The hope of clarifying a disappearance, seventeen years later: excavations begin Monday in the Ardennes to try to find the body of Estelle Mouzin, disappeared in 2003, on at least one former property of the serial killer Michel Fourniret who recently confessed to his murder. Under the guidance of Parisian investigating judge Sabine Kheris, investigators from the Dijon research section go to Ville-sur-Lumes, near Charleville-Mézières, in a house once occupied by the sister of the deceased criminal. in 2002. Regularly visited by Michel Fourniret until his arrest in 2003, the property has never been searched.
Justice is particularly interested in the cellar, whose soil formerly made of earth would have been covered with concrete by "the Ogre of the Ardennes", according to concordant sources. The military plans to first "x-ray" the ground, before considering digging, said the sources. According to elements of the investigations of which AFP has knowledge, the investigators exploit the track of a receipt, counting four boxes of split peas, found in search at Michel Fourniret. Coming from a supermarket near Ville-sur-Lumes, it is dated January 11, 2003, two days after the disappearance of Estelle Mouzin.
Read also: Estelle Mouzin case: what Michel Fourniret said to the judge
Questioned by Sabine Kheris during his last interrogation, on the possibility that he brought the girl in this house remained empty since the death of his sister, the "Ogre of the Ardennes" replied: "That is relevant fact. " "Not at all improbable, only it would be necessary to put images on it and it is not obvious, I am lost" , added the now 78-year-old man, who suffers from memory disorders but also describes himself like a "chess player" , enjoying the confrontation with the judge.
About ten kilometers away, the gendarmes could also undertake excavations around the Château de Sautou, in Donchéry. It was on this fifteen hectare property, surrounded by woods, that the bodies of two young women, 12 and 22 years old, were found in 2004, on the indications of the killer. Searches in Floing, a few kilometers away, on another piece of land that had belonged to the killer, had been in vain in December 2018.
"The most successful serial killer"
Described by psychiatric expert Daniel Zagury as "the most successful French serial killer" , Michel Fourniret had been incarcerated for the first time in 1984, for sexual assaults on a dozen young women. "Poacher" obsessed with young virgin girls, he was convicted in 2008 of the murders of seven young women or adolescent girls between 1987 and 2001, and sentenced to incompressible life, before being convicted again in 2018 for the assassination villainous by Farida Hammiche. In February 2018, he confessed to having killed two other young women in Yonne: Marie-Angèle Domece, disappeared in 1988 at 19, and Joanna Parrish, 20, found raped and strangled two years later.
After years of denial, he finally recognized in early March the kidnapping and murder of Estelle Mouzin, 9, disappeared on January 9, 2003 when she returned from school in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne). "It is possible that this image upsets me (...) and I recognize there a being who is no longer there by my fault" , he declared to Sabine Kheris, in charge of the investigation of the three files . But "the circumstances, the continuation, the course, it is in the oblivion" , he continued, without revealing the location of the body. “Track number 1” for years for the lawyers of the Mouzin family, Fourniret has been suspected several times, then dismissed. But his alibi had been contradicted in November 2019 by his ex-wife Monique Olivier, yet another twist in an extraordinary criminal record.
Read also: The first reaction of Eric Mouzin, father of Estelle, after the confessions of Michel Fourniret
