After 20 Years, 'the Woman in Pink' Has a Name

After two decades, authorities have identified a woman whose body was discovered beside a roadside near Barcelona, Spain. Once known only as "the woman in pink" for her color-matched shirt, pants, and shoes, she's been identified as Liudmila Zavada, a 31-year-old Russian citizen, believed to have died a day before her body was found on July 3, 2005. Her case is the latest to be solved under Operation Identify Me, an Interpol-led initiative launched in 2023 to put names to unidentified women found dead under suspicious circumstances across Europe. The breakthrough came after Interpol shared the woman's fingerprints with international police forces, leading Turkish authorities to match them to their records, per the BBC. Zavada's identity was then confirmed through DNA from a close relative.

Operation Identify Me has now resolved three long-standing cases. The first was Rita Roberts, a Welsh woman murdered in Belgium in 1992, whose family recognized a tattoo shown in a news report. Another was Ainoha Izaga Ibieta Lima from Paraguay, found dead in Spain under unclear circumstances. Interpol says the project is a response to increased cross-border migration and trafficking, which complicates missing person investigations. Interpol notes that women are especially vulnerable to gender-based violence, which is reflected in the list of 44 still-unidentified women—the oldest case dating back to 1982, per the Guardian. Most are thought to be murder victims between the ages of 15 and 30. Zavada's identification is seen as progress, but investigations into her death and others continue.