A woman nicknamed “The Woman in Pink”, whose body was discovered in Spain two decades ago, has finally been identified, Interpol announced on Thursday.
The breakthrough marks the latest success of Interpol’s “Identify Me” campaign, launched in 2023 to identify women found dead across Europe in previous decades, often victims of murder or suspicious deaths.
Interpol confirmed the woman as Liudmila Zavada, a Russian national.
Spanish authorities discovered her body in 2005 beside a road in Viladecans, near Barcelona. She was wearing a pink floral top, pink trousers, and pink shoes, and investigators determined she had died less than 24 hours earlier.
Police believed the body had been moved within 12 hours of discovery, indicating possible foul play. Despite years of investigation, her identity remained unknown.
With no new leads, Spanish police referred the case to the “Identify Me” project last year. A breakthrough came when Turkish police ran her fingerprints through their national biometric database, producing a match with Zavada, who was 31 at the time of her death.
Authorities later confirmed the match through kinship DNA analysis using a sample from one of her close relatives.
“After 20 years, an unknown woman has been given back her name,” Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza said in a statement.
This case marks the third success of the Identify Me initiative.
In 2023, the project identified Rita Roberts, a British woman murdered in Antwerp in 1992, after her relatives recognised her tattoo. Earlier this year, 33-year-old Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima was identified when Paraguayan authorities matched fingerprints submitted by Spanish police with their own database.
The Identify Me campaign continues to investigate 44 unsolved cases involving unidentified women.