Monique Olivier doesn’t like words “corpse”, “kid” Or “ejaculate”. “That’s not my vocabulary.”, explains the 75-year-old accused before the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court, in Nanterre, Tuesday December 5. On the occasion of her first interrogation, the former wife of Michel Fourniret, tried for a week for complicity in the Marie-Angèle Domèce, Joanna Parrish and Estelle Mouzin affairs, prefers the terms of “body”, “young lady” Or “leave too quickly”. With her, the “victims” become the “witnesses” of their own agony. “It’s so they don’t talk.” after having “benefited” of them that her ex-husband, whose death in May 2021 left her alone in the box, made them “disappear”. THE “violait” and the “killed”corrects the president of the court, Didier Safar.
Defensive, strategic euphemism, false modesty or question of “generation”, as she had slipped it during searches to find a body? For several hours, an abysmal gap appeared between the words chosen by Monique Olivier and the horror of the facts in question. The accused, hunched over in the same large white sweatshirt that she has worn since the beginning of the hearings, regularly takes refuge behind her memory “confused” and his difficulty in “remember all the details”. She “confused” And “makes mixtures between the victims, as the list is long, and undoubtedly incomplete.
“I listened to what he asked me to do”
Regarding Marie-Angèle Domèce, who disappeared at the age of 19 on July 8, 1988, Monique Olivier half-heartedly confirms, guided by the president’s questions, the terrible and usual scenario: the young girl spotted by Michel Fourniret in the village of Yonne where they lived, Saint-Cyr-les-Colons, “docking” a few days later with his wife as “bait”seven months pregnant, and the Peugeot 304 which “take a dirt road”.
Monique Olivier claims not to have seen what happened next: “He asked me to get out of the car, to move away, so that I wouldn’t see what he was going to do”. The serial killer, who is on his third murder, still confides in him that he has not “didn’t get what he wanted”. He failed to rape his victim, whom he strangled, “with bare hands”. As for the burial of the body, which was never found, the accused summons up the little vigor that characterizes her to assure that she was not present.
“If I knew where he was, I would say it. Why wouldn’t I say it? Out of malice? I’m going to die in prison, why wouldn’t I say it?”
Monique Olivierbefore the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court
Monique Olivier cannot say the same for Joanna Parrish, a 20-year-old English student found dead almost two years later, on May 17, 1990, in Monéteau, another commune in Yonne. Confirming that Michel Fourniret responded to an ad for English lessons for their son, then aged 1 and a half years, she admits to having accompanied him to the appointment, “maybe in town”in Auxerre, “maybe” after 7 p.m. Monique Olivier assures that she stayed in “the C15”, a van, while Michel Fourniret raped the young woman before killing her. Why did you stay this time? The answer is garbled: “He didn’t ask me to come down. Stupidly, I listened to what he asked me to do. I stayed like an idiot.”
“I can’t say I’m participating.”
Listening to it, Monique Olivier barely hears a little “noise” From the back of the vehicle, Joanna Parrish shouted, “but not long”under the blows of “big hands” by Michel Fourniret. The accused mimes on her face. The court tries to represent the unrepresentable: “It was happening behind you, a few inches.” “I know it’s barely even thinkable to say that.”, concedes the person concerned. What is going on in his head at that moment, an assessor asks him. Monique Olivier goes back and forth between the past and the present: “I have a kind of fear. I regret what is happening right now, at least in fact.”
“I heard her scream a little, I didn’t intervene. Now I regret it. It’s too late to say that.”
Monique Olivierbefore the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court
“You are not faced with the fait accompli by Michel Fourniret, opposes another assessor. You know what’s going to happen, you’re active. ‘I was like an idiot,’ excuse me, but that’s not a satisfactory answer.” “The answer is not good, yes, indeed”Monique Olivier responds laconically. “There is no right or wrong answer, there is only the truth”, encourages the president. The accused tries another explanation: “I can’t say I’m participating. He’s asking me to do it. I’m not doing it for fun, it’s like obedience.”
The truth takes circuitous paths during the hearing. And evolves throughout the interrogation. While Monique Olivier says she is convinced that Joanna Parrish was raped and killed “in the C15”she is hesitating : “You put me in doubt, I don’t know anymore.” Faced with questions from the general counsel, she admitted that the young woman was ultimately perhaps taken to their home in Saint-Cyr-les-Colons. “Do you remember the number of murders?”asks the prosecution. “There have been so many that I don’t prefer…” And names? Monique Olivier is confused. And faces? “Which one left the biggest impression on you?”, asks the prosecution. She grabs the pole: “The one that struck me the most was the one from earlier.”
“Monique Olivier is unfathomable”
This face is that of Joanna Parrish. The lawyer for the civil parties, Didier Seban, asked to have the photo of the young woman, smiling, shown, then showed Monique Olivier two autopsy images of her swollen face. The accused put on her glasses and looked carefully at the images. “I really regret it. When you see the beautiful girl she was… Because of me, she left. She didn’t deserve that, I’m sorry. I don’t know how to tell you, it’s unforgivable. “ A few moments later, she won’t remember his name.
Heard at the end of the day, investigating judge Sabine Khéris, considered the magistrate who managed to get Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier to speak in these three cases, described at the bar “spirit of the stairs” of the ex-wife of the ogre of the Ardennes. “It takes time for Monique Olivier to free herself. When I told her : ‘What do you have to lose ?’, she answered me : ‘Finally, I don’t understand myself’. Madame Olivier is unfathomable.” And the magistrate asked: “I think she’s gone as far as she can go. Can she go further ?” The Assize Court still has a few days to answer this question.