Now aged 75, the ex-wife of rapist and serial killer Michel Fourniret was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a security period of 20 years.
The verdict is in. After three weeks of trial, Monique Olivier was sentenced this Tuesday, December 19, 2023 to life imprisonment, with a security period of 20 years and not 22 years, as was requested on Monday. On paper, Monique Olivier, who is now 75 years old, should therefore not be able to go out before 2043 and her… 95 years. She still has to live to this old age. But it is nevertheless possible for a convicted person to request conditional release during the security period.
Thus, according to article 720-1-1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, a convicted person whose state of health, physical or mental, is no longer compatible with the conditions of detention may benefit from a suspension of the sentence. The decision is based on a medical certificate issued by the doctor of the health facility where the convicted person is treated. Conversely, this suspension measure can be revoked by the judge in the event that the inmate no longer meets the conditions of suspension.
Since November 28, Monique Olivier has been appearing before the Hauts-de-Seine Assize Court in Nanterre for complicity in the kidnappings and murders of Marie-Angèle Domèce, Joanna Parrish and Estelle Mouzin. Some cases are thirty-five years old, and victims’ families were sometimes still waiting for answers. Her former husband, Michel Fourniret, having died in 2021, Monique Olivier appeared alone before the Assize Court.
The 75-year-old accused has provided few new elements over the past three weeks. She mainly gave confused answers and claimed that her memory was failing her. On the other hand, she expressed regret and apologized to the families this Tuesday for her last speech before the verdict was rendered: “I ask forgiveness from the victims, from the families of the victims while knowing that it is unforgivable everything I ‘have done.”
The questions which still remain unanswered to this day concern the cases of Estelle Mouzin, aged 9 years old when she disappeared in 2003, and of Marie-Angèle Domèce who died in 1988, whose bodies were never found. Although the question was asked many times, the accused always claimed not to know where the bodies of the two women were and added that she would have communicated it if she knew. Inaccuracies also persist regarding the circumstances of the deaths of the two children. Present at the trial, Estelle’s father, Éric Mouzin, told the press on Monday, December 18, that the civil parties had “not had all the answers.” He also added, as relayed by franceinfo: “But we knew that these answers were hard to obtain.”
On Monday, the attorneys general had requested life imprisonment with the addition of a security period of twenty-two years, i.e. the maximum sentence, “in view of the exceptional seriousness of the acts committed, the necessary protection of the Company”. The general counsel declared: “Ms. Olivier, you were not an accomplice at that moment, you were the author of the choice to remain silent.” Me Seban, the lawyer for the Parrish and Mouzin families, spoke after the public prosecutor’s requisitions: “It is the maximum sentence that was requested, because the crimes committed justify it. For me, the prosecution’s requisitions are in line with what the families of the victims I represent were asking for.”
The verdict of this Tuesday, December 19 comes in addition to the previous convictions attributed to Monique Olivier. She has in fact already been sentenced to life imprisonment with a security period of 28 years in 2008 by the Ardennes Assize Court. A sentence which followed her complicity in the murder of four people and a rape committed by her ex-husband. During another trial held in 2018 at the Yvelines Assize Court, the accused was also sentenced to 20 years in prison, she was then aged 70.
