A new search for the body of Estelle Mouzin, whom Michel Fourniret admitted to having killed and who disappeared at the age of 9 on January 9, 2003, ended on Friday in the Ardennes.
No results have yet been announced.
Monique Olivier, the ex-wife of the serial killer, had been auditioned to better target the research.
Investigators on Friday concluded a new operation they were carrying out in the Ardennes to find the body of Estelle Mouzin, whom Michel Fourniret admitted to having killed, said a source familiar with the matter, with no immediate results announcement.
At the scene since Monday, investigators have left and the operation is over, said this source.
An AFP journalist had noted earlier their departure from a site where they had gone in the morning on the edge of the forest on the outskirts of the village of Rumel, and the lifting of the gendarmerie device which barred access.
"She gives details, we are moving step by step"
The village of Rumel is located 4 km from Ville-sur-Lumes, where, according to Monique Olivier, her ex-husband had, in a house belonging to her sister, kidnapped, raped and killed Estelle Mouzin, who disappeared at the age of 9 on the 9th. January 2003 when she was returning from school in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne).
The convoy carrying in particular the examining magistrate Sabine Kheris had reached this site, explored for the first time, after a long hearing the day before the ex-wife of the serial killer, Monique Olivier, at the gendarmerie of Charleville-Mézières.
Extracted from her prison on Wednesday to be taken there, Monique Olivier was escorted there Friday, according to the lawyer for the father of the girl, Me Didier Seban.
"Monique Olivier explains herself, she gives details, we are moving step by step, to understand what happened after the kidnapping of Estelle, and therefore we hope that these details will be sufficient to then be able to go and look for the body. ", he said Thursday evening, before he also left the region.
"Know this terrible truth"
"We have today (...) the truth of Monique Olivier on what happened to Estelle", he had advanced, expressing the hope "that this enormous work of the investigators, of the examining magistrate, these requests reiterated for more than fifteen years will allow us to know both this terrible truth and especially to have the necessary indications "to find the body of the child.
"Further excavations will take place, until we have been able to find Estelle. Now when, at what time, it depends on the degree of precision of the indications," he concluded.
Between Monday and Wednesday, investigators carried out excavations in a marshy area, located just next to Rumel in the town of Issancourt, where an excavator was stationary on Friday.
Several excavation operations have already been carried out in the region in recent months, but without breakthrough, especially in October in the presence of the septuagenarian serial killer, whose state of health has meanwhile deteriorated.