French prosecutors said Friday they had requested a new murder trial for serial killer Francis Heaulme over a killing committed in 1989.
Heaulme, 67, has been in jail since 1992 and was convicted of 11 homicides.
A court dropped an earlier attempt to try him for the 1989 murder of farmer Jean-Joseph Clement, who had his skull bashed in by a rock in the southeastern region of Vaucluse.
But prosecutors who reopened the file at France’s cold-case unit said they now wanted to go to trial.
Heaulme’s lawyer did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.
“This is an important step in the battle Mrs Clement has been fighting to find out what happened to her father and bring Francis Heaulme to trial,” said Didier Seban, a lawyer for the victim’s daughter.
He added that he hoped Heaulme would be “in a fit state to stand trial”.
The cold cases unit said in early April that Heaulme was in hospital, though they gave no further details about his health.
Heaulme, active between 1984 and 1992, travelled across France seemingly without a plan, killing on impulse at moments when he later said he “saw red”.
Dubbed the “Criminal Backpacker” by the media, Heaulme’s victims included lone women, pensioners and children.
He is most infamous for the 1986 murders of two children who were also beaten to death with rocks.
The bodies of the two boys were found abandoned by a railway line.
Heaulme’s conviction and life sentence for the children’s murders was only finalised in 2020 after a last appeal was rejected.
He is serving his sentence in a jail in eastern France that also houses notorious murderer Nordahl Lelandais and Dominique Pelicot, who allowed dozens of men to rape his drugged wife over a decade.
