A lorry driver who brutally murdered a French student and kept her body in the cab of his vehicle for 10 days so he could enjoy Christmas with his family has been granted a parole hearing.
If successful, Stuart Morgan could walk free around the 30th anniversary of the killing which shocked the nation.
Morgan, now 65, was jailed for life after being found guilty of the murder of 19-year-old Céline Figard a week before Christmas 1995.
The trucker hid Céline’s body in the bunk bed of his lorry’s cab and parked it opposite his family home in Poole, Dorset, before dumping it 10 days later in a lay-by at Hawford, near Worcester.
At his trial held at Worcester Crown Court the jury were told he had picked Céline up at Chieveley service station on the M4 in Berkshire on December 19, 1995.
The teenager from the farming village of Ferrieres-les-Scey, south east of Paris, was supposed to be hitching a lift to Salisbury, where she would catch a train to meet her cousin at a hotel in Fordingbridge, Hants.
The accountancy student had developed a fondness for the United Kingdom following a 1990 visit and travelled there repeatedly.
But she never arrived at Fordingbridge and the increasingly desperate hunt for Céline became front page news over the festive season. In the meantime, Morgan was enjoying a ‘normal’ Christmas with his 11-year-old son and wife.
If successful, Stuart Morgan (pictured) could walk free around the 30th anniversary of the killing which shocked the nation
Morgan, now 65, was jailed for life after being found guilty of the murder of 19-year-old Céline Figard (pictured) a week before Christmas 1995
Céline’s naked remains were discovered by a driver who had stopped in the layby on New Year’s Day 1996.
A post-mortem revealed that Céline had been strangled and bludgeoned with a heavy implement. She had been raped before being murdered.
Police soon discovered she had got into a Mercedes truck at the M4 service station.
The case was featured on the BBC programme Crimewatch towards the end of January, 1996. Morgan was named as a suspect by two people and was arrested in February 1996.
Aged 36 at the time, he denied the killing and told the jury he had ‘consensual’ sex with Céline before dropping her off unharmed in Southampton. The jury took just four hours to find him guilty.
Morgan was convicted of her murder in October 1996 and ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years behind bars. He continues to deny the killing and has had one failed appeal against his conviction.
But the jury at Morgan’s trial heard overwhelming evidence that linked the lorry driver to Céline’s murder.
Detectives found some of Céline’s belongings in Morgan’s garage, a blood-stained bunk mattress which had been in his lorry cab and droplets of blood sprayed around the inside of the cab.
A post-mortem revealed that Céline had been strangled and bludgeoned with a heavy implement. She had been raped before being murdered
Speaking after the verdict, Céline’s father Bernard Figard said: ‘This man will never pay enough for what he did. I hope he spends the rest of his days rotting in jail. To have found him not guilty would have been like killing my daughter for the second time.’
Referring to the details of the case he added: ‘It didn’t seem to move him or affect him at all when he heard the graphic descriptions of Céline’s ordeal.
‘I wonder if he has any nightmares about what he did to my daughter. How does he feel when he remembers the desperate shout of his powerless victim?
‘How does he feel when he remembers his own hands covered with my beautiful daughter’s blood?’
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 Midlands which police branded the work of a ‘Midlands Ripper’.
The murder investigation included the UK’s first national DNA screening programmes in the hunt for a murder suspect, covering more than 5,000 lorry drivers.
The testing was carried out not geographically, but by profession. Although the testing was voluntary, anyone refusing automatically put themselves under suspicion.
As it turned out, Morgan was arrested in February 1996 after a colleague recognised his image from a photofit. He was later charged with Céline ’s murder and convicted.
In 2016, London’s High Court was told Morgan still insists he is not a sex killer. Pictured: An artist sketch of Morgan in court
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.
He remains imprisoned at HM Frankland, Co Durham, having had his most recent application for parole rejected in 2022.
Céline was buried in her home village, 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.
The 20-year minimum tariff on Morgan’s sentence expired in February 2016 and he has failed five times since to persuade the Parole Board he is no longer a danger.
A spokesperson for the Parole Board said: ‘We can confirm the parole review of Stuart Morgan has been referred to the Parole Board by the Secretary of State for Justice and is following standard processes.
‘Parole Board decisions are solely focused on what risk a prisoner could represent to the public if released and whether that risk is manageable in the community.’
In 2016, London’s High Court was told Morgan still insists he is not a sex killer. Mr Justice William Davis said he ‘maintains his innocence to this day’.
Morgan – a Category A prisoner – was challenging the Justice Department’s refusal to move him to a softer regime by down-grading his security rating.
Bizarrely, he insisted that, even if he did murder the teenager, the crime was not sexually motivated.
But the judge told him: ‘The only sensible inference is that the killing of Miss Figard did involve a sexual element.
‘To conclude otherwise would be to accept that she may have been prepared to have consensual sexual intercourse with a 36-year-old lorry driver who she had never met before.’
