Justice for Joanna 33 years on? Ogre's wife goes on trial

ONE of the "Ogres of the Ardennes" appeared in court yesterday charged with the murder of British student Joanna Parrish.

- ADAM ASPINALL

The undergraduate, 20, fell prey to French serial killer Michel Fourniret while living in Auxerre in May 1990.

She was raped and murdered and her naked body dumped in a river by the beast, who finally confessed in prison before his death in 2021 aged 79.

His wife Monique Olivier, 75, was formally charged with her murder earlier this year and is standing trial in Nanterre, Paris, for Joanna's brutal death and two other grisly killings.

Fourniret's wicked crimes date back to 1988 in the case of Marie-Angele Domece, 18, who, like Joanna, was initially reported missing from Auxerre, but whose body has never been found.

Olivier is charged with aiding and abetting the kidnapping and murder of both women.

The third charge is for Olivier's complicity in the 2003 disappearance of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, whose body has also never been found.

Yesterday, she told the court: "I regret everything that happened." Olivier's lawyer Richard Delgenes said his client's appearance in court would set her apart from her husband.

He said: "Unlike him, she takes no special pleasure in the pain of his victims or of the families.

Before her husband's death, he was accused of murdering eight girls and young women between 1987 and 2001.

Olivier is already serving a life sentence for complicity in four of the killings and a gang rape.

The pair stalked the Ardennes region on the Belgian border for years in their van looking for vulnerable young girls.

The victims were either strangled, shot or stabbed with a screwdriver to feed what prosecutors called Fourniret's "obsession for virgins".

Vile Fourniret began offending in 1966 when, at age 24, he groped a minor.