Ex-wife of serial killer must serve life in prison
After more than ten hours of deliberation, a court in Paris has sentenced the ex-wife of French serial killer Michel Fourniret for her involvement in the deaths of two women and a girl. The verdict states: "Without the now 75-year-old woman, he would not have been able to commit his crimes.
Without her, the serial killer Michel Fourniret would not have been able to lure, rape and kill his victims so easily: The "Ardennes Monster's" wife of many years, Monique Olivier, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Paris after more than ten hours of court deliberations for three counts of aiding and abetting kidnapping and murder. The victims were nine, 18 and 20 years old. "I am sorry for everything I have done," said the 75-year-old before the verdict was announced.
"I confess to all three cases I am accused of", Olivier had surprisingly testified in court. The 18 and 20-year-old women disappeared in 1988 and 1990, the nine-year-old girl in 2003. Only the body of a British language assistant who disappeared in 1990 was later discovered. Olivier did not give any precise details about the whereabouts of the other two victims in court.
The judges also imposed a 20-year period of preventive detention. Olivier had made her husband's crimes possible in the first place, the public prosecutor had emphasized in her plea. In two of the three cases, the bodies of the victims have still not been found. At the beginning of the trial, the accused made a general confession and showed some remorse, but did not provide any new information about the locations of the victims' remains.
The public prosecutor accused the 75-year-old of instilling confidence in the girls even though she knew that they would be murdered. For example, when she was seven months pregnant, Olivier accompanied her husband in the car so that his victims would not become suspicious and be lured into the car. "Without her, (Fourniret) would not have been able to commit his crimes," said prosecutor Hugues Julié.
This is the third trial involving Fourniret's victims, but the first in which Olivier sits alone in the dock. Olivier had met Fourniret through a classified ad when he was in prison for rape. Even in his letters from prison, he spoke of his obsession with virgins. Olivier filed for divorce in 2008 after the couple were sentenced to life imprisonment. Fourniret died in prison in 2021.
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The involvement of Monique Olivier, Fourniret's ex-wife, in the kidnapping and murders of three victims in France was recognized in an international court process. Despite her confession and court testimony, the whereabouts of two of the victims' bodies remain unknown, perpetuating the international search for justice in these heinous crimes involving rape, murder, and manslaughter.
Source: www.ntv.de
