Who was Michel Paul Fournire, the 'Ogre of the Ardennes'?
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA: Netflix series 'Monique Olivier: Accessory to Evil,' is set to release on Friday, March 3. The series will detail the life of Monique Oliver, and Michel Fourniret, the notorious French sex killer. As the description of the series states, the series will explore, "From 1987 to 2003, Michel Fourniret cemented his legacy as France’s most infamous murderer. But his wife was an enigma: Was she a pawn or a participant?"
Fourniret was famous for roaming around France looking for virgins to rape and kill, using his wife to lure young girls to their deaths. When he was arrested in 2003, the "Ogre of the Ardennes" was one of Europe's most notorious serial killers.
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Who was Michel Fourniret?
Fourniret was a famous French serial killer who confessed to killing 12 people in France and Belgium between 1987 and 2003. When he was young, he reportedly claimed to have been abused by his own mother. He had worked in different sectors, including as a forestry worker and school supervisor. He was arrested in June 2003 for the attempted kidnapping of a teenage girl in Ciney. Later, he confessed to having killed nine people, including eight women and a man.
On 28 May 2008, Fourniret was convicted of seven of these murders and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole. In 2018, the killer confessed to killing two more women. Meanwhile, Fourniret and Olivier were convicted of the murder of Farida Hammiche, the last of the eight women that Fourniret confessed to killing. This confession led a Fourniret to seek a second life sentence and Olivier to yet another 20 years of imprisonment. Fourniret confessed to killing Estelle Mouzin in 2020. After he was arrested, he even boasted of being a "far better" killer than the sadistic Belgian pedophile Marc Dutroux, as per France 24.
When was Michel Fourniret first arrested?
Fourniret was first arrested in 1966 for sexually assaulting a young girl. While being in jail for committing this crime, he met Oliver through a pen pal program. The criminal wrote to her his sexual fantasies and how he want to kill young virgin girls. Oliver then responded that she would "help" him fulfill those fantasies if he killed her husband, although he never committed this murder. After Fourniret got released from jail in 1987, the duo began a relationship, and she started helping him in the murders. He used her to entrap some of his victims and check their hymens to see if they were virgins. Fourniret collapsed in his prison cell on November 20, 2020, only two weeks before police were to start digging for the remains of nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin, whom he raped and killed with the help of Oliver. Later, he died on 10 May 2021 at the age of 79 after being admitted to the hospital with respiratory problems.