Schoolgirl killer's conviction upheld

The man convicted of the murder of British schoolgirl Caroline Dickinson in France failed in his appeal against his murder conviction today.

Francisco Arce Montes was found guilty last year of raping and murdering the shy and quiet 13-year-old in a youth hostel in Pleine Fougeres in Brittany in July 1996.

Today his 30-year sentence was upheld at the Cour d’Assises in San Brieuc.

Montes spent his life drifting from country to country stalking young girls in youth hostels and had a preference for children aged between 12 and 15.

He travelled throughout Europe preying on children in Britain, Holland, France and Spain, and served three years of a five-year sentence for raping two girls in Germany between 1985 and 1988.

On the night Caroline died, Montes had first made an unsuccessful assault on another English girl who was staying at a hostel in St Lunaire.

Disturbed in the attack by classmates, Montes then drove to Pleine Fougeres, high on a cocktail of anti-depressant tablets and alcohol.

He attacked Caroline as she lay on a mattress in a room she was sharing with four other girls, covering her face so her cries could not be heard.

The “brutal and violent” attack lasted two minutes.

Despite the lengthy investigation into Caroline’s death, it was a keen-eyed US immigrations officer who ended the five-year manhunt for her killer.

Unbeknown to European police, Montes had fled an upcoming Spanish sex trial to the United States.

There his obsession with sexually preying on young women led to his arrest for Caroline’s murder.

Detroit airport-based Tommy Ontko tapped the Spaniard’s details into a database after seeing him named by French authorities in a week-old UK newspaper as a suspect in the Caroline case.

Montes’s photograph was published in the newspaper at the time of the UK inquest in April 2001 into Caroline’s death.

Just three weeks before, Montes had been arrested in Miami, Florida, for breaking into a youth hostel and committing a lewd act in a female dormitory.

Mr Ontko called Interpol and the French police in Brittany, and after DNA tests he was extradited to stand trial in France.

After the trial, Caroline’s father flew to the United States to thank Mr Ontko personally.