The dark story of Michel Fourniret, the serial killer obsessed with virginity who kidnapped, raped and massacred girls and teenagers

Michel Fourniret, the most famous serial killer in France, known as “The ogre of the Ardennes” for the murder of at least eight young women, adolescents and girls In this region, he died on Monday at the age of 79.

Fourniret was serving two life sentences and had been admitted a few hours earlier to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris in an “irreversible” situation.

The prosecution said in a statement that an investigation had been opened into the causes of death, a systematic practice in the event of the death of a prisoner. According to the newspaper The Parisian, had heart problems and suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.

In total, Fourniret was sentenced for eight murders, as the judge investigated his possible involvement in two other deaths, and he made a total of eleven victims.

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He was arrested in 2003 in Belgium after attempting to kidnap a girl, and authorities began to blame him for the disappearances of girls in the ardennes, a wooded region located between the south of Belgium and the north-east of France.

His third wife, Monique Olivier, was seen as an accessory for helping to attract multiple victims, and sentenced to 28 years in prison.

His crimes

Isabelle LavilleA 17-year-old French teenager disappeared in Auxerre on December 11, 1987 as she returned from school. His remains were found at the bottom of a well north of Auxerre in July 2006. Fabienne Leroy, a twenty-year-old girl, disappeared in 1988 in Mourmelon and her body was later found in the nearby woods.

In 1989 he murdered two young men, Jeanne-Marie Desramault, a twenty-two-year-old French student Elisabeth brichet, a twelve-year-old Belgian girl who disappeared from Namur after playing with a friend. In 1990 he killed Natacha Danais, a thirteen-year-old Frenchwoman Farida Hellegouarch, girlfriend of one of the members of the “hairpiece gang”, an organization dedicated to the robbery of banks. Fourniret killed her to join the criminal group. He bought a castle in France with money from this organization.

Between 2000 and 2001 he kidnapped and murdered Celine Season, eighteen, disappeared in Sedan. His body was found in Belgium. Manyana Thumpong, an eighteen-year-old young man who disappeared in 2001 from Charleville-Mézières. His body was also later found in Belgium.

His history

Son of an unstructured family (alcoholic father and abusive mother), Fourniret was born on April 4, 1942 in Sedan. Married three times and father of five children, he would have gradually turned into a sexual predator after discovering that his first wife was not a virgin.

He started having problems with the justice system for the sexual abuse of a girl as early as 1967, at the age of 25 and a father. Described by your case investigators as very smart, kinky and obsessed with virginity, between 1984 and 1987, he served a first prison sentence for sexual assault and rape of minors.

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After meeting Olivier while in prison, Monique Olivier became a couple when they were released and they went to live in a rural area of ​​Belgium.

He began in December 1987 a murderous journey through the border area, which it did not end until his arrest in 2003 after a failed kidnapping, although one of the crimes took place in Nantes, on the Atlantic coast.

By his own admission, he was a quiet family man by day and a “poacher” by night.

Fourniret took several secrets to his grave, especially where he buried little Estelle Mouzin, a 9-year-old girl who disappeared in 2003, whom he admitted to having raped and murdered. Despite his confession and the details provided by his ex-wife and accomplice, the girl’s body has not yet been found.

With information from EFE and AFP.