Michel Fourniret, nicknamed “the ogre of the Ardennes”, was convicted in 2008 of the murders of eight young women or teenagers between 1987 and 2018 and sentenced twice to life imprisonment. Died this Monday in Paris, he was still indicted as part of the investigation into the death of four other young girls.
The death of serial killer Michel Fourniret, 79, has dashed the hopes of several families of missing to see him appear in court. The septuagenarian, who was already serving two life sentences for the murder of eight young women and girls, died Monday afternoon at Pitié-Salpêtrière in Paris.
His death therefore occurs before the end of the investigations into the disappearances of Estelle Mouzin and three young women between 1988 and 2003. But these investigations will continue, before a possible trial of his ex-wife and accomplice Monique Olivier. The Parisian examining magistrate Sabine Khéris, she remains in charge of the judicial information which brings together these four cases and which is coming to an end.
Noting his health and his declining memory for two years, the families of these victims still hoped to see him appear at the assizes. They were counting on the truth of the hearing to obtain answers, while the defendant’s lawyers question the reliability of his confessions of the last two years, given the deterioration of his mental faculties. Despite dozens of hours of questioning by Judge Khéris, Michel Fourniret had only delivered partial confessions, alternating lies and false leads.
· Where is Estelle Mouzin buried?
The serial killer confessed in March 2020 his responsibility in the death of Estelle Mouzin, a 9-year-old girl kidnapped and killed in 2003 in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne) before the Parisian examining magistrate Sabine Khéris, who has resumed investigations in 2019.
Despite these confessions and details provided by the killer’s ex-wife, Monique Olivier, the little girl’s body has still not been found during the various series of recent excavations that have been carried out in the Ardennes.
The body of Marie-Angèle Domece never found
Michel Fourniret was also indicted in the files of Marie-Angèle Domece and Joanna Parrish, two young women, one of whom had disappeared and the other had been killed in the early 90s. In February 2018, the serial killer was confessed, acknowledging having “crossed paths” with the two young women and having killed them. “He made a detailed and reiterated confession,” said Didier Seban, the lawyer for the Parrish family.
The body of Joanna Parrish, an English assistant of British nationality in a secondary school in Auxerre, was found in May 1990 in Moneteau, in Yonne. The young woman was naked and the autopsy had revealed that she had been raped and beaten before her death. Marie-Angèle Domece was a young mentally handicapped girl, who had disappeared on July 8, 1988 in Yonne, at the age of 19. His body has never been found. Michel Fourniret was not tried for these two murders.
DNA traces linked to Lydie Logé discovered
Since December 2020, Michel Fourniret had been indicted for “kidnapping and forcible confinement followed by death” as part of the investigation into the disappearance of Lydie Logé, a 29-year-old young woman who went missing in 1993 in Orne, and whose the body was never found.
While two investigations, from 1994 to 1998 and then from 2004 to 2009, had resulted in dismissals, the investigations were relaunched in 2018 after connections established between the DNA traces from organic compounds found in Michel Fourniret’s van and the DNA of Lydie Logé’s mother. The serial killer was also not tried in this case.
Other unresolved cases
Michel Fourniret was first convicted three times in 1967, 1984 and 1987 for a dozen sexual assaults. Then on his release from prison in 1987, he moved in with Monique Olivier, his third wife, met in detention by classified ad and whom he made his accomplice. Their team ended in 2003, when Michel Fourniret was arrested in Belgium after a failed kidnapping.
In 2004 and 2005, Monique Olivier cracked and revealed to investigators eleven murders, including seven committed between 1987 and 2001. In 2008, Michel Fourniret was sentenced to irreducible life before being sentenced again ten years later in 2018 for the assassination of Farida Hammiche, whose body has never been found. By his own confession, he “had to hunt at least two virgins a year.” An obsession that would have arisen from the fact that his first wife, whom he thought was a virgin, was not at the time of their marriage.
In addition, investigators are working on a series of other unresolved cases in which the “Ogre des Ardennes” could be involved, in particular by analyzing DNA traces taken in particular from a mattress seized in 2003 in the house of the deceased sister. by Fourniret.
