France: serial killer Michel Fourniret dies with his secrets
Serial killer Michel Fourniret on leaving Charleville-Mézières court on May 27, 2008. REUTERS / Yves Herman
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
Michel Fourniret died at 79 years old.
The French serial killer convicted of the murders of seven young women and teenage girls suffered from heart problems and Alzeimer's disease.
An investigation into the causes of death is opened today by the Paris prosecutor's office.
Michel Fourniret was serving two life sentences.
Publicity
Read more
The Chateau de Sautou in northeastern France had become the symbol of horror.
It is in this huge house that Michel Fourniret kidnapped, raped and killed young women and adolescent girls between 1987 and 2001.
Of the homicides, he recognized eight in court.
He was sentenced twice to life imprisonment with his companion at the time Monique Olivier, accomplice of the serial killer, who according to his own confessions, had to "
hunt at least two virgins by a
n".
“The ogre of the Ardennes,” as he was nicknamed, sometimes spoke.
But he is often silent and also disappears with his secrets.
His death leaves many cases in abeyance.
Among them, the disappearance of
Estelle Mouzin
in 2003. Last year Michel Fourniret acknowledged his responsibility in the death of the 9-year-old girl who disappeared in 2003 in Guermantes, east of Paris.
Monique Olivier also declared last August that her ex-husband had kidnapped, raped and then strangled Estelle Mouzin.
And as for Marie-Angèle Domèce, the body was not found.
Justice has not passed.
►
To read also: Disappearance of Estelle Mouzin in France in 2003: "Michel Fourniret acknowledged the facts
"
Disappointment of families
According to
Le Parisien
, who revealed his hospitalization at the end of his life on Monday morning, he was placed in a coma and was “
considered by doctors to be non-resuscitable
”.
An end-of-life support protocol was initiated, the daily added.
Me Didier Seban, lawyer of several families of disappeared, including that of Estelle Mouzin, had reacted Monday noon to the information that the killer was at the end of his life, by expressing the "
disappointment of the families for the cases where he had been indicted
"and had not yet been tried:"
No trial concerning him, no possibility of having the expected answers
, "he told AFP.
The criminal journey of a young father
Michel Fourniret's criminal course would have started in the 1960s. He was then a young father, industrial designer in the Ardennes.
He takes an 11-year-old girl into his car, whom he tries to assault before releasing.
In front of the investigators he evokes a depression, a tendency to voyeurism.
His wife leaves him.
Second marriage, three more children.
At the end of the 1970s, Michel Fourniret scours the roads, armed with an old pistol, in search of young virgins.
An obsession.
After several assaults and a rape, he was arrested in 1984.
His second wife files for divorce.
Monique Olivier will then arrive in her life.
The complication of his murderous enterprise.
He meets her through a classified ad in a Christian newspaper.
They sign a morbid pact.
She must help him find his prey.
He must get rid of his former husbands and partners.
It is from his cell that he will establish a program.
A month and a half after his release from prison, their first victim will be a young high school student.
They travel the roads together in a white van.
She plays the beaters by coaxing their prey, sometimes with their baby in her arms.
It is difficult to know how many young women Michel Fourniret, alone or as a couple, has murdered.
Between his confessions, his retractions and his lies.
According to the daily,
Le Parisien
in addition to the eight murders for which he was convicted and the three disappearances for which he is indicted, he could be the author of many other crimes.
About thirty unknown DNA, taken from personal objects, are being analyzed and reconciled with unsolved cases.
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
France
Criminality