A French serial killer who murdered up to 30 girls and young women including British student Joanna Parrish died in a hospital intensive care ward today.
Michel Fourniret ended his days in the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital in Paris at 3pm on Monday, said city prosecutor Rémy Heitz.
The 79-year-old, who was known as the ‘Beast of the Ardennes’, had been rushed from Fresnes prison to a secure unit at the hospital on Saturday after ‘suffering from respiratory problems’.
Fourniret was serving life in prison without parole for murdering eight people when he slipped into a coma.
“He is suffering with heart problems and mental degeneration, has been placed in a coma, and doctors consider he cannot be resuscitated,” a source told Le Parisien newspaper on Monday.
Fourniret admitted kidnapping, raping and murdering 11 girls and young women over a 14-year period from 1987.
(Image: Reuters)
He was also thought to be behind up to 21 more killings of women and girls, who his wife picked up for him while driving around with their child in the car.
They included Joanna, the 20-year-old Leeds University language student who was killed in Burgundy countryside in eastern France in May 1990.
In 2018, Fourniret told examining magistrates that he ended the lives of both Joanna and Marie-Ange Domece, a mentally handicapped teenager who disappeared in 1988, aged 19.
Joanna’s body was found naked in the River Yonne in Auxerre, the day after she was reported missing.
Fourniret was the prime suspect in Joanna’s case for years, and was finally arrested in 2005 along with his wife Monique Olivier in connection with the death.
(Image: AFP)
(Image: PA)
He was first convicted of seven murders in May 2008, and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole.
Olivier was given life with a minimum term of 28 years in prison, for complicity in multiple murders.
Then, in 2018, the couple were tried for the 1988 murder of Farida Hammiche.
Fourniret was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder while Olivier was sentenced to a further twenty years for complicity in the murder.
It was revealed that she would pick up victims for him as she drove in their car around the wooden Ardennes area with their baby son in the backseat.
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Last year, analysts found forensic traces of two other Fourniret victims – nine-year-old Estelle Mouzin and 18-year-old Céline Saison – on a mattress belonging to the murderer’s sister.
Then advanced testing led to links with 12 other people, whose identities could be revealed.
Corinne Herrmann, a barrister representing presumed victims, said at the time: “We want the DNA of all victims and disappeared girls that we represent to be compared with those found on the mattress, and with all evidence under seal seized at Michel Fourniret’s home.”
Ms Herrmann added: “It is inconceivable that Fourniret did not kill other victims.”
Fourniret was in the high-security Fresnes until being rushed to the Pitié Salpêtrière.
Le Parisien reported that he “had already been hospitalized in emergency on several occasions.”
Didier Seban, another lawyer for the families of his victims, said: “His condition and his memory have been deteriorating for several months and we suspect that he will never be tried” for many of his crimes.
Mr Seban added: “This situation is obviously hard to live with for the families who will be deprived of the main accused in the event of a trial.”
Monique Olivier has told a fellow prisoner that her ex-husband’s victims “greatly exceeded 30”, according to investigating sources who have monitored her in Rennes prison.
Genetic traces have linked him with at least 21 unsolved cases of murders or disappearances across France.
This list exclusively concerns girls or young women, aged 10 to 39, who mysteriously disappeared or were murdered between 1987 and 2003 in 17 departments, the French equivalent of counties.
Mr Heitz confirmed said “a full investigation had begun” into the exact circumstances of his death..