28 years on, French serial killer admits murdering Joanna
A NOTORIOUS French serial killer has finally confessed to murdering British student Joanna Parrish 28 years ago.
Michel Fourniret, 75, known as the ‘Beast of the Ardennes’, has already admitted kidnapping, raping and murdering nine girls over a 14-year period from 1987.
But detectives could never prove he murdered Joanna, 20, a Leeds University language student who was killed in Burgundy in eastern France in May 1990.
However, earlier this week Fourniret told examining magistrates in Paris that he ended the lives of both Joanna and MarieAnge Domece, a mentally disabled teenager who disappeared in 1988, aged 19.
Marie-Ange’s body has never been found, while Joanna’s was discovered naked in the River Yonne in Auxerre, the day after she was reported missing. Dider Seban, the Parrish family lawyer based in Paris, confirmed that the development meant ‘the culmination of a long fight lasting 28 years’.
Joanna, from Newnham- on- Severn, Gloucestershire, was studying French and Spanish at Leeds and was coming to the end of a placement teaching English in Auxerre when she was killed.
Her parents, Roger Parrish and Pauline Murrell, criticised the investigation into the death, with her mother saying in 2015 there had been ‘absolute cock-ups from beginning to end’. They said police, journalists and local officials were allowed to contaminate the crime scene so detectives were left with few clues. They also alleged that vital DNA evidence was lost, files went missing and leads were not followed up properly.
Fourniret was the prime suspect in the case for years, and was finally arrested in 2005. He is already serving life in prison, without the possibility of parole.