A woman has been found guilty of involvement in the murders of three people, including a British student, by a man dubbed the ‘Beast of the Ardennes’.
Monique Olivier, who was already serving a life prison sentence for her part in other murders, was tried 33 years after Joanna Parrish was killed in the French city of Auxerre.
Olivier was found guilty of complicity in her murder, as well as those of Marie-Angele Domece in 1988 and Estelle Mouzin in 2003.
She has now been handed a second life sentence, with a minimum prison term of 20 years.
Her head remained bowed, with her eyes almost completely closed, throughout the sentencing – in which the gruesome details about the murders were read out.
Speaking after the hearing, Joanna’s father, Roger Parrish, said his family were “satisfied” that the court had “recognised Monique Olivier’s part in the murder of our daughter and sister”.
“There’s never been any doubt in our minds at all that she was equally responsible for the murder of Joanna and the other completely innocent victims,” he said.
Image: Joanna Parrish was raped, beaten and strangled
“From the very first moment that a victim was identified, she knew exactly what would happen to them, and not only did she do nothing to help them, but she actively encouraged and participated.
“Her presence alone would have gained the confidence of all the victims, who would never have believed a woman could be a part of such an appalling and depraved act.
“Finally, we now hope after this last obstacle in our struggle to gain an element of justice for Joanna has been overcome, we can remember our daughter and sister with a smile on our faces, which is how of course her many friends remember her.”
Asked later by Sky News later how he felt about the verdict, he said: “I think relief, probably.
“We always wanted to achieve some sense of justice for our daughter because she deserved, believe me, she really deserved it.
“She deserved a long, happy, and fulfilled life, which I’m sure she would have had, had she not had the desperate, desperate misfortune to come across a couple like them.
“So we did it to bring an element of justice for Jo.”
‘The Beast of the Ardennes’
Joanna, a 20-year-old university student from Gloucestershire, was working in France as part of her university course.
She was murdered by Olivier’s husband, Michel Fourniret, in May 1990.
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1:30
‘She deserved a long, happy life’
Joanna had placed an advert in a paper offering English lessons and had been contacted by Fourniret, who arranged to meet her and claimed he wanted to organise lessons for his son.
Her body was found in the River Yonne and a post-mortem showed that Joanna had been raped, beaten and strangled.
Fourniret is one of the most notorious serial killers in France’s history.
He was convicted of killing eight women, but died in 2021 before he could be tried for the murders of Joanna, as well as Marie-Angele Domece, 18, and Estelle Mouzin, 9.
He may have killed other victims, who have not yet been identified.
The pair first got to know each other as pen-pals in 1984, when Fourniret was in prison for sexually assaulting five young girls.
In letters that were never checked by prison authorities, he told Olivier of his fantasies of raping and murdering young girls.
Olivier, far from being appalled, said that she would help him fulfil those dreams as long as Fourniret, in turn, murdered her husband.
In the end, her first husband, Andre Michaux, survived, although his property was burnt down.
But Fourniret’s side of the bargain was to be fulfilled in a truly horrific way.
Image: Serial killer, Michel Fourniret
Repeatedly, Olivier acted as a lure – tricking girls and young women into entering a vehicle, thinking they were safe.
Instead, Fourniret was waiting inside, ready to assault and then kill his victims.
Couple used baby son to reassure victims
Olivier and Fourniret had a son, called Selim.
Olivier used her pregnancy to further reassure victims and then, after his birth, even exploited her baby.
On one notorious occasion, she asked a 12-year-old girl, Elisabeth Brichet, for help with her crying baby, pleading for her to come to the van and give directions to a doctor.
A few minutes later, Olivier sat with her child in the front seat of their van while, behind them, Fourniret was brutally attacking Elisabeth before later killing her.
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2:28
Parents’ 33-year wait for justice
In court, she gave evidence for day after day, standing in a dock that was surrounded by tall glass.
Watched by the families of all three victims, Olivier admitted that what she had done had been “monstrous” but said she had been intimidated by Fourniret, and scared of defying him.
The prosecution, as at her previous trials, admitted her involvement in the murders but claimed that she had, in fact, been a willing participant and had repeatedly passed over chances to help victims escape.
‘I couldn’t cry for six months’
Olivier, now 75 years old, stood up and spoke with a clear, conversational tone, her voice occasionally slowing and softening.
She rarely showed any emotion, even when admitting her role in the deaths.
She said Joanna didn’t deserve to die and that she was “a beautiful girl.”
But she also clashed angrily with her own son when he gave evidence against her.
She mocked the disguise he wore on a video link and he responded by saying: “Now you see the real Monique Olivier”.
Image: Joanna Parrish’s parents, Pauline and Roger
Joanna’s murder left her parents devastated.
Her mother Pauline Murrell told Sky News: “They said she was found in the water, and I was staring out of a window and I simply couldn’t take it in. I couldn’t cry for six months.
“Then I got the post-mortem report and I opened it on a Sunday morning, and I wasn’t able to get out of bed.”
Roger Parrish said: “She deserved a long and happy, fulfilled life. She worked hard and she deserved it. She was helpful, part of the community. People still remember her.
“Jo was a kind person but she was also bright and smart. She was not likely to have trusted a man who was by himself.
“When we found out that there was a female accomplice, I remember thinking that we had never thought of that. Why would we have done? But right from that moment, I thought, ‘this is it – this is the person’.”
At least 798 people in Gaza have reportedly been killed while receiving aid in the past six weeks – while acute malnutrition is said to have reached an all-time high.
The UN human rights office said 615 of the deaths – between 27 May and 7 July – were “in the vicinity” of sites run by the controversial US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
A further 183 people killed were “presumably on the route of aid convoys,” said Ravina Shamdasani, from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Its figures are based on a range of sources, including hospitals, cemeteries, and families in the Gaza Strip, as well as non-governmental organisations (NGOs), its partners on the ground, and Hamas-run health authorities.
Image: Ten children were reportedly killed when Israel attacked near a clinic on Thursday. Pic: AP
The GHF has claimed the UN figures are “false and misleading” and has repeatedly denied any violence at or around its sites.
Meanwhile, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said two of its sites were seeing their worst-ever levels of severe malnutrition.
Cases at its Gaza City clinic are said to have tripled from 293 in May to 983 in early July.
“Over 700 pregnant or breastfeeding women and nearly 500 children are now receiving emergency nutritional care,” MSF said.
The humanitarian medical charity said food prices were at extreme levels, with sugar at $766 (£567) per kilo and flour $30 (£22) per kilo, and many families surviving on one meal of rice or lentils a day.
It’s a major concern for the estimated 55,000 pregnant women in Gaza, who risk miscarriage, stillbirth and malnourished infants because of the shortages.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, after Israel eased its 11-week blockade of aid into the coastal territory.
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It has four distribution centres, three of which are in the southern Gaza Strip.
The sites, kept off-limits to independent media, are guarded by private security contractors and located in zones where the Israeli military operates.
Palestinian witnesses say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire towards crowds of people going to receive aid.
The Israeli military says it has fired warning shots at people who have behaved in what it says is a suspicious manner.
It says its forces operate near the aid sites to stop supplies from falling into the hands of militants.
After the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach the aid hubs, the United Nations has called the GHF’s aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.
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In response, a GHF spokesperson said: “The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys.”
The GHF says it has delivered more than 70 million meals to Gazans in five weeks and claims other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.
At least 798 people in Gaza have been killed while receiving aid in six weeks, the UN human rights office has said.
A spokesperson for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said 615 of the killings were “in the vicinity” of sites run by the controversial US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
A further 183 people killed were “presumably on the route of aid convoys,” Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva.
The office said its figures are based on numbers from a range of sources, including hospitals, cemeteries and families in the Gaza Strip, as well as NGOs, its partners on the ground and the Hamas-run health authorities.
The GHF has claimed the figures are “false and misleading”. It has repeatedly denied there has been any violence at or around its sites.
The organisation began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, after Israel eased its 11-week blockade of aid into the enclave.
It has four distribution centres, three of which are in the southern Gaza Strip. The sites, kept off-limits to independent media, are guarded by private security contractors and located in zones where the Israeli military operates.
Palestinian witnesses say Israeli forces have repeatedly opened fire towards crowds of people going to receive aid.
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1:01
US aid contractors claim live ammo fired at Palestinians
The Israeli military says it has fired warning shots at people who have behaved in what they say is a suspicious manner.
It says its forces operate near the aid sites to stop supplies falling into the hands of militants.
After the deaths of hundreds of Palestinians trying to reach the aid hubs, the United Nations has called the GHF’s aid model “inherently unsafe” and a violation of humanitarian impartiality standards.
Follow The World
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
In response, a GHF spokesperson told the Reuters news agency: “The fact is the most deadly attacks on aid sites have been linked to UN convoys.”
The GHF says it has delivered more than 70 million meals to Gazans in five weeks and claims other humanitarian groups had “nearly all of their aid looted” by Hamas or criminal gangs.
Ten children and two women are among at least 15 killed in an airstrike near a Gaza health clinic, according to an aid organisation.
Project Hope said it happened this morning near Altayara Junction, in Deir al Balah, as patients waited for the clinic to open.
The organisation’s president called it a “blatant violation of international humanitarian law, and a stark reminder that no one and no place is safe in Gaza“.
“No child waiting for food and medicine should face the risk of being bombed,” added the group’s project manager, Dr Mithqal Abutaha.
“It was a horrific scene. People had to come seeking health and support, instead they faced death.”
Operations at the clinic – which provides a range of health and maternity services – have been suspended.
Some of the children were reportedly waiting to receive nutritional supplements, necessary due to the dire shortage of food being allowed into Gaza.
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Israel‘s military is investigating and said it was targeting a militant who took part in the 7 October terror attack.
“The IDF [Israel Defence Force] regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimize harm as much as possible,” added.
Elsewhere in Gaza, the Nasser Hospital reported another 21 deaths in airstrikes in Khan Younis and in the nearby coastal area of Muwasi.
It said three children and their mother were among the dead.
Israel said its troops have been dismantling more than 130 Hamas infrastructure sites in Khan Younis over the past week, including missile launch sites, weapons storage facilities and a 500m tunnel.
On Wednesday, a soldier was shot dead when militants burst out of a tunnel and tried to abduct him, the military added.
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Eighteen soldiers have been killed in the past three weeks – one of the deadliest periods for the Israeli army in months.
A 22-year-old Israeli man was also killed on Thursday by two attackers in a supermarket in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, said the Magen David Adom emergency service.
People on site reportedly shot and killed the attackers but information on their identity has so far not been released.
A major sticking point is said to be the status of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) inside Gaza during the 60-day ceasefire and beyond, should it last longer.
More than 57,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war – more than half are women and children, according to Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry.
Its figure does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
The war began in October 2023 after Hamas killed around 1,200 people in Israel and kidnapped 251 others.
Some of them remain In Gaza and are a crucial part of ceasefire negotiations, which also include a planned surge in humanitarian aid into the strip.