Spaniard accused of raping and killing British schoolgirl in French youth hostel goes on trial

THE trial is due to begin today of the Spaniard accused of killing British schoolgirl Caroline Dickinson, who died eight years ago at a youth hostel while on a school trip to France.

Francisco Arce Montes, who is in his 50s, is charged with raping and murdering the 13-year-old Cornish girl at the hostel in Brittany in July 1996.

She was sleeping in a dormitory with fellow pupils from Launceston College when she was attacked during the night and discovered dead in the morning.

Her attacker had broken in without disturbing any of the other sleeping children.

For years, the French police investigation drew a blank, but Arce Montes, a former lorry driver, was arrested in the United States in 2001 after a bizarre coincidence provided a breakthrough in the case.

A US police officer on holiday in the UK read about the crime and the unsuccessful hunt for the killer - and connected the murder to a man arrested for a similar attack in Miami. The policeman followed up his hunch back in the US, and Arce Montes was finally extradited from Miami to France in November 2001 after a DNA sample linked him to the murder scene in Brittany.

Arce Montes at first denied the charges, but is said to have admitted to police he was at the youth hostel in the village of Pleine Fougres at the time of the killing.

Caroline died on a hot summer’s night when a group of 40 pupils and five teachers from her mixed comprehensive were sleeping in the youth hostel after an active day during an end-of-term trip across the Channel.

On the night of 18 July, someone entered the building, crept upstairs to the girls’ dormitory and raped and suffocated the teenager, somehow without disturbing any of the others sleeping there.

Caroline was apparently selected at random, and for her parents, John and Sue, years of frustration with the French police investigation would compound their grief.

None of Caroline’s classmates saw anything, although some told investigators they recalled hearing groaning noises and just assumed someone was having a nightmare.

Caroline’s body was found at 8am, and frantic revival efforts by teachers, police and ambulance staff came too late.

The tragedy put the spotlight on an idyllic corner of northern France and put pressure on the police to catch the killer.

Within days, officers had arrested a tramp known in the area - a convicted rapist with a violent history. The police announced that the suspect, Patrice Pade, who was picked up 40 miles from Pleine Fougres, had confessed and was the killer.

But an announcement a week later that DNA tests proved that he was not the killer seriously embarrassed the inquiry team. Investigators responded by carrying out DNA tests on about 400 males aged between 15 and 60 living in the village and surrounding area. But it all came to nothing.

John and Sue Dickinson were among many who publicly criticised the handling of the case, and the original "examining magistrate" was replaced.

His successor fared little better until the US police officer provided the one and only breakthrough five years after the schoolgirl died.

Arce Montes was placed on the suspect list when they found his name connected to an incident in another French youth hostel in 1994.

He had been convicted of several rapes in Germany in the 1980s, and was questioned in Spain in 1997 on suspicion of armed rape.

Arce Montes, from the Basque city of Bilbao in northern Spain, was working at a restaurant in the Breton town at the time of Caroline’s death.

This week, eight years on, John and Sue Dickinson may finally learn exactly what happened on an innocent end-of-term school expedition that their daughter had looked forward to so much.