Céline Figard

Céline Figard (23 May 1976 – 19 December 1995) was a French woman who went missing and was murdered during a visit to the United Kingdom in December 1995.

She accepted a lift from a lorry driver at the Chieveley services on the M4 in Chieveley, Berkshire, on 19 December, but never arrived at her destination.

Following an appeal for information on her whereabouts and police enquiries, her body was discovered on 29 December, at a lay-by on the A449 in Hawford, Worcestershire.

A post-mortem examination determined she had been strangled and bludgeoned to death.

The case received extensive news coverage in the UK around the Christmas and New Year period, amid fears that it could be linked to a series of killings around the English Midlands, which police called the work of a "Midlands Ripper".

The murder investigation included the UK's first national DNA screening programme in the hunt for a murder suspect, covering over 5,000 people.

Céline Figard was born on 23 May 1976 in Besançon, France, to Martine and Bernard Figard.

She had two brothers, Stephane and Nicolas, and a sister, Karine.

At the time of her death, she was studying accountancy at the Lycée le Grand Chênois in Montbéliard.

She developed a fondness for the United Kingdom following a 1990 visit and travelled there repeatedly.

Figard spent the summer of 1995 working at a hotel in Fordingbridge, Hampshire, where her cousin Jean-Marc was head waiter, using the opportunity to improve her English.

She planned to return to the UK in December to spend another two weeks with Jean-Marc.

After leaving home on Monday, 18 December, she travelled with a family friend employed by a local haulage firm to the French coast, as arranged by her parents, and crossed the English Channel the following day, arriving in Ashford, Kent.

She intended to travel to Fordingbridge by train; her escort found another French lorry driver, Roger Bouvier, who was willing to take her to Chieveley Services near Newbury, Berkshire.

When they arrived, Figard tried to phone Jean-Marc to ask him to pick her up, but misdialed.

She was offered a lift to Salisbury by the driver of a white Mercedes lorry.

Bouvier had reservations about the driver, but let her go with him nonetheless.

Figard left the service station with the driver at around 4:30 pm.

She never arrived at her destination, and was reported missing.

Police appealed for information about her disappearance, and issued a photofit of the lorry driver, but he was not identified.

By 25 December, investigators were working on the theory that he had abducted her.

The following day, investigators were working on the assumption she had been murdered.

Figard's father travelled to the UK to help detectives in their search for her and to appeal to the public for information as to her whereabouts.

On the morning of Friday, 29 December, the naked body of a young woman was found dumped at a lay-by on the A449 near the Worcestershire village of Hawford by a motorist who had stopped to change a windscreen wiper.

Police sought to establish her identity, but were sure it was not that of Louise Smith, an 18-year-old clerical assistant who had vanished early on Christmas Day after attending a nightclub at Yate, Gloucestershire.

Stuart William Morgan, a 36-year-old lorry driver from Poole, Dorset, was arrested in February 1996 after a colleague recognised his image from a photofit.

Morgan was later charged with Figard's murder, and convicted in October.

Detectives concluded that after raping, strangling and bludgeoning her, he carried her body in his vehicle for ten days over the Christmas period before dumping it.

Morgan was given a life sentence, with a recommendation to serve at least twenty years.

Figard was buried in the French village of Scey-sur-Saône-et-Saint-Albin, Haute-Saône, at a service attended by her family, friends and politicians in January 1996.

In the UK, she is remembered in a memorial garden established at a church in the Worcestershire village of Ombersley, close to where her body was discovered.

Smith's body was discovered in February 1996 in Chipping Sodbury, South Gloucestershire.

The body was positively identified as that of Figard the following day.

The post mortem determined she had been strangled and bludgeoned with a heavy implement, but did not establish which was fatal.

The post mortem revealed "no obvious signs" of sexual assault, but it was determined that sexual intercourse had taken place shortly before her death, and detectives believed it had occurred against her will.

Police said that the body had been lying where it was found for about twenty-four hours and were working on the theory that she had been held captive before being killed.

Detective Chief Superintendent Roger Hoddinott of Hampshire Police said at the time of discovery, Figard had been dead for at least four to five days, but did not announce a time of death.

An appeal in February 1998 was rejected by the Court of Appeal, and in 2009 the High Court turned down his application for a review of the length of his sentence.

He became eligible for parole in February 2016, and has continued to maintain his innocence.

He remains imprisoned at HM Prison Frankland as of 2022, having had his most recent application for parole rejected earlier in the year.