Michel Fourniret was convicted of eight murders: seven girls and young women killed between 1987 and 2001 in France and Belgium, and Farida Hammiche, a woman he killed in 1988 to take a cache of gold. The Ardennes assize court at Charleville-Mézières sentenced him in May 2008 to life imprisonment with no possibility of release, and the Yvelines assize court at Versailles gave him a second life sentence in November 2018. He confessed to three more deaths, of Marie-Angèle Domèce, Joanna Parrish and Estelle Mouzin, and was under formal investigation in a fourth, the disappearance of Lydie Logé, when he died in a Paris prison hospital on May 10, 2021. None of those four cases was tried against him.
His wife, Monique Olivier, was tried with him twice. She was convicted in 2008 of complicity in four of the murders and in a rape committed jointly, in 2018 of complicity in the Hammiche murder, and in 2023, on her own, of complicity in the abduction, confinement and murder of Domèce, Parrish and Mouzin. For more than 15 years the couple's crimes were investigated, where they were investigated at all, as unconnected cases in different regions and two countries. They were connected only after a 13-year-old girl escaped from his van in Belgium in June 2003.
Fourniret was born on April 4, 1942, in Sedan, in the French Ardennes near the Belgian border. He served in the French army during the Algerian War. He trained as a fitter and mechanical draftsman, and over the years he also worked as a carpenter, an electrician and a school supervisor; AFP later described him as a former forest warden. He married three times and had five children.
At his trials he traced his crimes to his first marriage. He said he had been deeply shaken to learn that his first wife was not a virgin, and at the opening of the Versailles trial in 2018 he again blamed his criminal path on that discovery. In statements to investigators he said he "had to hunt at least two virgins a year." The psychiatrist Daniel Zagury described him as the most accomplished of French serial killers.
His record began in the 1960s. In 1967, at 25, he received an eight-month suspended prison sentence, with an obligation to undergo treatment, for assaulting a girl in the Ardennes. In 1984 he was arrested and jailed again, accused of a series of sexual assaults on young women dating from the early 1980s. On June 26, 1987, he was sentenced for sexual assaults on about a dozen young women. Belgian and French reports give the sentence as five years; Slate.fr, writing in 2021, said the Essonne assize court imposed seven years, two of them suspended. He was released in October 1987.
In prison in the 1980s two other lives crossed his. At Fleury-Mérogis, near Paris, he briefly shared a cell with Jean-Pierre Hellegouarch, a robber who was later to send his own wife to Fourniret. And from prison he placed a personal advertisement seeking correspondents.
Monique Olivier answered it. She had fled a violent first husband in the early 1980s, leaving two children behind, according to AFP. Slate.fr reported that the advertisement ran in the Catholic weekly Pèlerin and that the two exchanged 217 letters. When he was released in October 1987 she was waiting outside the prison, and they settled together in the Yonne, the department around Auxerre in Burgundy.
Investigators and the courts later described a pact made in those letters. As AFP and Public Sénat summarized it, she was to help him find virgins, and in exchange he was to kill her first husband. He never harmed the husband. Fourniret's lawyer told La Libre Belgique before the 2008 trial that his client would deny any such pact and claim sole responsibility. The court's verdicts, which found her complicit in murders, are the legal record of her part.
The couple's son was born in 1988, and they married the following year. They divorced in 2010.
About two months after his release, the couple took their first victim together. Isabelle Laville, 17, was a high school student in the Auxerre area. In December 1987 she was walking home from school when Olivier pulled up beside her, said she was lost and asked for help with directions. Isabelle got in. Fourniret was picked up farther along, and the girl was taken to the couple's home, where he raped and strangled her.
Isabelle's remains were not found until 2006, at the bottom of a well, on information from Olivier; La Libre Belgique's AP report from the 2008 trial noted that large resources had been used in June 2006 to find her.
At the trial in May 2008, the Laville family's lawyer, Alain Behr, asked Fourniret whether he had planned the abduction. He answered that Isabelle had been "the instrument of destiny placed on the road of my premeditation," and compared himself to a poacher who sets out not knowing whether he will bring back a pheasant, a rabbit or nothing. Her father, Jean-Pierre Laville, told the court he was lying when he denied scouting her in advance.
In the 1980s a Paris robbery crew known as the "gang des Postiches" (the wig gang) carried out bank robberies between 1981 and 1986. Part of what AFP describes as its loot, about 20 kilograms of gold ingots and coins in a toolbox, had been buried in a cemetery at Fontenay-en-Parisis, in the Val-d'Oise. Jean-Pierre Hellegouarch, still in prison, had learned where it was from an Italian fellow prisoner. Hellegouarch himself told the 2018 trial that the gold had never belonged to the gang but to that Italian robber.
In March 1988, after Fourniret's release, Hellegouarch's wife, Farida Hammiche, 30, contacted Fourniret at her husband's request and asked him to help dig up the cache, promising him 500,000 francs. The gold was recovered and hidden at her home. Fourniret later told investigators that he received nothing, or too little, and decided to help himself. Farida Hammiche disappeared on April 12, 1988, near Clairefontaine in the Yvelines. Fourniret confessed to killing her there; her body has never been found.
With the gold turned into cash, the couple bought the Château du Sautou, a large house at Donchery in the Ardennes, a house at Sart-Custinne in Belgium and two vehicles, according to AFP. What was left of the gold was buried in the garden at Sart-Custinne, where investigators later found it; Belgian police recovered gold coins worth roughly 25,000 euros in July 2004, with Olivier leading them to the spot.
Hellegouarch told the Versailles court in 2018 that Olivier had come to see him in prison after his wife vanished, to say she was worried. He believed she had been sent to mislead him. He complained that a trial 30 years after his wife's death came far too late.
Fabienne Leroy was 20. She was taken in the Marne department in August 1988 and shot. La Libre Belgique's report from the 2008 trial gives August 4, 1988, and places the killing in the Reims area. In court Fourniret admitted approaching her and claimed that Olivier had been present, which Olivier denied and which the expert evidence contradicted, according to the same report. Asked why he had killed her, he said it was the "necessity of preserving anonymity."
Marie-Angèle Domèce was 18 or 19 (sources differ). She was a young woman with a mental disability who lived in care in the Auxerre area, and she disappeared in Auxerre on July 8, 1988, on her way to the station, according to RTBF. Residents of the care home reported a white Citroën van near the center that year. Her body has never been found.
Her case was not part of the 2008 trial. In 2005 Olivier told Belgian police at Dinant that Fourniret had fixed his attention on Marie-Angèle, and that she had helped him abduct, rape and kill her and hide the body. Fourniret disputed his wife's account. In February 2018, after years of further investigation, he admitted the killing. He was never tried for it. In 2023 Olivier was convicted of complicity in her abduction, confinement and murder, and in her attempted rape.
Jeanne-Marie Desramault was a 22-year-old student. She disappeared in Charleville-Mézières in March 1989. Her body was found in the grounds of the Château du Sautou in July 2004, after Fourniret told Belgian and French investigators where he had buried her. At the 2008 trial, the families' lawyer Didier Seban questioned him about her death, and Fourniret refused to be intimidated by what he called "a little lawyer"; it was on that day, May 16, 2008, that he stopped answering questions for the second time.
Elisabeth Brichet was a 12-year-old Belgian girl. She was abducted near her home in Saint-Servais, Namur, on December 20, 1989. Her parents, Francis Brichet and Marie-Noëlle Bouzet, waited almost 15 years to learn what had happened. In those years the Namur investigation followed one false lead after another, including a convicted pedophile who died in a car crash in 1997 and a Dutch truck driver who had died in 2001, and in July 2003 the family's lawyer asked investigators to look again at a possible link with the Marc Dutroux case. It was then that the prosecutor's office examined the newly arrested Fourniret.
In June 2004 the couple confessed. At the start of July 2004 a Namur investigating judge charged them with Elisabeth's abduction and unlawful detention, and the next day, at sites the couple pointed out, excavators began digging in the grounds of the Château du Sautou. Fourniret told investigators he had used a backhoe to bury his victims. Elisabeth's body was found there on July 3, 2004, and DNA analysis confirmed her identity. At the 2008 trial the court watched an extract of Fourniret's filmed confession to Belgian investigators about her death.
Joanna Parrish was 20, a British university student spending the year in Auxerre as an English language assistant at a lycée. She was abducted on the night of May 16 to 17, 1990. Her body was found in the Yonne river near Monéteau on May 17, 1990. Her case, like Marie-Angèle Domèce's, sat unsolved for decades.
Olivier first spoke of Joanna's death to Belgian police in 2005. In February 2018 Fourniret confessed to killing both young women. "I am the only one responsible for their fate," he said, adding that they would still be alive if they had not crossed his path. He was never tried. In 2023 Olivier was convicted of complicity in Joanna's abduction, confinement and murder, and in her rape. Joanna's father, Roger Parrish, then 80, told that court: "Joanna's story ended in May 1990." He said the murder had added disbelief, anger, trauma and sadness to the loss of a child, and that Olivier was as responsible as Fourniret.
Natacha Danais was 13. She was abducted in Rezé, near Nantes, on November 21, 1990, and was found dead on a beach in the Vendée three days later. In January 2005 Olivier was charged with complicity in her abduction, which had ended in death. Natacha was the last of what a Belgian reporter in 2008 called the first series of five crimes tried at Charleville-Mézières.
Lydie Logé, 29, was the mother of a seven-year-old boy. On December 18, 1993, she went Christmas shopping in Argentan with a friend, the last person known to have seen her alive, and returned to her home in Saint-Christophe-le-Jajolet, a village of about 240 people in the Orne, in Normandy. She was never seen again.
Two investigations, from 1994 to 1998 and from 2004 to 2009, ended in dismissals. The case was reopened in 2018 after DNA traces found in Fourniret's van were linked to Lydie's mother's DNA. On December 22, 2020, Fourniret was placed under formal investigation for abduction and unlawful detention followed by death. Slate.fr reported that in December 2020 he admitted responsibility, telling investigators that no one but he could have ended her life. He died five months later, untried. Olivier has been under formal investigation since January 2021 for complicity.
After Natacha Danais in 1990, no killing is attributed to Fourniret by any court until 2000. Lydie Logé's disappearance in 1993 falls in those years, and so does an attack on a young woman in the Namur area in January 1995, which she survived. Investigators have never established a full account of the decade.
Céline Saison was 18, a high school student in Charleville-Mézières. She was last seen near her home at about 7 p.m. on May 16, 2000, close to the Charleville courthouse. On July 22, 2000, three young men from the Sedan area picking mushrooms found her body in a forest at Vresse-sur-Semois, in Belgium, less than 200 meters inside the border; French gendarmes who came to the scene turned back, and Belgian investigators took over. At the 2008 trial Fourniret first admitted abducting and killing her while denying rape, then, after more than half an hour of questioning by the presiding judge, accepted the rape charge as well.
Mananya Thumpong was 13, a French girl of Thai origin whose family called her "the Eyes" for her large dark eyes. On May 5, 2001, between 5:30 and 6 p.m., she disappeared in Sedan while walking home from the town's media library. Some of her remains were found on March 1, 2002, in the Nollevaux woods in southern Belgium, about 30 kilometers from Sedan, and Belgian investigators found the rest there on June 20, 2005. Fourniret admitted the abduction and killing in 2004, a few days after his wife's statements. In June 2005 he was taken to Gedinne for a reconstruction, a day after he had refused to cooperate in the reconstruction of Céline Saison's killing.
On January 9, 2003, Estelle Mouzin, nine, left school in Guermantes, in the Seine-et-Marne east of Paris, to walk home. She never arrived. There were no direct witnesses, and searches and digs in several places found nothing.
Her disappearance became one of the longest-running investigations in France. Fourniret's name was raised after his arrest, but he denied any involvement and was cleared because of an alibi: a telephone call made at the time from his home at Sart-Custinne in Belgium, about 250 kilometers from Guermantes. AFP reported in 2021 that detectives had first suspected him in 2006, after finding a photograph of Estelle on his computer. The alibi held.
It fell in November 2019, when Olivier told investigators that she had made the call herself, at his request, so that he could be in the Seine-et-Marne. On November 27, 2019, Fourniret was placed under formal investigation in Estelle's disappearance. On March 7, 2020, the Paris prosecutor announced that he had acknowledged taking part. Olivier told investigators that Fourniret had held and killed Estelle in the house of his sister, by then dead, at Ville-sur-Lumes in the Ardennes. In August 2020 Olivier's lawyer revealed that partial DNA belonging to Estelle had been found in two places on a mattress taken from that house; RTBF noted that DNA evidence of this kind is often contested because traces can be carried from place to place.
Searches at the former family home at Ville-sur-Lumes in June 2020 and at other former Fourniret properties in the Ardennes found nothing. On April 1, 2021, Olivier acknowledged that she had driven Fourniret to a forest path in January 2003 so that he could dispose of the body, and searches in the woods at Issancourt-et-Rumel followed in late April 2021. Estelle's body has never been found. Her father, Éric Mouzin, called Fourniret's death "anecdotal" and criticized the failures of the justice system in his daughter's case.
On June 26, 2003, in the early afternoon, Fourniret abducted a 13-year-old girl in Ciney, in the Belgian province of Namur. He tied her up in his white Citroën C15 van. During a stop she got free and escaped, and a motorist picked her up and drove her back toward the van. She recognized it, and the registration number was noted. Belgian police traced the van to Fourniret, and he was arrested in June 2003.
Her escape is the reason the series ended. At the time he was held in Belgium only for the attempted abduction. He was detained at Dinant, and for a year no one connected him with the dead girls in France.
In June 2004, questioned by Belgian police, Monique Olivier began to describe her husband's past. Over 2004 and 2005 she named killings to investigators; AFP and Public Sénat put the total she disclosed at eleven; L'Avenir, writing in 2021, put it at nine, including Farida Hammiche. Fourniret, faced with her statements, admitted eight homicides committed in France and Belgium since 1987, and one attempted homicide. He admitted the killings of Céline Saison and Mananya Thumpong, which had remained unexplained until then, a few days after his wife's statements. In July 2004 he told Belgian and French investigators that he had buried Jeanne-Marie Desramault and Elisabeth Brichet at the Château du Sautou, and their bodies were recovered there.
French justice charged the couple for the first time on January 31, 2005, at Dinant, in a procedure the Dinant prosecutor called a European first: a Belgian investigating judge, acting for France, served the charges in Belgium. Fourniret, then 62, was charged with the abduction, murder and rape of Mananya Thumpong, and Olivier with complicity in the abduction of Natacha Danais. The Charleville-Mézières prosecutor, Francis Nachbar, said Fourniret was calm and confirmed his earlier statements, while denying premeditation and rape in the Thumpong case. Charges in the cases of Isabelle Laville, Fabienne Leroy, Jeanne-Marie Desramault, Natacha Danais and Céline Saison were to follow within days.
The couple were extradited from Belgium to France in December 2005 and January 2006. In January 2006 the criminal chamber of the Cour de cassation, France's highest court for criminal matters, rejected Olivier's argument that the charges against her in the four oldest French cases (Laville, Leroy, Desramault and Danais) were barred by the statute of limitations.
The Domèce and Parrish cases did not go to Charleville-Mézières. Olivier had described both to the Dinant police in 2005, but Fourniret disputed her account, and she accused the Charleville-Mézières prosecutor of striking her during questioning; that prosecutor had to step back from the case. The lawyer Didier Seban has argued that this is why the two Yonne cases were not joined to the 2008 trial. The files went to Paris, where investigating judges dismissed the case against the couple for lack of evidence. In 2012 a Paris investigating judge, Sabine Khéris, reopened it and ordered steps that had never been taken; Marie-Angèle Domèce's friends and relatives, for example, had not been questioned when she disappeared. Seban later praised Khéris as the kind of magistrate one dreams of for cold cases. Corinne Herrmann, lawyer for the Domèce family, put it more bluntly: "the justice system failed."
A September 2026 RTBF report on a Belgian documentary about the case argued that if Marie-Angèle's disappearance had been properly investigated in 1988, about ten later attacks might have been prevented.
The trial of Fourniret and Olivier opened before the Ardennes assize court in Charleville-Mézières on March 27, 2008, and was expected to last about two months. More than 300 journalists from eight countries came to the town. The jury of five women and four men took about half an hour to form, and the presiding judge was Gilles Latapie. The indictment covered seven murders, each preceded by rape or attempted rape, and the attacks on three girls or young women who had escaped, among them the Ciney girl whose escape led to the arrest.
Asked to state his identity, Fourniret said nothing and handed the president a sheet of paper. It read "Sans huis clos, bouche cousue": no closed doors, sewn mouth. He wanted the trial held in private, and he wanted to address the victims' families directly; Latapie reminded him that a defendant does not choose whom to address. Fourniret stared down Elisabeth Brichet's mother, who was led out of the courtroom by her son. Olivier, whose long black hair was now short and gray, said she was unemployed and had trouble recalling the names of her own lawyers.
For weeks Fourniret kept silent. On May 7, pressed by his second wife and two of his children, he agreed to answer questions, and in the following days he did, in what La Libre Belgique's reporter called an oratorical joust that showed a terrible offhandedness toward the families. He tried to implicate Olivier, gave few useful details and said he had tied the Ciney girl "symbolically." He denied using force against a 14-year-old girl he had approached at Gedinne station in February 2000; she told the court that he had grabbed her arm and that she escaped by jumping onto a train, and that she was happy to be alive. On May 16, after less than an hour of questions, he stopped again: "I wanted to speak. I have every reason to regret it." He declined to answer Mananya Thumpong's mother, saying that any answer would mean speaking. Isabelle Laville's father asked whether he would lose his other daughter too, since Fourniret had promised her he would talk.
The prosecutor, Francis Nachbar, asked for life imprisonment for Olivier with a 30-year security period.
On May 28, 2008, the court convicted Fourniret, 66, of the seven murders, of Isabelle Laville, Fabienne Leroy, Jeanne-Marie Desramault, Elisabeth Brichet, Natacha Danais, Céline Saison and Mananya Thumpong, and of the attacks on the three girls and young women who escaped. It sentenced him to life imprisonment with no possibility of release, the sentence the French press calls perpétuité incompressible. Slate.fr noted that this made him one of very few people in France to receive a security period with no end. His lawyer said he would not appeal.
Olivier, 59, was convicted of complicity in four of the murders and in a rape committed jointly on a girl, and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a security period of 28 years. A lawyer for one of the survivors suggested the court had set 28 years rather than the 30 requested to discourage an appeal.
Francis Brichet, Elisabeth's father, said he hoped the couple would rot in prison. He felt relief, he said, but his daughter was dead, and he wished Olivier had received the same sentence as her husband. Elisabeth's mother, Marie-Noëlle Bouzet, did not attend the verdict; her lawyer said she opposed the death penalty and thought prison an imperfect answer. The survivor of the 1995 attack near Namur said she felt like "a new woman."
The Hammiche killing, the only one in the series committed for money, was tried separately. Fourniret and Olivier went on trial before the Yvelines assize court at Versailles on November 13, 2018. Fourniret, then 76, admitted the murder but denied handling stolen goods, saying he had never known where the gold came from. His lawyer, Grégory Vavasseur, said he would cooperate as far as he could, and Fourniret himself spoke of hearing problems and a partly impaired memory, though he said he had no serious illness. Olivier, charged with complicity and handling stolen goods, acknowledged all the facts against her, according to her lawyer, Richard Delgenes. Hellegouarch, then 75, two of Farida's sisters and a former partner of hers were civil parties; Farida's parents had died. At one hearing Hellegouarch demanded that Fourniret say where her body was. "If he has two cents of courage," he said, it should be used for that.
On November 16, 2018, the court sentenced Fourniret to life imprisonment for the murder of Farida Hammiche, and Olivier to 20 years. According to Slate.fr, Fourniret later said that killing Farida Hammiche was his only regret. In 2005 he had told the psychiatrist Jean-Luc Ployé, "A Fourniret does not regret."
Fourniret spent his last years at Fresnes prison, south of Paris. On November 20, 2020, he collapsed in his cell. His lawyers asked for his sentence to be suspended on grounds of ill health. He had heart problems and Alzheimer's disease, according to Le Parisien as reported by AFP and Belga. On April 28, 2021, he was admitted to the secure interregional hospital unit at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris, which serves the Fresnes prison. He was placed in a coma, and his condition was described as irreversible.
He died there at 3 p.m. on May 10, 2021, aged 79. The Paris prosecutor, Rémy Heitz, opened the inquiry that French law requires into any death in custody. Didier Seban, lawyer for several families, including the Mouzins, said the families were disappointed that he would never be tried in the cases in which he had been charged, and spoke of anger "after so many years of inaction." "Michel Fourniret is taking his secrets with him," said Richard Delgenes, Olivier's lawyer.
With Fourniret dead, the families' remaining hope of a trial rested on Olivier. She was tried alone before the Hauts-de-Seine assize court at Nanterre from late November 2023, the first case brought by the Nanterre court's unit for unsolved crimes. She was charged with complicity in the abduction of Estelle Mouzin in 2003 and in the abduction, rape and murder of Marie-Angèle Domèce in 1988 and of Joanna Parrish in 1990. In 2021 she had told investigators that she went with Fourniret to the woods at Issancourt-et-Rumel to help him bury Estelle.
On the first day she said she regretted everything that had happened, and of her former husband, "He used me." The following week she admitted all the facts of the case. Their son, Selim Olivier, testified and urged his mother to tell the court everything she knew. Through the trial, though, she repeatedly said she did not know or did not remember, and she gave no new information about where the remains of Estelle and Marie-Angèle lay.
On December 19, 2023, after about ten hours of deliberation, the court convicted Olivier, 75, of complicity in the abduction, confinement and murder of Marie-Angèle Domèce, Joanna Parrish and Estelle Mouzin, with complicity in the attempted rape of Marie-Angèle and the rape of Joanna as aggravating findings. It sentenced her to life imprisonment with a 20-year security period; the prosecution had asked for 22 years. The presiding judge, Didier Safar, called the sentence just, adequate and proportionate to the extreme gravity of the facts. "She leaves with the same sentence," Delgenes said, "but with new guilty verdicts in three cases." Éric Mouzin and Roger Parrish criticized her conduct during the trial. Under her earlier sentences she had a combined security period of 30 years and could not be released before 2035, AFP reported.
In January 2025 Olivier admitted, in several stages before an investigating judge of the serial crimes unit at Nanterre, that she had been involved in Lydie Logé's disappearance. According to RTL, as confirmed by AFP, she said the couple had abducted Lydie, that Fourniret had tried to rape her before strangling her, and that she had helped hide the body. Corinne Herrmann, the family's lawyer, called it a form of confession and said the family needed answers and a dignified burial.
On January 21, 2025, Olivier, then 76, was taken under escort to Argentan and Saint-Christophe-le-Jajolet, with the investigating judge Sabine Khéris present, to retrace where the couple might have spotted Lydie and to look for her body. Her lawyer said she was taking an active part. The next day investigators took her to a quarry at Feuguerolles-Bully, south of Caen. Herrmann warned that Olivier had trouble finding her bearings. No trace of the body was reported. No trial date in the Logé case had been reported by October 21, 2026.
Michel Fourniret died in custody on May 10, 2021, convicted of eight murders. As of the latest report (RTBF, September 25, 2026), Monique Olivier is the last surviving member of the couple and is serving her sentences in France. The bodies of Farida Hammiche, Marie-Angèle Domèce, Estelle Mouzin and Lydie Logé have not been found.
Proven by final judgment: the murders of Isabelle Laville, Fabienne Leroy, Jeanne-Marie Desramault, Elisabeth Brichet, Natacha Danais, Céline Saison and Mananya Thumpong (Ardennes, 2008), and of Farida Hammiche (Yvelines, 2018).
Confessed, never tried against him: the deaths of Marie-Angèle Domèce and Joanna Parrish (confessed February 2018) and Estelle Mouzin (acknowledged March 2020). Olivier's 2023 conviction for complicity establishes in law that the three were abducted, confined and murdered, but Fourniret himself was never tried and died legally unconvicted of those deaths.
Investigated, never tried: the disappearance of Lydie Logé, for which he was placed under formal investigation in December 2020. Slate.fr reported that he admitted responsibility; other reports say only that he was suspected and charged.
The total: AFP has given the number of killings he confessed to as eleven, which is not a figure any court has fixed. In 2006 an AP report said he was suspected of killing 19 people, and AFP wrote in 2023 that reports had suggested many more. No court or investigator has published evidence for a higher total.
Accounts differ on his 1987 sentence (five years in Belgian and French reports; seven years with two suspended, from the Essonne assize court, in Slate.fr); Marie-Angèle Domèce's age (18 or 19); the date and place of Fabienne Leroy's killing; how many killings Olivier disclosed in 2004 and 2005 (nine or eleven); and when Fourniret confessed to Joanna Parrish's death (2018 in most reports; one AFP copy says 2016).
April 4, 1942: Michel Fourniret is born in Sedan, Ardennes.
1967: given an eight-month suspended sentence, with compulsory treatment, for assaulting a girl in the Ardennes.
1984: arrested and jailed over a series of sexual assaults on young women.
1980s: shares a cell at Fleury-Mérogis with Jean-Pierre Hellegouarch; begins corresponding with Monique Olivier.
June 26, 1987: sentenced for sexual assaults on about a dozen young women.
October 1987: released; settles in the Yonne with Olivier.
December 1987: Isabelle Laville, 17, is abducted near Auxerre.
March 1988: Farida Hammiche asks him to help recover buried gold.
April 12, 1988: Farida Hammiche, 30, disappears near Clairefontaine.
July 8, 1988: Marie-Angèle Domèce disappears in Auxerre.
August 1988: Fabienne Leroy, 20, is killed in the Marne.
1988: the couple's son is born; they marry in 1989.
March 1989: Jeanne-Marie Desramault, 22, disappears in Charleville-Mézières.
December 20, 1989: Elisabeth Brichet, 12, is abducted in Saint-Servais, Namur.
May 16 to 17, 1990: Joanna Parrish, 20, is abducted; her body is found near Monéteau on May 17.
November 21, 1990: Natacha Danais, 13, is abducted in Rezé; she is found dead on a Vendée beach three days later.
December 18, 1993: Lydie Logé, 29, disappears from Saint-Christophe-le-Jajolet.
January 1995: a young woman survives an attack near Namur.
February 2000: a 14-year-old girl escapes him at Gedinne station.
May 16, 2000: Céline Saison, 18, disappears in Charleville-Mézières; her body is found at Vresse-sur-Semois on July 22, 2000.
May 5, 2001: Mananya Thumpong, 13, disappears in Sedan; remains found in the Nollevaux woods on March 1, 2002.
January 9, 2003: Estelle Mouzin, 9, disappears in Guermantes.
June 26, 2003: a 13-year-old escapes from his van in Ciney; he is arrested in June 2003.
June 2004: Olivier begins describing the killings to Belgian police; Fourniret admits eight homicides.
July 3, 2004: Elisabeth Brichet's body is found at the Château du Sautou; Jeanne-Marie Desramault's is found there the same month.
January 31, 2005: first French charges against the couple, served at Dinant.
2005: Olivier tells Dinant police about Domèce and Parrish.
December 2005 and January 2006: the couple are extradited to France.
January 2006: the Cour de cassation rejects Olivier's statute of limitations challenge.
2006: Isabelle Laville's remains are found in a well.
March 27, 2008: trial opens in Charleville-Mézières.
May 28, 2008: Fourniret is convicted of seven murders and sentenced to life with no possibility of release; Olivier receives life with a 28-year security period.
2010: the couple divorce.
2012: Judge Sabine Khéris reopens the Domèce and Parrish investigation.
February 2018: Fourniret confesses to killing Marie-Angèle Domèce and Joanna Parrish.
2018: the Logé case is reopened after DNA traces in his van.
November 16, 2018: Versailles court gives Fourniret a second life sentence for the Hammiche murder; Olivier receives 20 years.
November 2019: Olivier breaks his alibi in the Mouzin case; on November 27 he is placed under formal investigation.
March 7, 2020: the Paris prosecutor announces that he has acknowledged his part in Estelle Mouzin's disappearance.
August 2020: partial DNA of Estelle is reported found on a mattress from Ville-sur-Lumes.
November 20, 2020: he collapses in his cell at Fresnes.
December 22, 2020: placed under formal investigation in the Logé case.
April 28, 2021: admitted to the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital.
May 10, 2021: dies in custody, aged 79.
December 19, 2023: Olivier is convicted at Nanterre of complicity in the murders of Domèce, Parrish and Mouzin and sentenced to life with a 20-year security period.
January 2025: Olivier admits involvement in Lydie Logé's disappearance and takes part in searches in the Orne and Calvados.
September 25, 2026: latest report; the bodies of four victims remain unfound.