|
'Virgin hunters' go on trial
27/03/2008 14:50 - (SA)
Charleville-Mezieres, France - A French husband and wife who have confessed to hunting for virgins in a 15-year killing spree went on trial here over the kidnap, rape and murder of seven young women and girls.
Michel Fourniret, 65, took his seat next to Monique Olivier, 59, behind bullet-proof glass to hear accusations that he raped and murdered six young women in France and one in Belgium between 1987 and 2001.
Olivier is on trial for one of the murders and complicity in four of his other crimes whose victims were aged between 12 and 21.
Hundreds of locals from Charleville-Mezieres had queued in pouring rain for a seat in the court which will hear how Fourniret, dubbed the "Ogre of the Ardennes," made a deadly pact with Olivier while serving a jail sentence for sexual assault.
They agreed that she would find him virgins after his release if he killed her ex-husband, the court in this town near the Belgian border will hear from prosecutors during the trial set to last two months.
Life imprisonment
The bespectacled former electrician, wearing a blue jumper and an open-necked shirt, held up for the presiding judge a piece of paper that said "My lips are sealed if there is no closed door hearing."
He then handed the judge a document rolled up and tied with a red ribbon and asked him to read it. The judge commented that the document was "very nicely made" and that he would read it in due course.
If convicted, the couple face life imprisonment.
Investigators believe that in addition to the seven murders, Fourniret may have killed several other women, including a young British woman in 1990.
Fourniret, a lover of literature and a keen chess player, has admitted to investigators that he needed to go hunting for a virgin at least twice a year, prosecutors have said, adding that he was obsessed with virginity.
Abducted, raped and murdered
They said the couple began their killing spree in 1987 and that it only came to an end in 2003 when a 13-year-old girl Fourniret tried to abduct in Belgium managed to escape and raise the alarm.
The girl told Belgian investigators that Fourniret had boasted to her that he was "worse than" Marc Dutroux, Belgium's most notorious criminal sentenced to life in jail in 2004 for child kidnappings, rapes and murders.
Fourniret was arrested after the girl's escape and confessed to several murders after Monique Olivier spilled the beans to Belgian police.
The couple allegedly drove up alongside 17-year-old Isabelle Laville and asked her for directions, and then persuaded her to get into their van and show them the way. She was abducted, raped and murdered.
They continued abducting women with similar ruses until 2003, authorities say.
|
News
