“Ardenne cannibal”: the wife of a serial killer spoke about the rape of a student

The ex-wife of French serial killer Michel Fourniret has told police he beat British student Joanna Parrish unconscious before raping, strangling her and dumping her body in a river.

According to The Guardian, 75-year-old Monique Olivier is under investigation for complicity in the kidnapping and murder of 20-year-old Joanna Parrish in 1990 and two other victims – 19-year-old Marie-Angele Domez in 1988 and nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin in 2003.

On the second day of the trial, the Belgian prosecutor who questioned Olivier in 2004 said she described how she and Fourniret picked up Parrish, a Leeds University student who had spent eight months in France as a teaching assistant, near the Auxerre train station in Yonne. two hours southeast of Paris.

“Michel asked the girl if she was a virgin and if she had a boyfriend. He told her to undress, but she refused. He beat the young girl until she lost consciousness, then raped her. He then strangled her,” Olivier told police in a statement she later retracted.

“He then took her naked body and threw it into the river,” she added.

Parrish’s naked body was found in the nearby Yonne River the next morning, May 17, 1990, The Guardian writes.

On Wednesday afternoon, Didier Safar, the judge presiding over the trial, asked Olivier to stand and explain his position.

“After my statement yesterday, you had very few comments. I would like to ask you a question. What is your position on the three charges brought against you?” – Safar asked.

Olivier, standing in the box, stated: “I admit all the facts, three facts of which I am accused.”

“In other words, do you accept the facts in the Parrish, Domez and Moosen cases?” asked Judge Safar.

Olivier nodded.

Defendants in French trials are not required to admit guilt, but when the trial began Olivier told the court she regretted “everything that happened.”

During a 17-year campaign of kidnappings and murders, the couple’s modus operandi was for Olivier to lure victims into the car as a woman was less likely to cause them fear. Furniret must have been waiting behind or standing further down the road, waiting to be picked up

Fourniret, known as the “Man-Eater of the Ardennes,” is believed to have killed at least 10 young women and girls. He was sentenced to life in prison for seven murders in 2008, but died in 2021 before he could stand trial for three more, including the murder of British woman Parrish.

Olivier is already serving a life sentence for his role in the murders, The Guardian notes.

Frances Nachbar, a former state prosecutor who interrogated Fourniret and Olivier between 2004 and 2008, said she then confessed to involvement in the murders of Parrish and Domez, but later retracted her testimony and accused him of forcing her admit.

“Monique Olivier explained that Fourniret kidnapped the girl at the Auxerre station. We knew nothing about this kidnapping, this murder of Joanna Parrish. Monique Olivier spoke in detail about the ropes used to bind the girl and the sexual assault she suffered in the van in the presence of Monique Olivier. Suddenly she tells us: “The body was thrown into the stream, Fourniret did it.” She also says that Fourniret raped the victim.”

Nachbar said Olivier later retracted the information.

“Monique Olivier is a pathological liar and portrays herself as a victim,” he said, adding that she and Fourniret were “monsters of inhumanity, perversity and cruelty. They were both dangerous.”

He defended the decision not to include the murders of Parrish and Domez in Michel Fourniret’s 2008 trial, saying they had no evidence “other than Olivier’s refuted statements.”

The bodies of Domez and Mouzin were never found.

The trial is ongoing.