She accepted a lift from a lorry driver at Chieveley services on the M4 in Chieveley , Berkshire , on 19 December, but never arrived at her destination.
Following an appeal for information on her whereabouts and police enquiries, her body was discovered on 29 December, at a lay-by on the A in Hawford , Worcestershire. A post-mortem examination determined she had been strangled and bludgeoned to death. The case received extensive news coverage in the UK around the Christmas and New Year period, amid fears that it could be linked to a series of killings around the English Midlands , which police called the work of a " Midlands Ripper ".
The murder investigation included the UK's first national DNA screening programme in the hunt for a murder suspect, covering over 5, people. Stuart William Morgan, a year-old lorry driver from Poole , Dorset , was arrested in February after a colleague recognised his image from a photofit. Morgan was later charged with Figard's murder, and convicted in October. Detectives concluded that after raping, strangling and bludgeoning her, he carried her body in his vehicle for ten days over the Christmas period before dumping it.
Morgan was given a life sentence , with a recommendation to serve at least twenty years. An appeal in February was rejected by the Court of Appeal , and in the High Court turned down his application for a review of the length of his sentence.
He became eligible for parole in February , and has continued to maintain his innocence. He remains imprisoned at HM Prison Frankland as of , having had his most recent application for parole rejected earlier in the year. In the UK, she is remembered in a memorial garden established at a church in the Worcestershire village of Ombersley , close to where her body was discovered. She developed a fondness for the United Kingdom following a visit and travelled there repeatedly.
