TWISTED MONSTER
Inside the Ogre of the Ardennes’ rampage of rape, kidnap, torture & murder with his WIFE’S help as she faces fresh trial
The French serial killer's dark obsession fuelled a murder spree that would leave at least 12 dead
THE Ogre of the Ardennes' blood-soaked reign of terror would leave at least 12 women dead over two decades before the twisted killer was finally brought to justice.
Pictures would show Michel Fourniret in cuffs in 2003 after his final 13-year-old victim was able to chew through her restraints and escape.
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The serial killer's sickening crimes were finally exposed by her bravery but the world would be truly horrified when the depths of his depravity were revealed.
All with the help of his wife, Monique Olivier, who would procure women and girls to satisfy his twisted fantasies, he kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered.
Fourniret slaughtered dozens including Brit Joanna Parrish - although it's believed he could have killed at least another 21.
Fuelled by incestuous sexual abuse from his own mother as a child and the fact his first wife had not been a virgin on their wedding day he developed a sick obsession with virginity.
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It sparked a horrifying killing spree that would see him snatch girls from the street, murder for gold and bury his victims in the grounds of the couple's French chateau.
Fourniret spent 18 years behind bars before his death aged 79 while serving a life sentence for his crimes.
His wife, now aged 75, appeared in a Paris court on Tuesday charged with helping her late husband to kidnap female victims.
Olivier is already serving a life sentence for complicity in four of the killings and a gang rape committed by Fourniret.
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She is now on trial for being an accomplice in three further murders, including that of British student Joanna Parrish.
After details of the deaths were described in court, Olivier said: "I regret everything that happened, listening to all that."
The naked body of 20-year-old Parrish was found in the Yonne River in Auxerre in May 1990.
Her parents, Roger Parrish and his ex-wife Pauline, Murrell have been battling for justice ever since and are due to give evidence at the month-long trial.
Fourniret was charged with abduction, rape and murder in the cases but died before he could be brought to trial.
BLOODY KILLING SPREE
Fourniret was dubbed the "Ogre of the Ardennes" after the region on the France-Belgium border where he preyed on victims.
Born in Sedan, France, Fourniret claimed to have been sexually abused by his mother as a child before he was first arrested in 1966 for groping a minor.
He would first make contact with his soon-to-be wife 18 years later while serving a three-year prison stretch for abusing five young girls in Paris.
After placing an ad in a catholic magazine for a pen-pal, nurse Olivier replied and the pair formed an evil pact.
Fourniret wrote to her about his twisted fantasies of raping and murdering virginal girls and Olivier offered to hunt down victims for him on one condition - he would need to kill her first husband.
But the deal was never done and Olivier carried out her sick deeds regardless.
On his release for being a "model prisoner" in October 1987, his partner in crime waiting for him at the gates and a deadly killing spree would unfold.
Their first victim, 17-year-old Isabelle Laville, was snatched from the streets of Auxerre, Paris just months after Fourniret's release on 11 December 1987.
She'd already been spotted days ago by the sick couple before Olivier lured her into their car while asking for directions.
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They then picked up her husband posing as a hitchhiker so they could strangle and sedate the teen.
When inside the vehicle the serial killer "grabbed her by the hair and asked her if was she a virgin, and she replied in the affirmative’’, according to The Herald Sun.
Brought into their home in Saint-Cyr-les-Colons, the teen was raped and choked to death before her body was thrown into a disused well - her remains were not uncovered until 2006.
In April of the following year, the couple would carry out a murder very different from the rest with the killing of 30-year-old Farida Hammiche.
The wife of Fourniret's former bank robber cellmate, she contacted him asking for his help digging up a stash of gold bars buried in a graveyard.
He agreed to help and Hammiche paid him for the job, but a month later Fourniret strangled her to death and took the haul for himself.
Fourniret and Olivier bought a stunning castle called the Château du Sautou in northern France with their newfound fortune.
Hammiche's body was never found.
The murders would continue every year until 1990 with the killings of Marie-Angèle Domèce, 18, Fabienne Leroy, 20, Jeanne-Marie Desramault, 19, Elisabeth Brichet, 12, Joanna Parrish, 20 and Natacha Danais, 13.
Fabienne Leroy was kidnapped from a supermarket by the sadistic pair in 1988 while Olivier was pregnant with Fourniret's baby.
She was raped and shot dead before her body was found in woodlands the following day.
Jeanne-Marie Desramault was lured into the couple's home to babysit after meeting Olivier on a train to Charleville but she infuriated the serial killer when she confirmed she was not a virgin.
Fourniret reportedly found her like a vision of the Virgin Mary but strangled her to death before burying her in the grounds of their home.
Fourniret and Oliver married in July 1989 and by December they had murdered 12-year-old Elisabeth Brichet after luring her into their car as she walked home from a friend's house in Belgium.
After attempting to suffocate her with a plastic bag, Fourniret strangled her to death, storing her body in a freezer before burying her in the castle grounds.
A year later, they lured 13-year-old Natacha Danais into their van after they spotted her walking home from a shop to fetch her mum's forgotten purse.
They stabbed her in the chest with a screwdriver, strangled her, and dumped her body on a beach.
At trial, it was suggested that Fourniret raped her after she was dead.
Danais was the last murder they carried out together and Fourinet would not kill again for another decade.
The couple would move to Gedinne Belgium in the early 1990s.
In 2000, Fourniret raped and murdered 18-year-old Céline Saison before abducting, raping and murdering 13-year-old Mananya Thumpong a year later.
Saison's body was found by mushroom foragers months after her death, while Thumpong's body was mostly eaten by wild animals by the time it was discovered in the woods nearly a year later.
KILLER SNARED
The sadistic killer was finally snared at his home in Sart-Custine, Belgium in June 2003 after a failed attempt to kidnap a 13-year-old girl.
The teen managed to chew through her rope restraints after being dragged into his van, sexually assaulted and told he intended to kill her.
When the van stopped, the girl broke free and flagged down a passing motorist who jotted down Fourniret's license plate.
Both husband and wife were arrested, extradited to France and interrogated before a shock twist saw Olivier attempt to save her own skin by revealing her partner's crime to cops a year later.
In a bid to avoid a lengthy sentence herself, she claimed she'd been the victim of a controlling psychopath.
Realising he was doomed, Fourniret cooperated with police and confessed to many of the crimes, even showing investigators where some of his victims were buried.
In 2006, one of his daughters from a previous marriage tragically took her own life after her father's horrific acts became known.
He admitted to eight killings before his 2008 trial and was convicted of the murder of seven victims whose remains had been found.
He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Olivier was sentenced to life with no possibility of parole for 28 years.
Both were also ordered to pay £1.2million in moral compensation to the victim's families.
In 2018, the "Ogre" confessed to killing two more women in Auxerre - Marie-Angèle Domèce, an 18-year-old disabled woman in July 1988 and 20-year-old Brit Joanna Parrish in May 1990.
And two years later he admitted murdering Estelle Mouzin who vanished in Guermantes in January 2003.
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After his death in 2021, his wife is now back in court charged with aiding and abetting the gruesome attacks on Joanne Parrish and Marie-Angèle Domèce.
The third charge is for Olivier’s complicity in the 2003 disappearance of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, whose body has also never been found.
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