Michel Fourniret, the Ogre of the Ardennes

Laura

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There is a major trial going on here in France that usually has a long article every day in the local newspaper. Everybody is sort of following it and I have to admit that it is fascinating.

The story is that the wife and husband made an agreement that if he would kill her ex-husband, she would help him find virgins to rape and murder. Just now, she is quibbling over the terminology that it was not a "signed" pact. Well, heck, who would write something like that down and actually sign it?

I wondered if there was anything about the trial in English, so I searched this morning and found some items to share:

Serial Killer And His Wife Stand Accused
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1310760,00.html

A self-confessed serial killer and his wife are to go on trial for the "diabolical pact" that led to the murder of seven young women.

Michel Fourniret, known as the Ogre of the Ardennes, has already confessed to most of the killings of which he is accused.

The focus at the trial in France's Charleville-Mezieres will be on the role played by Monique Olivier, who has admitted luring many of the young women into Fourniret's hands.

Police believe Fourniret may have killed as many as 30 young women, among them British student teacher Joanna Parrish.

She was found dead in Auxerre in 1990 and Fourniret has now been named as an official suspect.

Joanna's parents will attend some of the trial even though her case will not be mentioned.

After 18 years of campaigning, the family hope Fourniret will face trial for Joanna's murder later this year.

Roger Parrish told Sky News: "We never speak about closure because we don't feel that can happen. We know Jo's not coming back but if we can find who is responsible that will help us all.

"We just want to know the truth. When you look at how Jo was taken on the threshold of her life it is just so unfair.

"We want to remind the French authorities that we are not going away."

While Fourniret, 65, is being tried for seven murders, his 59-year-old wife is charged with one murder and as an accomplice in six others.

It was Olivier who revealed the full extent of her husband's 16-year killing spree to police after his arrest for kidnapping a young girl in 2003.

Author Alain Hamon told Sky News: "No one can understand how a woman who is a wife, a mother, could be involved in helping with such horrible crimes.

"That is why there is so much interest in this case. People think about Fourniret 'He is guilty, he has confessed, he is finished' but they ask 'Monique Olivier - why?'"

In addition, it has been reported that Fourniret and Olivier's son Selim will give evidence.

The case is expected to last two months.

More:

http://www.enews20.com/news_Ogre_of_the_Ardennes_Goes_to_Trial_06802.html
“Ogre of the Ardennes” Goes to Trial

One of France’s most deadly serial killers, Michel Fourniret, dubbed the “Ogre of the Ardennes” goes on trial this week with his wife, Monique Olivier, who is accused of complicity in five murders. The couple’s trial will begin Thursday, in Charleville-Mezieres, in France's northern Ardennes region. If convicted, they would both face life in prison.

Fourniret, 66, is dealing with kidnapping, rape and murder charges in connection with the tragic deaths of seven young women killed in France and Belgium since 1987 to 2003. The police officials suspect he might be involved in several other murders, including that of British student Joannna Parrish whose body was discovered in Auxerre, 1990, the Press Association reports.

The police detained Fourniret in June 2003, after he kidnapped a 13-year-old girl, who managed to escape from his van. The girl immediately gave his license plate number to the Belgian police officers.

According to the officials, Fourniret claimed that he was “worse than” Belgium’s most notorious criminal, pedophile Marc Dutroux, sentenced to life in 2004 due to a series of kidnappings, rapes and murders. Investigators described Fourniret as a narcissistic, manipulative and authoritarian person.

“I dream of a guillotine whose blade would be controlled by a rope long enough so that all the people who have something against me can join together and eliminate me. I owe them that,” he told the investigators quoted by Reuters.

Former forest ranger, Fourniret, had a history of sex offences. While in prison for a series of rapes, he started to correspond with Olivier and formed a pact with her: if he would kill her ex-husband – which he did not – she would lure virgins for him. Olivier claims that Fourniret manipulated her into carrying out her role and she hopes that she would get a lighter sentence for her own crimes.



http://www.euronews.net/index.php?page=info&article=477464&lng=1

France braces for grim details as Fourniret trial begins


An obsession with virginity is cited as the primary motive in the seven rape-murders for which Michel Fourniret is on trial in the northern French Ardennes region. His wife Monique Olivier is being tried for one murder and for abetting four others.

Aged between 12 and 21, Isabelle, Fabienne, Jeanne-Marie, Elisabeth and Natacha all disappeared between 1987 and 1990. Céline and Mananya were abducted and killed in 2000 and 2001.

Fourniret was arrested in 2003, after he failed to abduct a girl over the border in Belgium. His wife told about the murders.

Belgian and French investigators retraced some of the presumed serial murderer's steps. They dug in many places. The couple had moved around a lot.

Two bodies were unearthed at a chateau in the
Champagne-Ardennes region. Fourniret seemed to be cooperating but the sometimes macabre details he offered did not always lead to a find.

He would hop the French-Belgian border, to abduct in one country and kill in the other. Belgium extradited him in January 2006. Both sides' authorities agreed to hold one trial.

Fourniret's first arrest dates from 1967, which led to a conviction for assaulting a minor. Further convictions for sexual offences followed. Yet the police often skipped over Fourniret.

In spite of his criminal record, he was never questioned in connection with disappearances in the 1990s. He would later claim responsibility for murders that had been attributed to others, such as Emile Louis and Marc Dutroux.

Formal charges were brought against Fourniret at the beginning of this month for two more murders.
Other investigations are continuing.

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/sport/story.asp?j=205819380&p=zx58y996x&t=sport
Serial killer disrupts court hearing
27/03/2008 - 1:45:23 PM

Serial killer Michel Fourniret went on trial for seven murders today and immediately tried to manipulate the court proceedings.

The 65-year-old "Ogre of the Ardennes" took his place in the dock in the French town of Charleville-Meziers beside his wife Monique Olivier who is suspected of helping him lure his young female victims to their deaths.

When asked to identify himself however, Fourniret refused to speak and instead demanded the hearing be held in secret by holding up a sign which read: "Without a closed courtroom, staying tightlipped".

Fourniret is charged with kidnapping, rape and murder in the crimes committed in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2003. The victims, aged from 12 to 21, were strangled, shot or stabbed with a screwdriver.

He is also suspected of many other murders, including that of British student Joanne Parrish in Auxerre in 1980.

The trial is one of the biggest serial killing cases ever held in France, and drew comparisons with Belgium's notorious paedophile Marc Dutroux, sentenced to life in prison in 2004 for a series of child kidnappings, rapes and murders.

Fourniret also passed to the judge a rolled paper tied in a red ribbon, which his lawyer said was a message to the victims' families. He asked that the judge read it, and the judge declined.

Defence lawyer Pierre Blocquaux also told the court Fourniret did not want to be defended by him or his two other lawyers.

Olivier appeared to be co-operating and answered the judge's opening questions about her identity. Her lawyers as saying she planned to apologise to the victims' families.

Olivier looked for a long time at the families and did not react as crowds of photographers snapped her image as she entered.

Fourniret was captured in Belgium in June 2003 after the bungled kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl who took down his number plate number after she managed to escape from the back of Fourniret's van.

Belgium extradited Olivier to France in 2005 and Fourniret in 2006. Judicial officials in both countries decided the case should be tried in France because six of victims were French citizens.

Jean-Maurice Arnould lawyer for the family of one of the victims, 12-year-old Elisabeth Brichet, said the family was not expecting an apology from Fourniret.

"He's a man without conscience," he said.

Elisabeth's father said he did not want to hear Fourniret's account of his daughter's murder.

"We don't want new facts of the crimes; for us it's already hardly bearable," Francis Brichet said.

His daughter's body was found along with that of 21-year-old Jeanne-Marie Desramault in the wooded grounds of Fourniret's former property in northern France.

An array of exhibits sat in the courtroom including a shotgun, two revolvers, a screwdriver and various pieces of rope.



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/europe/killers-stunts-disrupt-his-trial-801773.html

Killer's stunts disrupt his trial

By John Lichfield in Paris
Friday, 28 March 2008

The self-confessed serial murderer and rapist Michel Fourniret has angered families of his victims with a series of stunts at the start of his trial in northern France.

M. Fourniret, 65, who admits seven murders and seven sexual assaults in France and Belgium in 1987-2003, refused at first to speak in court. He held up a piece of paper printed with the words "sans huis clos, bouche cousue", meaning that he planned to keep his mouth shut unless the trial was held in private. He answered questions about his identity only with nods of his head.

He then handed the chairman of the judges a scroll, wrapped with a red ribbon. Breaking his silence, M. Fourniret said that the scroll was a "statement, which I intended to read out. If the trial is not to be held in camera, I ask you to read the statement to the court".

The chairman of the assize court in Charleville-Mézières, Gilles Latapie, refused to do so but said that the statement would be added to the court record.

A lawyer for the family of one of his victims, Maître Alain Behr, accused M. Fourniret of "grotesque behaviour" and "wanting to give the impression of being in charge".

M. Fourniret's wife, Monique Olivier, 59, is on trial for helping him to "hunt" and entrap virgins by posing as a friendly woman or as the distressed mother of a sick baby. She is accused of taking part in one murder and complicity in four other killings.

The trial is expected to last two months.

French 'serial killer's' wife denies murder pact
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/bvirginhuntersb-wife-of-serial-killer-denies-murder-pact/2008/04/01/1206850847027.html

The wife of self-confessed French serial killer Michel Fourniret today denied in court she had entered into a pact to help him lure women to rape and murder.

"A pact was never signed between us, there was no agreement," Monique Olivier told the judge on the third day of Fourniret's trial for the kidnap, rape and murder of seven young women.

Olivier, 59, has been charged with one count of murder and complicity in several others during a killing spree that prosecutors said began in 1987 and ended in 2003 when a girl managed to flee from Fourniret's vehicle.

Investigators seized letters Olivier wrote to Fourniret while he was in prison on sexual assault convictions that suggest she had agreed to help him entrap his victims if he, in turn, killed her abusive husband.

"It was only words," Olivier told the court in Charleville-Mezieres, a town near the Belgian border. "There is a difference between words and actions."

Olivier had told Belgian police in June 2004 that a deal had been reached between them, but she recanted during testimony on Monday.

Fourniret is being tried for the rape and murder of six young women or teenage girls in France and one in Belgium, aged between 12 and 21, who were strangled, stabbed with a screwdriver or shot.

A Belgian teenager took the stand earlier and testified that her escape from the clutches of Fourniret was like "being in a film."

"He said to me: 'Shut up or I'll kill you... you must give me pleasure, if you don't give me pleasure you won't be going home'," she said as Fourniret sat in the dock and listened to her testimony.

The girl, identified in court only as Marie because at 17 years old she is still a minor, said that in June 2003 she was walking along a road in her Belgian hometown of Ciney when a Citroen van pulled up and its driver, Fourniret, asked her for directions.

He insisted she get in to show him the way, she said. When she did, Fourniret pushed her into the back of the truck and tied up her hands and feet.

"I felt like I was in a film," Marie told the court.

Marie said that Fourniret's threat to kill her came after she started screaming and tried to resist when he began touching her breasts.

She managed to free her limbs and jump out of the van when it stopped at a junction. A passing car picked her up and drove her to a police station, where the car's driver gave police Fourniret's car number plate.

That led to Fourniret's arrest.

Fourniret, 65, listened impassively as Marie testified.

Earlier Monday, the man dubbed the "Ogre of the Ardennes" repeated his threat to "boycott" the trial if it was not held behind closed doors.

When the presiding judge asked him if had anything to say about the events of June 2003, when Marie was abducted, Fourniret replied: "I am burning to talk about them but I cannot."

"I will respond to you in private," he told the judge half a dozen times during the day.

In a letter sent to his son Selim, Fourniret reportedly furnished the details of what he planned to do to Marie had she not fled. "It is obvious that I would have torn out her eyes and her limbs with infinite pleasure," he wrote in the missive, according to state prosecutor Francis Nachbar.

The charges against the couple state Olivier played a key part in many of her husband's meticulously planned schemes to abduct young women.

Fourniret was charged earlier this month in two other cases that do not feature in the current trial -- the 1990 murder of British student Joanna Parrish and the 1988 killing of Frenchwoman Marie-Angele Domece.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/europe/3875987.stm

Thursday, 8 July, 2004, 14:16 GMT 15:16 UK
How Fourniret slipped through the net
The revelations by self-confessed child killer Michel Fourniret are the latest to hit France and Belgium, which are still reeling from two high-profile cases - the Dutroux case in Belgium and the Outreau paedophile trial in northern France.

Michel Fourniret, dubbed the "Ogre of the Ardennes" after the forested border region between France and Belgium where many of his confessed crimes occurred, may yet turn out to be one of France's worst serial killers in recent times.

By his own admission, he says he has killed nine people, mostly young women and girls.

The 62-year-old forest warden confessed after his wife, Monique Olivier, gave information to the police, apparently fearing a conviction similar to the 30-year sentence handed down to the spouse of paedophile and murderer Marc Dutroux last month.

She is under arrest in Belgium on charges of failing to help a person in danger, and aiding and abetting the abduction and unlawful imprisonment of a victim.

Michel Fourniret was convicted to seven years in prison in 1987 by a French court for rape and indecent assault of minors, but was freed after a few months because of the length of time he had already spent in custody.

FOURNIRET'S LIFE

* 1983-1987: In prison in France
* 1992: Moves to Belgium
* June 2003: Arrested in Belgium
* June-July 2004: Wife Monique Olivier denounces him, Fourniret admits nine murders


During that time, he met Monique Olivier, then a prison visitor. He later moved to Belgium and got a job as a school supervisor without Belgian authorities finding out about his past.

He was re-arrested in Belgium in June 2003 for abduction of minors and sexual misconduct when he was identified by a 13-year-old girl. She said she had been bundled into his van after he asked for directions.

But he only confessed to the string of murders last week, after his wife made her accusations against him. He still denies having committed any crime between 1990 and 2000.

Follow-up

That revelation prompted the French government on Tuesday to announce the creation of a commission that would look at ways of improving psychiatric treatment of released prisoners who may become recidivist sexual predators.

"At the time there were no laws to ensure the traceability of sexual offenders, so in my view there were no failures of the system"
French prosecutor Yves Charpenel

"In a certain number of cases, we can't just let them free like that, without either compulsory treatment or admitting such people to a psychiatric hospital," Justice Minister Dominique Perben told French radio.

But according to the French prosecutor in the case, Rheims-based Yves Charpenel, "there have been no failures" in the judicial system in the absence of a follow-up of Michel Fourniret.

"This was a normal reduction of sentence; Michel Fourniret had behaved like a model prisoner," Mr Charpenel told AFP news agency.

"At the time there were no laws to ensure the traceability of sexual offenders, so in my view there were no failures of the system, given the judicial context at the time."

A law passed in 1998 sets out an obligation to follow up sexual delinquents, which was reinforced by a later law in March 2004 which creates a national register of sex offenders and is due to come into force in the autumn.

EU co-operation

The case has also highlighted the need for better co-operation across the European Union, where the absence of many border controls means criminals can travel unhindered, observers say.

EU states already share information on convictions under a so-called mutual legal assistance convention from 1959, but some governments feel this is not working as well as it should, Reuters news agency reports.

In the meantime, judges and police forces on either side of the Franco-Belgian border have been co-operating and dividing the workload.

They will have to decide in the long run how and in which country Michel Fourniret will be tried.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23468854-5012749,00.html

Teen tells of narrow escape



April 02, 2008 12:00am

A Belgian teenager has testified that her escape from the clutches of accused French serial killer Michel Fourniret was like "being in a film".

Her escape led directly to the capture of Fourniret, dubbed the Ogre of Ardennes, and wife Monique Olivier, his alleged partner in crime.

"He said to me: 'Shut up or I'll kill you . . . You must give me pleasure. If you don't give me pleasure, you won't be going home'," she said as Fourniret, 65, sat in the dock.

The girl, now 17, identified only as Marie, said that in June 2003 she was walking along a road in her Belgian hometown of Ciney when a Citroen van pulled up and its driver, Fourniret, asked her for directions.

He insisted she get in to show him the way, she said. When she did, Fourniret pushed her into the back of the truck and tied up her hands and feet.

"I felt like I was in a film," she told the court.

Marie said that Fourniret's threat to kill her came after she started screaming and trying to resist when he began touching her breasts.

She managed to free her limbs and jump out when the van stopped.

A passing car picked her up and drove her to a police station, where the driver gave police Fourniret's car number plate, leading to his arrest.

When the judge asked if he had anything to say about these events, Fourniret replied: "I am burning to talk about them, but I cannot."

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/2008/03/28/chilling_tales_at_serial_killer_trial/3260/
Chilling tales at serial killer trial

CHARLEVILLE-MEZIERES, France, March 28 (UPI) -- A jury heard chilling tales of a cold-blooded sexual predator and "virgin hunter" as accused serial killer Michel Fourniret went on trial in France.

Fourniret, 65, is on trial in the French Ardennes region charged with raping and killing seven girls and women, ranging in age from 12 to 21 since 1987.

Fourniret's wife, Monique Olivier, 59, is also on trial, charged with one killing and allegedly helping lure four other victims.

Jurors were told how Olivier would gain the confidence of the girls and women they had identified as prey, the Times of London reported Friday. After the victims had been bound, gagged and sometimes drugged by her husband, she would examine them to check whether they were the virgins he desired.

She would then hand them over to Fourniret "in the sole aim of allowing him to fulfill his fantasies," a report read in court said. He would assault his victims -- his "beautiful little subjects" -- before shooting or strangling them, the report by investigating magistrates said.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23464914-5005961,00.html
Serial killer's wife denies pact



From correspondents in Charleville-Mezieres

April 01, 2008 06:59am

THE wife of self-confessed French serial killer Michel Fourniret today denied in court she had entered into a pact to help him lure women to rape and murder.

"A pact was never signed between us, there was no agreement," Monique Olivier told the judge on the third day of Fourniret's trial for the kidnap, rape and murder of seven young women.

Ms Olivier, 59, has been charged with one count of murder and complicity in several others during a killing spree that prosecutors said began in 1987 and ended in 2003 when a girl managed to flee from Fourniret's vehicle.

Investigators seized letters Ms Olivier wrote to Fourniret while he was in prison on sexual assault convictions that suggest she had agreed to help him entrap his victims if he, in turn, killed her abusive husband.

"It was only words," Ms Olivier told the court in Charleville-Mezieres, a town near the Belgian border. "There is a difference between words and actions."

Ms Olivier had told Belgian police in June 2004 that a deal had been reached between them, but she recanted during testimony overnight.

Fourniret is being tried for the rape and murder of six young women or teenage girls in France and one in Belgium, aged between 12 and 21, who were strangled, stabbed with a screwdriver or shot.

A Belgian teenager took the stand earlier and testified that her escape from the clutches of Fourniret was like "being in a film".

"He said to me: 'Shut up or I'll kill you... you must give me pleasure, if you don't give me pleasure you won't be going home'," she said as Fourniret sat in the dock and listened to her testimony.

The girl, identified in court only as Marie because at 17 years old she is still a minor, said that in June 2003 she was walking along a road in her Belgian hometown of Ciney when a Citroen van pulled up and its driver, Fourniret, asked her for directions.

He insisted she get in to show him the way, she said.

When she did, Fourniret pushed her into the back of the truck and tied up her hands and feet.

"I felt like I was in a film," Marie told the court.

She said that Fourniret's threat to kill her came after she started screaming and tried to resist when he began touching her breasts.

She managed to free her limbs and jump out of the van when it stopped at a junction. A passing car picked her up and drove her to a police station, where the car's driver gave police Fourniret's car number plate.

That led to Fourniret's arrest.

Fourniret, 65, listened impassively as Marie testified.

Earlier, the man dubbed the "Ogre of the Ardennes" repeated his threat to "boycott" the trial if it was not held behind closed doors.

When the presiding judge asked him if had anything to say about the events of June 2003, when Marie was abducted, Fourniret replied: "I am burning to talk about them but I cannot."

"I will respond to you in private," he told the judge half a dozen times during the day.

In a letter sent to his son Selim, Fourniret reportedly furnished the details of what he planned to do to Marie had she not fled.

"It is obvious that I would have torn out her eyes and her limbs with infinite pleasure," he wrote in the missive, according to state prosecutor Francis Nachbar.

The charges against the couple state Ms Olivier played a key part in many of her husband's meticulously planned schemes to abduct young women.

Fourniret was charged earlier this month in two other cases that do not feature in the current trial - the 1990 murder of British student Joanna Parrish and the 1988 killing of Frenchwoman Marie-Angele Domece.

http://www.euronews.net/index.php?page=info&article=478410&lng=1
Alleged serial killer breaks silence in French court

In France, alleged serial killer Michel Fourniret has broken his silence for the first time with an angry outburst in court. Fourniret's wife had earlier denied that letters she wrote to her husband constituted a pact to help him lure women to rape and murder.

Monique Olivier, 59, is charged with complicity in murder and kidnapping. But when it came to claims that he had agreed to murder her ex-husband, Fourniret, 65, angrily shouted his denial at prosecutors.

A lawyer for the families of his alleged victims suggested that Fourniret may be on the point of cracking under pressure and taking the stand himself - something he has so far refused to do.

The court also went outside to examine a van alleged to have been used by Fourniret to trap his victims. He is charged with raping and murdering seven girls and women in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2001.
 
Welcome to Belgium :|

I just want to add a piece of information that you may also have read or heard before

According to Lichfield, Fourniret targeted mostly virgins. He claimed that when Fourniret went hunting and knew he would bring back a girl or woman, he would dig a three-meter deep grave in advance. Some of the graves were dug on his property in the French Ardennes, which he bought shortly after his release from prison. The money he used to buy the property was allegedly stolen from one of his victims.

While Fourniret was serving time in a French prison, he met fellow inmate Jean-Pierre Hellegouache. Paul Ames claimed that Jean-Pierre was involved in the "far-left militant group Action Directe, which was responsible for a series of bomb attacks in France during the 1980s." On July 3, 2004 Expatica.com reported that Fourniret learned that the group's "war chest" of some $30,000 worth of gold coins was being held by Pierre's wife, Farida. When Fourniret was released from jail, he tracked Farida down, stole the cache of money and then murdered her. Ames stated that the money was used to buy 32 acres of land in Donchery which housed an 18th century castle. Shortly after his confession, Fourniret and his wife led police on a search of his property to look for some of the bodies he buried there.
There is a more detailed explanation in french (sorry) here

I thought the connection if everyting said true, interesting as Action directe may have been as any "terrorist organisation" either created or infiltrated by the secret services osit.
 

Serial killer Michel Fourniret died in hospital at the age of 79
Michel Fourniret had been hospitalized in emergency on May 8 at the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris. The doctors, who considered that the septuagenarian was not resuscitatable, had engaged a protocol of end of life. He died on Monday, according to the Paris prosecutor.
 
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