Ex-wife of ‘Ogre of the Ardennes’ to go on trial over British woman’s murder

The ex-wife of a notorious French serial killer dubbed the “Ogre of the Ardennes” will stand trial this week over the murder of a British woman more than 30 years ago.

Monique Olivier, 75, will be questioned about her role in the killing of Joanna Parrish, whose naked body was discovered in a river in central France in 1990.

The hearing, which is set to begin on Tuesday, will run for three weeks and also interrogate Olivier’s alleged role in two other murders.

The crimes date back to 1988 in the case of Marie-Angele Domece, who disappeared aged 18 from Auxerre, and 2003, when nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin was abducted – despite intensive searches both bodies have never been found.

Michel Fourniret – who was charged with abduction, rape and murder in the cases – died in 2021, aged 79, before he could be brought to trial. He was dubbed the “Ogre of the Ardennes” by media after the hilly region on the French-Belgium border where he lived and preyed on his victims.

Olivier, who was married to Fourniret, is charged with aiding and abetting the kidnapping and murder of Ms Parrish and Ms Domece. Her third charge is for complicity in the disappearance of Ms Mouzin.

Tuesday’s trial will mark the first time Ms Parrish’s killing is interrogated in court. For 30 years, her case had gone cold until Fourniret admitted in 2018 to brutally killing her while he was already serving a life sentence for seven other murders.

At the time of Fourinet’s death two years ago, Joanna’s father Roger Parrish told the Telegraph that French authorities should have done more to expedite his trial for Joanna’s killing. Their failure to do so stripped Ms Parrish’s family of the chance to see her killer face justice, he said.

“[A trial] would have offered us some closure,” Mr Parrish said.

Ms Parrish, 20, who studied French and Spanish at Leeds University, was teaching English at a high school in the Burgundy town of Auxerre at the time of her abduction. She was snatched by Fourniret after placing an advertisement in a local newspaper offering English lessons.

An autopsy showed that she had been drugged, raped and strangled before being dumped in the river Yonne.

Olivier is currently serving a life sentence for her role in four other murders and a rape committed by Fourniret.

In 2018, 10 years after her initial sentencing, Olivier was given a further 20 years’ jail for her part in the killing of Farida Hammiche, the wife of one of Fourniret’s former cellmates.

In 2019, she overturned her husband’s alibi for the day Ms Mouzin disappeared, prompting him to admit responsibility months later. Fourniret had earlier admitted killing Ms Parrish and Ms Domece.

“I am the only one responsible for their fates... If those people had never crossed my path, they would still be alive,” he told investigators.

Olivier said in 2020 that her husband kidnapped, raped and killed Ms Mouzin, a fragment of whose DNA was found on a mattress seized from the couple’s home in 2003. And in 2021 she admitted her own role in the case for the first time, saying she was with her husband when he buried the girl’s body near a forest in the Ardennes.

Criminal experts have been divided on whether Olivier may have driven Fourniret to kill. Some have characterised her as the puppeteer who pulled the strings, possessed of a penchant for “perverse” behaviour.

In the early 1980s she fled from her violent first husband, with whom she had two children, before becoming a pen pal of Fourniret while he was serving a jail sentence for rape.

The two sealed a pact that she would find him virgins to rape if he would kill her then-husband – which he never did. They lived together after he was released in 1987, buying a chateau with stolen gold dug up from a graveyard, and had a son together.

The pair are the deadliest couple in French legal history and criminal experts believe there could be dozens more victims yet to be accounted for.