“L’Ogre des Ardennes”: a story of kidnappings, rapes and crimes of virgin girls | the Chronicle

The crimes and rapes committed by the serial killer and pedophile Michel Fourniret, also known as the ‘Ogre of the Ardennes’, came to an end in 2003 when their last 13-year-old victim managed to escape and seek help. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with his wife, Monique Olivier, also sentenced to life imprisonment.

During their 16 years of marriage, the “demon couple” as they became known years later in the media, he murdered at least seven girls in France and Belgium, and they attempted to kidnap and rape three more between 1987 and 2003.

Fourniret was accused of “murder, rape and kidnapping“in the seven homicides he admitted (Isabelle Laville, Fabienne Leroy, Jeanne-Marie Desramault, Elisabeth Brichet, Natacha Danais, Céline Saison y Mananya Thumpong), attempted rape, failed kidnapping and sexual assault. His wife had to answer for the charge of co-author of one of the crimes, committed in 1989, and of complicity in five others.

It all started in the 1980s, when the rapist was serving a prison sentence for sexual assault and met his third wife, Monique Olivier, via an announcement to the press. It was she who helped him get in touch with potential victims, investigators said, once he was released.

So, a few months after gaining their freedom, the couple began a frenzy of kidnappings, rapes and murders for the hunt for virgins which lasted almost 20 years. Their first victim became a dark model of how they were to function. In December 1987, Olivier saw Isabelle Laville, 17, walking home from school.

Olivier asked for directions and convinced Laville to get in the car. Along the way, they picked up Fourniret on a hoax. In the vehicle, Fourniret “He grabbed her by the hair and asked her if she was a virgin, and she said yes”, according to The Herald Sun. Fourniret strangled Laville with a rope before Olivier drugs her with Rohypnol to calm her down.

Laville was taken to his home in Saint-Cyr-les-Colons, where Fourniret raped and strangled Laville to death. His remains were found at the bottom of a disused well in 2006.

The chance and perseverance of a Belgian police officer ended the couple’s criminal odyssey in June 2003 near Namur, Belgium, when Fourniret tried to kidnap a 13-year-old girl, that she was saved because, badly tied up by her captor, she managed to escape and bring to the police the license plate of the van in which Michel Fourniret tried to kidnap her.

Finally in 2008, the Criminal Court of Charleville-Mezières, in the Ardennes (north-eastern France), sentenced serial killer Michel Fourniret to life imprisonment without the possibility of reduction of sentence, which means that Founiret will never be released from prison.