‘Weird man’ seen at death hostel

A STUDENT spoke yesterday of the “weird” man who appeared in a youth hostel on the night Caroline Dickinson was raped and murdered as she slept.

Amy White, now a 21-year-old student, was a fellow Launceston College pupil on the trip to Brittany in July 1996. She was sleeping in a dormitory opposite Caroline.

Yesterday she told the trial of the man accused of killing Caroline about the encounter with the "evil" stranger as she and two classmates went to the toilet in the youth hostel in Pleine-Fougeres.

The man was aged about 30-40 with long straggly hair and looked very unkempt with "distinctive bushy eyebrows", she said.

Just after the murder, she identified the accused man, Francisco Arce Montes, from photos provided by police. Yesterday she was asked in court if she would describe the eyebrows of the man in the dock as "bushy".

Ms White turned and stared at the accused man and replied: "Yes."

"A lot went on. I was very young, but I remember seeing the photo and I remember recognising Montes the sheer glare of the man. He looked as evil in the papers as he did that night."

It was when Ms White and her two friends got up to go to the toilet some time between midnight and 2am that they encountered the man on the stairs.

"He said something ... and then he sniggered quietly to himself and went down the stairs away from us. We carried on to the toilet."