DNA results on murder suspect due

PARIS, France -- The results of DNA tests carried out in France on samples taken from a leading suspect in the murder case of British schoolgirl Caroline Dickinson are due to be announced.

Investigators are believed to be planning to announce the results of the tests at a press conference in the French town of Rennes at 2200 local time (2100 BST) on Saturday.

French investigators have returned from the U.S. with DNA samples taken from Spanish-born suspect Francisco Montez.

Yves Boiven, Assistant Public Prosecutor in Rennes, said the samples were being analysed in French laboratories as a matter of urgency.

"We have to be patient and not get too excited, though this is obviously a very important development," he said.

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

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

Caroline, 13, from Bodmin in Cornwall, 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.

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.

U.S. DNA tests have so far shown "a close match" between Montez and samples taken at the scene of Caroline's murder.

If the French tests confirm the match, the judge will ask for the extradition of Montez to be charged with the crime.

He can only be sent to France if a request for extradition is made by the French authorities, said Patricia Mancha of the Immigration and Naturalisation Authority in Miami.

French lawyer Herve Rouzaud-le-Boeuf, who represents Caroline's father John Dickinson, said Montez's name had first appeared in the inquiry as a suspect in 1997.

"He is not a new figure at all," he said. "He is a very old suspect."

He said when Judge Reynaud van Ruymbeke took over the case in August 1997, he ordered all youth hostel directors in France to be interviewed about any incidents.

"On the basis of that he pinpointed 80 names of people who had been involved in incidents of sexual assault in youth hostels in France," said Rouzaud-le-Beouf.

He said Montez had never been seen near Pleine-Fougeres, but was named as being involved in a sexual assault in a youth hostel in the Loire.

"He is only a suspect as a result of the efficient and brilliant methods of M Ruymbeke," said Rouzaud-le-Boeuf.

But he said it had not been possible until very recently to trace him.

"He is a Spaniard who had lived in London and Germany and was a very itinerant sort of person," he said.

John Dickinson is said to be "reasonably excited and hopeful but he is remaining rational and cautious."

At last week's inquest into Caroline's death, coroner Edward Carlyon said it was "every parent's worst nightmare."

Miami Beach Police Department
French Ministry of Justice

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