Research continued Tuesday in the Ardennes to try to find the body of Estelle Mouzin. However, investigators have still found no trace of the girl, who disappeared in 2003 at the age of nine. 

Excavations have still not resulted in the former properties of serial killer Michel Fourniret in the Ardennes. For the second day of investigations, the investigators found no trace of the body of Estelle Mouzin, who disappeared in 2003 at the age of 9 years old. But the excavations must continue "all week", leaving "the hope" to the family to find the remains.

>> READ ALSO -  STORY - Disappearance of Estelle Mouzin: from the first suspicions to Fourniret's confession

Two Fourniret victims buried in this area

The investigators combed the area around the Château de Sautou, the former property of Michel Fourniret close to that excavated the day before. An area of ​​15 hectares of parks, woods, forests and ponds which surrounds an imposing 19th century bourgeois residence. This domain was bought by Michel Fourniret a little more than a million francs at the time, thanks to the spoils of coins and gold bars which he had stolen from one of the members of the "gang des Postiches" , a famous gang of robbers from the 80s.

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It was in this area, in 2004, that the bodies of the first two victims of the serial killer, Elisabeth Brichet, 12, and Jeanne-Marie Desramault, 22, were found buried more than three meters deep. After years of denial, Michel Fourniret acknowledged in early March the murder of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, who was abducted on January 9, 2003 when she returned from school in Guermantes, in Seine-et-Marne. 

It is in this context that the investigators and the gendarmerie experts have once again deployed their research device to probe the ground and fly over the field with a drone. In addition, divers from the river brigade are responsible for exploring the water points.

>> READ ALSO -  EXCLUSIVE - Estelle Mouzin affair: the Fourniret track "was not a priority", believes lawyer Monique Olivier

"We believe that this domain has not revealed all its secrets"

This research is carried out on the basis of what is known about the habits of Michel Fourniret according to Didier Seban, the lawyer for Estelle Mouzin's father. "We know how Michel Fourniret buried his victims. We know he preferred the wells, the water points so we go a little further, a little deeper," he explains. "It is a sufficiently isolated place which he knew perfectly, where he has already buried two victims. It is not nothing. So we think that this area has not revealed all its secrets", estimates Didier Seban who assures that "the means are put to discover the body of Estelle or those perhaps of other forgotten victims of Michel Fourniret".

>> HONDELATTE RACONTE -  The disappearance of Estelle Mouzin

But unlike 2004, Michel Fourniret was not there to guide the investigators. And when Estelle Mouzin was kidnapped, he hadn't owned Château du Sautou for a long time. Already sentenced in 2008 to incompressible life imprisonment for the murders of seven young women or adolescent girls between 1987 and 2001, Michel Fourniret was again sentenced in 2018 for a heinous murder. And in February 2018, he confessed to having killed two other young women in the Yonne, Marie-Angèle Domece and Joanna Parrish.