Michel Fourniret’s ex-wife sentenced to life imprisonment for complicity in three murders, including that of Estelle Mouzin

The former wife of the serial killer was found guilty of complicity in the kidnapping, sequestration and death of Marie-Angèle Domèce, Joanna Parrish and Estelle Mouzin.

The deliberations lasted more than ten hours. At the end of three weeks of trial, Monique Olivier was sentenced Tuesday, December 19 to life imprisonment, with a security period of 20 years, by the Hauts-de-Seine assize court, in Nanterre. The former wife of serial killer Michel Fourniret, who died in May 2021, was found guilty of complicity in the kidnapping, sequestration and death of Marie-Angèle Domèce, 19, Joanna Parrish, 20, and Estelle Mouzin, 9 years. The prosecution had requested the maximum penalty incurred for these acts, namely life imprisonment with 22 years of security.

In reading the court’s reasons, the president described the sentence handed down as “fair, adequate and proportionate to the extreme seriousness of the facts in which his involvement is total” and to “the personality” by Monique Olivier, “without empathy” neither “affect for dehumanized victims”. Recalling his confessions in these three cases, Didier Safar nevertheless mentioned a “real attempt at questioning” raised by a recent expertise at the latter. The accused did not react to the verdict.

“I confirm what I said and I regret everything I did, declared Monique Olivier on Tuesday during her last words in court . I ask for forgiveness from the families of the victims while knowing that everything I did is unforgivable.” During the debates, the ex-wife of the “ogre of the Ardennes”, 75 years old, euphemized her participation in the crimes of Michel Fourniret. But she maintained the statements made at the end of the investigation in these three cases, which almost remained unclassified cases before they were taken over by investigating judge Sabine Khéris.

Reiterated confessions, but little more

Regarding Marie-Angèle Domèce, who disappeared at the age of 19 on July 8, 1988, Monique Olivier confirmed the terrible and usual scenario of the couple: the young girl spotted by Michel Fourniret in the village of Yonne where they lived in Saint-Cyr-les-Colons, “docking” a few days later with his wife, seven months pregnant, as “bait”and the Peugeot 304 which “take a dirt road”. Monique Olivier claimed not to have witnessed what happened next, the murder by strangulation of the young woman and the burying of the body, which was never found.

As for Joanna Parrish, a 20-year-old English student found dead almost two years later, on May 17, 1990, in Monéteau (Yonne), Monique Olivier admitted to having accompanied Michel Fourniret to the meeting – for supposed lessons in English – and having stayed in “the C15”, a van, while Michel Fourniret raped the young woman before killing her. Why did you stay this time? “He didn’t ask me to come down. Stupidly, I listened to what he asked me to do. I stayed like an idiot”stammered the accused.

In the Estelle Mouzin affair, whose disappearance on January 9, 2003 in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne) haunted the entire “a generation”, as argued by Marine Allali, one of the family’s lawyers, Monique Olivier provided a few more details on how she had kept the little girl for several hours the day after her kidnapping, in the unsanitary and freezing house in Villes -sur-Lumes, in the Ardennes. She described sitting next to her on the mattress where Estelle Mouzin’s mitochondrial DNA was found, then taking her to the bathroom and giving her a glass of water. “She was sad, a little sleepy but not attachedshe assured. And then she cried. She told me she wanted her mom. I told her she was going to see her soon.”

Not releasable before 2035

Grateful that she should have “take him away from there” rather than leaving it to “big hands” by Michel Fourniret, Monique Olivier maintained, despite the pleas of the civil parties, that she did not know where the child’s body was. Despite numerous excavations carried out on his indications in the Ardennes forest, he was never found. “I want these crimes to haunt you during your nights in the remand center”launched Didier Seban, the lawyer for the Mouzin and Domèce families, towards the box during his pleading.

Castigating him “silence” And “indifference” of this woman, “active accomplice” of serial killer and not wife “passive” And “submissive” as some psychological experts described her, the prosecution considered that she had inflicted a “double punishment” to the families of victims. “Not only did she participate in the theft of these lives, but she left these civil parties in the darkcastigated the general counsel, Stéphanie Pottier. Madame Olivier, you are not an accomplice at that moment, you are the author of the choice to remain silent.”

“Without Monique Olivier’s confessions, we are not here today in any of these three cases. They are the cement of all the evidence” collected against Michel Fourniret, opposed his lawyer, ensuring that his client had “engaged in another path” since 2018. Richard Delgenes confirmed, during his pleading, that he would not appeal the verdict so as not to “inflict a second trial on the civil parties”. This new sentence merges with the previous ones. With her life sentences and twenty prison sentences in 2008 and 2018, accompanied by security periods of 28 and 10 years, the prosecution did the calculation: Monique Olivier will not be released before 2035. She will be 87 years old.