Michel Paul Fourniret (4 April 1942 – 10 May 2021)[2] 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,[3] Fourniret confessed in 2004 to killing nine people, eight females and one male,[4] having been informed on by his then-wife,[5] Monique Pierrette Olivier (born 31 October 1948).

[11][13] While imprisoned in 1984 for sexually assaulting another five young girls, Fourniret started corresponding with Monique Olivier via a prison pen pal programme.

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.

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.

The next day, the couple took Brichet to the château, where Fourniret strangled her after a failed attempt to suffocate her with a plastic bag.

[29][30] After Dutroux's arrest in 1996, Brichet's mother Marie-Noëlle Bouzet helped to organise the White March in honour of Belgium's missing and murdered children.

[31] The remains of Brichet and Desramault were exhumed from the gardens of the Château du Sautou on 3 July 2004, after Fourniret and Olivier confessed to the killings.

[32] The final known murder Fourniret committed with Olivier's help took place on 21 November 1990 near France's western coast.

They saw Natacha Danais, a 13-year-old local girl, walking through the car park towards her home, having been sent to fetch her mother's forgotten purse.

After driving to a secluded area near the coast, Fourniret stabbed Danais twice in the chest with a screwdriver and strangled her before leaving her body on the beach.

He drove alone across the Franco-Belgian border to Charleville-Mézières on 16 May 2000 and lured 18-year-old Céline Saison, who was on her way home from school, into his van in the late afternoon.

Driving with her back to Belgium, he raped her before strangling her with a rope and dumping her body in a forest in Sugny, Vresse-sur-Semois.

Olivier was also arrested, and she and Fourniret were extradited to France, where they helped police find the bodies of three of the four missing victims over the next two years.

[49] In November 2023, the trial of his former wife and accomplice Monique Oliver for three murders, including Joanna Parrish and Estelle Mouzin, began [50][51] In February 2018, Fourniret confessed to killing two more women in Auxerre: Marie-Angèle Domèce, an 18-year-old disabled woman, in July 1988, and Joanna Parrish, a 20-year-old British student, in May 1990.

[60] Christian Ranucci was one of the last people executed in France, having been convicted of the abduction and murder, committed on 3 June 1974, of Marie-Dolorès Rambla, aged eight.

Rachida Dati, the then French Minister for Justice, who advocated legal reforms in France, wanted a more relaxed attitude to preventive custody and parole under supervision.

[62] The proximity of the Chateau des Amerois in neighboring Belgium (approximately 30 km) to the Château du Sautou (commune of Donchery) bought by Fourniret was also mentioned.