Hitchhiking Hell: The Murder of Céline Figard | Murdered at First Sight | Forensic Files

[MUSIC PLAYING] LINDA AITCHISON: At the time that Céline Figard went missing she'd been hitchhiking.
KERRY DAYNES: police are now thinking foul play. This is a foreign national who doesn't
know the country that she's in. She doesn't have any friends here as far as we're aware.
DAVID FARRER QC: For a time, the police investigation worked on the basis that she might
still be alive, and possibly have been kidnapped. NATASHA RIGLER: At the time, it was obviously headline news.
It was a big story. Her family were in France, they didn't know where she was. LINDA AITCHISON: A local businessman was driving past,
and he happened to glance this way into the ditch. And he could actually see what later turned out to be a body.
DES THOMAS: But she'd been bludgeoned with a heavy instrument, and she's been strangled.
CANON PETER KERR: How can somebody have left a body in our village? Particularly of a young girl?
LINDA AITCHISON: It was dreadfully sad, and dreadfully scary to think that there could be
a serial killer on the loose. [MUSIC PLAYING] [CARS DRIVING] [MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: I just got home from work about 9:30 at night,
and the phone rang. [PHONE RINGING] It was a Chief Constable. He Basically said there's a young girl
missing at Fordingbridge, I think she's been abducted. Over to you, it's your responsibility.
So OK sir, yes. Get on with it. The missing girl was a French girl called Céline Figard,
and her cousin, who was a head waiter at a local Italian Fordingbridge reported her missing.
DAVID FARRER QC: She came over just for Christmas on the 18th of December. She'd brought over a couple of bottles of champagne.
I think a Christmas present for the cousin with whom she was going to stay. KERRY DAYNES: the 19th of December
Céline hasn't showed up. Now the police are immediately concerned. Here's a French student who had very clear and definite plans.
She's not somebody who would let down her cousin. So, suspicious. But she's gone missing somewhere between France
and Fordingbridge in Hampshire. So that's a huge distance. Where do you start to look?
[MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: She was an accountancy student. She'd previously been here, and worked through the summer,
I think. She was coming to work over the Christmas period. She actually got a lift from a friend of the family
to England in a lorry. She subsequently got a lift with another French driver who was going to South Wales.
He stopped at Chieveley, and he was going to arrange for her to have another driver to drop
her off at Fordingbridge. DAVID FARRER QC: The friendly French lorry driver was going on elsewhere, and she phoned her cousin.
I think with a view to getting a lift from him. But she either dialed the wrong number, or he wasn't in.
Anyway, the call failed, and she then evidently decided to look for another lift.
She was plainly ready to hitchhike. LINDA AITCHISON: In those days for a young woman of 19
to be hitchhiking, it was something-- in my world, that was something still remarkable.
I don't think that hitchhiking was particularly a popular pastime, and I can remember
being struck at how sad it was that she'd been hitchhiking. [MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: Fordingbridge is probably the remotest town
in the New Forest. It probably one of the remotest towns in Hampshire. Once we'd established that she'd got to Chieveley,
there was no need to search Fordingbridge. My, if you like, my intuition told me
that whoever picked her up was going to South of the docks, because the A34 leads straight down to Winchester
and the M4 at the Southampton docks. KERRY DAYNES: we've got at the moment is a missing girl.
We don't know that any crime has been committed. But it's very concerning, because she's somebody
who is incredibly reliable. And she's somebody who stays in contact with her friends and family.
[MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: We were thinking, crikey, we've got an abduction. Young girl.
Start spending some serious money. Get the team together, and away we go. But you have to remember when you start an inquiry,
the detectives mantra. Believe nobody, accept nothing, check everything. So the first person that you're checking
was of course the person who reported her missing, her cousin. The cousin was a bit appalled when he
found he was being checked out. It's very rare, relatively speaking, to be a stranger.
So you have quite a difficult task sometimes to actually eliminate close relatives
before you can move on. The second person would be the lorry driver. And that he'd go back.
At the same time we had to get in touch with the family, but they were 200 miles East of Paris.
The only practical way you could do that is to send people over. KERRY DAYNES: police would of course want to speak
to Céline's family in France. Now they are not persons of interest, but what can they tell the police about Céline's contacts?
Who does she know in the UK? Who would she contact if she was in trouble? Is there anywhere that she would stop off?
Would she want to visit a friend for example? But it just seems that her only contact, really, is her cousin.
And he's the one who's reporting her missing. So it's a dead end. [MUSIC PLAYING]
DES THOMAS: So we have a kidnapping. It's time limited. You're trying to get somebody back alive,
so time is of the essence. We put an appeal out and we had that achievement. On the face of it, this looks like a pretty unpromising
place for a scenes of crime. But as things turned out, it turned out to be an excellent place.
Because lorry parks, lorry drivers, they know each other, and they were able to give a very good description.
We had a lorry buff, the equivalent of a train spotter. What he didn't know about lorries wasn't worth knowing.
KERRY DAYNES: able to give the police a description, not only of the driver, who he says is a man around 35,
he's got short fair hair and a beard. But also of the vehicle that he was driving.
So this is a white Mercedes lorry, and it's pulling a thermo refrigeration unit.
So pretty specific there. It becomes very important that we find that man. We're able to identify him as soon as possible.
LINDA AITCHISON: From early on in the inquiry when they started to talk about a lorry driver being a suspect,
there was definitely a feeling around that time that lorry drivers were becoming a new sort of bogeyman
if you like. [MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: Where I would eliminate the cousin, we were able to eliminate the original lorry driver.
But our first duty is to preserve life. Until we had a body, we assumed that she was still alive.
LINDA AITCHISON: Quite early on police were able to rule out Céline's friends and family.
And sadly they were able to say that she'd been taken by a stranger. She'd got herself a lift over to the UK,
and she was out there many miles from home. It would have just been absolutely bizarre for any one
of her family of friends to have gone to those lengths to do anything to harm her.
DES THOMAS: That's when we decided, OK, the best way of finding out what's going on here
is to go public with it. And that's where publicity is really, really important.
[MUSIC PLAYING] LINDA AITCHISON: They kept Céline's name in the press. And we would have been on their backs
all the time, pushing for new angles. And I think they did a good job of keeping it
in the public eye. It was frustrating for us to be publishing a paper where we weren't carrying news of what
was happening in the inquiry. DES THOMAS: We had a number of sightings of Céline.
We were lucky. We had an independent sighting I think, by one or two people who actually were--
who actually described the person she got in the cab with. You have some pretty good lines of inquiry to start with,
you're not in the desert. We had information which identified both the vehicle, quite precisely,
where it was really precise. It was a Mercedes, and the paint color was an original.
So it is that amount of detail. And a thermo store refrigerated trailer. So yes, straight away we were on firm ground with that.
KERRY DAYNES: police were able to track down the French lorry driver. And what he tells them is that she had accepted
a lift from somebody that he didn't know, and he felt rather uncomfortable about.
And he's able to give them a crucial description. DAVID FARRER QC: The French lorry driver described his own
reaction to the appearance of the lorry driver with whom Céline accepted a lift.
He saw him as very sinister in appearance. So sinister, that he described himself as freezing
at the sight of him. And being so concerned for Céline's welfare, that I think he prayed when he returned to his own lawyer
that she would be all right. LINDA AITCHISON: Very quickly within the investigation,
the police were able to distribute and show a photo fit. It looked like a very young man with very bland features,
and fair hair. It didn't seem to have particularly compelling or detailed characteristics.
So I can remember there was a feeling really of bafflement as to how they felt that particular very rushed,
in our opinion, photo fit was going to be of any use to the inquiry. DES THOMAS: What you do in the investigation really,
is start off with 70 million suspects. And you eliminate them. So we eliminated all the women in the country,
and all the men who weren't ginger haired with a beard, who were driving a Mercedes lorry.
So you had a narrow band of people to eliminate. Once we got her at Chieveley, and we got her in a cab
with a bloke who was driving a particular lorry, it was him we're after. Because he's the one who could tell us if she's alive or she's
dead. DAVID FARRER QC: For a time, the police investigation worked on the basis that she might still be alive,
and possibly had been kidnapped. But I think within a day or two, with no signs of any contact
from kidnappers or anything like that, it turned into a murder inquiry. [MUSIC PLAYING]
DES THOMAS: You've got a girl who appears to be kidnapped from Chieveley. From Chieveley, within two hours you can be in the Midlands.
You can be at Southampton docks. You could be in the Kent coast, and you could be in the West Country.
Well we've established she got into a lorry. My initial reaction was, this is not going to end well.
We're obviously getting more pessimistic as each day passes. I mean, experience has taught us the longer it goes,
the more bad the prognosis. We're also under pressure at this time to make rational decisions.
So if I say, OK we'll put a block on the gates of Southampton docks, people say, well,
how do you justify that? Well, my intuition wouldn't carry much weight. So one of the reasons we searched the A34 for
was, he could have taken her from the docks down to Bournemouth and Poole, and dropped her off.
Or dropped her off at Ringwood, where she could have got a lift or a cab up to Fordingbridge.
But Fordingbridge is not on a road that most lorries would take. [MUSIC PLAYING]
KERRY DAYNES: the 21st, the police are now thinking foul play. This is a foreign national who doesn't
know the country that she's in. She doesn't have any friends here as far as we're aware,
so it's got to be a kidnapping, hasn't it? And so the police immediately instigate their set procedures
for abduction. DES THOMAS: Now this was a very difficult period. This was Christmas, so lots of people
on holiday, lots of people at home watching television. So do people want to welcome police
officers knocking on their doors on Christmas Day? KERRY DAYNES: think that this story had more resonance
with people, because it took place over the Christmas period. And we all start thinking about family, don't we?
And our connections. So I think that there was a real media interest in Céline that
went above and beyond what maybe we would normally have expected, because of that season.
NATASHA RIGLER: So being about 12 years old in December 1995, I do remember reports on the news of a girl going missing.
A French student. She was obviously a little bit older than me, but it was still a girl, and it was Christmas time
and nobody knew where she was. CANON PETER KERR: I first heard of Céline Figard on television,
radio. And so I sort of traced her across the country. And naturally, with two daughters of my own,
wondering I just hope that they find her all right. NATASHA RIGLER: There was a suggestion
that she'd been kidnapped, so it was quite scary at the time, really, to think that this girl was missing somewhere.
At the time it was obviously headline news, it was a big story. Her family were in France, they didn't know where she was.
KERRY DAYNES: father came to the UK on Boxing Day, and he doesn't speak a great amount of English.
So can you imagine how difficult this entire situation is for him? He's in this strange country, he's having to put his trust
and faith in the British police, and he doesn't know what conversations are taking place around him.
So it's just a time of incredible worry for him. [MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: I met Céline's father and her cousin.
Initially I don't think he wanted to believe that his daughter had been abducted.
The reason we asked him to participate in the appeal was to try and ease the pain for him,
but also to appeal to the public that it's a dad here whose daughter's missing. Most of you are fathers or mothers, you've all got kids.
You know, how would you feel in this position? Please help us. I think that was his appeal from his heart,
hoping that she was still alive. KERRY DAYNES: makes strategic sense to go public with this, because in appealing for information,
you have got thousands of sets of eyes looking for information wanting to help you.
And that is a great advantage to an investigation, but it's a double edged sword.
Because also, what happens is, you get flooded with information. Well-meaning people come forward and say, well
I think that I've seen Céline. Or I think that I've seen this van. Or I've seen somebody acting suspiciously.
So it can actually overwhelm an investigation as well. DES THOMAS: And the next stage is to rattle him.
It is to say, look, we're coming to get you mate. Return her. I mean, it's not the only case I've been involved
in where we've done that, and this has provoked irrational behavior. Because people they want to say they got away with it,
and the next thing you know, there's someone on television saying, we're coming to get you.
And people straight away report suspicious behavior. So we're actually asking the public to give
us the information we need. We'll process it, and we'll then make the world a bit safer than it was before.
For you. [MUSIC PLAYING] KERRY DAYNES: police not only want to speak to the public,
but they also want to speak directly to whoever has abducted and potentially killed Céline.
Now the strategy that they took, I don't know whether it was the best strategy, to be honest.
They were saying, we're coming for you, we're going to find you. They're essentially wanting to put the wind up this person.
Because they want him to act in a way that is reckless because he's anxious. They want him to make a mistake, or do something
to draw attention to himself. Now, they're taking quite a gamble there really. DES THOMAS: In this case, it worked.
People came forward initially with the photo fit and the lorry. You go and you have elimination factors.
If he ain't got ginger hair, and he ain't got a beard, and he ain't driving a Mercedes, straight away he's eliminated.
KERRY DAYNES: police sent out over 22,000 questionnaires to haulage companies and truck drivers
across the UK. They wanted to get as much information as possible. So the police made an awful lot of work for themselves.
And I think that it's indicative of just how desperate they were to find Céline.
This is a big, big story in the newspaper. They would want to reunite her with her family,
whether dead or alive. That would be really important to them. DES THOMAS: We only had about 100 police officers.
Probability was she'd be murdered, and that murderers don't usually carry the bodies of their victims around with them.
They usually dump them somewhere. And we researched all the likely places to preclude the possibility that the body was there.
[MUSIC PLAYING] I think it was the 27th of December, we had a joint Hampshire, Thames Valley search team come out.
Helicopters, and they searched this whole area down the A34 just to preclude the possibility that if she were murdered
and dumped quite close to here. And the only thing they found was a cigarette, which was a bit of a relief.
[MUSIC PLAYING] LINDA AITCHISON: Céline's body was discovered here on the 29th of December 1995 by a local businessman
who was driving past. And he pulled over possibly to address an issue with his windscreen.
So he pulled over from here, from the A449 onto this lay by. Obviously, really in the middle of nowhere.
And he was doing what he's doing, and he happened to glance this way into the ditch.
And he could actually see what later turned out to be a body. So the police closed off the road,
so on this side of the carriageway you just couldn't get past. Now in terms of being a reporter at that time,
your attention is triggered by. "what on earth is happening? Why is that road closed?"
But it was very soon, it was the very next day that the police were able to tell us
all about what was happening. DES THOMAS: We weren't sure if it was her body or not, which is a bit of a problem.
But In the end, it looked probably it was going to be her. KERRY DAYNES: police now have a murder
investigation on their hands. And that takes the pressure off them a little bit,
because they're no longer racing against time in the hope that Céline is going to be found alive.
But they want to find this man, and they want to convict him. DES THOMAS: You need to get the family
told before you got the news. So I had a couple of chaps in France, they were on their way
back. They were in Paris, they said, no problem, we'll do that. Anyway, they did it.
LINDA AITCHISON: It was December the 30th 1995, between Christmas and New year. And I would have been in the office
working as a news editor. And one of the reporters made the usual call. It turned into press conferences and things,
so that we were able to collate massive coverage at the time about the murder of Céline.
DES THOMAS: The body was next to a large oak tree. It's a prominent feature of the environment.
So I think it had been placed there deliberately, so whoever had done it could mark the spot.
And for some time up in that part of the country, they'd had a number of girls gone missing.
I think over a number of years it was 10 or something like that, who turned up murdered.
And the question initially was, is this Céline Figard's body, or is it somebody else's.
LINDA AITCHISON: It was dreadfully sad, and dreadfully scary to think that there could be
a serial killer on the loose. [POLICE SIRENS] After Céline's body had been discovered,
the police were able to establish I think very quickly through their forensic tests and so on, that
she'd been strangled. And that was a detail that they shared with us very early on as well.
My heart went out, not only to Céline's family, but also to the police. I know they're hardened to what they're working on,
but it just, we worked in conjunction with them to help them. And having to deal with such a sad, tragic, horrifying,
set of events, I think was difficult for everyone. [MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: The killer had taken all Céline's clothes off.
She was naked, he'd removed everything which in his mind could possibly be useful to the police.
The whole area was cordoned off. The forensic officers and search officers did the standard search for that sort of crime, which would
have been very, very detailed. And then the body was taken for a post-mortem examination.
From the post-mortem examination it indicated that she'd been bludgeoned with a heavy instrument, and she'd been strangled.
My personal interpretation was that she had been trying to escape, then hit over the head,
and then strangled to push her off. LINDA AITCHISON: There was a theory at the time that sadly
Céline could have been another victim of a suspected serial killer in the West Midlands.
There had been more than one young woman found murdered. The police at that time, were calling the Midlands Ripper.
NATASHA RIGLER: I think there were initial reports of a serial killer, which was
obviously really frightening. Because there was a lot of cases that they were kind
of linking it to at the start. And then her body was obviously found just outside of Worcester.
LINDA AITCHISON: The headline that we went under wasn't anything to do with a mystery
or identifying the young woman. It was literally, we're looking for this man. We're looking for the killer.
And the headline was manhunt. DES THOMAS: Bernard Figard came across on the 31st of December,
2 days after the body was found to visit the crime scene and to lay flowers at the crime scene.
Obviously to make his peace with the tragedy that overwhelmed him and his family.
REPORTER: In the slush and the ice beside a road hundreds of miles from home, Bernard Figard
remembered a daughter who should have been celebrating New year with her family tonight.
His simple tribute underlining a fresh plea for help. ANDREW HORN: I was going down into Worcester
to collect a friend of mine who'd just traveled up to meet us for Christmas, and I couldn't go down
the road because the whole of the dual carriageway was closed off. You just don't expect to hear about, or find about really.
But to see that Céline Figard's body was found in our parish, in a sort of a quiet village community, was a great
shock and surprise to us all. LINDA AITCHISON: The community in Worcester were deeply
saddened and shocked by the murder of Céline Figard, and the discovery of her body.
And it was a deep sense of shame that it was their community that had become her final resting place,
but in such a traumatic and violent way. And they very much wanted to pay their respects.
[MUSIC PLAYING] CANON PETER KERR: But the feeling I met in this village is that, "how can
somebody have left a body in our village? Particularly of a young girl." LINDA AITCHISON: They were really worried
that things would never be the same again to be living in that beautiful countryside,
quiet area. And it was just obviously a deep sense of shock, and mourning for a poor young woman
who had been found so far from home. ANDREW HORN: You drive past the site every day, pretty well.
I mean it's the main trunk road, if you like, from Worcester to Kidderminster. And as you drove by, there was always
flowers by the lay by there. LINDA AITCHISON: They kept Céline's name in the press.
There was a specific police spokesman whose job was only to deal with the press.
And we would have been on their backs all the time, pushing for new angles. And I think they did a good job of keeping it
in the public eye. [MUSIC PLAYING] KERRY DAYNES: you've got a girl who has been abducted
and killed by a complete stranger to her, you've got to start thinking, "well is this the work
of a serial killer?" And although the police would be looking at Céline's case in and of itself, that inquiry would be just about her murder.
They want to know whether it is linked to other murders, and whether or not they should be working in conjunction
with other police forces. [MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: On the 3rd of January, we had a meeting because of this link with the serial killer.
Because she might have been murdered by the serial killer, we decided to hand the job over to West Midlands Police.
And from my perspective, I was a bit reluctant. But we couldn't really conduct inquiries up there
from our base in Southampton. [MUSIC PLAYING] KERRY DAYNES: body was found just off a major roadway,
which certainly fits in with the theory that the police have got that Céline has been
abducted by a lorry driver. NATASHA RIGLER: There was a manhunt after Céline's body was found.
It was in the National newspapers saying that they were looking for lorry drivers.
They, I think, had narrowed it down to a specific Mercedes lorry that they were looking for.
And they were potentially even gonna DNA test lorry drivers to try and track down
the person that had done this. LINDA AITCHISON: Now what you have to bear in mind
is, back in '95, '96, this wasn't often reported on. I think it was a relatively new technology.
And we did a full page on, "Science may hold the key to this murder." And what they said was, they were
going to get DNA tests from around 1,200 different truck drivers. And I remember thinking, "My goodness, that's quite an ask.
That's quite a big task." But they were determined to do it. [MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: We very quickly had a phone call from the managing
director of Mercedes, UK, who said "Our database is available to you." And there's a lot of that, there were only a limited number
of lorries of that description. And also, you have the particular mark of a lorry with the thermal store refrigerated unit.
So it's only a question of time and working through the details before you can actually pin it down to a specific driver,
and specific location. DAVID FARRER QC: The obtaining of DNA samples from I think,
over 1,000 lorry drivers, none of which in fact produced initially any connection with Céline.
LINDA AITCHISON: There was a Crime Watch appeal towards the end of January 1996.
We watched it to report on it. In early February, after the Crime Watch program had been shown, not surprisingly the police
got a steady influx of calls. And very interestingly, in a major breakthrough, what actually happened was around I think,
five different people actually contacted the police to say that there were links with, or possible connections
with somebody that they knew. A lorry driver called Stewart Morgan. [MUSIC PLAYING]
KERRY DAYNES: at this point Morgan does make the mistake that the police were hoping that he would.
Because he's worried, all of these sets of eyes are looking for him. This is a huge, huge story in the press.
He tries to change his appearance. He shaves off his beard. Now his work colleagues were already suspicious of him,
but this made them even more so. And so they started ringing the police, and giving them tip offs.
DES THOMAS: Morgan must have seen himself on television, and he didn't come forward.
And if he'd been innocent, the first thing he would have done in my view, was to turn up the nearest police station
and say, "Look, you're looking for me." But of course, he didn't do that. KERRY DAYNES: the 4th of January,
still there are no major leads. And so the police decide to go public with a piece of information that could be key.
And that is the fact that Céline was traveling with two bottles of very rare French champagne.
DAVID FARRER QC: And in fact, Stuart Morgan gave one of the two bottles to as I recall, a woman who
worked in the garage which he frequently filled up at in Southampton. And the lady working at the garage
calls the police to pay a call on Morgan. And when they did so, they found items of her possessions.
And they also uncovered a bloodstained mattress from I think a garage at the back of his house.
[MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: Morgan was arrested. I think his name was already in the database.
It's just a question of processing all the stuff. And I mean, the evidence against him was overwhelming,
but he protested innocence. DAVID FARRER QC: He, when asked about the blood standing
on the mattress, told a story about a man who'd been involved some considerable time before in a traffic accident, to whom
Morgan had given a lift at a time when the man's leg was badly gashed as a result of the crash.
NATASHA RIGLER: When Stuart was arrested, it was really, really frightening to think
that he just lived over there. Just sort of 100 yards from my sister's house. And we found out about it, it was in the local paper,
but obviously everyone around here kind of knew what was going on. This house was searched by police.
[MUSIC PLAYING] DAVID FARRER QC: Searching his house revealed evidence that he'd stolen from her.
Forensic evidence from the post-mortem revealed DNA, which connected him to the murder.
It was only some time after they had arrested Stewart Morgan that they obtained a DNA sample from him,
which of course created the critical link between him and her. And in fact, caused him to change his story completely.
He having begun by alleging she'd never been anywhere near his lorry. [MUSIC PLAYING]
LINDA AITCHISON: Céline was believed to have been murdered on December the 19, 1995.
And just a month later, as the police investigation was still getting underway, her funeral was held
in France in a tiny village. [MUSIC PLAYING] Unsurprisingly, the streets were just packed
with people wanting to pay their respects, and wanting to listen. She was only 19 years old.
Of course, all funerals are sad, and when we lose loved ones we ache for them. But the loss of a 19-year-old daughter
was particularly hard hitting for people. [MUSIC PLAYING] KERRY DAYNES: police arrest Stewart Morgan at his home,
and his story is that he's never met Céline. "No governor, it wasn't me. I wasn't there.
I don't know her." But that story very quickly began to break down. LINDA AITCHISON: After Stewart Morgan was arrested,
and under the sort of rules of what we were allowed to report, because it didn't have any bearing on the case.
We were able to report with information from the police about Stewart Morgan, the man.
He did have a criminal past, but only minor stuff. And certainly nothing suggesting any sort
of assault or any sexual element to his crime. So we were able to include in the newspaper
that he was a lorry driver from Poole in Dorset. We were able to say I think, what company
you worked for, and so on. Photos then of course, also came out of Stuart Morgan.
DES THOMAS: He was in and out the docks I think, about eight times over the Christmas period
with Selena's body in the cab. He took the damaged stuff out of the cab, and put it in his shed.
[MUSIC PLAYING] NATASHA RIGLER: As news came out, we discovered that Stewart and we're
going to parked his cab off on the side road over the Christmas period. And it's the exact same place we parked our car when we came
on Christmas Day, completely unaware that his lorry was also parked there. He'd parked it there because it was
too big to fit up his driveway, so it did kind of stand out. But then we later discovered that poor Céline's body had
been in the cab the entire time over Christmas Day, and we were totally unaware of it.
It's really, really sickening, and frightening, and horrible to think that he'd left
the body of a young woman parked in the cab of his lorry on Christmas Day. [MUSIC PLAYING]
DAVID FARRER QC: The trial took place at Shire Hall, it was the Crown Court. It began on the 2nd of October.
Céline's parents came over for the trial with a nun from a local convent who spoke some English, because neither
of them spoke English. As far as I was concerned at that time, I had far more contact with them than I would
normally have expected to have had with the parents of a victim. And for the only time in my life,
I translated my opening into French and provided it to them in advance, so that they could understand basically what the prosecution
case was going to be about. KERRY DAYNES: Morgan on the stand saying, "No, I absolutely deny that I had anything
to do with Céline's murder." He's decided that he is pleading not guilty. DAVID FARRER QC: His defense was going
to be that he'd given Céline lift, and they'd had consensual sex. And he'd simply dropped her off in Southampton,
perfectly hale and hearty. The fact that he had lied consistently about never having met her until DNA proved the contrary.
The telltale removal of the fuses from his tachograph. The blood, albeit unidentified blood, but the presence
of any blood on the mattress. [MUSIC PLAYING] KERRY DAYNES: Farrer, who is prosecuting,
decides to do something that is really quite shocking. And I'm sure that he must have thought about this in great
detail, because members of Céline's family would have been there. But he decides that he's going to bring
the blood stained mattress actually into the court. This is going to be far more impactful than just
showing a photograph of it. DAVID FARRER QC: I think probably two others as well.
The production of the mattress would be a fairly devastating answer to Morgan's claim.
I left the position of Céline's parents who'd shown throughout this, extraordinary courage in facing
up to evidence in that case. But I said to them, I really strongly advise you to stay away from court while this is done.
It will be very, very distressing. But her father, perfectly courteously said, "No,
thank you, but we shall be there. We'll see it, and we'll see it." And they sat through it without a sound.
Without any sign of upset or anything like that. It was quite extraordinarily stoical.
The jury could see it very clearly, and you could see the effect it had upon them.
[MUSIC PLAYING] DES THOMAS: Really significant things were the people who identified Morgan
were able to do the photo fits. The lobby expert who knew the mark of the Mercedes.
Mercedes, UK, who had made their database available. I mean, from that moment, we couldn't lose.
We could trace everybody who had a lorry of that sort in the UK, and eliminate them.
And then the rest, they say, is history. A completely meaningless and useless murder, robbing a young girl of at least 70 years of life.
It's a tragedy if nothing else, is it? DAVID FARRER QC: Morgan came across to me
as a very cold individual. He was clearly in a difficult position, giving evidence.
Because he had some fairly damaging pieces of evidence to explain away. But I don't think he did himself any favors
in the way he came across. He seemed to lack any degree of human warmth, as I remember.
DES THOMAS: I think the jury, from memory, took three hours to convict him. And he was sent to prison.
For what it's worth, my personal view is that he murdered her shortly after he kidnapped her.
Because I think he was a pretty violent individual. [MUSIC PLAYING] NATASHA RIGLER: Stuart had been sentenced to 20 years in prison
for what he'd done to Céline. Looking back, I mean, he would have done his time by now.
Thankfully, he's not been released, yeah. I don't think for what he did to that poor girl who was just
on our way to spend Christmas with her family, completely innocent, I just don't
think that that was really long enough of a sentence. [MUSIC PLAYING] LINDA AITCHISON: At the time that
Céline Figard went missing, she'd been hitchhiking. And a really sad, upsetting, feature of the case
is that her dad actually said, had he known that she was hitchhiking, there is no way
he would have let her go. BERNARD FIGARD: Let us forget Morgan, but remember Céline.
[MUSIC PLAYING] ANDREW HORN: The people of Worcester, because everyone was sort of shocked about what had happened,
decided to raise some money, raise a fund to support the family. And people just kept on contributing.
They wanted to raise a Memorial as much as anything else. Fundraisers and people of Worcester
eventually decided upon the site for the Memorial garden here in the church. On the 16th of June in 1997 there was a memorial service
that took place here in St Andrew's church, and the family were here, along with some
of the police officers. [MUSIC PLAYING] The church here was packed to, you know,
it holds about 500 people. And I think every seat was taken, really. It was nice really for this garden
to be here for the Figar family to have something to latch onto. And I know that Bernard came over
here every year for I think, the first five years to the garden. [MUSIC PLAYING]
The fact that they found who it was and he's still in prison now, then I think, "yes, that is justice."
But nothing brings their daughter back. NATASHA RIGLER: I feel really sad for Céline's family.
I mean, I was 12 at the time, she was 19. And her parents have missed out, they've had their daughter
snatched away from them. And they've missed out on all those years. It's really tragic to think that, you know,
I've lived all these years, and she hasn't been able to. DES THOMAS: She's a young girl with a whole life ahead of her.
She studied accountancy, and it's all been robbed. It's all so pointless, isn't it?
I mean the term nonsense criminal sums it up. It's a crime that has no profit in it
apart from the gratification of the individual who did it. You feel angry about it, but I mean, what can you do?
Unfortunately there are these people in the world aren't there? [MUSIC PLAYING]

EPISODE 9 – CÉLINE FIGARD

In December 1995, 19-year-old French hitchhiker Céline Figard is trying to get to her cousins home in the United Kingdom so they can celebrate Christmas together. When she can’t find a route there, she accepts a ride from a truck driver and is never seen again. Even 25 plus years later, tales of women being endangered while traveling alone are still as relevant as ever. Like and subscribe for more episodes and please share your thoughts about Celine’s episode in the comments below. Murdered At First Sight is a true crime documentary series that tells the first-hand stories of the most complex and hard-to-solve homicide cases: murders committed by strangers.

Brief Summary

Céline Figard, a French student, was murdered in 1995 after hitchhiking in the UK, leading to a high-profile investigation and trial.

Key points

Céline Figard Goes Missing. A French student disappears while hitchhiking in England, raising alarms about foul play.
The Investigation Intensifies. As the investigation unfolds, police face mounting pressure to find Céline's abductor.
Body Discovered. Céline's body is found, leading to a murder investigation.
Céline Figard's Tragic Murder. Céline Figard was found murdered, leading to a manhunt for her killer.
The Community's Mourning. The murder of Céline Figard deeply shocked the Worcester community, leading to a memorial.
The Arrest of Stewart Morgan. Stewart Morgan was arrested after evidence linked him to Céline's murder.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It was obviously headline news.

Natasha Rigler remembers the impact of the case on the public.

0:41WatchNov 17, 2022

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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