The search to find the body of Estelle Mouzin in the Ardennes was suspended on Friday but should resume this week. – AFP
New twist in this endless research. The searches to find the body of Estelle Mouzin, whose serial killer Michel Fourniret confessed to the murder, will resume “Tuesday or Wednesday” in the Ardennes, we learned Monday from a source close to the investigation.
According to France Info, the ex-wife of Michel Fourniret, Monique Olivier, admitted having played a role in the kidnapping of the girl who disappeared in 2003.
New elements?
The lawyer of Eric Mouzin, Me Didier Seban, quoted by the radio, indicated that Monique Olivier gave new information which will direct the investigators “to a place which will be searched in the coming days” in the Ardennes. “She was not in Seine-et-Marne but was present when Estelle was in the Ardennes, alive,” said the lawyer on the radio.
Richard Delgenes, lawyer for Monique Olivier contacted by AFP, on the contrary indicated that “in the state of the investigations, there are no new elements on the implication of Monique Olivier. She participates to try to help the investigators to find the body but never admitted knowing where Michel Fourniret had put it ”, he added.
“Michel Fourniret’s health problems prevent him from answering questions and probably being tried. Efforts are therefore focused on Monique Olivier but the unavailability of Michel Fourniret should not lead to trying to give Monique Olivier a role that she does not have and that she has never had ”, insisted Me Delgenes.
“Monique Olivier recognized that Michel Fourniret was the author of the kidnapping of Estelle Mouzin and the investigating judge indicted her for complicity,” his lawyer recalled.
“With these individuals, it’s only the facts and the evidence that make sense. What they tell you … ”, reacted to AFP, Eric Mouzin, the father of the girl who disappeared on January 9, 2003 when she was returning from school, in Guermantes (Seine-et-Marne ).
Unsuccessful searches
On Friday, investigators closed a new series of unsuccessful excavations on the outskirts of the village of Rumel, in the Ardennes. This village is located 4 km from Ville-sur-Lumes, where, according to Monique Olivier, her ex-husband, in a house belonging to her sister, kidnapped, raped and killed Estelle Mouzin, 9 years old.
The convoy carrying in particular the examining magistrate Sabine Kheris had reached this site, explored for the first time, after a long hearing Thursday of the ex-wife of the serial killer at the gendarmerie of Charleville-Mézières.
Several excavation operations have already been carried out in the region in recent months, but without breakthrough, especially in October in the presence of Michel Fourniret, whose state of health has meanwhile deteriorated.
Fourniret sentenced to life imprisonment
Aged 78, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of seven girls, adolescents and young women between 1987 and 2001. He is indicted in three other cases. The Parisian investigating judge Sabine Kheris took over in the summer of 2019 the direction of the investigations into four disappearances and murders linked to Michel Fourniret. She succeeded in obtaining a confession from the serial killer, in particular in the Estelle Mouzin affair.