Woman in 20-year-old cold case identified as Russian citizen

Liudmila Zavada was identified as part of a campaign by global police agency Interpol. (Interpol via CNN Newsource)

A woman whose body was found by a road in Spain two decades ago has been identified following an international police campaign.

Russian citizen Liudmila Zavada was discovered on 3 July 2005 in Viladecans, near Barcelona, dressed in a pink top, pink trousers and pink shoes, said global police agency Interpol in a statement Thursday.

She had been dead for less than 24 hours at the time, and Spanish police said the cause of death was suspicious as evidence suggested her body had been moved in the 12 hours prior to it being discovered.

After failing to identify the remains, Spanish police submitted the case to Interpol’s Identify Me campaign, which was launched in 2023 and aims to identify more than 40 women found dead in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain in recent decades.

As part of the campaign, Interpol shared biometric records of the cases with its 196 member countries, which turned up a match with fingerprints held in Turkey’s national database.

The match with Zavada, who was 31 when she died, was then confirmed through DNA analysis involving one of her close relatives, said Interpol.

“After 20 years, an unknown woman has been given back her name. Each successful identification brings fresh hope to the families and friends of missing persons and creates new leads for investigators,” said Interpol secretary general Valdecy Urquiza in the statement.

“Through global cooperation and by connecting police around the world, we’re helping more families find the answers they’ve been waiting for.”

This is the third successful case solved 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 involved Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima, a 33-year-old woman from Paraguay whose body was found in a shed on a farm in Spain in 2018.