Lawyers for Michel Fourniret, who was to be heard Tuesday and Wednesday by the investigating judge in charge of the investigation into the disappearance of Estelle Mouzin in 2003, called for "caution" on the accusations formulated last week by the ex-wife of the serial killer. "The information disseminated in the press to our surprise must be approached with caution and the greatest precautions for the respect of the presumption of innocence", declared to journalists Me Vincent Nioré when arriving at the Paris court with Me Cédric Labrousse , twenty minutes before the start of the hearing of their client by Judge Sabine Kheris.
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Monique Olivier accused her ex-husband last week
Last week, heard by the magistrate, Monique Olivier had, according to her lawyer Richard Delgenes, accused her ex-husband of having kidnapped, raped and strangled Estelle Mouzin, 9, in Ville-sur-Lumes, in the Ardennes in 2003 , in the house of the latter's sister who had died a few months earlier. These new statements, which complement the first accusations made in January by the 71-year-old woman, add to the recent identification of the girl's partial DNA, mixed with other traces, on a mattress seized in 2003 in this house near Charleville-Mézières, and revived the hope of finding his body.
At 78 years old, Michel Fourniret, whose convoluted statements and memory problems complicate the task of investigators, ended up confessing in March his responsibility in this affair: "I recognize there a being who is no longer there by my fault" , he had declared to the judge. He also considered "relevant" the fact that the body of the girl could be in one of his former properties in the Ardennes.
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But excavations, carried out at the end of June during four days in the house of Ville-sur-Lumes, as well as in the castle of Sautou, a former property of the one who is nicknamed "the Ogre of the Ardennes", however did not allow to find the corpse. Michel Fourniret was convicted in 2008 of the murders of seven young women or adolescent girls between 1987 and 2001 and sentenced to irreducible life, before being convicted again in 2018 for a heinous murder.