Fingerprints identify Paraguayan woman seven years after death

Each successful identification “gives renewed hope” that other women “can also have their identities returned to them”, said Interpol Secretary General Valdecy Urquiza.

“Our work is not just about solving cases, it’s also about restoring dignity to victims and giving a voice to those affected by tragedy,” he said.

Lima was found dead in a poultry shed attached to a farmhouse in Spain’s Girona province in August 2018.

She was not carrying any identification documents, and the people living in the farmhouse and other local residents said they did not know who she was. Police said she had a tattoo of the word “success” in Hebrew.

Last year, she was added to the Operation Identify Me campaign, which has seen Interpol “black notices” – seeking information about unidentified bodies – released to the public for the first time.

Earlier this month, a breakthrough came when Paraguayan authorities matched fingerprints uploaded by Spain to the black notice against ones on their own national database.

Lima’s brother told police that she had travelled to Spain in 2013. He reported her missing to Paraguayan authorities in 2019 after several months without contact.

While Lima has now been identified, Interpol said the circumstances around her death remain “unexplained”.

The woman previously identified through the campaign was 31-year-old Rita Roberts from Wales.

The last contact her family had with her was a postcard from Belgium in May 1992. Her body was found the following month.

Her family spotted her distinctive black rose tattoo in a BBC report about the launch of the Operation Identify Me campaign in 2023.

The campaign is seeking to find the identities of another 45 women found dead in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy and Spain. The majority of them are murder victims, believed to be aged between 15 and 30.

Interpol said increased global migration and human trafficking has led to more people being reported missing outside their countries, which can make identifying bodies more challenging.

Details of each case have been published on Interpol’s website, along with photographs of possible identifying items and facial reconstructions.