Joanna Parrish, 20, was raped and murdered in 1990. Monique Oliver, the ex-wife of Joanna’s alleged killer Michel Fourniret, said he killed the British student and dumped her naked body in a river
The ex-wife of French serial killer the ‘Ogre of the Ardennes’ has revealed they killed a British student and dumped her naked body in a river.
Monique Oliver, now 70, said her former husband Michel Fourniret, 76, raped and killed 20-year-old Joanna Parrish in 1990.
She told a closed court preliminary hearing she got out the van they in which they picked up the student because she did not want to witness the horrific crime.
Oliver was grilled for two days by the judges who pressed her for details of the crime against the Gloucestershire student, from Newham on Severn.
Olivier lured girls into Fourniret’s van on several occasions to rape and kill them, evidence at the evil couple’s trial in 2008 revealed.
Both are now behind bars for life.
The couple have been compared with Moors murderers ian Brady and Myra Hindley.
Olivier met Fourniret whilst she was a prison warder in a jail where he was serving a sentence for petty crime more than thirty years ago.
She wrote letters to him calling him ‘My Tiger’ and the couple married on his release and began luring and killing young victims.
But Fourniret divorced Olivier after she revealed to a prosecutor in 2005 that he had killed Joanna.
Michel Fourniret, left in 2004 and right in 2008, was yesterday described as a ‘devious psychopath by Joanna’s father Roger Parrish
Olivier, pictured in 2008, met Fourniret whilst she was a prison warder in a jail where he was serving a sentence for petty crime more than thirty years ago
She later retracted her confession and claimed interrogators had beaten her and forced her to confess.
The parents of Joanna, Roger Parrish and Pauline Sewell, have campaigned for justice for 28 years.
They have suspected Fourniret of killing their daughter since the early 2000s.
In February, Fourniret finally confessed to killing the 20-year-old Gloucestershire student.
He told judges: ‘If she had not met me she would still be alive today’.
Michel Fourniret was yesterday described as a ‘devious psychopath by Joanna’s father Roger Parrish.
The parents of Joanna, Roger Parrish and Pauline Sewell, have campaigned for justice for 28 years
He could face trial for the 20-year-old’s murder next year.
His conviction would mean closure for her parents and the end of their ordeal.
In May, Joanna’s parents were updated on the investigation into their daughter’s murder by a judge during a 90-minute meeting in Paris.
Afterwards, their French lawyer Didier Seban declared: ‘The end of a long fight for justice is in sight’.
There were still fears, however, that Fourniret – a known manipulator of judges, prosecutors and Police – would retract his confession.
But Joanna’s parents are confident that his ‘repeated confessions’ to judges in February will be enough to see him convicted.
Joanna’s parents previously said they were convinced that Fourniret killed their daughter. They have suspected Fourniret of killing their daughter since the early 2000s
Fourniret was jailed for life in 2008 for seven murders of teenage girls in France and Belgium.
Olivier was also given a life sentence for complicity in four of the killings.
Joanna’s parents previously said they were convinced that Fourniret killed their daughter.
Ms Sewell wrote to Monique Olivier begging her to confess so she could get closure to the 28-year nightmare.
They campaigned for nearly three decades, visiting France dozens of times to force judges and Gendarmes to bring her killer to justice.
‘I cannot say that I am happy today but I can say that I am relieved. We have been coming to France for 28 years to get justice,’ Mr Parrish said last month.
An poster handed out by Joanna’s parents
‘It’s been a long time. We are not worried about coming to face to face with Fourniret.’
The naked body of Miss Parrish was found in a river in Burgundy on May 17 1990.
An autopsy revealed she had been beaten, raped and strangled while puncture marks on her arms which suggested she had had air injected into her veins.
Michel Fourniret is known to have inflicted this treatment on several other of his victims as a form of torture.
A student teacher at a school in Auxerre Joanna had placed a newspaper advert offering English lessons.
The evening before she died she told friends she was going to meet a man who had replied to her offer.
Fourniret is known to have regularly scanned newspaper advert columns in his search for potential victims.
During the two day questioning by judges in Paris this week, Olivier also related details of another murder, that of French girl Marie-Ange Domèce,19, whose body has never been found and whose murder Fourniret admitted in February.