“To judge is to be interested in the journey of life (…). I believe that it is first and foremost up to you to explain this journey of life.” The president of the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court is preparing, Tuesday, November 28, to begin the personality interrogation of Monique Olivier, tried for complicity in the kidnappings and murders of Marie-Angèle Domèce, Joanna Parrish and Estelle Mouzin. “It scares me to be all alone, in front of everyone looking at me”, explains the 75-year-old woman in a small voice. She appears alone, her ex-husband, serial killer Michel Fourniret, having died in 2021.
>> How Monique Olivier put investigators on the trail of Michel Fourniret in the three cases for which she is being tried
Short white hair, light sweater, stooped: Monique Olivier has not changed much since her two previous trials, in 2008 and 2018. On this first day of hearing, her words are often confused, she mumbles. So much so that it must be repeated often.
At the end of the morning, when President Didier Safar finishes recalling the unbearable abuse inflicted on the young victims of Michel Fourniret, in which Monique Olivier, in part, actively participated, she loses her means, and her first words are revealed to say the least inconsistent. As a first statement, the accused says weakly: “No I regret…”. “Pardon ?”retorts the president very loudly. “I regret everything that happened, but listening to this makes me…” she declares, without finishing her sentence.
She will then be more verbose, sometimes even displaying a confident tone. “I see her different, I think she has acquired a certain freedom of expression, she talks more, she answers questions more,” observes Didier Seban, lawyer for the victims’ families, to the press.
A “criminal pact” reviewed
This native of Tours happily returned to her childhood, alongside an alcoholic mother and an absent father, who refused to welcome her when she tried to escape her first husband, André Michaux, with whom she had two children, in 1980 and 1981. She accuses him of having been violent and recounts in detail this evening where, after putting the little ones to bed, he slapped, tried to strangle her before taking her to the bathroom. “He made me lie down in the bathtub filled with water and held my head in the water for longer and longer. That’s what made me decide to leave.”
Monique Olivier leaves him and marries an American, so that he obtains French nationality. They divorced a year later, in 1987. It was that same year that she began her correspondence with Michel Fourniret, then incarcerated for several sexual assaults on young women, something he did not hide from. From then on, in an exchange of more than 200 fiery letters, a “criminal pact” was formed: he promised her that he would kill her ex-husband and, in exchange, she would have to help him find victims.
“What was Fourniret’s obsession?”, asks the president. She remains silent, then, after several seconds, clearly embarrassed: “It was meeting a young person.” When he asks her what she thinks of his fascination with young virgin girls, she replies, after a silence: “It was a bit shocking but let’s just say… It was kind of ridiculous, really, to be constantly searching…“That’s often what Monique Olivier’s responses look like: convoluted sentences that miss the point. “So you joined in this search for virginity?“, he insists. “Yes”she blurted.
“I am not innocent”
She knew, but she continued, followed him and assisted him throughout his murderous journey. “He told me: ‘You obey, you don’t try to understand. Obey and that’s it'”, assures the one who claims to have always been afraid of him. “But he was never violent, Fourniret?”asks Didier Safar. “No, no, but he had very mean words. He liked us… when there were people at home, he liked to put us down.”
This is the line of defense of Monique Olivier, who constantly asserts that she was subject to the wishes of her “ogre” husband. And why, after sixteen years of married life with him, did she decide, in a spectacular turnaround in June 2004, to confess to the Belgian authorities a series of crimes committed by her then husband? “Because I had had enough, it all had to stop,” she explains, before continuing, in a somewhat complicated form of mea culpa: “I’m not innocent, I’m not saying I don’t deserve prison.”
Corinne Herrmann, defender of the Domèce family, has another interpretation. “You are very clever, when you confess, you talk about two cases: Céline Saison and Mananya Thumpong, where you were not with Fourniret on the roads”, asks the lawyer specializing in “cold cases”. “You denounce two facts for which, in principle, you risk nothing.” “I no longer answer questions”, replies Monique Olivier, offended.
“You’re not going to blame me for all the unsolved crimes?”
The prosecution hopes that she will continue to be cooperative throughout the trial, because speaking “in front of victims” is not the same as “before an investigating judge”, underlines Monique Olivier’s lawyer, Richard Delgenès, in front of journalists. The civil parties are waiting for answers, and Didier Seban even hopes to make her talk about several unresolved cases, convinced that she still keeps many secrets.
When facing the accused, he refers, for example, to a babysitter, mentioned by Monique Olivier during various interrogations and whose existence was confirmed by the couple’s neighbors. His identity was never established by investigators. He also talks about the Lydie Logé affair, a 29-year-old young woman missing in Orne since 1993. Her DNA trace was found in Michel Fourniret’s van, which led, at the end of 2020, to a new investigation. in examination of the serial killer then that of Monique Olivier.
“You’re not going to blame me for all the unsolved crimes anyway?” the accused annoys. “We’re still waiting for your explanations. Why don’t you give them today?”asks Didier Seban calmly. “Because I have nothing to say”, retorts Monique Olivier. The lawyer intends to return to it in the coming weeks: the trial is scheduled to last until December 15. But the president has already announced that it could be extended.