Ex-wife of French serial killer given life sentence for three murders
PARIS – A French court on Dec 19 sentenced the ex-wife of serial killer Michel Fourniret to life in prison for her role in three murders by her former husband.
After 10 hours of deliberations, Monique Olivier was convicted of complicity in Fourniret’s murder of two young women dating back decades, including 20-year-old British student Joanna Parrish and a nine-year-old girl.
Olivier, 75, must serve a minimum of 20 years behind bars, the court ruled. With her head lowered and eyes half-closed, the accused appeared impassive as she listened to the verdict.
“The sentence of life imprisonment is just, adequate, and in line with the extreme seriousness of the facts, where the involvement (of Monique Olivier) is total,” said judge Didier Safar as he read the verdict.
She was convicted of playing a role in the abduction, sequestration and murder of Ms Parrish and 18-year-old Marie-Angele Domece in 1988, aggravated by her role in the attempted rape of Ms Domece and the rape of Ms Parrish by Fourniret.
She was also convicted of playing a role in the 2003 abduction, sequestration and murder of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, whose body has never been found despite intensive searches.
Fourniret died in 2021 aged 79 before he could be brought to trial for the three killings. He confessed to 11 murders before he died, but reports have suggested there could have been up to two dozen more.
“It is the end of a long fight for the families,” said Didier Seban, a lawyer for the victims’ families.
“For the families who waited so long, who fought so hard for such a verdict, it is obviously a decision that gives them satisfaction after a very demanding trial.”
Olivier is already serving a life sentence issued in 2008 for complicity in four other kidnappings and murders committed by Fourniret. A decade later she was sentenced to a further 20 years for complicity in another murder.
Ms Domece’s remains have also never been found, while Ms Parrish’s naked body was recovered from the Yonne river in the French department of the same name. She had been beaten, drugged and raped.
“He used me,” Olivier said about her husband on the trial’s opening day. The couple divorced in 2010.
Fourniret was known as the “Ogre of the Ardennes” after the hilly, densely forested region on the French-Belgian border where he was based and found many of his victims.
Prosecutors argued that Fourniret could not have killed so easily without Olivier’s help.
She and Fourniret together had one son, Mr Selim Olivier, who gave evidence at the trial last week, urging his mother to tell the court everything she knew.
Olivier expressed regret on the final day of her trial.
“I ask for forgiveness,” Olivier said ahead of sentencing. “Although I know that what I did is unforgivable.” – AFP
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