A woman whose body was found on a Spanish road 20 years ago was identified after an international police campaign.
Russian citizen Ludmira Zavada was found in a Villadecan wearing a pink top, pink pants and pink shoes on July 3, 2005 in a Villadecan near Barcelona, wearing a pink top, pink pants and pink shoes, the world police agency said in a statement Thursday.
She had died within 24 hours at the time, but Spanish police said the cause of death was suspected as it was suggested that her body had been moved 12 hours before it was found.
After failing to identify the bodies, Spanish police, launched in 2023, aimed to identify more than 40 women who have died in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain over the past decades.
As part of the campaign, Interpol shared biometric records of cases with 196 member countries, showing matching fingerprints held in the national database of Turkey.
The match with Zavada, who was 31 at the time of her death, was later confirmed through DNA analysis, including one of her close relatives, Interpol said.
“Twenty years later, an unknown woman has returned her name. Each successful identification card brings new hope to the family and friends of the missing person and creates new leads for investigators.”
“Through global cooperation and by bringing together police around the world, we are helping more families find the answers they’ve been waiting for.”
This is the third successful case resolved by the Identify Me campaign.
The first involved a British woman named Rita Roberts, who was murdered in Antwerp, Belgium in 1992. Roberts’ family recognized her tattoo after seeing media coverage of the campaign.
The second involves Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima, a 33-year-old woman from Paraguay, whose body was found on a Spanish farm in 2018.
