Fourniret: My encounter with a serial killer couple

As Public Prosecutor in Charleville-Mézières from 2003 to 2008, I was in charge of the Fourniret/Monique Olivier case for four years and, at their assize court trial, secured their conviction to life imprisonment. It was an exceptional case—by the number of young girls and adolescents who fell victim, by the length of the criminal trajectory of this serial killer couple, by the abomination and inhumanity of the crimes committed, and by the unprecedented perversity of these two monsters.

It took me 15 years after the 2008 trial to write my book Ma rencontre avec le Mal (My Encounter with Evil), which is not a journalistic narrative of these heinous crimes but rather the writing of my lived experience—my share of truth. It is an attempt to contribute to the understanding of the particular handling that major criminal cases and serial crimes require, as well as the legal, criminological, and social challenges they present. Above all, my book was intended to help others understand, at least in part, the terrible and irreversible torment endured by the families of these unfortunate victims, so that they might be better heard by the justice system, granted genuine attention, and shown constant empathy throughout their arduous judicial ordeal.

The chilling discovery of a serial killer

Upon my appointment as Public Prosecutor in Charleville-Mézières in 2003, I was immediately made aware of two very serious criminal cases: the abduction and murder of two young victims. On May 16, 2000, Céline, aged 18, disappeared after leaving her high school in Charleville-Mézières. Any suggestion of a runaway was quickly dismissed, and although searches began immediately, they remained fruitless until July 22, 2000, when her skeletal remains were discovered in nearby woodland close to the Belgian border. On May 5, 2001, Mananya, aged 13 and a half, disappeared in Sedan, an Ardennes town, as she left the public library and was returning home. On March 1, 2002, her body was discovered about 30 kilometers away, near a Belgian village. The analogies between these two crimes were far too numerous to suggest coincidence: the geographical proximity of the events and of the sites where the bodies were found, the modus operandi of urban abductions carried out discreetly, the details of how the bodies were abandoned, the victims’ physical and psychological profiles… Together with the investigating judges and investigators of the Reims police judiciaire, the frightening hypothesis of a serial killer operating in the Ardennes became increasingly credible. Despite multiple investigations conducted jointly by the judicial police of Reims and Dinant in Belgium, the searches remained unfruitful. That was until June 26, 2003, when a major event reignited both inquiries. On that day, a 13-year-old girl, Marie-Ascension, was abducted in Belgium. Thanks to her courage and composure, she managed to free herself from her restraints and escape from the van in which her abductor had confined her. A motorist picked her up and, with remarkable presence of mind, took note of the vehicle’s license plate. The gendarmes traced it to Monique Olivier, wife of Michel Fourniret. Fourniret was quickly arrested. He admitted to the facts and stated that he had tied up the girl, touched her breasts, considered having sexual relations with her, and told her that “he was far worse than Dutroux.”

Searches carried out at his home revealed children’s clothing, ropes, adhesive tape, a pair of handcuffs, a child’s inhalation mask, vials of ether, and various weapons, including police revolvers stolen during a burglary.

Fourniret agreed to kill Monique Olivier’s two previous partners, and in exchange, she would provide him with young virgin girls, whom they referred to as “MSPs (membranes on legs)” or “young slits.”

Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier: the deadly alliance of a serial killer couple

Monique Olivier claimed to be completely unaware of her husband’s proclivity for children, denied any awareness of his prior convictions, and asserted—like Fourniret—that this abduction was an isolated case. It would take a full year, the relentless work of Belgian investigators who questioned her 120 times, and the covert recording of a prison visitation, before she finally gave her first confession—very partial—regarding the number of crimes committed and her own role. A few days later, confronted with the details provided by his wife, Fourniret confessed as well. He explained that he had met Monique Olivier while serving a sentence for previous sexual assaults. She had responded to his request for a pen pal, and over the course of eight months they exchanged more than 200 letters. The analysis of this voluminous correspondence is chilling: even before meeting in person, they had sealed a genuine criminal pact. Fourniret promised to kill Olivier’s two former partners, and in return, she would provide him with young virgins girls, whom they referred to as “MSPs (membranes on legs)” or “young slits.” Two months after Fourniret’s release, this pact—until then confined to paper—was put into practice, with devastating consequences for Isabelle, aged 17.

On December 11, 1987, Isabelle disappeared on her way home from school in Auxerre. The couple’s later confessions revealed the meticulous planning of this abduction: surveillance beforehand, the kidnapping of the girl by Monique Olivier, Fourniret pretending to have run out of fuel before climbing into the vehicle, slipping a cord around her neck, while Olivier administered Rohypnol tablets that rendered her semi-conscious. Brought to their home, Fourniret attempted to rape her but was unable to do so due to erectile failure. Acting on her own initiative, Olivier performed oral sex on him. Fourniret then strangled the girl, and together they disposed of her body by throwing it into a disused well. It would take more than two years and the exploration of some thirty old wells before her remains were finally recovered—a heart-wrenching moment for Isabelle’s father. The murders continued one after another, as the bloody trajectory of the couple stretched on for 16 years.

In January 1988, Fourniret, accompanied by Monique Olivier, shot a sales representative at point-blank range with a shotgun in order to rob his wallet. This act of violence was consistent with one of their written agreements. The victim miraculously survived.A few weeks later, they committed another murder by killing the partner of one of Fourniret’s former fellow inmates, in order to steal part of the loot from the Gang des Postiches, a notorious group of bank robbers active in the Paris region. This allowed them to purchase, for 1.2 million francs, the Château du Sautou, a 19th-century castle with a park of about fifteen hectares. A criminal episode as bizarre as it was deadly. In August of the same year, they abducted and murdered Fabienne, a 20-year-old student, in the Marne. Fourniret first tried to kill her by injecting air into her veins with a syringe, then shot her at point-blank range with a sawed-off shotgun. They abandoned the young woman’s body on the Mourmelon military base, echoing the crimes committed by another serial killer, Adjutant Chanal.

In January 1989, the couple abducted Jeanne-Marie, a 21-year-old student, in Charleville-Mézières. After attempting to rape her, Fourniret strangled her while Monique Olivier sealed her nasal and oral passages with adhesive tape. They buried her body on their property at the Château du Sautou. Her remains would not be found until 15 years later, after searches complicated by Fourniret’s manipulations and provocations. In December 1989, near Namur in Belgium, Monique Olivier used the pretext of her sick infant—lying in a cradle at the back of her vehicle—to abduct 12-year-old Elisabeth together with Fourniret. After bringing her to their Ardennes home, intoxicating and tying her up, Fourniret attempted to rape her—again unsuccessfully, despite another act of oral sex performed by Monique Olivier. Elisabeth spent the night in chains, before being taken the next day by Fourniret to the Château du Sautou, where he suffocated her in a transparent plastic bag. During a later “conversation,” he tried to provoke me by odiously recounting in detail the physical transformations of a face undergoing asphyxiation.

Un mode A modus operandi strikingly similar to that of another serial killer, Francis Heaulme.
similaire à celui d’un autre tueur en série, Francis Heaulme.

In November 1990, they abducted Natacha, 13, from a supermarket parking lot near Nantes. Fourniret brutally beat her, raped her, and stabbed her repeatedly with an awl. He abandoned her body on a beach in Vendée, 80 kilometers away—a modus operandi strikingly similar to that of another serial killer, Francis Heaulme. In 1995, Fourniret violently assaulted a dog groomer in Namur. Thanks to her presence of mind, the victim, Joëlle, survived, though she still suffers permanent psychological trauma to this day—a genuine psychological murder. In 2000 and 2001, he abducted, raped, and killed Céline and Mananya in the Ardennes, after subjecting them to prolonged psychological torture. An endless ordeal for these two young victims.

Between 1990 and 2000, far from being a “quiet period,” the couple’s criminal activities continued at a relentless pace. Crimes were committed, such as the murder of young Estelle in Guermantes, near Paris—solved 16 years later—as well as numerous attempted or aborted abduction, rapes and murders plans.

Michel Fourniret: the most “accomplished” serial killer

A deep dive into the tortured psyche of a diabolical couple

How can such extreme and murderous deviations be explained? Nothing in the past lives of either Fourniret or Monique Olivier provides the faintest beginning of an answer. Only their numerous psychological and psychiatric evaluations have managed to lift part of the veil.

Fourniret has been described as “the most accomplished serial killer.” Of chilling coldness, highly organized and obsessive, sadistic, extremely violent and perverse, his criminal pathology was regarded as absolute. He derived genuine pleasure from the terror and humiliation of his victims, prolonging their agony. Monique Olivier, on the other hand, possessed an intelligence quotient far above average. Perverse and manipulative, she managed to make herself indispensable to Fourniret in order to fulfill her own most archaic fantasies. She was the one who gave him his license to kill; “without her, there would have been no murder.” Indifferent to the suffering of their young victims, she took a certain pride in being Fourniret’s accomplice and played a particularly active role in the commission of their crimes. The grip they exerted over each other was total and reciprocal, through “the alienation of each in the fantasy of the other.” Experts spoke of “a genuine co-optation of their unconscious drives, a mechanism so intimate that it gave rise to a new, third entity: the acting couple. It was as if a new subject had been created—two psyches meshed together, driving them toward criminal action.”

Life sentences for an unprecedented verdict

This monstrous couple was convicted in May 2008 after eight grueling weeks of trial. To their insufferable demeanor, the families responded with exceptional dignity—despite their immeasurable and permanent grief—commanding the respect and admiration of all.

Fourniret was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, in other words, a true whole-life sentence with no possibility of adjustment, reduction, temporary leave, or early release—a sentence rarely imposed in France. Monique Olivier was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum security period of 28 years. She remains the only woman ever to have received such a sentence in France.

France had never before witnessed such a monstrous serial killer couple, over such an extended period, targeting such a high number of young victims—likely between thirty and thirty-five, many of whom remain unidentified—tortured under horrific conditions. May such atrocities never be repeated.

“No one will come out of the Fourniret case unscathed—not FRANCIS NACHBAR, not even you, Mr. Prosecutor.”

Fourniret uttered this sentence only minutes after his first encounter with Prosecutor Nachbar. It was on July 3, 2004, during the excavations in the park of the Château du Sautou, in the Ardennes, where the bodies of two of his victims were discovered. The monster was not mistaken. Eighteen years later, those words still resonate like a grim refrain. Indeed, Francis Nachbar did not emerge entirely unscathed from this extraordinary judicial case, from the hundreds of hours spent with Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier, a diabolical couple and the ultimate embodiment of evil. Fifteen years after the 2008 Assize Court trial, Francis Nachbar decided to deliver his own share of the truth about one of the greatest serial killer cases France has ever known. It took him all these years to feel ready—freed from judicial office and from any constraints.

A vital book that sheds new light on this bloodstained couple. In total, Michel Fourniret confessed to 11 murders. He is also suspected in 21 other cases of missing girls and young women. Available to order here.