How Monique Olivier put investigators on the trail of Michel Fourniret in the three cases for which she is being tried

This time, she will be alone in the dock. Monique Olivier was already sentenced in 2008, alongside Michel Fourniret, to life imprisonment for her participation in four of the murders of the man who was still her husband, from whom she divorced in 2010. The “ogre of the Ardennes” is died in May 2021 and the one who assisted him in his criminal itinerary will therefore answer questions from the Nanterre Assize Court (Hauts-de-Seine) in his absence, from Tuesday November 28.

At 75, she appears for complicity in the kidnapping, rape and murder of Marie-Angèle Domèce in 1988, but also Joanna Parrish in 1990, and for complicity in the kidnapping of Estelle Mouzin in 2003. The bodies ofEstelle Mouzin and Marie-Angèle Domèce have never been found, despite several excavation campaigns.

These three cases, which remained unresolved for a long time, were resolved by the “cold cases” unit of the Nanterre court. Today, the families are impatiently awaiting this trial, after decades of legal wanderings.

Businesses over thirty years old

To trace the thread of the Domèce and Parrish affairs, we must go back more than thirty years, to the very end of the 1980s. On July 8, 1988, Marie-Angèle Domèce, a young woman of 19, disappeared after leaving the home for young girls where she lived, in Auxerre (Yonne), to reach the station and find her nanny a few kilometers away. Less than a year later, the body of Joanna Parrish was found on May 17, 1990 floating in the Yonne, in Monéteau, about a hundred meters from Marie-Angèle’s home. This young 20-year-old British woman, who worked as an English assistant in a high school in Auxerre, was beaten, raped and strangled.

For many years, French justice provided no response to the families of the two victims. Their cases saw no real progress, in a department then tormented by numerous disappearances of young womendont Isabelle Lavilledisappeared in December 1987. We learned much later that this 17-year-old girl was the first victim killed by Michel Fourniret. “At the time, nothing was happening in Yonne, no disappearance of a young woman would be successfully followed up in the department”explained Didier Seban, today lawyer for some of the victims’ families, to West France.

A track known since 2005

In these two files, the link with Michel Fourniret emerged more than a decade later, when the serial killer was arrested in June 2003 in Belgium, after the failed kidnapping of a teenage girl. For a year, and after more than a hundred interrogations, the Belgian police relentlessly questioned his then wife, Monique Olivier, without succeeding in getting her to admit anything. But in June 2004, in a spectacular turnaround, she confessed to a series of nine crimes committed by her husband, in which she admitted having had an active participation.

In June 2005, following further interrogation, she also accused him of the rape and murder of two other young women. She says that in 1988, the year of the disappearance of Marie-Angèle Domèce, her husband “had spotted a young girl of 18 or 19 years old, blonde, with a round face” whom he kidnapped while she was walking on a road in Auxerre, according to the indictment order, consulted by franceinfo. To give the victim confidence, Monique Olivier, then seven months pregnant with their son Selim, claimed that she was in the car when the victim was kidnapped, the victim of an attempted rape and then killed.

She adds that“again”in 1990, they went to the Auxerre bus station and “spotted a young woman of around 18 or 19 years old”who accepted “to follow them and get in the back” of their vehicle. Michel Fourniret then beat her, tied her up before raping her, unconscious. Monique Olivier clarifies “staying in her place during the incident, without looking at what was happening.” He then strangled her before dumping her body, “completely bare, in the stream near which they were”. This story coincides with the circumstances of Joanna Parrish’s death.

Witnesses re-examined

However, these two cases are not joined to the seven other murders and assassinations for which the couple was convicted by the Ardennes Assize Court in 2008. An order dismissing the case was even issued in 2011, the Parisian judges in charge of files arguing in particular that the DNA traces found on the body of Joanna Parrish do not correspond to the genetic fingerprint of Michel Fourniret (the investigation will subsequently emphasize that he used condoms). The magistrates also emphasize that the procedural framework in which these confessions were collected is “uncertain”.

Because in the meantime, Monique Olivier returned to these statements, claiming, in 2006, that her confessions were extorted from her. As for Michel Fourniret, he formally denies being the author of these two murders. But the court of appeal annulled the order and relaunched the investigation in 2012. “A final chance to know the truth”, declared then the father of Joanna Parrish, convinced of the guilt of the spouses. And it is ultimately Parisian judge Sabine Khéris, supported by the Dijon research section, who will move up a gear in 2016.

The witnesses from the time are all re-interviewed, some are even heard for the first time, such as a group present in a bar in Auxerre with Joanna Parrish, the day before her disappearance. One of them assures that she was approached in the evening by a man resembling Michel Fourniret. The assistant principal of the high school where the young woman worked, who had also never been heard from, affirms that a man who strongly reminded her of the serial killer came to inquire after her death, following the publication of a small advert she had published, in which she offered English lessons.

Confessions in 2018

Concerning Marie-Angèle Domèce, a crucial testimony puts investigators back on the Fourniret trail. A friend from his home assures investigators that she saw Michel Fourniret roaming around the establishment on several occasions, “five or six times”in a white, dirty car, with an old cover and adhesives on the back, notes the indictment order.

During long interrogations, these numerous incriminating elements were put under the noses of the two accused. And finally, in February 2018, Michel Fourniret confessed. He explains, without giving details, being “the only one responsible for their fate”.

“If these people hadn’t crossed my path, they would still be alive.”

Michel Fourniret

to Judge Sabine Khéris

The same year, he was taken from his cell to be brought back to the scene of Marie-Angèle Domèce’s disappearance, but would never reveal the location of the body. In 2019, a new excavation campaign was organized with the two spouses, but it yielded nothing. A “final check” takes place in early 2023no result.

An alibi that shatters

Monique Olivier’s words have often proven decisive in advancing the investigations concerning her ex-husband. This was the case in another case, the third judged in the coming weeks, and undoubtedly the most publicized: the Estelle Mouzin affair. The 9-year-old girl disappeared in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne) in January 2003, while returning from school. During the first months of the investigation, colossal means were implemented to find her and the name of Michel Fourniret quickly emerged, even though he had just been arrested. But a phone call made from her home in Belgium on the day of the little girl’s disappearance made her innocent in the eyes of the police.

For years, false leads have multiplied. And Eric Mouzin, the child’s father, helped by his lawyers, will fight for the Fourniret trail to be studied. At the beginning of 2018, they requested the relinquishment of the judicial police of Versailles, which had neglected this lead too much, according to them. Without success. And it was only during his interrogation by investigating judge Sabine Khéris, in March 2018, in the context of the Domèce and Parrish cases, that the Ardennes killer released “hidden confession” on Estelle Mouzin.

A turning point is taking place. Especially since the magistrate has an asset: Monique Olivier. And in November 2019, the serial killer’s ex-wife shattered his alibi. She admits having made the famous phone call to Michel Fourniret’s son, from a previous union, on the evening of January 9, 2003. And adds that the little girl “was just the sort of girl who could satisfy” her ex-husband. He ended up confessing four months later to his responsibility in this disappearance.

Bodies never found

In spring 2021, Sabine Khéris decides to hear Monique Olivier once again. After long hours of relentless interrogation, the septuagenarian thus recognizes to have played a role in the kidnapping of the little girl. “I spoke to her a little bit, she just told me that she wants to see her mother. She looks sad. (…) She was calm, in my opinion, he had given her a sedative”she told the judge.

>> From the disappearance of Estelle Mouzin to the trial of Monique Olivier, a look back at twenty years of investigation to put the pieces of the puzzle together

She then provides new information which will direct investigators to a piece of forest, just a few kilometers from a house that belonged to Michel Fourniret’s sister, in Ville-sur-Lumes (Ardennes). She claims to have waited at the end of a road, in their white van, for Michel Fourniret to bury the little girl’s body. On his instructions, major excavations were carried out in the area to try to find what could be found. In vain.

In this trial which is about to open, two bodies will therefore be missing: that of Marie-Angèle Domèce and that of Estelle Mouzin. “I don’t think I will find my sister’s body, unless the co-author [Monique Olivier] Please speak up about this during the trial.”confided Véronique Domèce at the beginning of the year. Their father, Claude Domèce, will know nothing of the accused’s possible revelations: he died a few days agoafter fighting all his life to know the truth about his daughter’s fate.