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.

[5][6] Figard 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.

[5] After leaving home on Monday, 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 English Channel the following day,[8][9] arriving in Ashford, Kent.

She intended to travel to Fordingbridge by train; her escort found another French lorry driver, Roger Bouvier, who was willing to take her to Chieveley Services near Newbury, Berkshire.

[16] On the morning of Friday, 29 December, the naked body of a young woman was found dumped at a lay-by on the A449 near the Worcestershire village of Hawford by a motorist who had stopped to change a windscreen wiper.

[17] Police sought to establish her identity, but were sure it was not that of Louise Smith, an 18-year-old clerical assistant who had vanished early on Christmas Day after attending a nightclub at Yate, Gloucestershire.

One of five children of John and Julianne Morgan, he was raised in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where his father was employed as a council foreman and his mother – a refugee from the former East Germany – worked as a school cleaner.

After attending Croydon Polytechnic to train as a plumber and heating engineer, he established a plumbing business in the Tunbridge Wells area.

Morgan initially denied meeting her, but after he was picked out at an identity parade, he claimed he and Figard had met and engaged in consensual sex.

[12] Evidence was presented by the prosecution to suggest that Morgan continued to use the vehicle while Figard's body lay in the cab, and that the lorry was parked outside his house over the Christmas period.

Farrer said Morgan bought a spade, axe and hacksaw with the intention of dismembering the body, but changed his mind, instead making an overnight delivery run to dispose of it.

[29] He claimed her photographs and other belongings were in his possession because she had left them in his truck,[28] and the mattress had become stained with blood because a man had lain on it after gashing his leg while the vehicle was on loan to another driver in 1994.

[5] On 16 October, a jury took three and a half hours to convict Morgan of Figard's murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that the Home Secretary should decide his parole eligibility.

[10] In January 2009, Morgan appealed again under paragraph 3 of Schedule 22 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to the High Court of England and Wales requesting a review of the minimum term recommendation.

A hearing at the High Court on 26 January was told that under the terms of his sentence, Morgan would be eligible for parole from February, but had continued to maintain his innocence throughout his time in prison, claiming to be in a "Catch-22" situation where he could not qualify for release without admitting his guilt.

[30] In June 2022, the French newspaper L'Est Républicain reported that Morgan was still imprisoned and had seen another application for release rejected earlier in the year.

A memorial garden dedicated to Figard was planted at St Andrew's Church in the village of Ombersley, Worcestershire, close to where her body was found, and opened at a ceremony in June 1997.

[35] The garden also remembers other victims of violent crime, including Joanna Parrish and Caroline Dickinson, two English students who were murdered in France.

On 29 December 2000, the fifth anniversary of the date Figard's body was recovered, the local newspaper, the Worcester News reported that an annual service of remembrance was held for her at the church during the autumn, attended by her parents.