Late the other night, I happened to catch a programme about the murder of Caroline Dickinson, a British schoolgirl, in France in 1996. I remembered the case to a degree, but the programme exposed a number of interesting points of similarity (to my mind) with the Kercher murder investigation.
The case was handled from the start by an investigating judge (the French criminal justice system is still a predominantly inquisitorial system - particularly for serious crimes). There was a great deal of pressure on the investigating judge to solve the case: the murder had a very high profile, both in France and in the UK, and the girl had been killed in a shared room in a Youth Hostel (which had serious implications for the French tourist industry, especially in the important area of student exchanges).
Within a few days of the murder, the judge announced that the killer had been caught. A local drifter had "made a full confession" to the crime, and the judge essentially announced that the case was solved. However, the victim had been sexually assaulted during the murder, and the killer had left semen at the scene. DNA tests soon proved that the drifter who'd made the "confession" was not the killer. The judge reacted with insolence and a fit of pique, and at first insisted that the drifter had been one of a group of killers, and that the semen came from an "accomplice". In addition, the police (under the judge's direction) had taken virtually no statements from the other students in the hostel or people living nearby, and had botched the forensic examination of the scene (does all this sound familiar....?).
Eventually, the victim's father petitioned successfully (with help from the British Embassy in Paris) to get the judge replaced as the head of the investigation. But even the new judge conducted a pretty lacklustre investigation, despite officially disregarding the drifter as a suspect. After an intensive campaign by the victim's father, the judge agreed (reluctantly) to DNA test all men between 16 and 50 living in and around the small village where the murder occurred. But there were no matches.
Somewhat by chance, the publicity generated by the DNA tests and a rough police photofit (based on the half-asleep remembrances of one of the other girls in the murder room) jogged the memory of one of the local residents, who remembered a Spanish drifter who'd been working on nearby building sites who resembled the photofit. The drifter's name was Francisco Arce Montes. Police quickly established that he had a prior criminal record for sexual crimes committed in youth hostels. So he quickly became the chief suspect. The new judge had a quick look for Montes in France and Europe, but without success. Within a few months, the investigation was put onto the back burner.
Then an extraordinary coincidence led to the capture and conviction of Montes. The victim's father was still trying to generate publicity, and persuaded the UK Sunday Telegraph newspaper to publish a story highlighting how the French authorities had the name of the chief suspect, but seemed either unable or unwilling to seek him out. A US Customs official was conducting an investigation at Detroit Airport, and while he was waiting for a colleague, he thumbed through a copy of the Sunday Telegraph at one of the airport newsstands. He happened upon the story mentioning Montes, and idly wondered whether US authorities had ever been consulted about Montes' whereabouts (they hadn't). When he got back to his office, he looked up Montes in the national crime computer databases, and discovered to his amazement that Montes had just been arrested in Miami for sexual offences against a number of girls in a backpackers' hotel near the beach. Eventually, a DNA sample was taken, and it perfectly matched the semen sample from Caroline Dickinson's body. Montes was ultimately convicted of her murder.
To me, there are a number of very interesting similarities between these two cases, notably: the pressure for results; the consequent rush to judgement; the improper obtaining and usage of "confessions"; the belligerence of the investigating judges/prosecutors; the unwillingness to discard the initial suspect(s), even when logic suggested that he/they had nothing to do with the crime; the botched collection of physical evidence and witness statements; and the way that the local authorities drew in the wagons when faced with criticism (or even tough questioning of methods).
ETA: I do hope everyone in Irene's way manages to stay safe. Best wishes to all fellow posters in N Carolina and up the Eastern Seaboard.
