The former wife of a late French serial killer was sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday for her role in the decades-long rape and murder of two young women and the disappearance of a nine-year-old girl, according to media reports.
Monique Olivier, 75, was on trial in France for her role in the 1990 rape and murder of 20-year-old Joanna Parrish, a British student whose body was found in the Yonne River, and 18-year-old Marie-Angèle Domèce in 1988 , the BBC reported.
She was also accused of helping to kidnap nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin in 2003. The girl's body was never found.
“I regret everything I have done and I ask the victims’ families for forgiveness, although I know this is unforgivable,” Olivier told the court.
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Monique Olivier, 75, in the defendant's box during a trial against her now deceased ex-husband Michel Fourniret, nicknamed the “Ogre of the Ardennes”. Olivier was recently convicted for her involvement in her husband's crimes against young girls and women. (ean-Pierre REY/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
Olivier's ex-husband Michel Fourniret, nicknamed the “Ogre of the Ardennes”, died before he could be tried for the murders. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2008 for the murders of seven girls and young women between 1987 and 2001. In total, he confessed to eleven murders before his death.
Most of the victims were aged between 9 and 30, the BBC report said. Fourniret died in 2021. Olivier was already serving a life sentence for her role in her dead husband's previous crimes.
“Her presence alone would have won the trust of all the victims who never believed that a woman could be involved in such a horrific and depraved act,” said Parrish's father, Roger Parrish.
Earlier this month, Olivier told a French court that she was sitting in the front seat of the couple's car when her husband got into the back seat to kill and rape Parrish.
Frenchman Michel Fourniret sits in a car after being questioned by investigators in Dinant on June 30, 2004. Fourniret, a French forest guard and convicted rapist, confessed to raping and killing six girls. He died in 2021.
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“Like a coward, I don't do anything, I hear her screaming a little, but I don't intervene,” she testified, CBS News reported. “It's fear, panic, [I am] “Not able to do anything at all,” she said.