Caroline killer `struck in 1993'

THE KILLER of Caroline Dickinson, the 13-year-old who was murdered in France in July 1996, may have raped another girl three years earlier, it was disclosed yesterday.

A second photofit was released yesterday of the suspected serial rapist.

Caroline was raped and smothered in a hostel bedroom in Pleine Fougeres, Brittany, while on a trip with Launceston Community College, Cornwall.

The latest photofit released by French police is of a man with long dark hair, a flat nose and bushy eyebrows. It was based on descriptions given by a French teenager who was raped at knifepoint in Nancy, eastern France, in May 1993, three years before Caroline was killed.

The victim contacted the police after seeing a photofit of a suspect released by French police in February this year, prepared from sightings near the hostel in the days before the Brittany murder. "The woman recognised the photokit categorically as that of her attacker," said Patrick Duchamp of Nancy police.

The original photofit, of an unshaven, bushy eyebrowed man with long, untidy hair, attracted more than 1,000 calls to the French police. A police spokesman in Nancy appealed for anyone who recognised the second photofit to get in touch with them.