He had hunted girls and young women – raped them and eventually murdered them. Michel Fourniret was up to mischief in France and Belgium for years before he was caught.
Paris (AP) – One of the worst serial killers in France, Michel Fourniret, is dead. The 79-year-old died on Monday afternoon in the Pitié Salpétrière hospital in Paris, as the public prosecutor announced.
His health had deteriorated dramatically in the past few months. Fourniret kidnapped, raped and murdered several young girls and women in France and Belgium. The media called him the “monster of the Ardennes”. The serial killer was also in the focus of investigators in other unresolved cases.
Fourniret was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of seven young women and girls in May 2008. In 2018, he was sentenced to life imprisonment again for another murder. Investigators assume that the number of his victims is significantly higher. In other unresolved murder cases, too, it was repeatedly checked whether Fourniret could have anything to do with it. His ex-wife helped him with his horrific crimes – she too was convicted in 2008.
Fourniret’s series of murders was only stopped in 2003 by the presence of mind of a girl in Belgium, where Fourniret had meanwhile settled. It was able to escape from Fourniret’s delivery truck and wrote down the car number, which led to the man’s arrest. Fourniret had targeted virgins in his gruesome deeds, and with his wife at the time he is said to have “hunted down virgins”. Fourniret buried some of his victims on his estate in the Ardennes.
When Fourniret finally confessed to some of his crimes, the police and the public were particularly interested. The Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux had just been convicted of rape, kidnapping and murder in 2004. However, there was no connection between the two killers. Like Dutroux, Fourniret targeted young girls – his victims were hitchhikers, for example. He had already been sentenced to prison for rape in France in the 1980s, but was released early from prison.
When he was tried in 2008, family members were shocked by Fourniret’s behavior. At first he was silent for weeks. Then he was cold and numb as he detailed the horrific crimes. He also insulted lawyers and judges. Only last year Fourniret had reportedly confessed to another murder. This is the unexplained disappearance of the little Estelle. The nine-year-old girl disappeared in 2003 on her way home from school in Guermantes near Paris.
Recently, there has been repeated speculation about Fourniret’s state of health. He had been treated in the Pitié Salpétrière hospital in Paris since the end of April. At the end of last year, Fourniret had already been hospitalized after a fit of weakness in his prison cell. The newspaper “Le Parisien” wrote that the 79-year-old suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and heart problems and was most recently in an artificial coma. The authorities did not provide any information, with reference to medical confidentiality. The public prosecutor’s office has now launched an investigation into the cause of death.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210510-99-544626 / 2
