‘Ogre of Ardennes’ wife faces trial over killing of UK student
THE wife of the “Ogre of the Ardennes” serial killer accused of murdering British student Joanna Parrish must stand trial in November, French prosecutors demanded yesterday.
It came after a Netflix documentary shone new light on the role Monique Olivier played in allegedly helping her husband kidnap, rape and kill his victims in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The body of Ms Parrish, a 20-year-old Leeds University language student, was found in the River Yonne near Auxerre, Burgundy, in 1990, a day after she was reported missing. Michel Fourniret, the main suspect, died in 2021, aged 79, making his former wife the only living suspect in Parrish’s case.
Olivier met Fourniret while he was serving time in prison for sexually assaulting a dozen young women, agreeing a bizarre pact that she would find him virgins to rape if he would kill her then husband, which he never did.
Prosecutors have faced pressure in recent weeks to prosecute Olivier after a Netflix documentary looked at her involvement aiding her husband. According to the creators of Monique
victims were “reassured” to get into Fourniret’s car because his wife was with him.
Ms Parrish, from Gloucestershire, was living in Burgundy, working as a language assistant, when a man answered an advert she had put in a local paper offering English lessons.
Her body was discovered shortly after she agreed to meet him.
According to the Netflix documentary, the fact that Olivier was working alongside Fourniret resulted in many more victims.
“Because she was in the car [with Fourniret] victims were reassured,” Michelle Fines, the journalist and producer of the documentary, told the BBC in March. “The parents of Joanna Parrish always wondered how it was possible that their daughter could go with a man. But when they knew there was a couple, they understood how it could have been possible.”
Yesterday prosecutors filed their request for a trial, arguing that Olivier should face charges of “complicity in kidnapping and kidnapping murder, followed or accompanied by rape of Joanna Parrish”.
Olivier is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole for complicity in four murders and a gang rape committed by Fourniret. She has also received a 20-year term for complicity in a fifth, financially motivated murder by her former husband.
After Fourniret was released from prison in 1987 they lived together – buying a chateau with stolen gold dug up from a graveyard – and had a son.
But in 2004 she accused him of the murders of nine young women and teenagers, of which he admitted to eight. He was sentenced to life in jail in 2008 and the pair divorced in 2010.
Olivier, 74, is now the only living suspect in Ms Parrish’s case.
Despite Fourniret and Olivier being key suspects in the initial investigation into Parrish’s death, the case was closed in 2011 after judges decided there was not enough evidence for the case to stand trial. Fourniret confessed to Ms Parrish’s murder in 2018.
The latest request to put his former wife on trial comes following a new investigation conducted by a special cold case unit launched last year.
According to investigators, Olivier played a role in luring Ms Parrish into Fourniret’s van so he could rape and murder her. The student’s naked body was later found in a river, having been raped and strangled.