Serial killer’s ex-wife tried in UK student murder

The ex-wife of one of France’s most notorious serial-killers has gone on trial for her role in the 1990 mur­der of British student, Joanna Parrish.

Monique Olivier, who is 75 and already serving a life sentence in jail, is also charged with helping the late Michel Fourniret commit two other murders, one of a nine-year old girl.

Joanna Parrish, 20, was found dead in a river near the town of Auxerre.

The Leeds University student had been working as a gap-year English teacher.

She had been beaten and raped.

More than 30 years later, the trial in the Paris suburb of Nan­terre is the first chance for her family to see a semblance of jus­tice. Her parents, now divorced, are attending.

Fourniret was nicknamed the Beast of the Ardennes after he was convicted of seven murders of young women in 2008. In jail 10 years later, he confessed to killing Joanna Parrish and the two others.

In France, most interest is focused on the case of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, who disap­peared on her way from school in Guermantes southeast of Paris in 2003. She is believed to be Fourniret’s last victim. Her body has never been found.

Fourniret died in 2021 before he could be tried for these three murders.

Olivier was also convicted in the 2008 trial, during which her role in aiding Fourniret’s murderous sex obsession was laid bare. As his female accomplice, she was able to win the trust of victims, who would otherwise have been on their guard against a single male.

In court on Tuesday, she was asked by the judge if she had anything to say and replied: “I regret everything that happened.”

In the first murder, alone in the couple’s van she picked up a hitch-hiker, then further down the road picked up Fourniret, who was pretending to be anoth­er hitch-hiker. —BBC

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