The new excavation campaign carried out since Monday in Issancourt-et-Rumel (Ardennes) was suspended Thursday, November 18 without having made it possible to find the body of Estelle Mouzin, alleged victim of Michel Fourniret in 2003, AFP learned from the lawyers.
Read also Final excavations in the Mouzin affair
"
It's over, we're packing everything up,
" Me Richard Delgenes, lawyer for Monique Olivier, the killer's ex-wife, told AFP after leaving the area Thursday evening. He claimed that his client was to be brought back in the evening to Fleury-Mérogis (Essonne) prison, where she is serving a 28-year security measure for complicity in four of the murders of "
the ogre of the Ardennes
". Me Corinne Herrmann, the lawyer for the family of the girl, had indicated earlier to AFP that this fourth day of searches had not made it possible to find Estelle's body, without giving more details. "
We are all convinced that it is there,
" she stressed, however. "
It's consistent to be here, it
is important to put the means. "
"We saw it all start again"
In the early evening, the excavator mobilized since Monday on the excavation site, the communal wood of Issancourt-et-Rumel, near the Belgian border, had left the scene, noted an AFP journalist.
"
We saw everything start again,
" Ghislain Debaiffe, the mayor of the town, told AFP.
The wood of Issancourt-et-Rumel, a village of 400 inhabitants, has already been explored several times by investigators, on the basis of indications provided by Monique Olivier.
This was the eighth search campaign for the child's body since June 2020. Estelle Mouzin had disappeared at the age of nine in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne), on the evening of January 9, 2003, while 'she was coming home from school.
Read alsoDisappearance of Estelle Mouzin: new failure of an excavation campaign in the Ardennes
Issancourt-et-Rumel is located 4 km from Ville-sur-Lumes where, according to Monique Olivier, Michel Fourniret kidnapped, raped and killed the girl, in a house belonging to his sister.
The ex-wife of the serial killer had for the first time recognized in April a role in the kidnapping of the child.
She had specified that she had accompanied Michel Fourniret to the edge of the woods to let him go and bury the body.
Sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of seven young women or adolescent girls between 1987 and 2001, Michel Fourniret finally confessed in March 2020 his responsibility in the disappearance of Estelle Mouzin.
He died at 79 in Paris on May 10.