Story By: James King, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Newsflash

A Russian man has been charged over the killing of an American law student whom the police say he picked up at the side of the road and raped and murdered after offering her a lift.

Police who arrested Aleksey Popov say that he had spotted American student Catherine Serou, 34, hitchhiking and offered to give her a lift.

But he then took her to a deserted, wooded area where he robbed her, raped her and then killed her by stabbing her twice in the neck. She died instantly.

Serou, who was a student from the US, had moved to Russia in 2019 and was studying law at the Lobachevsky University graduate school in the city of Nizhny Novgorod.

She had recently had breast enlargement surgery in the hope that it would improve her love life. However, she disappeared after driving off in a car with a man following her surgery at around 9:00 PM on 15th June this year.

Before disappearing, Serou sent one last message to her mum, which read: “I’m in the car with a stranger. I hope I haven’t been kidnapped.”

Cops say Aleksey Popov, 44, was arrested after the woman’s dead body was found in the Gorodetsky district of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast.

Security officials detained the suspect, who was a local resident previously convicted for “similar offences”, according to local media outlet Life.

He claimed that he was tortured into confessing, which conflicts with the fact that police say he had shown them where the body was buried.

The man filed a complaint against law enforcement for “torture and forcing him to incriminate himself” at the time.

Serou’s body was cremated in Russia and the urn with her ashes was sent to New Orleans, in the US state of Louisiana, where she was buried in the family grave with her grandmother.