Francisco Arce Montes

Who is Francisco Arce Montes?

Francisco Xavier Arce Montes is a Spanish serial abuser and murderer who has been convicted of multiple counts of sexual assault and sexual abuse across Europe. Most of Montes's targets were around 11 or 12 years of age, and he is known to have committed assaults in Germany, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States.

Montes told investigators that he had a miserable childhood. He was born the only son of middle class parents who ran a corner grocery store. During his teens, he began to obsess over his personal hygiene and began doing things such as operating doorknobs and light-switches with a handkerchief. At 20 Montes exposed himself to a neighbor, and he was then diagnosed with depression and "progressive schizophrenia".

In 1981 Montes broke into the room of a girl in a youth hostel in the Netherlands and "touched her sexually against her wishes". The girl, now a woman, testified against Montes during a trial in 2005. Montes was also jailed in Germany during the mid-1980s for armed rape. Montes left a swath of other offenses across Europe.

Montes was tried and convicted for the murder of Caroline Dickinson, a Cornish schoolgirl he attacked on July 18, 1996 in youth hostel in the small Breton town of Pleine-Fougères, France. He had been arrested in Miami Beach, Florida in 2001 on suspicion of nocturnal sexual assault of two Chilean backpackers, but state authorities put their proceedings in abeyance so as to extradite him to France. His arrest followed publicity surrounding the inquest held in Cornwall as a result of which his name was published in a national newspaper. Tommy Ontko, an immigration official at Detroit Airport, picked up an edition of this British newspaper and having read the story checked federal IT systems which eventually led him to the fact Montes was in custody in Miami Beach. Having confirmed as far as he was able this was so he contacted the French authorities.