THE first anyone living  in the small hamlet of Hawford knew that anything was up was the clatter of rotor blades and the noise of the engine as a police helicopter hovered overhead, shattering the silence on a bitterly cold January 1 in 1996. Then it descended from the leaden sky and landed in a field alongside the dual track A449 between Worcester and Ombersley.

Anyone, that was, except a local businessman who had pulled into a layby on the northbound carriageway half an hour or so before to fix a broken windscreen wiper and spotted the naked body of a girl in undergrowth a few yards off the road. He immediately drove home and rang 999.

Soon the layby was cordoned off as detectives and forensic experts arrived. The nationwide hunt for missing French student Celine Figard had ended in a Worcestershire wood. Her cousin, with whom Celine should have been spending Christmas, travelled up from Hampshire to confirm identity. The 19-year-old had been raped and strangled.

Celine’s disappearance had been making national headlines since she was last seen getting into the cab of a white Mercedes lorry at Chieveley services on the M4 on December 19.

The teenager from the little farming village of Ferrieres-les-Scey, south east of Paris, was supposed to be hitching a lift to Salisbury, where she would catch a train to meet her cousin at a hotel in Fordingbridge. But she never arrived. Tragically, Celine had climbed into the cab of a killer.

The murder hunt was led by Det Ch Supt John McCammont, head of West Mercia CID,  a no-nonsense, old school copper and straight talking Scotsman, who learned his trade in The Met under the legendary 'Old Grey Fox', Scotland Yard’s Commander Bert Wickstead.

There were two obvious lines of enquiry. First the Mercedes truck, which was pulling a Thermo King refrigeration unit. Its driver was described as aged between 30-35 with short fair hair and a short cropped beard, but no moustache. Second, two bottles of Pascal Chretien champagne, which had been given to Celine in France, but were not sold in England. She was carrying them to give to her cousin and they were not with her body when it was found. Who had them?

British murder squads joined forces and a 100-strong team of detectives was assigned to the case, including 40 from West Mercia. They were tasked with tracking down the owners and drivers of more than 4,000 Mercedes lorries matching the description of the one seen at Chieveley services and whether Celine’s killing was linked with a series of girls being given lifts in lorries or vans and their bodies dumped roadside.

It ultimately became one of the largest enquiries West Mercia has ever been involved in, with more than 22,500 questionnaires sent to hauliers across the UK and many thousand DNA tests carried out on drivers. The public response was encouraging and the net was already tightening by the time the case was featured on the BBC programme Crimewatch towards the end of January. The broadcast swamped  the police incident room with nearly 600 callers coming forward with information.

Crucially two people named the same suspect and it was not long before detectives were knocking on the door of Stuart Morgan, a 36-years-old family man of Bournemouth Road, Parkstone, Poole in Dorset. The reaction from neighbours who knew him was almost unanimous. They described Morgan as a “friendly, decent working man”, a “really lovely man” and “not the sort of man to be involved in something like this”. Ironically one of the comments came from a petrol pump attendant to whom Morgan had given one of Celine’s distinctive bottles of champagne. Little did the neighbours know that police had found some of Celine’s belongings in Morgan’s garage, a blood stained bunk mattress which had been in his lorry cab and droplets of blood sprayed around the inside of the cab.

Morgan first appeared before Redditch Magistrates on February 21 and his murder trial began at Worcester Crown Court on October 2, 1996. The prosecution claimed that after killing Celine, Morgan carried her body in his cab for two days while he drove around the country. He then left her in his cab during the Christmas holidays and afterwards set off again before dumping the body as he drove along the A449 – a long way from where he had picked Celine up and even farther from where he lived.

The trial laid bare Morgan’s tangled domestic life. He had three children by two wives and for several years, while married to his second wife, kept a “second home” up in Lancashire where he had another woman. He also freely admitted picking up numerous girl hitchhikers and having “consensual” sex with them over many years.

The court heard that shortly after Celine’s disappearance Morgan shaved off his beard and enquired about the cost of a new bunk bed for his lorry cab – a highly unusual request in the industry. He had also refused to voluntarily give a blood sample for DNA analysis.

Prosecuting counsel David Farrer QC described Morgan’s defence as “a story that defied truth, common sense and on many occasions common decency in equal measure. It was like a rotten plank that crumbles wherever you touched it.”

After a four-and-a-half hour retirement the jury returned a unanimous guilty verdict and Mr Justice Latham jailed Morgan for life.

But that was not the last the world heard of Stuart Morgan. From his prison cell and without his defence lawyer’s knowledge, he launched a DIY appeal. It failed. He became a prolific letter writer, on occasions sending them to this newspaper. None were published.

On his retirement in 1997 Det Ch Supt John McCammont was asked for his opinion of Stuart Morgan. “I never spoke to the guy,” he replied. “The actual contact was down to other officers. He writes to me though. Quite often. Always complaining about something.”