Selene Faggard was nineteen years old, a French woman from the quiet town of Besançon near the Swiss border, when she set out on December 18, 1995, to spend Christmas with her cousin in Britain. Her father was a farmer, and she had grown up in a close family with two brothers and a sister. Years earlier, a visit to Britain had captured her imagination, and she had been planning to move there to work in the hotel industry. On this trip, the French rail network was disrupted by the season, so her parents arranged for a family friend, a truck driver making a delivery to England, to take her part of the way.

He dropped her off in Folkestone, where a second French trucker agreed to carry her to a truck stop near Newbury. From there, she planned to reach her cousin’s hotel in Fordingbridge by evening. By nightfall, her parents had heard nothing. They waited, growing anxious, until a call finally came.

It was not Selene. Her cousin was on the line, asking whether her plans had changed. She had never arrived. With no other options, the family contacted the police.

French authorities alerted their British counterparts, and an investigation began. The first two drivers were located and confirmed their parts in the journey. The second driver told police that Selene had tried to call her cousin from a pay phone around 4:30 p. m.

but could not get through. He offered to find her another ride, asking truckers at the lot if anyone was heading toward Salisbury, a short drive from her cousin’s town. The first man he asked declined. The second agreed.

He was around thirty-five, with short blond hair and a beard, driving a white Mercedes truck. The driver who handed her over later said something about the man had unsettled him. But Selene had no other choice, and she went with him. That was the last time anyone saw her alive.

The third driver, however, could not be identified. The witness did not remember his license plate, only the white Mercedes and the physical description. Police created a composite sketch and distributed it through the media. The case quickly drew attention in both Britain and France.

It was days before Christmas, and the disappearance of a young woman during the holiday struck a nerve. There was also a darker fear: over the previous two years, several young women had been murdered in the same region, and police suspected a single killer was responsible. A large-scale search was launched. More than a hundred officers were assigned, joined by helicopters and an airplane scanning the ground.

They focused on the route the third driver might have taken. Nothing was found. The first week passed with no leads. Public appeals brought a flood of calls, but one by one, they dead-ended.

Then, on the morning of December 29, a man driving near Worcester stopped to adjust his windshield wipers. Walking along the roadside, he noticed something partially covered by snow. He went closer and saw it was a human body. He rushed home and called police.

The body was that of a young woman, but it could not be identified at first. There was an early theory that it might be a local woman who had disappeared after leaving a nightclub, but that was quickly ruled out. The next day, December 30, the body was confirmed to be Selene’s. Her cousin was brought in to make the identification, sparing her parents that task.

The location of the body was telling. The highway where she was found was almost in the opposite direction from where she had been heading. Police grew more certain that the third driver was responsible. Selene’s clothing and personal belongings were missing, and none were found near the scene.

The autopsy showed bruises and abrasions from heavy blows, signs of strangulation, and evidence of sexual assault, though no biological material from the perpetrator was recovered. One detail stood out. Examiners believed her body had been left by the roadside only about twenty-four hours before it was found. Eleven days had passed since her disappearance.

Police speculated that the killer may have kept her alive for much of that time, or carried her body along with him. The second driver had mentioned that the suspect’s truck was equipped with an industrial freezer, which raised the possibility that the body had been preserved in cold storage for days. There were no solid leads on the driver’s identity until a conversation with Selene’s parents revealed a small but unusual detail. She had been carrying two bottles of a specific French champagne as Christmas gifts.

The brand was not sold in Britain, making those bottles unique in the country. Police released information about the bottles alongside photos of identical ones, hoping the killer might have shown them or given them to someone. That lead also went nowhere. With no other options, investigators took an unprecedented step.

In early January, they launched the first mass DNA collection in British history, focusing on drivers of Mercedes trucks and similar vehicles. Over the course of more than a month, they tested more than five thousand drivers. Most cooperated willingly. A few refused, and those individuals were flagged for further scrutiny.

In mid-February, a tip finally caught the investigators’ attention. A man called police after seeing the suspect’s sketch on the news. He said it looked strikingly similar to a co-worker: a thirty-six-year-old truck driver named Stuart Little, who drove a Mercedes truck with a refrigeration unit. Detectives looked into Stuart’s background.

He had a criminal record, though only for non-violent offenses. They approached him carefully and asked for a DNA sample, presenting it as part of the routine mass screening. Stuart refused, which deepened their suspicions. After several more attempts, he agreed.

The moment his DNA was in hand, police secured a warrant to search his truck. They found traces of blood on the mattress in the sleeping area and elsewhere in the cab. Testing confirmed it was Selene’s blood. That was enough for an arrest.

A search of Stuart’s house turned up more. In his garage, investigators found Selene’s personal belongings. They also noticed something odd about his tachograph, the device required by law to record driving hours. On the day Selene’s body was dumped, Stuart had deliberately concealed information about his movements, and a suspicious gap appeared in his log after he resumed work.

During his first interrogation, Stuart denied any involvement, claiming he had never picked up Selene. But when the other driver identified him in a lineup, Stuart changed his story. He admitted to giving her a ride, said they had consensual intercourse, and claimed she had simply forgotten her belongings when he dropped her off. The investigators did not believe him.

They kept digging and found a witness who had seen Stuart the day before the body was discovered, near a warehouse about fifty miles away. He had been starting a fire next to his truck, apparently burning something. When confronted, Stuart said he was warming up his truck brakes, which he claimed had frozen. Officers searched the area and found Selene’s underwear under a fence, stained with her blood.

Piecing the evidence together, investigators reconstructed a likely timeline. Stuart picked her up, drove to a secluded area, assaulted her, and killed her. The blood evidence in his truck suggested he kept her body on the lower bunk of his cab for ten days, continuing his deliveries as if nothing had happened. A week after the murder, he went home to celebrate Christmas with his wife and children while the body lay just yards away in his truck.

Receipts showed he had purchased a shovel, an axe, and a saw, but for some reason he abandoned any plan for dismemberment and simply left the body by the roadside. There were other troubling details. The day after Christmas, Stuart gave an acquaintance the two bottles of French champagne. He claimed he had bought them from another truck driver.

Investigators did not believe him. He had also worn a beard for years, but shaved it off entirely just as the suspect’s sketch was appearing in the news. The reason Selene’s calls to her cousin had failed was also explained: Britain had recently changed its phone codes, and she had dialed an outdated number from her notebook. For Stuart’s family, friends, and co-workers, the revelations were a shock.

He had seemed like a devoted family man. Many refused to believe he was involved until the evidence became impossible to ignore. His trial began in October of that year. Despite the weight of evidence, he stuck to his story and denied everything.

The jury deliberated briefly and unanimously found him guilty of murder. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after at least twenty years. He appealed, claiming media attention had biased the jury, but the court rejected that. He tried again in 2006, and again he was denied.

In 2016, Stuart became eligible for parole. The request was denied. He still refused to admit to the crime and maintained his innocence, and the judge voiced concerns that he remained a danger to society. He remains in prison.

Stuart Little was ruled out as a suspect in the other murders in the area. Those crimes were eventually linked to another truck driver, arrested in late 1997. Investigators suspected that Selene might not have been Stuart’s only victim, but after years of searching, no evidence has ever connected him to any other crime.