The days of the “ogre of the Ardennes” are numbered.
According to corroborating sources, the 79-year-old serial killer Michel Fourniret was hospitalized urgently on Saturday, May 8 at the interregional secure hospital unit of La Salpêtrière in Paris for respiratory problems.
He suffers from heart problems and mental degeneration, has been placed in a coma and is considered by doctors to be non-resuscitable.
According to our information, his prognosis is vital and cannot be reversed.
An end-of-life support protocol has been initiated.
In recent months, the state of health of the detainee who was incarcerated at the Fresnes penitentiary center has deteriorated sharply. He has already been hospitalized in emergency on several occasions. Solicited his lawyers did not follow up, as for the Paris prosecutor's office, he did not wish to comment.
Sentenced twice to life imprisonment for the murders of eight women or teenage girls and indicted four times for those of little Estelle Mouzin or young women Lydie Logé, Joanna Parrish and Marie-Angèle Domèce ‚the serial killer will never be tried for these crimes of which he admitted to be the author.
"It has been several months since his condition and his memory have deteriorated and we suspect that he will never be tried," observes Didier Seban, the lawyer for the families of these victims.
"This situation is obviously hard to live with for families who will be deprived of the main accused in the event of a trial."
Mystery DNAs taken from Fourniret effects under analysis
On the brink of the death of the Ogre des Ardennes, will we one day know the real extent of the crimes of the evil couple formed by Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier? The ex-wife and accomplice of the killer had confided to a co-inmate of the Rennes remand center that the number of their victims "greatly exceeded thirty". As the Parisian revealed on Wednesday, around thirty unknown DNAs taken from the effects of Michel Fourniret are being analyzed to determine if they are not those of forgotten victims. These genetic traces are the subject of connections with at least 21 unsolved cases of murders or disappearances at the hands of the judicial police and the gendarmerie.
This list exclusively concerns girls or young women, aged 10 to 39, mysteriously evaporated or murdered between 1987 and 2003 in 17 departments.
This desire of justice to try to complete the bloodthirsty record of Michel Fourniret has been reinforced by recent advances in the cases of Estelle Mouzin and Lydie Logé.
The serial killer has been formally linked both to the disappearance of the 9-year-old girl in 2003 in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne) and to that of the 29-year-old young woman in Saint-Christophe-le-Jajolet (Orne ) in 1993 thanks to advances in science.
Read also About thirty DNA mysteries, 21 cold cases studied ... in search of the ghosts of Michel Fourniret
"We are also convinced that he has made other victims, but he will no longer be able to contribute to the truth or to possible searches for bodies ... deplores Didier Seban. It is regrettable and it is attributable to the justice system which has remained inactive for too long and did not want to delve into the Fourniret case. This example and the uncertainty that continues to hang over the reality of his criminal course must prompt a change in the law in the treatment of these serial criminals and these old cases. "
The sixth campaign in the Ardennes to search for the remains of Estelle Mouzin, ended in failure, despite the conviction of the investigators, guided by the ex-wife of the serial killer, to be on the right track. His wife, Monique Olivier, had been extracted for the occasion from her cell where she is serving a 28-year prison sentence for complicity in four of the murders of her ex-husband, and had been questioned one last time, at the Sedan gendarmerie. According to her, she would have accompanied her ex-husband before letting him go bury the body of little Estelle on January 11, 2003. Two days earlier, the nine-year-old girl had been kidnapped on the way to school in Guermantes ( Seine et Marne).