Montage with the photos of Michel Fourniret, on the left, and Estelle Mouzin, on the right. - Sipa / Niko / Sipa

Silences, confessions, and perhaps more secrets. In forty years of crimes, the rapist and serial killer Michel Fourniret has often diverted justice. Sentenced to incompressible life in May 2008 for seven murders, then again to life in 2018 for a vicious assassination, the "ogre des Ardennes" this week recognized the kidnapping and murder of Estelle Mouzin, a 9-year-old girl years gone in 2003 in Seine-et-Marne.

Now that he is 77 years old, time is running out to reconstruct the criminal course of the one who describes himself as "a chess player" in front of the investigators and suffers from cerebral degeneration. "Play with a partner like you, it's worth it", but "my memory leaves the camp," he said in November to the magistrate Sabine Kheris, who comes, according to the Paris prosecutor's office, to collect his confessions.

In the memory of the killer

In February 2018, Fourniret first admitted to the judge that he had killed two young women in Yonne: Marie-Angèle Domece, disappeared in 1988 at 19, and Joanna Parrish, 20, found raped and strangled two years later . Murders he had previously denied, and for which he had been indicted in 2008. "If these people had not crossed my path, they would still be alive," he said during a of his interrogations, consulted by AFP.

Her ex-wife, Monique Olivier, confirmed the dotted confession of her former husband for these two women. She also accused him in late January of killing little Estelle Mouzin, after having contradicted his alibi this fall. Recognized as an accomplice of four murders and a rape in a meeting, Monique Olivier was sentenced to life in 2008, with 28 years of security.

Years after the fact, these various confessions raised the hope of elucidating these cold cases , but secrets remain buried in the memory of the killer, in prison for seventeen years. Last November, he was also questioned for the first time in the investigation into the disappearance, in 1993 in Orne, of a 29-year-old woman, Lydie Logé. Without being charged.

"Absolutely perverse"

Described by psychiatric expert Daniel Zagury as "the most successful French serial killer", the murderer often played with investigators. Maître Didier Seban, who defends several relatives of his victims, speaks of a real "battle" with him "to find out more". “One crime echoes another. But they admit them and confuse them, ”he laments. "What surprises is the absolute ego of this character, the pride he takes in his criminal work," notes the lawyer. "It's the killer who takes you into his crimes. It is absolutely perverse, absolutely unbearable, ”he adds.

Born in 1942 in Sedan (Ardennes), Fourniret, married three times and father of five, would have been traumatized to discover that his first wife was not a virgin. By his own admission, he would then have turned into a “poacher”. He was first sentenced three times in 1967, 1984 and 1987 for a dozen sexual assaults.

A criminal pact

Of his third wife, Monique Olivier, met in detention by classified ad, he then makes an accomplice, sealing with her a criminal "pact": in exchange for the murder of her first husband, she helps him find a virgin woman. When he left prison in 1987, he moved with her.

Two months later, he rapes and kills 17-year-old Isabelle Laville. Fabienne, Jeanne-Marie, Elisabeth will follow ... Their equipment ends in 2003, when Fourniret is arrested in Belgium for a failed abduction. In 2004 and 2005, Monique Olivier cracked and revealed to the investigators eleven murders, including the seven tried in 2008. Committed between 1987 and 2001 in France and in Belgium, they had been preceded by rapes or attempted rapes.

Justice

Disappearance of Estelle Mouzin: Portrait-robot, van ... Clues that lead to Fourniret

Justice

Disappearance of Estelle Mouzin: Why did Monique Olivier "swing" Michel Fourniret?

  • Michel Fourniret
  • Estelle Mouzin
  • Justice
  • Murder
  • Disappearance