The parents, brothers and sisters of the 9-year-old girl were heard on Wednesday before the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court. They testified to their immense pain, twenty years after the kidnapping and murder of the child.
“No one will emerge from the Fourniret affair unscathed.” This sinister prophecy, pronounced by the serial killer himself, shortly after his arrest in 2004, resonated singularly on Wednesday December 6 before the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court, in Nanterre. On the seventh day of the trial of Monique Olivier, tried for complicity in three crimes committed with her ex-husband, who died in May 2021, the testimonies of Estelle Mouzin’s relatives illustrated the extent to which the shock caused by the kidnapping and murder of the 9-year-old girl spread in concentric circles to members of her family.
Twenty years after his disappearance, on January 9, 2003 in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne), guilt is undoubtedly the feeling that still most crushes those who survived him. “I made a big mistake by letting her come home from school alone, a mistake I will blame myself for until the end of my life.”testified his mother, Suzanne.
Exile and nocturnal awakenings
The loss of voice of this 67-year-old woman, who testifies by videoconference to distance herself from “the horror”betrays his indescribable pain. “Forever traumatized”she says, her voice broken, “the nightmare” to see his “younger girl” “evaporate” a winter evening. “It’s like someone had amputated my leg”explains Suzanne, recounting the two years of“daily hell” which followed, the impression of seeing Estelle everywhere in the house, “media pressure”, “the gaze of others”, “the posters” of his daughter “along the Paris ring road”. This woman from Germany, divorced from Estelle’s father, then left France: “I uprooted myself in 2005 to go as far away as possible.”
“How can someone take a child and do what he did? I’m lost for words… It’s crazy to do that.”
Suzanne, Estelle Mouzin’s motherbefore the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court
“We become guilty of the acts committed by otherstheorized her ex-husband, Eric Mouzin, heard on the stand just before. Guilty of living and being joyful, guilty of being there and her not being there, a shame which is perhaps part of the mechanisms of perversion.“ Not comfortable with “the emotions”this industrial risk expert still keeps track of the number of days that have passed since the disappearance of his daughter, “7,636”. This father, who we have seen age during the walks organized each year in memory of Estelle in Guermantes, confides that he only cries when he takes a plane: “I try to get a seat against the window, because I know there’s no one on the other side.” He wakes up every night “at 3 a.m.”, because he has “long believed that it was at this time that Estelle was murdered”.
“Thinking the unthinkable for twenty years”
Eric Mouzin shares with the court and the jurors the images that have haunted him for all these years: “I’m going to ask you to make an effort to visualize. Since the start of the trial, we’ve been in a bit of abstraction, so here I’m asking you to imagine the rape of this little girl, terrified, kidnapped for several hours, carried around in a closed van, which spent a night in an abandoned house, probably not heated, perhaps tied up.” Estelle’s father then asserts: “We are in the negation of humanity, the child reduced to an object as a means of satisfying an obsession”that of virginity.
His second wife, Dominique, is still by his side, twenty years later. She also spoke at the bar about her “guilt” of having dragged the two children from his first marriage into this “whirlwind of doom”. This 72-year-old woman, who became a psychologist, nevertheless attached herself to “preserve the joy of living” for Estelle’s siblings while Eric Mouzin was “in the fight against evil and fight against oblivion”. Very moved, her testimony written in her hands, Estelle’s mother-in-law spoke of the difficulties in keeping this blended family afloat in the face of the tragedy: “This event is an ‘unthinkable’. We tried to think the unthinkable for months, for years, for twenty years.”
“Our lives were transformed but not destroyed. We held on. But at what cost? Each assassination does not have just one victim.”
Dominique, Estelle Mouzin’s mother-in-lawbefore the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court
Among these siblings, another Estelle grew up, of the same age. “Estelle the brunette and Estelle the blonde, our two stars”summarizes Dominique, recalling that Eric Mouzin had to “pronounce ‘Estelle, at the table’ every day, without crying”. This half-sister, now 30 years old, was often told on the phone: “Estelle? Ah, have we found you?” So much so that she stuck a post-it on her forehead with her first name, her mother reported. On the stand, she confirms: “My life has been not to live with a sister, but with her shadow.” A form of “twinning” for the worst – “admit and detach yourself from the guilt of even existing” – and the best – “Live for two, travel for two, love for two, dance for two”.
“Tell us where you buried Estelle”
In the same terrible game of mirrors, Estelle’s half-brother, Yann, revealed how he himself had been kidnapped by a child molester at the age of 4, “in broad daylight”in a park, before being released. “The only way to kidnap a child is to lie to them, to appeal to their deep kindness, to play with their innocence”, he testified. He was 10 years old when Estelle disappeared. Arthur was 14. He chose to live with his father when his parents separated, his two sisters remaining in Guermantes with their mother. A choice that he still blames himself for today: “Perhaps I would have been in charge of picking Estelle up from school…” His big sister Lucie, 15 years old at the time of the kidnapping, “remembers the anguish that seized her the evening of her disappearance”. The family’s lawyer, Didier Seban, read her letter in court, the young woman having just given birth to her second child.
“In a matter of minutes, I and my family were catapulted into the epicenter of the earthquake that the disappearance of an innocent child represents for society.”
Lucie, Estelle Mouzin’s sisterbefore the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court
Like her brothers and sisters and her parents, Lucie wanted to talk above all about her sister. “The photos that everyone has in mind are not representative. If we had to choose one photo, it would be the one where she is jumping on the edge of a swimming pool and laughing.”writes Lucie, describing Estelle as a little girl “very beautiful, with large green eyes speckled with gold”, “very lively, talkative, loved and loving, tender, endearing”, “popular” and doing “the clown” at school. Photos of the little girl are shown at the hearing. On one of them, chosen by her father, Estelle has the “illuminated face” after swimming in the warm Caribbean Sea in Martinique.
“Easy child, always in a good mood, smiling, very interested in the world, with an extroverted personality…” Her mother was also full of praise for her daughter, who had “life ahead of her”. “She is gone forever, but I would like to know where she is”enjoins Suzanne, speaking directly to Monique Olivier: “If you still have an ounce of humanity left in you, tell us where you buried Estelle.”
After keeping her head down during the testimony, the accused stands up in the box: “I don’t know. If I knew, I would say it. Why wouldn’t I say it if I knew?” Monique Olivier only gave information on the place where the girl’s body could be buried after the death of Michel Fourniret. In vain, the excavations yielded nothing. Why did you wait so long ? The director of investigation of the research section of the Dijon gendarmerie, interviewed in the afternoon, gave the answer she had given at the time: there was simply no “not thought”.