Interpol identifies 'Woman in Pink' after 20 years

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LYON - A woman nicknamed "The Woman in Pink" after her body was found in Spain two decades ago has finally been identified, Interpol said Thursday.

The case is the latest to be solved by the international police organisation's cold cases campaign "Identify Me", created in 2023 and tasked with identifying women who were found dead across Europe in recent decades, murdered or in suspicious circumstances.

The woman was named as Liudmila Zavada, a Russian national, Interpol said.

She was found dead in 2005 by a road in Viladecans, Spain, close to Barcelona, dressed in a pink floral top, pink trousers, and pink shoes, and had been dead for less than 24 hours.

Police believed the body had been moved in the 12 hours prior to discovery, suggesting foul play. But her identity remained a mystery.

Last year Spanish police, having no new leads, handed the case to the Identify Me campaign, which Interpol coordinates in collaboration with Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain.

A breakthrough in the recent case came this year when police in Turkey ran the woman's fingerprints through a national biometric database, resulting in a match with Zavada, aged 31 at the time of her death.

The match was subsequently confirmed through kinship DNA analysis using the DNA of one of her close relatives.

"After 20 years, an unknown woman has been given back her name," said Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza in a statement.

The case is the third success for the Identify Me appeal.

In 2023 it led to the identification of Rita Roberts, a British woman who was found murdered in Antwerp in 1992, thanks to relatives recognising her tattoo.

Earlier this year, 33-year-old Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima was identified when Paraguayan authorities matched fingerprints uploaded by Spain against their own national databases.

The Identify Me campaign is still trying to solve 44 cases of unidentified women.