The French Fred and Rose West

The horrific true story of Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier

Born in 1942 in Sedan, France, near the Belgian border, Michel Fourniret hailed from a family where his father worked as a metalworker, and his mother was a farmer’s daughter. During his childhood, Fourniret, a quiet child with a slightly above-average IQ, displayed an affinity for chess and classical music.

However, his adult life was marked by struggles in maintaining employment. Despite attempts at various jobs, including forestry worker and school supervisor, Fourniret faced repeated failures. It was through a series of convictions that his true and disturbing vocation became evident.

In 1966, Michel Fourniret faced his initial arrest for child molestation, a crime that marked the end of his first marriage. Despite fathering three children with his second wife, this union also crumbled when he was arrested yet again, this time for the rape and indecent assault of minors.

During his custody awaiting trial, Fourniret sought connection through an advertisement in a Catholic magazine, seeking a pen-pal. Monique Olivier, a nurse and mother of three, responded to this plea. Having endured a stammer in childhood and a series of abusive relationships in adulthood, Olivier made a dark pact with Fourniret — she vowed to aid him in ‘hunting virgins’ if he assisted in eliminating her former husband.

However, only one aspect of this macabre deal would come to fruition.

Psychologists might speculate that Fourniret’s fixation on virgins was connected to his struggles with premature ejaculation, with only virgins lacking the experience to criticize his condition. What is known is that part of Olivier’s grisly responsibilities involved physically inspecting the victims before Fourniret raped them to ensure they met his criteria.

Upon Fourniret’s release in 1987, dubbed a ‘model prisoner’ for his early release, Olivier, his ‘bloody muse,’ awaited him at the prison gates. Two months later, the chilling killing spree commenced.

In December 1987, the sinister duo embarked on their spree, claiming their first victim. 17 year old Isabelle Laville fell prey to their deceitful ploy as they intercepted her on her route home from school. Under the pretense of being lost, they lured her into their van, where Fourniret perpetrated unspeakable horrors, culminating in her tragic demise.

A year later, their reign of terror persisted with the abduction of 20-year-old Fabienne Leroy from a supermarket. The subsequent discovery of her lifeless body, bearing the grim evidence of a fatal gunshot wound to the chest, only underscored the chilling nature of their crimes.

Undeterred by the horror they unleashed, the couple exchanged vows and welcomed a son into their dark world. Acquiring a chateau nestled in the forested borderlands between France and Belgium, reports suggested Fourniret financed this purchase with ill-gotten gains from a bank robber and militant cellmate. Pursuing his twisted agenda, he hunted down the cellmate’s wife, extracted information about the concealed money, and ruthlessly silenced her forever.

In 1989, the couple claimed their youngest victim, 12 year old Elisabeth Brichet, abducted from the Belgian town of Namur. Fourteen years later, the grim discovery of her remains within the confines of the couple’s ominous chateau sealed the haunting legacy of their crimes.

Presenting a facade of an idyllic family, complete with their son, they skillfully portrayed an image of trustworthiness, luring unsuspecting girls who might otherwise be cautious. Fourniret and Olivier, with their son in tow, employed various ruses to deceive their victims. At times, they pretended their son was unwell, seeking assistance to navigate to a hospital. Another ploy involved Olivier driving alone, picking up a girl, and then, while on the road, encountering Fourniret waving an empty petrol can, feigning a need for a refill. Subsequently, Olivier would stop to pick him up.

Fourniret’s methods of violence varied, ranging from strangulation to shooting, and sometimes injecting air into his victims’ veins to induce a fatal heart attack. Unfortunately, death offered no reprieve from his depravity. After stabbing one girl to death with a screwdriver, he proceeded to sexually assault her lifeless body. Olivier, complicit in these heinous acts, witnessed the rapes and murders, with the couple later reenacting these gruesome scenes in their twisted sex life.

The disposal of bodies was either within Fourniret’s grounds or the surrounding area. The spree of killings spanned years, yet authorities treated each case in isolation. The lack of collaboration between French and Belgian police hindered information sharing, preventing the realization that the Ardennes region bore an unusually high murder rate due to a serial killer making it his hunting ground.

Evading the pursuit of an investigatory task force, the malevolent couple might have eluded arrest if not for the daring escape of one of their victims. In 2003, Fourniret attempted to abduct yet another girl, audaciously asserting his superiority over the recently apprehended Belgian paedophile and serial killer, Marc Dutroux.

However, the girl orchestrated a remarkable escape, gnawing through the ropes binding her wrists and leaping out of the van at a set of traffic lights. Before making her getaway, she astutely recorded his vehicle’s registration.

When the police questioned both Fourniret and Olivier, they remained oblivious to the fact that they were dealing with the French counterparts of Fred and Rose West. Olivier, laboring under the mistaken belief that the police possessed more information than they did, chose to confess in the hope of securing a reduced sentence.

The initial confession centered around a murder reminiscent of the disappearance of Leeds University student Joanna Parish in Burgundy in 1990. Confronted with this revelation, Fourniret admitted to a plethora of murders, intriguingly omitting acknowledgment of the one resembling Joanna Parish’s tragic fate.

Fourniret made an unusual request during his trial, asking female jurors to prove their virginity at the time of marriage, a plea swiftly denied, much like his unsuccessful bid to exclude the media.

Throughout the two-month trial in Charleville-Mezières, eastern France, Fourniret exhibited uncooperative behavior, frequently refusing to speak and displaying a complete absence of emotion or remorse. However, a momentary eruption of anger surfaced when he learned that, based on IQ tests, his seemingly subservient wife surpassed him in intelligence.

The state prosecutor painted a grim picture, describing Fourniret as a ‘necrophiliac monster’ and characterizing the duo of Fourniret and Monique as a ‘devil with two faces’.

While Monique did express remorse, the state prosecutor criticized her ‘deafening silence’ in response to the victims’ cries, given her active role in securing them. Whether she found solace in being an observer rather than a direct victim of physical abuse remains unclear. Nevertheless, she was found guilty of being her husband’s accomplice in at least five murders and was sentenced to serve a minimum of 28 years of her life sentence.

Michel Fourniret, convicted of murdering seven girls, met his demise in jail in May 2021 at the age of 79.