Next week marks the harrowing, 25th anniversary of the death of French student, Celine Figard, whose body was found in a copse, near to the layby in Worcester.

It was a crime that shocked the county and the nation, not least because of the callous way Celine's body was dumped, ten full days after her murder.

It was a cold, unwelcome fact which ended all hope of a better outcome, following intensive police investigations and appeals over the Christmas period.

Trucker Stuart Morgan savagely raped then beat to death the teenage hitch-hiker and dumped her body ten days later. He had picked up the 19-year-old French student, Celine Figard, at a service station on the M4 in Berkshire on December 19 in 1995.

Following the police appeal for information as to her whereabouts and police investigations, her body was discovered on December 29, 1995 at a lay-by on the A449 in Hawford, Worcestershire. A post-mortem examination determined she had been strangled and bludgeoned to death.

The heartless killer had hid her remains so that he could enjoy Christmas with his family but, 10 days after killing her, he dumped Celine's naked body at the lay-by.

Morgan, who was from Parkestone, Dorset, was convicted of her murder in October 1996 and was ordered to serve a minimum of 20 years behind bars.

An appeal in February 1998 was rejected by the Court of Appeal, and in 2009 the High Court turned down his application for a review of the length of his sentence. He became eligible for parole in February 2016.

At his trial, Morgan insisted that he had consensual sex with Celine before dropping her off 'alive and well' in Southampton.

But the judge said that, until confronted with DNA evidence, Morgan had "denied any knowledge of her" in police interviews.

He insists that, even if he did murder the teenager, the crime was not sexually motivated.

But the judge told him: "The only sensible inference is that the killing of Miss Figard did involve a sexual element.

"To conclude otherwise would be to accept that she may have been prepared to have consensual sexual intercourse with a 36-year-old lorry driver who she had never met before."

In France, the Figard family, were reported to be haunted by Celine's murder, five years after her body was found, and they called for killer Morgan's confession as to why he killed the 19-year-old after raping her in his cab.

But given that Morgan proclaims his innocence, that crumb of comfort is unlikely to be offered to them.

Figard is buried in the French village of Scey-sur-Saône-et-Saint-Albin, Haute-Saône.