FRENCH serial killer Michel Fourniret and his wife Monique Olivier, who were described as "a devil with two faces", were sentenced to life yesterday for the kidnap, rape and murder of seven girls and young women during a killing spree in France and Belgium from 1987 to 2001.
Dubbed the "Ogre of the Ardennes", Fourniret, 66, a former electrician, was given a whole-life tariff with no chance of parole. Olivier, 59, who helped trap the victims and dispose of their bodies, was convicted of complicity in five murders
and was ordered to serve at least 28 years.
The verdicts brought to an end a two-month trial that has been one of the most gruesome to hit France since the Second World War. Fourniret and Olivier were described by the prosecutor as "monsters" who plumbed the depths of evil as they hunted down virgins to rape and kill in a "terrifying and nauseous" frenzy of murder.
Their victims, the oldest of whom was 22 and the youngest just 12, were mostly kidnapped in the heavily-wooded Ardennes region on the Franco-Belgian border, before being raped, then shot, strangled or stabbed and their bodies hidden or discarded.
Fourniret has indicated that he will not appeal his sentence. Olivier has ten days to appeal. Although Fourniret had confessed to the murders, he refused to co-operate during the trial.
His early attempt at refusing to attend the hearing, in Charleville-Mézières in the region of eastern France where most of his crimes were committed, was defeated by the judge, who ordered that he be brought to court every day, by force if necessary. However, he remained silent through most of the hearing, only speaking for a couple of days after his second wife requested him to do so.
On the last day of the trial, he delivered a 15-minute diatribe, partly written in verse, in which he criticised the prosecution. After repeatedly insulting his wife, whom he described as "a doormat", he concluded by saying she was "a poor woman incapable of harming anyone".
Olivier's lawyers tried to portary her as a submissive wife who was terrified of her violent husband. However, Xavier Lenoir, the state prosecutor, said Olivier was "a deceitful witch", who displayed "a deafening silence" to the screams and pleas for help from the girls being raped by her husband.
Prosecutors also stressed that while Fourniret had several convictions for sexual assault, he did not start killing until he met Olivier. Fourniret and Olivier were described as "terrifying and highly dangerous personalities who had merged into a single creature of evil".
The couple first came into contact while Fourniret was serving a sentence for one such assault and Olivier, who was separated from her first husband, replied to his ad for a pen pal in a Catholic magazine. The couple quickly signed a "diabolical pact" through letters in which Olivier agreed to help supply Fourniret, who signed his letters Shere Khan and whom she called "my beast", with virgins, in return for which he would kill her husband.
Fourniret only succeeded in carrying out a raid on the former husband's home and burning his paintings. Olivier, however, proved to be an effective accomplice in luring and trapping her husband's prey.
Fourniret maintained he was in an "altered state" when he committed the murders. "I remain an extremely dangerous individual," he told the court. Only Olivier expressed any remorse for the couple's crimes, mumbling: "I regret everything that I have done. That is all."
Although Fourniret was tried for seven murders, investigators believe he may have committed many more. The couple are due to face a further trial for three other murders, including that of Joanna Parrish, 20, a British student.
Fourniret described himself as a poacher who went out hunting for virgins. His modus operandi was to identify a potential victim while driving, stop to ask for directions and then persuade her to get into his car.
His wife's presence served to reassure the future victim, according to the prosecution. Olivier accompanied her husband on at least one "hunting expedition" while pregnant. The court also heard how Fourniret and Olivier used their infant son to lure girls into their car by saying they were strangers to the region and needed to find a doctor because their baby was ill.
Their killing spree was brought to an end in 2003 by the courage of a 13-year-old Belgian girl who foiled the couple's efforts to kidnap her by escaping from their van and giving its registration number to police.
Olivier finally broke down a year later during her 120th interrogation and accused her husband. Police believe she finally confessed over fear for her own fate after learning that Michelle Martin, the wife of the Belgian paedophile killer Marc Dutroux, had received a 30-year sentence for her role in her husband's crimes. Olivier and Martin were later reported to have become friends in the Belgian prison where both were held; she and her husband were extradited to France to face trial.
The past two months of hearings have exposed some of the tragic errors made by investigators, which allowed Fourniret to continue killing for so long.
The court heard that police and gendarmes failed to communicate as they answered to two separate ministries, and that Fourniret and Olivier had worked as caretakers at a Belgian primary school, despite Fourniret's criminal record for sexual assault in France because of lack of communication between the two countries.
Despite his horrific crimes, on the final day of the trial, Fourniret's lawyer Pierre Blocquaux appealed to the jury to show compassion toward his client.
But the father of Celine Saison, 18, who was raped and strangled to death in 2000, told the serial killer: "I feel so much hate that if life permits, I will go and spit on your grave."
Joanna Parrish: Murdered near where Fourniret had killed
THE naked and bound body of Joanna Parrish, 21, was found in a river in Burgundy in eastern France in 1991.
She had been working in her gap year as a teaching assistant in the town of Auxerre when she went missing after setting off to meet an unknown man.
He had answered an advertisement she had placed offering English lessons, and had said he would like her to teach his son.
Michel Fourniret, who confessed to the kidnap, rape and murder of 17-year-old Isabelle Laville in Auxerre three years earlier, has denied killing Ms Parrish, of Gloucester.
In March this year, he was given "mise en examen" status, making him an official suspect in the Parrish case – similar to the "arguido" status used in Portugal in the Madeleine McCann case.
After the court hearing in Charleville-Mézières, north-east France, yesterday, Ms Parrish's parents said they would now have to wait to see whether Fourniret was to be charged with their daughter's murder.
Roger Parrish and Pauline Sewell, who attended the trial, issued a joint statement after Fourniret was jailed for life.
It read: "This is not the final chapter in our quest for justice for Joanna. We must wait to see if Fourniret is to be charged in connection with her death.
"Our hearts go out to the families of the victims of this killer, because we know what they have gone through.
"We are very grateful to them for the support they gave us during our visits to France.
"Indeed, we would like to acknowledge the kindness and messages of hope from around the world we have received over the last 18 years."
BACKGROUNDDURING the trial, Michel Fourniret admitted betraying a former cellmate by killing his wife to get his hands on stolen gold ingots, in a twisting tale of double-cross.
Fourniret met Jean-Pierre Hellegouarch, leader of the notorious "Postiches" gang, in 1984 in Fleury-Merogis prison outside Paris. Fourniret was serving a sentence for sexual assault and Hellegouarch for bank robbery, arms dealing and drug trafficking.
Fourniret was released in 1987. The following year, Hellegouarch, who was still in jail, asked Fourniret, whom he considered "inoffensive" and with "gardener's hands", to help his wife, Farida Hammiche, dig up the loot and hide it in a safe place where he could recover it on his release.
Hellegouarch, now 65, told the court he had nicknamed Fourniret and Olivier "The Popeyes" and considered them incapable of stealing the gold.
Fourniret, who agreed to help in return for a "commission", helped Hammiche dig up the gold and hide it in the bathroom of a safe house.
But in 1988, he arranged to meet Hammiche and killed her, burying her body in Claire-fontaine forest outside Paris. According to Fourniret, he strangled her, while Olivier stabbed her with a bayonet. Olivier denied this in court, which threw her husband into a rage during which he insulted his wife, accusing her of lying.
Fourniret recovered almost all of the loot, using it to buy an Ardennes chateau. He paid 1.2 million francs (£120,000) cash for the Chateau de Sautou, left, where he later buried several of his victims.
Fourniret left 300,000 francs in the hiding place for Hellegouarch, and told the gangster his wife had stolen the rest.
The full article contains 1553 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
