THE brother of a York backpacker who was murdered in Australia 19 years ago has written a book about how her family came to terms with the tragedy and how she inspired them to create a charity.

Former Huntington School and York College student Caroline Stuttle died in Bundaberg, Queensland, in April 2002 when she was thrown from a bridge by drug addict Ian Previte. He was later jailed for life but released last year after serving 15 years.

Caroline’s Rainbow Foundation was set up by her family after her death to help keep backpackers safe when travelling.

Now her brother Richard has written ‘Chasing Rainbows - The stolen future of Caroline Ann Stuttle,’ to show how her life and death "touched the world and inspired people to live their best lives", said publisher Vanguard Press, adding: "It’s a must-read for all would-be travellers and parents of gap year students.”

Richard said: “I wanted the book to not only talk about Caroline, and educate people on travel safely, but to give a true account of what it was like to go travelling and be a backpacker, but also about dealing with long term grief and how that affects you and affects life.”

He said writing the book had been a cathartic process for him in dealing with his grief.

“It details what happened. I was in the French Alps at the time and getting back to the UK, dealing with that initial devastation of ‘Oh my God, my sister has gone, she’s been murdered in Australia,’ and how we dealt with that as a family and how I started to deal with that as an individual.

“It’s also about Caroline, the wonderful person she was, the enthusiasm she had for life. We thought that her energy, her passion for life was too strong for us to just let that fade away so we started the charity.

“We wanted to help people, as Caroline would help people in her life. We wanted them to travel safely and wanted them to explore the world, and hopefully help prevent people go through the tragedy we were going through.”

l Chasing Rainbows, costing £17.99, is available from bookshops and from www.pegasuspublishers.com.