Natacha Danais

Michel Paul Fourniret (4 April 1942 – 10 May 2021) was a French serial killer who confessed to killing 12 people in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2003.

After he was arrested in June 2003 for the attempted kidnapping of a teenage girl in Ciney, Fourniret confessed in 2004 to killing nine people — eight females and one male — having been informed on by his then-wife, Monique Pierrette Olivier (born 31 October 1948).

Fourniret was first arrested in 1966 for sexually assaulting a young girl.

While imprisoned in 1984 for sexually assaulting another five young girls, Fourniret started corresponding with Monique Olivier via a prison pen pal programme.

He wrote to her of his fantasies of raping and murdering virginal girls; she responded that she would "help" him fulfil those fantasies if he killed her husband, although he never committed this murder.

After he was released from prison in 1987, they began a relationship.

Soon afterwards, he not only raped but went on to murder young girls, with Olivier as his accomplice.

On 11 December 1987, Fourniret and Olivier drove, in separate vehicles, to Auxerre.

Seeing 17-year-old Isabelle Laville—whom the couple had seen a day or two earlier and were targeting—walking home from school, Olivier stopped to ask Laville to join her in the car and give her directions, which Laville agreed to do.

Driving down the road, Olivier reached the spot where Fourniret was standing with his car, pretending it had broken down.

After Olivier, as planned, pretended to offer him a lift, he got into her car.

Fourniret choked Laville with a piece of rope before Olivier sedated her with Rohypnol.

The couple brought the girl to their home in Saint-Cyr-les-Colons, where Fourniret raped and strangled her.

They threw Laville's body down a disused well in Bussy-en-Othe.

She was the wife of Jean-Pierre Hellegouarch, an imprisoned bank robber with whom Fourniret had shared a cell prior to the latter's release in October 1987.

She asked Fourniret to help her unearth a haul from a cemetery in Fontenay-en-Parisis, which had been stolen by members of the Gang des postiches.

After Fourniret and Hammiche managed to retrieve the haul, which consisted of gold ingots and coins, Hammiche gave Fourniret a share worth 500,000 francs for helping her dig it up and hiding it in her apartment in Vitry-sur-Seine.

On 12 April, aiming to steal Hammiche's share, Fourniret and Olivier lured Hammiche out of her home.

They drove her to Clairefontaine-en-Yvelines, where they strangled her and buried her body.

The couple then broke into Hammiche’s home and stole the haul.

They used the money they made from it to buy a château called the Château du Sautou in Donchery.

Hammiche's body was never found.

By August, Olivier was pregnant with Fourniret's baby.

On 3 August, the couple drove to a supermarket in Châlons-sur-Marne (now Châlons-en-Champagne), and encountered 20-year-old Fabienne Leroy in the car park.

With Olivier feigning illness, the couple asked Leroy to join them in their car and give them directions to a doctor's surgery.

After Leroy got in, the couple drove to a forest near the military camp of Mourmelon-le-Grand.

Fourniret ordered Olivier to look at Leroy's hymen to see if it was still intact, but Olivier refused.

After raping Leroy, Fourniret shot her in the chest.

In March 1988, Fourniret was contacted by 30-year-old Farida Hammiche.

In January 1989, Fourniret met 21-year-old Jeanne-Marie Desramault on the evening train to Charleville-Mézières.

Her remains were recovered from the well more than eighteen years later, on 11 July 2006.

Fourniret was convicted of seven of these murders on 28 May 2008 and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole, while Olivier was given life with a minimum term of 28 years for complicity.

In February 2018, Fourniret confessed to killing two more women.

On 16 November 2018, Fourniret and Olivier were convicted of the murder of Farida Hammiche, the last of the eight women that Fourniret confessed to killing in 2004.

Fourniret was given a second life sentence and Olivier was sentenced to a further 20 years of imprisonment.

In March 2020, Fourniret confessed to killing Estelle Mouzin, who disappeared from Guermantes in 2003.

Fourniret was born in Sedan, France, the son of a metal worker and a homemaker.

Acquaintances remembered him as a quiet, intelligent child who enjoyed chess and classical music.

He would later claim to have been sexually abused as a child by his mother.

As an adult, he drifted through a series of menial jobs, including forestry worker and school supervisor.