Story By: Michael Leidig, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News

A Romanian lorry driver suspected of being a serial rapist has been extradited to Austria to go on trial this month over the murder of a French student in January 2014.

The lorry driver, identified only as Catalin C. because of local privacy laws, has already been jailed for life without the possibility of parole by a court in Freiburg in Germany after he admitted hitting a female jogger over the head with a schnapps bottle.

The 27-year-old victim was then raped and murdered, before her corpse was hidden in a wooded area surrounded by vineyards near the small town of Endingen in November 2016.

It was days before her body was discovered and a manhunt was launched in a bid to find the attacker.

The 43-year-old lorry driver has now been sent to Austria to stand trial for the killing of the French student after prosecutors in Innsbruck filed a murder charge in June 2018.

He allegedly admitted the murder of the 20-year-old French student from Lyon, named in local media as Lucile K., while undergoing psychiatric evaluation. Her body was found on the bank of the river Inns after a search started by her friends who had reported her missing.

The murder weapon was a metal bar used to remove wheel nuts from lorries, which set police on the trail of a possible lorry driver as the killer. It was recovered from the nearby river during a search by police for clues.

The suspect was eventually arrested in 2017 based on an analysis of lorry movement data from border crossings in and around Kufstein, and then a saliva test was a match with DNA evidence found at the scene of both murders.

He is currently in custody in Austria awaiting trial on 24th March.

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