hospital and then fled the scene.
In 2020, South Australia police reopened the investigation and ultimately issued a warrant for Lines’ arrest, The Guardian reports. That same year, Lines left Australia with her two kids and went to Taiwan—where Australia doesn’t have an extradition treaty. Interpol released yellow notices—typically issued to help find missing children—for Lines’ kids in 2021.
On Wednesday, Lines arrived on a flight into Palau and was promptly arrested by major crime detectives on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to murder. Bruckner was also arrested in Australia on Wednesday on conspiracy to murder.
Lines and Bruckner are now accused of attempting to kill Hawtin in the Oct. 2017 ax attack. They’re also accused of planning to kill Hawtin as well as his mother, Rhonda Hawtin, by hiring a hitman to take them both out sometime after December 2021.
Lines and her female lover have also been charged with attempting to murder Hawtin on Jan. 1 2018 at the rehab facility.
