Caroline suspect's murder trial

Caroline Dickinson was staying in a youth hostel in Brittany

A Spanish man is to stand trial for the rape and murder of Cornish schoolgirl Caroline Dickinson seven years ago.

Francisco Arce Montes, who was arrested in Florida, will appear in court in the French town of Rennes.

No date has yet been set for the trial, but court sources say it is likely to take place in spring 2004.

Caroline,13, was killed while on a school trip from Launceston in July 1996.

She was sexually assaulted and suffocated in her dormitory at a youth hostel in the Brittany town of Pleine-Fougeres.

Arce Montes, 52, was arrested in Miami in March 2001 after allegedly breaking into a woman's bedroom and committing a lewd act.

But state authorities there decided to drop the case against him in order to facilitate his extradition to France.

He was extradited in November 2001 and placed under investigation for Caroline's murder, and has since been in custody in a prison in Rennes.

The investigation in the Dickinson case was apparently at a dead end in 2001 after more than 3,500 DNA tests had failed to reveal the culprit.

But it was kick-started by a remarkable coincidence.

A US police officer on holiday in Europe read an account of the Dickinson case and made the connection with the arrest in Florida of Arce Montes, a former waiter.