At the Assize Court of Nanterre,
December 19, 2002. It is almost 5 p.m. when Megan, 11, walks up the main street of Guermantes, in Seine-et-Marne. The bus taking her home from college dropped her off about a kilometer away. “On the way home, a small white van arrives on my right and a gentleman, alone, tells me that what I am carrying seems very heavy and he offers to take me back,” recalls, twenty years later later, the young woman before the Nanterre Assize Court. She is now 32 years old, long brown hair surrounds her thin face. But she has not forgotten anything about that Thursday. She had “her big square satchel” and, on her shoulder, her sports bag. She refuses to get in, but the driver insists. “He tells me it really looks heavy, that it doesn’t bother him. » She feels panic overtaking her, she “freezes”, fears that the man will follow her home. After two minutes – “but it seemed longer” – he finally left. He seems “disappointed,” she notes.
This story takes on its full relief when we compare it to the disappearance of Estelle Mouzin, three weeks later, in the same street, a few dozen meters away. The two girls were neighbors and friends. And even though Megan was two years older than Estelle, they looked similar. Same build, same brown hair often held back by a duvet. Michel Fourniret – who died in May 2021 – never mentioned this affair, but Monique Olivier indicated during hearings in 2019 and 2020 that her ex-husband told him that a young girl refused to come up. According to his account, the serial killer told him that he had spotted the city and two little girls but that he had suffered “a failure”. He planned to return there, said Monique Olivier.
“It had no particular interest”
This crucial testimony has, however, long been underestimated. Megan told this story to her mother that evening, to her father a few weeks later. In March 2003 – two months after the disappearance of Estelle Mouzin – the latter recounted his daughter’s confidences to a police officer. It is not the police department responsible for the investigation, and the official does not make the connection. “The person who received me said that it was too vague and that it was of no particular interest,” recalls this man, as straight as an “i” at the bar. In mid-June 2003, while the PJ of Versailles re-interviewed all the inhabitants of the village, he mentioned this story again. This time, the young teenager is heard.
Megan gives an accurate portrait of the man behind the wheel of the van. Between 40 and 50 years old, unshaven, straight hair down to his ears, round glasses, thick eyebrows. We ask him to draw it. The image projected to the audience is striking. It is certainly a child’s drawing, the lines are clumsy, but when compared to Fourniret’s photos of the time, the resemblance is striking. “He was starting to have white hair and he had steel blue eyes [elle les décrit marron] », However, points out Me Richard Delgènes, Monique Olivier’s lawyer. We almost forgot her, she is so impassive in the box. Tried in particular for the kidnapping and sequestration of Estelle Mouzin, she did not react and seemed almost absent from the debates.
“It’s striking the resemblance to the man I saw”
Megan also provides a precise description of the van. White, three seats in the front, the rear door windows are covered with a filter which does not allow you to see what is happening inside. She points out three similar models. Among them, a Citroën Jumpy. A model that Michel Fourniret owns. When the schoolgirl is heard, the serial killer is still running. He was arrested in Belgium a few days later when he had just kidnapped a 13-year-old girl who managed to escape from the vehicle. A Citroën Jumpy.
Belgian investigators quickly confided their suspicions about the Mouzin affair to their French counterparts. According to them, Michel Fourniret’s alibi – he says he made a phone call to his son for his birthday – does not hold up. But this track is quickly evacuated. Megan will not be heard from again until… 2018. And it is in 2019 that she will be presented with photos of the serial killer for the first time. The resemblance jumps out at him. “It was Michel Fourniret who approached me that day,” she assures. Awkward, in an almost accusatory tone, the president bombards him with questions. Why didn’t she note the license plate? Why didn’t she get involved in Eric Mouzin’s association? Why didn’t she contact investigators when she saw Fourniret’s face in reports?
The young woman fiddles with her hands and discreetly wipes her eyes. His voice trembles. We feel her upset. She and Estelle were friends. Just five days before the little girl’s disappearance, they had spent the afternoon making a snowman. “I felt guilty for a long time about not getting into the car,” she confides, strangled sobs in her throat. And to insist: “It could have been me and not my girlfriend. I told myself that it would have been less serious because my parents still had my brother and my sister. While Estelle’s mother was the only one at home. » Furious at the president’s interrogation which gives “the impression that she is guilty”, Me Didier Seban, Eric Mouzin’s lawyer, reassures her: “You were a little girl, you could not have protect her. »