Eloïse Bertil 12:45 p.m., May 30, 2022, modified at 07:14 a.m., November 29, 2023

In the Estelle Mouzin case, there is an image that we all know: this photo on a light blue background of the little girl, dressed in a red woollen sweater, which illustrated her wanted poster. A photo that hides a very emotional family story and that was an important clue to implicate the serial killer Michel Fourniret. Focus on this element as Monique Olivier's trial is taking place before the Hauts-de-Seine assizes.

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The contrasting photo of Estelle Mouzin, with her brown hair, green eyes and red sweater, has remained etched in the memory of the French. This red sweater that we see in the photo is the one she was wearing on the day of her disappearance, January 9, 2003 in the small town of Guermantes, in Seine-et-Marne. For Eric Mouzin, Estelle's father, this garment is all the more symbolic because it has been passed down, in reality, from father to daughter. "The red sweater is quite a story...", he confided for the very first time in 2022, at the microphone of journalist Chloé Triomphe, in the Original podcast "L'Ombre" produced by Spotify and Europe 1 Studio.

[EDIT] On the first day of the trial of Monique Olivier, accomplice of serial killer Michel Fourniret, Eric Mouzin appeared in the courtroom, on the bench of the civil parties, wearing a red sweater himself.

On the first day of #MoniqueOlivier's trial, Éric Mouzin wore a red sweater, so I immediately thought of @chloe8triomphe's podcast "L'ombre" which tells the story of a knitted sweater unknit and reknitted passed down from father to daughter. @fannierasclepic.twitter.com/wo0ZO2I9dA

— Marion Dubreuil (@MarionDub) November 28, 2023

"That sweater was mine." With palpable emotion, Eric Mouzin told the podcast "L'Ombre" that at the beginning, it was Estelle's grandmother who knitted it for him. "A sweater like that, made with love, you can't throw it away," she protested when he tried to get rid of it. So the sweater was unknit and reknitted in a smaller size so that it could be worn by Estelle. Until the day the little girl was kidnapped on her way home from school one winter evening in 2003.

Years later, when investigators find a piece of red woollen thread on a mattress that belonged to serial killer Michel Fourniret, a terrible scenario emerges. "We need to know if this red thread can match the sweater," sums up Eric Mouzin in the podcast "L'Ombre". However, like all grandmothers who knit, Estelle Mouzin's grandmother "keeps bits of yarn to repair the holes," he confides.

>Who is (really) Monique Olivier? Discover a new story in the episodes of "The Shadow" to discover by clicking here.

This time, the police rushed to Estelle's grandmother's home to compare the leftover wool corresponding to the red sweater she knitted for Estelle with the sample taken from Michel Fourniret. Tests will confirm that it is indeed the same wire. This is one of the material elements that will make it possible to establish with certainty a link between the disappearance of Estelle Mouzin and the shadow of Michel Fourniret.

The terrible symbol of the "red thread"

"So there is this 'red thread' that is established in space and time, between the piece of yarn found [at Michel Fourniret's, editor's note] and the piece of yarn that was used to knit the sweater. The analysis of the red thread, which is aptly named, I found it very symbolic, in fact," says Eric Mouzin, who is still upset by this detail today. To discover other previously unknown elements about the Estelle Mouzin case, listen to the Original podcast "L'Ombre", a counter-investigation by Chloé Triomphe produced by Spotify and Europe 1 Studio.

Want to listen to this podcast?

"L'ombre" is a podcast of five episodes of about thirty minutes each, to be found free of charge and exclusively on the Spotify listening platform.