'Ogre of the Ardennes' widow Monique Olivier jailed over murder of British woman Joanna Parrish
Mia Morrison A French court sentenced the ex-wife of serial killer Michel Fourniret to life in prison for her role in three murders by her former husband.
After 10 hours of deliberations, Monique Olivier was convicted of complicity in the murders by Fourniret of three young women dating back decades, including 20-year-old British student Joanna Parrish.
Olivier, 75, should serve a minimum of 20 years behind bars, the court ruled on Tuesday.
She was convicted of playing a role in the abduction, sequestration and murder of Parrish in 1990 and 18-year-old Marie-Angele Domece in 1988, aggravated by her role in the attempted rape of Domece and the rape of Parrish by Fourniret, known as the “Ogre of Ardennes”.
She was also convicted of playing a role in the 2003 abduction, sequestration and murder of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, whose body has never been found despite intensive searches.
Fourniret died in 2021 aged 79 before he could be brought to trial for the three killings, meaning the trial of Olivier is the last chance for the victims’ families to find justice.
Her former husband was jailed for life in May 2008 for the murder of seven girls and young women between 1987 and 2003. He confessed to 11 murders before he died, but reports have suggested there could have been up to two dozen more.
Olivier is already serving a life sentence issued in 2008 for complicity in four kidnappings and murders committed by Fourniret. A decade later she was sentenced to a further 20 years for complicity in another murder.
Domece’s remains have also never been found, while Parrish’s naked body was recovered from the Yonne river in the French region of the same name. She had been beaten, drugged and raped.
“He used me,” Olivier said about her husband on the trial’s opening day. The couple divorced in 2010.
Prosecutors argued that Fourniret could not have killed his victims so easily without her.
Olivier and Fourniret together had one son, Selim Olivier, who gave evidence at the trial last week, urging his mother to tell the court everything she knew.
