By her lawyer’s own admission, Monique Olivier’s new psychological expertise “does not change much” in the situation. The ex-wife of Michel Fourniret, who will be tried from November 27 before the Assize Court in Nanterre for complicity in the murders of Marie-Angèle Domèce, Joanna Parrish and Estelle Mouzin, remains “responsible and guilty” of the facts reproached. “She will be condemned in the same way,” underlines Me Richard Delgenes.
On the other hand, the work carried out by Mickaël Morlet-Rivelli, the legal expert recently charged by judge Sabine Khéris with assessing the intelligence of the accused, “changes everything about the understanding we have of her and about the way in which it was presented. Already sentenced to life imprisonment, Monique Olivier would not be the intelligent and manipulative woman described by French experts who met her in 2005, when she was detained in Namur, Belgium.
One of them, Jean-Luc Ployé, explained in the documentary broadcast on Netflix “L’Affaire Fourniret: In the head of Monique Olivier” that he estimated his IQ at 131. A “completely remarkable” result which “corresponds to 2.2% of the French population. “From the moment Monique Olivier has an intellectual level higher than that of Michel Fourniret, it is difficult for her to be manipulated,” assured the expert psychologist, adding that the ex-wife of the serial killer was “very manipulative and extremely dissembling.
Jean-Luc Ployé admitted to having been “surprised” by Monique Olivier’s performance, of which he was “certain”. To prove his point, the psychologist went so far as to show the camera the scoring sheet used to measure his IQ.
“A self-effacing, reserved, naive and easily influenced subject”
While watching the documentary, Mickaël Morlet-Rivelli, psychologist and legal expert at the Reims Court of Appeal, noticed a detail in this document that was important. The test used by Jean-Luc Ployé is “obsolete”, he writes in his report, consulted by 20 minutes. The version used dates from 1968. However, the tests are regularly updated to adapt to the average IQ of the population, which tends to increase over the years. The result obtained could therefore only be overestimated. To do this properly, it would have been necessary to use the fourth edition of this test, released in 2000.
The young expert makes the decision to warn Monique Olivier’s lawyer of his discovery. In turn, Me Richard Delgenes writes to the investigating judge Sabine Khéris. The magistrate, who is at the head of the “cold cases” pole, is responsible for investigating the disappearance of Lydie Loge, of whom Michel Fourniret, who died on May 10, 2021, is strongly suspected. On April 21, she asked Mickaël Morlet-Rivelli to carry out a new psychological and behavioral examination of Monique Olivier and assess her intelligence.
To do this, the psychologist enlists the help of a neuropsychologist and a teacher-researcher. The expert will spend 38 hours with Michel Fourniret’s ex-wife, and make her take 23 tests. His report was submitted on September 22. And his conclusion is clear: “His level of intelligence is in the low average zone, with a total intelligence quotient of 92.” Mickaël Morlet-Rivelli noted “no sign suggestive of a tendency to lie , manipulation, mythomania or fabrication.” On the contrary. Monique Olivier “appears very deficient in terms of self-esteem and self-confidence”. “He is a self-effacing, reserved, naïve and easily influenced subject, with a strong tendency toward social anxiety and suggestibility,” he writes.
A distorted portrait
According to him, Monique Olivier was “particularly sensitive to a context of coercive control”. In other words, she was totally submissive and under the influence of the serial killer. The conclusions of this new expert report are very close to those rendered by the Belgian doctors who examined her in 2004. The latter had evaluated her IQ at 92. However, these are the results obtained the following year by the two French experts, Jean-Luc Ployé and Philippe Herbelot, who will draw the portrait false of an evil and manipulative woman, on which the investigators based themselves. “It polluted the way we questioned him for a long time,” observes Me Richard Delgenes. It was said that she was manipulative, that she was intelligent, so they questioned her based on these elements. » These latest revelations change the interpretation “of the answers they gave, of their silences”.
This new report, he insists, also shows that “the Belgian experts were right” and that it is not a “quarrel of experts”. For the criminal lawyer, the French specialists who overestimated his IQ in 2005 clearly “mistaken” and we are doing “a lot of harm”. He asked that Jean-Luc Ployé be called as a witness at his client’s trial in Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine). She will be tried for complicity in the kidnapping of Estelle Mouzin, then aged 9, in 2003, as well as in the kidnapping, murder and rape of two young women: Marie-Angèle Domèce, 19 years old, in 1988 , and Joanna Parrish, a 21-year-old British national, in 1990, in Yonne.
But, regrets Mr. Delgenes, “the president of the Assize Court told me that we could not call an expert as a witness.” Mickaël Morlet-Rivelli will be expected to come and explain his work at the bar.