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Celine Marie Therese Figard (23 May 1976 – 19 December 1995) 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. Figard was buried in the French village of Scey-sur-Saône at a service attended by 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. ==Background and disappearance== Celine Figard was the second of four children born to dairy farmers Bernard and Martine Figard of Ferrières-lès-Scey, near Besancon, in a rural community in eastern France. She was a gifted student, with a flair for music, language and mathematics. At the time of her death she was studying accountancy at the Lycée le Grand Chênois in Montbéliard. She developed a fondness for the UK following a 1990 visit and traveled there repeatedly.〔〔 She 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 returned to the UK in December to spend another two weeks with Jean-Marc.〔 After leaving on 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 channel the following day.〔〔 She arrived in Ashford, Kent. She had intended to travel to Fordingbridge by train, but her escort found another French lorry driver who was willing to take her to Chieveley Services at Newbury in Berkshire.〔〔〔 He then helped her to find another trucker for the final leg after she tried to phone her cousin to ask him to pick her up, but misdialed. She was last seen alive at Chieveley Services at Junction 13 of the M4 on the afternoon of Tuesday 19 December, entering a white Mercedes lorry.〔 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.〔 Celine'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. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Murder of Celine Figard」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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