An American woman studying in Russia, who went missing four days ago, has been found dead and a man has been detained on suspicion of her murder ,Russian police said Saturday.
An investigation had been underway for Catherine Serou, a 34 year-old graduate student and former Marine, afterwards she disappeared on Tuesday in Nizhny Novgorod, a city about 250 kilometers from Moscow and where she had been studying in a college.
Serou went missing after leaving her house in Bor, a suburb of the city, Tuesday day and getting into an unidentified vehicle, Russia’s Investigative Committee, which handles serious offenses, said in an announcement on its site.
Serou’s body was found on Saturday, police said following a large-scale search
A local guy born in 1977 and convicted of multiple serious crimes has been arrested on suspicion of abducting and murdering her, according to police.
He’s cooperating with the investigation, they said.
Serou had registered in a law masters at Nizhny Novgorod’s Lobachevsky University in the autumn of 2019, her mum Beccy Serou told NPR in an interview this week by Mississippi where the elder Serou lives.
She advised NPR her daughter had sent her a text message on Tuesday evening just before she vanished, saying she had been at a car with a stranger.
“It states:’In a car with a stranger.” I hope I am not being abducted.’
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She said her daughter was in a rush to get to a practice where a payment had not gone through and so had perhaps jumped into a passing automobile without needing an Uber to arrive.
“I think that when she saw the person wasn’t driving to the practice, but instead was driving right into a woods, she panicked,” said Beccy Serou. “Her phone last pinged off a mobile tower in that forest.”
Local volunteer groups had posted missing men finds appealing for sightings of all Serou.
A decision on charges and pre-trial detention will be made in the near future, the Investigative Committee stated in the statement.