A man serving life in Germany for raping and killing a 25-year-old woman, and who lived for years in a quiet street in Swindon, is to be questioned about the murder of an English student in France 17 years ago.

The body of Joanna Parrish, 20, from Gloucestershire, was found in a river in Auxerre, Burgundy, in 1990. She had been raped, tortured and strangled.

Police in Auxerre are to question Ulrich Münstermann, 49, after DNA evidence linked him to another unsolved sex murder in the area shortly before Ms Parrish was killed.

Münstermann spent several years living in Swindon, where he worked as a television repair-man. He came to Britain in 1986 after completing a jail sentence in Germany for two sex crimes. He was arrested in Swindon six years later for two more sex crimes and spent three more years in jail in Germany before returning to Swindon.

He was jailed in 2004 after DNA linked him to the murder of Karen Oehme, who was found raped and strangled in a field in Dulman, Germany, in 1983. The 25-year-old victim was the daughter of Wolfgang Oehme, chairman of the oil giant Esso in Hamburg.

The woman raped and murdered near Auxerre a year before Ms Parrish was 24-year-old Sylvie Baton. DNA found on her bed linen is alleged to have been matched to samples taken from Münstermann.

At the time Ms Parrish’s parents joined forces with Ms Baton’s family as they appealed for information about their daughters’ deaths.

Gerald Rudge, a retired journalist, who lives in Burgundy and has followed the investigation into Ms Parrish’s murder, said: “There has been a significant development with a new suspect being questioned by police in Auxerre. Münstermann was in the area at the time and he will be brought to Auxerre under guard for questioning.”

He added: “Police have already linked him to Sylvie Baton’s murder after DNA analysis.”

Another suspect, the self-confessed serial killer Michel Fourniret, could yet stand trial for Ms Parrish’s rape and murder. Fourniret, 64, became the No 1 suspect after he was convicted of raping and murdering a number of young women in France and Belgium.

However, although he has confessed to other crimes, the forest ranger has denied killing Ms Parrish.

A French police source said that the authorities have never been convinced that Fourniret was her killer.

“Joanna was murdered after she placed an advertisement in the local paper offering English lessons,” she said. “A man responded to the advertisement, a meeting was arranged and Joanna was never seen alive again.

“Fourniret was an opportunist killer and this was just not his style. The only evidence was his wife’s confession that she was present when Fourniret killed Joanna, but it is thought that she only said this to get a lesser sentence.”

Fourniret’s wife had been charged as his accomplice in the murders.

Roger Parrish, Joanna’s 61-year-old father, from Newnham on Severn, said: “There is a new suspect in this case but we cannot see any precise connection at the moment.

“We do know this man was in the area and after Jo’s murder we did link up with the parents of Sylvie Baton appealing for information.”

Ms Parrish, a former pupil of Ribston Hall High School for Girls, in Gloucester, was in France as part of her Leeds University French degree course.

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