Wife: Serial killer had six more victims
The wife of confessed serial killer Michel Fourniret has alleged that her husband killed six more young women, bringing the total number of murders police are investigating to 19.
Fourniret has been formally charged with eight of the murders in France and Belgium.
Philippe Morandini, part of the Belgian investigation team, confirmed that Monique Olivier, who is suspected of involvement in some of the crimes, had made the new accusations against her husband.
Police in the town of Dinant are leading the investigation into the couple, who are both being held in Belgian jails.
The latest accusations follow claims by Olivier last month that her estranged husband killed two other teenage au pair girls.
She also said then that her husband had confessed that the couple committed the hitherto unsolved abduction, rape and murder of student teacher Joanna Parrish in the French town of Auxerre in 1990.
Joanna, from Newnham-on-Severn, Gloucestershire, disappeared on May 16, 1990 after she went to meet a man who had answered an advert she placed locally to give private language lessons.
She was serving a one-year Leeds university undergraduate post as an English language teaching assistant in Auxerre,
On the night of her death she had an early evening appointment in central Auxerre, but was never seen alive again after leaving her flat at the school where she taught.
Her naked body was found the next morning in the village of Moneteau, close to Auxerre, floating in the river Yonne. She had been severely battered, raped and strangled.
Joanna’s parents, Roger, 62, and Pauline, 59, together with their son Barney, 32, have since led a tireless campaign for justice, including a number of private initiatives for witness appeals and leading their own investigation after what they have denounced as an ineffective and insensitive official enquiry.
They have attacked the French-led investigation for losing vital evidence, mislaying statements and failing to pursue obvious leads.
In Belgium today, magistrate Morandini said: “Mme Fourniret has made a statement saying there would be six other incidents. So we have two young au pair girls and six other minors.”
He said the total of cases under investigation now stood at nineteen, including 10 cases involving victims in Belgium.
Prosecutors say Fourniret, 62, was a sexual predator who murdered his young rape victims to prevent them from identifying him during a killing spree in Belgium and northern France dating back to the 1980s.
He has been held in Belgium since June 2003 after the bungled kidnapping of a 13-year-old girl.
Fourniret confessed to some of the killings after he was denounced by Olivier.
Morandini insisted the claims of Fourniret’s wife should not be taken at face value. “It is only a statement. I cannot say whether it is well founded or not,” he said.
