FRANCE:THEY ARE known as les diaboliques. For nearly 16 years, from the end of 1987 until their arrest in mid-2003, Michel Fourniret (65) and Monique Olivier (59) were a husband and wife serial killer team who preyed on virgins.
Their trial, for the kidnapping, rape and murder of seven girls between the ages of 12 and 20, opened at the assize court in Charleville-Mézières, northeastern France, yesterday and will continue until May 30th.
The couple have been imprisoned since a 13-year-old escaped from Fourniret's van in June 2003 and led police to them. Long bound by what the prosecution called "a criminal pact", they sat in the dock with two gendarmes between them yesterday, but never exchanged a glance.
Fourniret seemed to doze for much of the afternoon and appeared bored as the 111-page charge sheet was read.
The victims' families were so traumatised by the detailed, chronological account of the murders that they were unable to speak to journalists after the session. "I am worse than [the Belgian serial killer Marc] Dutroux," Fourniret told Marie-Asuncion S., the 13- year-old escapee. Police found revolvers, handcuffs, ropes, adhesive tape, a child's skirt and broken ether phials in Fourniret's blood-stained van.
Psychiatrists and lawyers describe both of the accused as above average in intelligence. Neither would have killed alone, experts say, but together they created a sort of malevolent chemistry. Fourniret has taken sadistic pleasure in bargaining to reveal scraps of information throughout the investigation.
Yesterday, he refused to speak unless his trial is closed to the public. When the judge asked him a question, Fourniret held up a piece of cardboard on which he had written, "Without closed doors, closed mouth". He passed a scroll on which he had written more to the judge. It may be read out later in the trial.
Fourniret and Olivier met through an announcement in the Catholic magazine Le Pèlerinin 1986, while he was imprisoned for raping an under-age girl. "Prisoner would like to correspond with person of any age to forget his solitude", it said. A divorced mother of two, Olivier was working as a care-giver to an elderly woman in rural France. She wrote to him about her miserable life, and he called her his "titmouse" and "my favourite little monster".
By letter, the couple agreed that Fourniret would kill Olivier's ex-husband - a promise that was never fulfilled - and she would help him satisfy his craving for virgins. "I shall execute your orders with pleasure," she wrote to him.
"No, I'm not a petty bourgeoise. I want to work with my wild beast, help him."
When Fourniret was released in October 1987, Monique Olivier was there to meet him. They settled in the Yonne department of Burgundy, moving later to Belgium, where Fourniret worked in a school. Olivier gave birth to a son, Sélim, in 1989. She used the infant to attract girls for her husband.
The couple committed their first murder in December 1987. Monique Olivier stopped to ask Isabelle Laville (17) for directions and persuaded the girl to get in her car. Down the road, she picked up Fourniret who was hitch-hiking with a jerrycan in his hand. The couple pretended not to know each other.
They took the schoolgirl to their isolated home, where Fourniret raped and strangled her before throwing her body down a well, where her skeleton was found nine years later.
After her first year in prison, Monique Olivier "cracked". It is not clear how many girls the couple killed. She has told of 11 murders. He admits to eight, including the seven for which they are standing trial. Both are likely to be sentenced to life in prison.