The widow of a French serial killer who sought out virgins to rape and murder will stand trial from Tuesday for her role in three murders dating back several decades, including the murder of a British woman whose body was found in a river in 1990.
Monique Olivier was married to Michel Fourniret, who was accused of kidnapping, rape and murder in the cases, but died in 2021 at the age of 79 before he could stand trial.
The crimes date back to 1988 in the case of Marie-Angele Domece, who disappeared from Auxerre at the age of 18, and to 1990 in the case of 20-year-old British woman Joanna Parrish, whose naked body was found in the Yonne River. which flows through the department has the same name in central France.
Olivier is accused of complicity in the kidnapping and murder of the girls.
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Her third charge relates to complicity in the 2003 disappearance of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, whose body was never found two decades later despite an intensive search.
French gendarmes control access to the excavation site in Issancourt-et-Rumel, northern France, on October 11, 2022, as part of a new search campaign for the body of Estelle Mouzin, alleged victim of serial killer Michel Fourniret in 2003. FRANCOIS NASCIMBENI/AFP via Getty Images
Domece’s body was never found either.
All of Fourniret’s victims – most of whom were raped – were shot, strangled or stabbed, the BBC reported. Most were killed in the Ardennes region of northern France and Belgium.
Many of the witnesses to be called in the three-week trial are investigators from France and Belgium, where Fourniret was arrested in 2003.
Sabine Kheris, the investigating judge who accepted Fourniret’s confession, is said to be one of them.
She now heads a recently created cold case unit based in the Paris suburb of Nanterre. This case is the first to come to trial for the unit.
The “Ogre of the Ardennes”
France has for years been both repulsed and fascinated by the crimes of Fourniret, dubbed the “Ogre of the Ardennes” by the media after the hilly region on the French-Belgian border where he lived and preyed on his victims.
File photos from 2008 show Monique Olivier (left) and her husband Michel Fourniret, who were convicted of preying on young virgins to rape and kill in crimes in France and Belgium from 1987 to 2003. AP photo
The trial is “the result of a very long battle,” said Didier Seban, a lawyer representing Estelle’s father Eric.
The fact that Fourniret never stood trial for the crimes shows that “we failed to conduct the investigation as it should have been,” Seban said.
Fourniret himself asked to be tried in all three cases in 2008, but “nothing was done,” said Monique Herrmann, a lawyer for Domece’s family.
The trial against Olivier alone was “a little short-changed” for Eric Mouzin, who has devoted all his energy to finding out what happened to his daughter.
“It will be difficult to reach a verdict with just one defendant,” he said, even though Olivier himself is accused of “significant” crimes.
He also hopes for nothing from the defendant herself, other than that she will be sentenced “according to the seriousness of the crime.”
Olivier’s lawyer, Richard Delgenes, said the court should not expect “any revelations” from her but that her “involvement” in the proceedings distinguished her from her husband.
“Unlike him, she takes no particular pleasure in the pain of his victims or their families,” he added.
The 75-year-old has already been convicted twice for aiding and abetting some of her husband’s crimes.
She fled her violent first husband, with whom she had two children, in the early 1980s before becoming a pen pal with Fourniret while he was serving a prison sentence for rape.
The two made a pact that if he killed her then-husband, she would get him virgins to rape – which he never did.
They lived together after he was released in 1987 – buying a castle with stolen gold unearthed from a cemetery – and had a son together.
Olivier received a life sentence in 2008 for her role in four murders and a rape by Fourniret.
In 2018, Olivier was sentenced to an additional 20 years in prison for her role in the murder of Farida Hammiche, the wife of one of Fourniret’s former cellmates.
In 2019, she revoked her husband’s alibi for the day Estelle Mouzin disappeared, leading him to admit responsibility months later.
Fourniret had previously admitted to killing Parrish and Domece.
“I am the only one responsible for their fate… If these people had never crossed my path, they would still be alive,” he told investigators.
Olivier said in 2020 that her husband kidnapped, raped and killed Mouzin, with a fragment of his DNA found on a mattress confiscated from the couple’s home in 2003.
And in 2021 she admitted for the first time her own role in the case, saying she was with her husband when he buried the girl’s body near a forest in the Ardennes.
Who were the victims?
The BBC reported that the couple’s first victim was 17-year-old Isabelle Laville.
In 1987, Olivier drove her van to Laville as she was walking home from school, told the student she was lost and persuaded her to sit in the vehicle to help give her directions, the BBC reported . They later stopped to pick up Fourniret, who eventually raped and murdered the teenager, the BBC reported.
Jean-Pierre Laville, father of Isabelle, Michel Fourniret’s first victim, on March 11, 2008 in Mulhouse, France. Pool DEMANGE/MARCHI/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
For 16 years, the pair worked together to kidnap and murder at least eight girls and young women, the BBC reported. They were finally stopped in 2003 when a 13-year-old girl Fourniret tried to kidnap managed to escape, leading to his and Olivier’s arrest.
The BBC reported that Fourniret’s known victims were Isabelle Laville, Fabienne Leroy, Jeanne-Marie Desramault, Elisabeth Brichet, Natacha Danais, Céline Saison, Mananya Thumphong, Farida Hammiche, Marie-Angèle Domèce, Joanna Parrish and Estelle Mouzin.