Serial Killer's Ex-Wife Gets Another Life Sentence

UPDATE Dec 19, 2023 5:26 PM CST

The ex-wife of a French serial killer has been handed another life sentence. Monique Olivier was sentenced Tuesday for her role in the rape and murder of two young women, the BBC reports. She was also sentenced for the kidnapping of Estelle Mouzin, a 9-year-old girl whose body was never found after she disappeared in 2003. Olivier admitted that she served as "bait" to persuade women and girls to get into the vehicle she was driving, with then-husband Michel Fourniret hiding in the back, reports CBS News. "I regret everything I did and I ask for forgiveness from the families of the victims, while knowing that it is unforgivable," she told the court. Olivier was already serving a life sentence for her role in other murders. Fourniret, known as the "Ogre of the Ardennes," died behind bars in 2021.

Nov 27, 2023 3:00 AM CST

In 2018, the French serial killer known as the "Ogre of the Ardennes" confessed to the 1990 murder of Joanna Parrish. But Michel Fourniret died in prison (where he was serving a life sentence after having been convicted in 2008 of killing seven other girls and women) in 2021, before he could face trial for her slaying. Now, in what the Guardian calls the last chance for justice for Parrish's family, Fourniret's ex-wife is going on trial for her murder. Monique Olivier is also serving a life sentence for acting as her then-husband's accomplice during his 17 years of kidnapping and killing girls and women in France, and she's been charged with complicity in Parrish's murder as well as the disappearances of Marie-Angèle Domèce and Estelle Mouzin, the BBC reports

The bodies of Domèce, who disappeared at age 19 on her way home from school in 1988, and Mouzin, who was 9 when she disappeared in 2003, have never been found. But Fourniret admitted to killing them and Parrish, who was 20 when she went to meet a man she thought wanted her to teach his son English. Her body was found the next morning in a river. Olivier was charged in connection with her and Domèce's kidnappings, rapes, and murders as well as Mouzin's kidnapping. Authorities say she often drove the couple's van, with Fourniret hiding in the back, and stopped girls and young women to ask for directions, suggesting they get in the van to help her. The couple divorced in 2010. (More Michel Fourniret stories.)