Europe 1 with AFP 12:26, ​​September 03, 2021

The seventh excavation campaign carried out since Monday in the Ardennes to try to find the body of the girl who disappeared in 2003 at the age of 9 was interrupted on Friday.

Monique Olivier, widow of serial killer Michel Fourniret and indicted for complicity, was present during part of this research.

The excavations carried out since Monday in the Ardennes to try to find the body of Estelle Mouzin, alleged victim of Michel Fourniret in 2003, were interrupted this Friday, the investigators meeting at the gendarmerie of Sedan, indicated the gendarmerie and a lawyer . On the site of Issancourt-et-Rumel, designated as the place of the burial of Estelle Mouzin by Monique Olivier, the ex-companion of the serial killer, "the excavations are well completed for this week (...) the site is released, the mobile gendarmes left, "said the gendarmerie. 

The police device surrounding this seventh search operation for the body of the girl carried out since June 2020 had been lifted Thursday evening, and access to the searched area, on the edge of a communal wood remained open Friday morning.

"Everyone is at the Sedan gendarmerie," about fifteen km away, said Monique Olivier's lawyer, Me Richard Delgenes.

Monique Olivier had been taken there for a final interrogation at the unsuccessful conclusion of a previous search campaign to try to find the body of the girl, kidnapped at nine years old, on January 9, 2003 in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne). 

"It's starting to tighten a bit"

"Like the other days, we did not find (...) It starts to stretch a little, it's normal", said Thursday Me Richard Delgenes, after a questioning of the goodwill of his client by the family lawyer, Me Didier Seban. "Be careful not to try to force a confession at all costs, elements that she would not have because we would not have done what needed to be done sooner," he added. Monique Olivier "is the co-author with Michel Fourniret of the crimes we know and therefore, while promising that she does everything, that she wants to help us, there are secrets that she does not want to share", Mr. Seban had said the day before. 

Sentenced to irreducible life imprisonment for the murders of seven young women or adolescent girls between 1987 and 2001, Michel Fourniret - who died in Paris on May 10 at 79 years old - ended up confessing in March 2020 his responsibility in the disappearance of the child. Monique Olivier for her part affirmed in April to have accompanied him to Issancourt-et-Rumel to let him bury the body, near Ville-sur-Lume, where, still according to her, her ex-husband kidnapped, raped and killed Estelle.