Ex-wife of French serial killer says he raped then murdered British student
The former wife of French serial killer Michel Fourniret told police he beat British student Joanna Parrish unconscious before raping and strangling her and throwing her body in a river.
Monique Olivier, 75, is on trial for complicity in the kidnapping and murder of Parrish, 20, in 1990 and two other victims – Marie-Angèle Domèce, 19, in 1988 and nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin in 2003.
On the second day of the trial, a Belgian prosecutor who questioned Olivier in 2004 said she described how she and Fourniret had picked up Parrish, a Leeds University student who was spending eight months in France as a teaching assistant, near the station at Auxerre in the Yonne, two hours southeast of Paris.
“Michel asked the girl if she was a virgin, if she had a boyfriend. He told her to get undressed and she refused. He hit the young girl until she was unconscious then raped her. Then he strangled her,” Olivier told police in a statement she later retracted.
“He then took her naked body and threw it in a river,” she added.
Parrish’s naked body was found in the Yonne River nearby the following morning, 17 May 1990.
On Wednesday afternoon, Didier Safar, the judge presiding over the trial, asked Olivier to stand up and clarify her position.
“Following my statement yesterday, you had very few comments. I would like to ask you a question. What is your position on the three charges against you?” Safar asked.
Olivier, standing in the box, said: “I acknowledge all the facts, the three facts of which I am reproached.”
“In other words, you admit the facts in the Parrish, Domèce and Mouzin cases?” Safar asked.
Olivier nodded.
Defendants in French trials are not required to enter a plea but when the trial opened Olivier told the court she regretted “everything that happened”.
During a 17-year campaign of kidnappings and killings, the couple’s modus operandi was that Olivier should lure the victims into the vehicle as a woman was less likely to make them afraid. Fourniret would be waiting in the back or standing further along the road waiting to be picked up
Fourniret, known as the Ogre of the Ardennes, is believed to have killed at least 10 young women and girls. He was jailed for life in 2008 for seven murders but died in 2021 before he could be put on trial for three more including that of Parrish.
Olivier is already serving a life sentence for her role in the killings.
Francis Nachbar, a former public prosecutor who questioned Fourniret and Olivier between 2004 and 2008, said she had admitted being involved in the killing of Parrish and Domèce back then, but subsequently retracted her statement and accused him of making her confess.
“Monique Olivier explained that Fourniret had abducted a girl at Auxerre station. We had no knowledge of this kidnapping, this murder, which was of Joanna Parrish.
“Monique Olivier gave details of the cords used [to tie] the girl and the sexual abuse to which she was subjected in the van in Monique Olivier’s presence.
“All of a sudden, she tells us: ‘The body was thrown into a stream, it was Fourniret who did it.’ She also says that Fourniret raped the victim.”
Nachbar said Olivier retracted the information later saying he had hit her, which he strenuously denied.
“Monique Olivier is a pathological liar and makes herself out to be the victim,” he said adding that she and Fourniret were “both of them monsters of inhumanity, perversity and cruelty. They were both dangerous.”
He defended the decision not to include the murders of Parrish and Domèce in Fourniret’s 2008 trial saying they had no evidence “except Olivier’s retracted statements”.
The bodies of Domèce and Mouzin have never been found.
The trial continues.