Missing US woman found dead in Russia
June 19, 2021
A 34-year old United States citizen who had been in Russia studying has been found dead after she went missing on Tuesday, local investigators said Saturday.
Russia's state Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal probe into the disappearance of "a foreign citizen," adding that authorities had arrested a man in his early 40s over her death.
Catherine Serou had been studying law at a university in the Nizhny Novgorod region, 420 kilometers (260 miles) east of Moscow, according to Russia's RIA news agency.
She arrived in Russia from California three years ago, RIA reported.
What we know about Catherine Serou's disappearance
According to an Investigative Committee statement, the woman's whereabouts had been unknown since she left home on June 15 and got into a vehicle.
"Today, as a result of a large-scale search operation, the girl's body was discovered," the Investigative Committee said in a statement, without naming her.
Her last communication before going missing was with her mother just after 6:30 p.m. local time (1530 UTC) on Tuesday, telling her that she was traveling in a car with unknown people, investigators said.
Serou's Mississippi-based mother told US public radio station NPR that her daughter had sent her a final text on Tuesday evening saying: "In a car with a stranger. I hope I'm not being abducted."
Beccy Serou said her daughter had been in a rush to return to a clinic where a payment had not gone through and so may have hitched a ride with a passing car.
Catherine Serou was a former US Marine who had done a tour in Afghanistan. She had planned on returning to the US after her studies to pursue a career as an immigration lawyer, according to her mother and media reports.
fb/jlw (AFP, Reuters)