Murder of Celine Figard

Who is Murder of Celine Figard?

Celine Marie Therese Figard was a 19-year-old accountancy student from Ferrières-lès-Scey in eastern France, who went missing during a visit to the United Kingdom on 19 December 1995, after accepting a lift from a lorry driver at a motorway services in Berkshire. Following an appeal for information on her whereabouts and police enquiries, her body was discovered ten days later on 29 December 1995 at a lay-by 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.

Stuart Morgan, a 37-year-old lorry driver from Poole in Dorset was arrested on 19 February 1996 after a colleague recognised his image from a photofit. Morgan was later charged with her murder. 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 after his conviction in October, with a recommendation to serve at least twenty years. 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.