DNA 'very similar' to murder samples

RENNES, France -- French police investigating the murder of a British schoolgirl say DNA samples taken from a prime suspect held in the U.S. were "very similar" to those taken from the crime scene.

Yves Boiven, assistant public prosecutor in Rennes, said on Saturday there were "very important similarities" with traces taken in Pleine-Fougeres where Caroline Dickinson was killed.

DNA samples from Spanish waiter Francisco Arce Montez were flown to France from the Florida where he is being held on suspicion of sex offences.

Boiven said the French judicial authorities want to talk to "the person held in Florida" and to follow up investigations concerning him, but he refused to publicly name Montez.

He said police wanted to talk to the suspect in France, but he would not comment on whether or when a formal extradition application would be made.

The initial test results were made public at a press conference in the Bretagne town of Rennes.

At a news conference in Launceston, Cornwall, Caroline's father John Dickinson described the news from France as a "fantastic breakthrough."

He said: "After nearly five years of searching it looks as if we have been able to make progress in the investigation into Caroline's death."

Fighting back emotion, he went on: "We have never lost hope. This was such a horrendous crime it could not go unpunished. We would never have given up hope.

"It is a fantastic fact it has happened, absolutely brilliant."

He praised the vigilance of US immigration service official Tommy Ontko, who began investigations into Montez in relation to Caroline, saying: "I would like to shake his hand."

Caroline, 13, was raped and suffocated as she slept with friends in a hostel in Pleine-Fougeres in Brittany while on a school trip to France in July 1996.

Montez, 51, was named by police in France as one of their suspects and the Spanish-born restaurant worker is wanted in connection with a series of assaults on teenage girls in hostels in the Loire Valley, 200 miles from where Caroline was killed.

He was arrested in Florida last month but his possible link to the crime was only realised by alert immigration Ontko who had read about the schoolgirl's murder while on holiday in Britain.

Boiven said: "There exists sufficient proof to authorise a request for this person to be brought on to French soil.

"I must remind you that every person suspected remains innocent and at this stage any impartial tribunal cannot make a declaration of guilt."

He added: "This is the result of more than four years of work by French police. The long inquiry carried out by French police after the murder and rape committed during the night of 17th and 18th July 1996 on Caroline Dickinson led to a large number of genetic tests which were the result of a very long and detailed inquiry which led investigators and the expert in charge of the affair to investigate a very large number of people.

"Until today, none of these tests gave any significant similarities with the genetic traces taken from the scene of the crime.

"A certain number of people were still being looked for in order to verify where they were on the night of the murder.

"Among these was the man taken in for questioning by the American authorities in Florida and who since March 1999 has been on the Schengen wanted list (an area of co-operation between EU police forces)."

Montez has refused to co-operate with prosecutors in Miami.

His lawyer Connie Alter said he would not be co-operating with prosecutors in his trial on charges of breaking into a woman's house and committing a lewd act.

"My client will be exercising his constitutional right to silence," said Alter.

She could not comment on how this would affect the investigation into Caroline's murder. At last week's inquest into Caroline's death, coroner Edward Carlyon said it was "every parent's worst nightmare."

DNA results on murder suspect due
April 14, 2001

French Ministry of Justice
Miami Beach Police Department

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