INTERNATIONAL • FRANCE

Widow of French serial killer faces trial over her role in three
murders
Monique Olivier is the wife of self-confessed French serial killer Michel Fourniret, a 65-year-old
carpenter arrested in 2003 after an attempt to kidnap a 13-year-old girl.

Le Monde with AFP

Published yesterday at 11:44 am (Paris) • 3 min.

Monique Olivier waits for the beginning of her trial, on March 27, 2008 at courthouse in
Charleville-Mezieres, a town in the French Ardennes region bordering Belgium
(northern France). DENIS CHARLET / AFP

The widow of a French serial killer known as the "ogre of the Ardennes" will face trial from Tuesday,
November 28, over her role in three murders dating back several decades, including the killing of a
British woman whose body was found in a river in 1990.

Monique Olivier was married to Michel Fourniret, who was charged with abduction, rape and murder
in the cases but died in 2021, aged 79, before he could be brought to trial.

The crimes date back to 1988 in the case of Marie-Angele Domece, who disappeared aged 18 from
Auxerre, and 1990 for 20-year-old British woman Joanna Parrish, whose naked body was found in the
Yonne river that runs through the department of the same name in central France.

Olivier is charged with aiding and abetting the kidnapping and murder of the girls. Her third charge is
for complicity in the 2003 disappearance of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, whose body has never been
found two decades on, despite intensive searches. The body of Domece has also never been found.

Many of the witnesses set to be called in the three-week trial are investigators from France and
Belgium, where Fourniret was arrested in 2003. They are also set to include Sabine Kheris, the
Olivier's lawyer, Richard Delgenes, said the court should "not expect any revelations" on her part but
that her "participation" in the process is what sets her apart from her husband. "Unlike him, she takes
no special pleasure in the pain of his victims or of the families," he added.

The 75-year-old has already been convicted twice of aiding and abetting in some of her husband's
crimes. She fled in the early 1980s from her violent first husband, with whom she had two children,
before becoming a penpal of Fourniret while he was serving a jail sentence for rape.

'Only one responsible'

The two sealed a pact that she would find him virgins to rape if he would kill her then-husband –
which he never did. They lived together after he was released in 1987 – buying a chateau with stolen
gold dug up from a graveyard – and had a son together.

Olivier received a life sentence in 2008 over her role in four murders and a rape committed by
Fourniret. In 2018, Olivier was given a further 20 years' jail for her part in the killing of Farida
Hammiche, the wife of one of Fourniret's former cellmates.

In 2019, she overturned her husband's alibi for the day Estelle Mouzin disappeared, prompting him to
admit responsibility months later.

Fourniret had earlier admitted killing Parrish and Domece. "I am the only one responsible for their
fates... If those 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, a fragment of whose DNA
was found on a mattress seized from the couple's home in 2003. And in 2021 she admitted her own
role in the case for the first time, saying she was with her husband when he buried the girl's body near
a forest in the Ardennes.

Le Monde with AFP