On Wednesday, May 28, 2008, Michel Fourniret, 66, also known as "the Ogre of the Ardennes," who, along with his wife and accomplice, Monique Olivier, 59, were sentenced to life in prison by a French criminal court for carrying out a horrific series of sex murders between 1987 and 2001, ending a two-month trial in Charleville-Mezieres in northeastern France. Together the couple was described in court as the "devil with two faces" for the rapes and murders of seven girls and women in Fourniret's demented and perverted quest for virgins as victims.
According to details revealed at Fourniret's and Olivier's trial, Fourniret harbored a sick and unnatural lust for virgins and was actually in prison serving a sentence for sexual assault when he and Olivier made a pact with each other in which he would kill Olivier's former husband if she assisted him in finding virgins that he could victimize. When Fourniret got out of prison, he did not kill Olivier's husband as promised—but she did help him find virgins. Their method of operation was fairly simple: Fourniret would pick out his desired victims, ages 12 to 21, and Olivier would gain their trust and confidence. Afterwards the girls and young women would be drugged, and then sexually assaulted until Fourniret's depravity was satisfied. When he was finished with his victims, they would be shot, stabbed with a screwdriver or strangled by Fourniret. Olivier, meanwhile, stood by and watched as her husband carried out his inhuman acts of evil.
In addition to the seven victims for which they were convicted of murdering, the couple also faces charges in at least two other cases including one involving a 20-year-old teaching assistant who disappeared from the city of Auxerre during the early evening of May 16, 1990. Her nude body was found the following morning floating in a river just outside of town. The other case involves that of a 20-year-old female British student who was found dead in the Burgundy region of France, also in 1990.
The murderous couple was actually caught in Belgium in June 2003 after they botched the kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl who managed to slip out of her bindings and escape from the rear of Fourniret's van. She was able to provide the police with the registration plate information from the van, which ultimately led to the killers' arrests. After lengthy jurisdictional battling over which country they should be prosecuted in, France eventually won because six of the victims were French citizens. As a result, Belgium extradited Olivier to France in 2005, and Fourniret the following year.
During their lengthy trial, Fourniret and Olivier were described as the "cruelest" criminals that country has ever known. The prosecutor, Francis Nachbar, referred to Olivier as "a witch," and Fourniret's court-appointed attorney said that his client's case was not defendable.
"You both have nothing more than the appearance of human beings," Nachbar said during his closing arguments. "We have been delving into the very depths of evil."
"I can breathe again," said the mother of the killers' first victim who was kidnapped while on her way home from school in 1987, and later raped and murdered, after the jury's verdict had been announced.
"We will now try to return to a normal life," said the father of another victim.
As a provision of the jury's guilty verdict, Fourniret is barred under French law from seeking parole, a move aimed at ensuring that the killer will die in prison. Convicted of complicity in four of the killings, Olivier will not be able to apply for parole until 2036 at which time she will be 87-years-old, if she is still alive.
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