SERIAL MURDER IN FRANCE : MICHEL FOURNIRET
Would you believe me if I told you a pedophile serial killer was active at the same time as Dutroux, right next to him, over the French border? Meet Michel Fourniret.
I’m going to start this piece with a slight apology - I haven’t been active in quite a while. After the initial rush of pieces I’ve written, I wanted to take a small break, and right after that, a new job offer came my way, and suddenly my free time to read and write was drastically reduced. Things have started to calm down for now, hopefully that means I manage to be more active again. I posted on Twitter about how I wanted to do a piece on witchcraft, cults, and satanism in Belgium for Halloween 2025, I figured the time would be right, but sadly I couldn’t even go through all my readings much less write about them. Don’t worry though, if you’re interested in those themes, I’m keeping this idea in my head for another time. I also desperately want to finish my DUTROUX : THE MISSING PIECES series. I have one last part planned and ready to be written. Give me some more time, but that will be one of the next pieces you’ll read on here.
It has been a while since I’ve wanted to talk about Michel Fourniret. Unlike Dutroux, I have no personal connection to the case. Any Belgian will tell you that if they lived through the Dutroux affair or immediately in it’s wake, they feel some sort of connection, directly or indirectly. One of the houses I’ve spent my childhood in was two streets up the houses where Julie and Mélissa lived. I’ve seen their parents. I’ve walked up to the small bridge where they were last spotted, and for years, it was home to small reminders of their presence - old missing posters, support messages to the parents, banners, all that. In a way, Marc Dutroux has been a real looming presence in my life, from this incomprehensible boogey man as a kid to an obsession of mine to search for the truth about this case in my adult life. With Michel Fourniret, it feels different. I had no intrinsic knowledge of the case, and I thought that if I ever were to write about this case, I wanted to do it properly. This is why I might revisit this piece one day with a part two, because there’s a lot to cover and keeping it all concise and interesting isn’t easy. There are a lot of rabbit holes to go down, but hopefully I managed to cover all bases with this.
You can consider this article to be a follow-up to my SERIAL MURDER IN BELGIUM series. Before you read this, I have to remind you that this article will deal with themes of sexual assault, abuse, incest, and pedophilia, and while I will obviously hold back from sharing the most graphic aspects of these crimes, their nature is highly disturbing.
Fourteen years
We’re in 19891. It’s a cold December evening in Belgium. We’re the 20th, 4 days out from Christmas Eve. Winter’s officially here tomorrow. Winters in Belgium are quite rude, especially in the country side. Snow is common, but you do mostly get the rainy, foggy days for weeks on. There’s this sense that everyone and everything in the country is running slower until spring, which can be a long, long wait. To be quite honest, it’s shit. It’s already dark out there, it’s 7:30 pm. At that time of the evening, everyone’s probably in front of their television, watching the news on the VRT or the RTBF. The US troops have just invaded Panama to topple Manuel Noriega, and over in Romania, Ceaușescu is living out his last days. Marie-Noëlle Bouzet and Francis Brichet are part of the few who are not in front of their TV set that night. Just a few minutes ago, at exactly 6:51 pm, their daughter Elisabeth Brichet left her schoolmate Vanessa’s house after spending the afternoon there. They live right next to each other, a 3 or 4 minutes walk. Elisabeth lives in a quiet neighborhood in the north of Namur, called Saint-Servais. Namur’s one of the biggest cities of Wallonia, to the south of Brussels, to the west of Liège, and not too far away from Charleroi (a 45 minutes car ride). Saint-Servais is one of the very last parts of the city suburbs before it fully becomes the countryside. The 12 years old was apparently last seen walking near one of the local landmarks, the cemetery of Saint-Servais. Since then, nothing. Not a word, not a sighting. Elisabeth’s mother senses immediately that something went wrong that night. To the contrary of the local cops. They gave her the same rundown they give to everyone whenever a kid goes missing in that era : relax, she probably just ran away. She’ll turn up. Something in the tone of “If something awful happened to her, we’ll arrest the culprit, and we’ll find her safe!”. They don’t know it yet, but that simply would not be true. They won’t find what happened to Elisabeth the next day. Or the next week. Or the week after, or the month after, or the year after, or the decade after. It would take 14 years for Marie-Noëlle Bouzet and Francis Brichet to find out what happened to their daugther. In 1989, we’re still in pre-Dutroux Belgium. That is basically prehistory in terms of police work set out for any crime that isn’t the theft of an handbag or a speeding fine. The Brabant Killers had stopped their terror campaign just four years ago, stunning the ineffective (and complicit?) gendarmerie into buffing up to deal with more serious threats. They had faster cars, bigger guns, more funds. As for missing children and local cop work, it was so dire that citizens had to set up their own organizations, like Marc and Corine2, to help each other with all these disapperances. One thing’s for sure, Dutroux had nothing to do with Elisabeth Brichet. At this point, he’d been in the clink for 3 years. He’ll get out in 3 more years, to carry the crimes that would become the Dutroux affair. In many ways, Michel Fourniret and Marc Dutroux are alike. Very, very much alike…
At the time of his arrest in 2003, Michel Fourniret had been a serial rapist, killer, and pedophile for almost 25 years. How does a man who commits such horrible crimes for such a long time period does not get caught is the evident question that comes to mind, but just like Dutroux, you’ll see that there may be more going on with Fourniret. Before getting into his crimes, I thought it would be important to give a short bio of the man, as well as his wife Monique Olivier who is essential to Fourniret’s crimes, she’s his partner for most of them. Just like Michelle Martin, Dutroux’s wife3. This is one of the key elements to interpret cases like these. Most serial killers, pedophiles, and other mass criminals will be painted as lone wolves, isolated people who worked that way because this is how you do this stuff : you have to be working alone, by yourself, with no accomplice or else they’ll turn on you, leave evidence behind for cops to find. If not by simply ditching you, later on when you get caught. It’s also a “selling point” for true crime stories, the serial killers always have to be these highly intelligent figures who manage to outsmart everyone to keep their spree going. When people watch a documentary or listen to a podcast about this stuff, they want to hear about the crimes, not some possible accomplice who could have led to a larger different story involving money deals, drugs, weapons, human trafficking. But the reality is that when a serial criminal like Michel Fourniret goes out, he needs the complicity of others like his wife, or unknown others who help out, or else some of these crimes wouldn’t be possible, logistically, physically, etc. Then there is the question of how and why you ended up being in this line of crime, who profits off it, and how some of these criminals, described as isolated, pariahs of society end up being rich, owning multiple properties (we’re speaking of a literal château for Mr. Fourniret), and not being caught for a quarter of a century. A rhetorical question some would say.
Michel Fourniret
Michel Fourniret was born on April 4, 1942 in Sedan, France. He grew up in the Ardennes, an isolated region covered in forests, stretching from the southeast of Belgium all the way into north-eastern France. To get a good sense of what the Ardennes are like, I recommend you watch the movie Calvaire (2004), directed by Fabrice Du Welz4. His dad Gaston was a metal worker. His dad and his mom, Lucienne, were born at the turn of the century, respectively in 1899 and 1906. Fourniret has two siblings, an older brother and an older sister. Starting at 18, Michel worked at a steel foundry. Two years later, at only 20, in 1962, Michel Fourniret completed his military service and was drafted for France’s war against the Algerian revolution5. Started in 1954 and ending the same year Fourniret got drafted, it led to Algeria’s independence from France’s colonization. The pull out from France led to a division in French society, army officials, and its ruling class, with the formation of the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS), a far-right paramilitary organization that claimed a French Algeria and attempted on President De Gaulle’s life. Many of the people involved in the short lived OAS would later be found throughout the world as mercenaries, virulent anticommunist fighters, politicians, or stay-behind spies. The war crimes committed by France in Algeria include but are not limited to murder, torture and rape, and one such culprit was Lieutenant Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose Hitlerjugend knife was found after a torture session he infliged on innocent Algerian civilians, before they were killed with a burst of bullets coming from automatic rifles. The records on Fourniret’s participation are not findable online, his only claim to truth being a small 300 euros pension the French state awarded him for his service, around 19996. It proves he definitely served but no source expands to what capacity. If we are to believe he was an active part in the conflict, it would mean he saw, or even worse, participated in war crimes. This would explain how Fourniret seemed unfazed by his serial killer activities decades later. Just like some Vietnam vets would come home after serving and go crazy killing people, Fourniret could have developed the same symptoms, a sick man in a sick society, introduced to being a murderer through finding pleasure in being forced to kill innocent people, serving the interests of those above him.
A year later, in 1963, Michel Fourniret meets and marries his first wife, Annette7. Their marriage won’t last long. In 1966, Michel Fourniret racks up his first conviction for voyeurism and violence in Nantes, western France. He’s only 24. In 1968, he’s officially divorced. Following his divorce, he moves to the Paris region and remarries almost immediately in 1970 with Nicole, and has his first kid, Nicolas, followed 2 years later by twins, Anne and Marie-Hélène. In 1973, Fourniret gets another conviction for voyeurism and violence, this time in Verdun, eastern France. He has avoided prison for now. Until the 80s, Fourniret has sort of a quiet life. He sells some of the terrains he bought with his first wife. Nothing of importance really happens. His dad dies in 1984, and the same year, in March, Fourniret is arrested for the third time. He’s accused of assaulting multiple teenagers, attempting to rape another, and raping a woman. He’s convicted of 7 years of prison, 5 of which are non-suspended, but he gets out after 3 years and a half. Much like Dutroux in Belgium, the French judiciary system didn’t care about the early release of a multiple offender with an high risk of recidivism. As you’ve probably noticed, we haven’t talked about Monique Olivier yet. And that’s because Fourniret would meet her through prison letters. That’s right, he posted an ad in a local newspaper and Monique wrote back to him and continued to write back to him after finding out he had been in prison for assaulting multiple teenagers. They even made plans for when he would get out : Monique Olivier had been in a relationship herself, but it was going sour. She said he was hitting her and taking over her life. Fourniret simply offered to kill him in exchange for Olivier helping him with finding young virgin girls… Fourniret, whose virginity had been taken from him at an early age (by a relative? It’s unclear, we’ll get back to that) had developed an obsession with the concept of virginity and wanted to find young virgin girls to “experience it". So from the start, not only was Monique Olivier a full accomplice, she was deeply involved in the sinister operations.
Monique Olivier
Monique Olivier was born on the 31st of October in 1948 in Tours, France8. Monique had three brothers, an uninterested dad, and an alcoholic unemployed mom who never recovered from losing her own mom. She spent most of her childhood living at her grandma’s house. She stopped going to school after primary school and instead became a secretary at 16. She meets an older man at 18 with whom she has a sexual relationship. I’m not bringing this up as some morbid detail, it’s one of the reasons Michel Fourniret accepted to get with Monique Olivier after she wrote to him, she understood she was part of the “bad ones”, because she lost her virginity at a young age, and so she was willing to help him with his obsession of virginity, to “redeem herself”.
At 22, Monique meets her first husband, André Michaut, 38. A pied-noir9, born in Algeria, he served in the French police services there and later worked for the Direction de la surveillance du territoire10, DST for short, a domestic intelligence and counterintelligence police force. Quite the Curriculum Vitae. But André was now simply working at a driving school. Monique gives birth to two sons, Murphy and William, in 1980 and 1981. André keeps being paranoid about his wife cheating on him and thinks the children aren’t his. He starts hitting her. Monique says that one night, he closed every shutter, put the kids to bed, and hit her all night. He also would have waterboarded her, telling Monique “this was how I made arabs talk when I was in the DST”. He made her sign a declaration that stated the kids weren’t his. Monique left the day after and drifted apart from him for a year or two, before he came back to her and tried to play repent. His jealousy beatings soon started again. Quite curiously, after they got back together, André brought Monique to some place out of Nîmes, the city where they lived, where a man was waiting for them. André told Monique that she had to perform oral sex on the man or else he would take their children away. Monique speaks of being forced to have sex with other men, which André denies. At some point, Monique Olivier simply could not take it anymore and decided to give up her rights to see her children for her liberty. She then spent a few years living with as a companion or attendant for an older woman. It’s in 1987 that her life would take a turn for the worse when while reading local papers, she stumbles on an ad placed by Michel Fourniret.
Paper trail
“Prisoner would like to correspond with anyone of any age to forget loneliness”.
A lonely and depressed Monique Olivier sees this ad and decides to write back. Fourniret and Olivier exchanged letters from February 27 to October 7, 1987. They wouldn’t meet for the first time until after those letters but their content reveals macabre plans they would follow upon after Fourniret’s release. Monique explains her relationship troubles with André Michaut, and Fourniret simply answers that he’ll help her kill her husband and get their kids back.
I recently made sure that I had "what it takes" for an individual action that must be well thought out and prepared... which aims to recover the two hatchlings that I am revolted to know are separated from their mother. [...] You will have your revenge sooner or later but you will have it, this is not an empty promise.
Michel Fourniret, in letters dated August 1st and August 20th 1987.11
Monique Olivier is glad to hear Fourniret wants to help her and she devotes herself to him. She writes back :
I will gladly carry out your orders (no sir, I'm not saying that half-heartedly). You know, your Natouchka [nickname that Fourniret gave her] is ready to help you with many things, she wants to know she's useful... I want to work alongside my beast, to assist him, that would make me so happy. Do you understand what I mean? I want to exist for him, so that he knows it well.
Monique Olivier, in a letter dated September 17th 1987.12
In further letters, Fourniret brings up his virginity obsession. He uses very crude language and makes it clear that Olivier understands what he means and what he wants. He also makes it clear to Monique Olivier that he intends to kill the other men she has had sex with.
You know the price. And that tight sex, I'll have it four times. [...] I want to possess its membrane. [...] I have to establish a program... Have enough money to forget about money, kill three guys... Own a young hole... The pleasure of risk... Kidnappings.
Michel Fourniret, in letters dated August 6th and August 25th 1987.13
This is as revealing as it gets. I’m awfully sorry you’ve had to read that, but I think it’s very important to make it clear that Michel Fourniret intended to kidnap, abuse, and kill young girls upon his release, and Monique Olivier supported him. Fourniret also makes quite the reveal to Monique in those letters, one that would tend to explain his obsession with virginity.
No one ever knew what you're about to read... When I was about 5 (or 6 at the most), Mom usually slept in. She took me into bed... She laid on her back, put me on top of her between her legs, holding me, placing my penis in a place I couldn't see but which instinctively inspired repulsion in me, the desire to run away. […] Impossible, Natouchka, you can imagine, to completely forget this terrifying trauma. It was also difficult for my father to forget her escapades and infidelities... Mom is a whore.
Michel Fourniret, in a letter dated October 7th 198714.
I’ve spared some of the details and again, apologies for making you read that, but what an absolute horrifying reveal by Michel Fourniret - if he suffered incest abuse at such a young age, it could explain his disgust for sex and people who have it, as well as this obsession with virgin girls. As we’ve seen with Marc Dutroux, it’s not uncommon for pedophiles and abusers to have suffered a trauma similar to the one they inflict on their victims15. This letter is the only time Fourniret has ever brought up this story.
Michel Fourniret leaves prison at the end of 1987 and the couple finally meets. They settle in the Ardennes, in Floing. In 1988, at the couple’s surprise, they welcomed Selim, their first child. Monique Olivier thought she wasn’t able to have children anymore and it makes Fourniret rather irritated. They marry each other the next year.
When this kind of fire starts…
By 1987, Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier were officially a couple, and about to embark on the crime spree referred to as the Fourniret affair. Much like Marc Dutroux, and during the same era (the 1980s), Fourniret had abused a dozen girls already and had spent years in jail for it. Condemned to 7 years in 1984, he would only do 3 and a half years before being released. You have to keep in mind he had also already been condemned of assault against a minor and voyeurism in the 1960s and the 1970s. Same question as Dutroux then : how does a man with such an awful pedigree slip through the cracks and get an early release? Of course there are laws and they need to be applied, everyone is entitled to it. But surely background checks have to be run and questions have to be asked. What conclusions are we to draw from the French and Belgian justice system when men like Michel Fourniret and Marc Dutroux get an early release - sheer incompetence from everyone involved, were they master manipulators who could fool professionals, or was there some large conspiracy from pedophile elites to set free child kidnappers? I don’t think one of these is the unique truth or that there was a global conspiracy orchestrated from top to bottom to release these guys early. But the fact is once again, as it did with Marc Dutroux, coincidences will pile up as Michel Fourniret starts the awful crime spree that would make him famous in 2003 when he was finally arrested.
It’s October 1987 and Fourniret is 45 years old. He decides to move in a trailer in the Yonne region with Monique Olivier. Coincidentally, from 1975 to 2000, the Yonne department was a hotspot for missing children, so much so that in France they talk of the Disparues de l'Yonne, the missing girls of Yonne in English. In total, more than 20 young girls went missing, 7 of whom were claimed by Émile Louis, which I want to talk about at some point - I want to write about this whole missing girls of Yonne case really - as well as 3 who were killed by Fourniret. Again, not unlike Dutroux, Fourniret is piling up the properties - he rents an apartment in Sedan (in the Ardennes), lives in his trailer while building a small decrepit home with his own hands for his family, and it won’t be long until he buys up a castle. Yes, you’ve just read that right.
The first victim of Fourniret post prison release is Isabelle Laville, 17 years old16. She was walking home from school near Auxerres, in the Yonnes, on December 11th 1987. Police immediately called the case a child runaway, and it was given no follow up after just 5 weeks of investigation… It was unsolved until Fourniret admitted to it 17 years later. Monique Olivier was driving their car while Fourniret played hitchiker with a jerrycan in his hand. They had staked out the young girl the day before to be sure of where she was going. Monique stops the car to convince young Isabelle to hop in, and then she picks up Michel Fourniret a few hundred meters down. The trap closes down on Isabelle Laville. She was drugged, brought home, then raped and killed by strangulation. Monique Olivier recalls having to help out Fourniret to get hard to abuse his victim. She was rolled inside a carpet and then the two of them dumped her in an old well. Her body was found in April of 2006. Isabelle’s parents will always maintain that Monique Olivier was as much responsible for her death as Fourniret is.
Fourniret’s next victim would be Farida Hamiche, in April of 1988. Or rather that’s what he claims. The entire ordeal is quite confusing. While in prison, Michel Fourniret is supposed to have met Jean-Pierre Hellegouarch17, a French ganster who was close to the Postiches Gang18, a crew of Parisian bank robbers active in the 80s. They’re called Postiches because in French that’s what fake mustaches, wigs and beards are called, and that’s exactly what they wore to do their bank robberies. All the biggest members were arrested in 1986. Here’s where it gets sketchy : the gang had apparently buried most of their loot, a rumored 50 kilos of gold, including gold coins, gold bars, and money, in a secret location. Hellegouarch, who claims he was close to them, apparently knew the secret location. Fourniret then somehow found out about it from Hellegouarch while in prison.
Here’s where Farida Hamiche comes into play : she’s Hellegouarch’s wife, and she also apparently knew of the secret location. Fourniret got out of prison before Hellegouarch, contacted his wife Farida to say he’s gonna help her get the loot, and then in whatever order, killed her and got to the secret location to dig up the gold. To make it even more sketchier, her body was actually never found. She went missing with her car, leaving administrative papers and a freshly cooked dinner behind. Hellegouarch didn’t even suspect Fourniret of being the culprit, but the man accused himself immediately when he explained years later to the court that this is how he got the money to buy his extravagant castle property in the Ardennes, the château de Sautou. If you ask me, something doesn’t add up here. Hellegouarch wasn’t directly involved with the Postiches Gang and I don’t see any reason why he would know where their war loot was buried after the gang went down. And I don’t see a gangster trusting a pedophile he met in prison to meet up with his wife to get said loot, and not expect to be crossed. The only proof that Fourniret had ever stumbled upon any treasure of any sort are gold coins found while the backyard of his house, when it was being searched for bodies after he was arrested, and they were worth around 25.000 euros19. That is quite the sum of money, but far from the amount spent on the Sautou Castle by Michel Fourniret : 223.000 euros, paid in cash. One thing is certain, in 1988, Fourniret stumbled upon a lot of money and bought himself a goddamn castle. The pedophile was going to run his operation out of there for the few years to come. It’s almost caricatural, something out of fiction. Here’s a few pictures of the property :
Fourniret’s spree continues the same year. In August of 1988, Fabienne Leroy, 20, is kidnapped and killed near Mourmelon. Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier were lurking in a supermarket parking lot when they found her and pretended they were looking for a doctor or a pharmacy for Olivier, who was 8 months pregnant at the time. She was raped and then shot and dumped near a local military base, to try and make it seem like the killing had been done by a military man. Coincidentally, at the same time and in the same region of Mourmelon in the 80s, a kidnapper and serial killer was active, with 8 men going missing20. Chief officer Pierre Chanal was arrested on August 9th 1988 when the police found a 20-year-old Hungarian man tied up in the back of his car. He had picked him up as a hitchhiker the day before and had kidnapped him and then raped him. The chief officer taped his abuse, and more material was even found at his house, including VHS tapes. The trial was dragged out through and no additional evidence beyond the initial camera footage was ever found, and by 2003, Chanal killed himself. He was never convicted and the French military did everything in its power to cover up this story. In my opinion it’s likely Chanal was helped out by others, that he wasn’t filming those rapes just for his own enjoyment, and it’s curious to note that Fourniret knew he could confuse the cops by playing copycat to get suspicion away from him.
In March of 1989, Michel Fourniret kidnaps Jeanne-Marie Desramault in Charleville-Mézières, near the Belgian border. She is raped and then killed. He buries her on the property of the Sautou castle. She was 22.
That same year, Monique Olivier and Michel Fourniret got married in July. No drinks, no wedding party, no guests except their two neighbors.
…it is very hard to put it out.
A few months later, in December of 1989, Elizabeth Brichet would disappear in Belgium. Her parents would only know what happened that night in 2004, upon Fourniret’s arrest. He was asking for road indications to a doctor with Monique Olivier and managed to get her inside his vehicle by using their baby son as bait21. He then drove all the way back to his castle. She was held captive there and abused for around 36 hours before being killed by strangulation. She was buried near the castle property. What drove Fourniret to get out of his way and go hunting for victims in Belgium? Did he know making the trek across the border would confuse Belgian and French cops? Did he know the Belgian police forces were overwhelmed and corrupt? Did he know of other pedophiles, notably Marc Dutroux, who operated there and could they possibly have been working to kidnap children for other people? Granted, there’s way less evidence of Fourniret being involved in a pedophile network that there is of Dutroux. Then again, he bought himself a castle, built other properties, and as far as he admitted, he abused and killed 12 victims, but there could have been more we have never heard about. Dutroux and Fourniret knowing each other was a real possibility that was looked into22. I touched on it a bit towards the end of THE MISSING PIECES, PART I. The theory was simple, if there was a pedophile network Marc Dutroux was kidnapping children for, Michel Fourniret could have been doing just the same. Going out of his way to go into Belgium would be explained by the fact that this network was operating out of Belgium and that they had protections in the country. One of the 30 dead witnesses of the Dutroux affair23, Jean-Marc Houdemont, a controversed filmmaker who was a pedophile himself, had been contacting the investigative cell in charge of the Brichet disappearance in 1997 and promised reveals regarding the Dutroux affair and a possible involvement with Elizabeth Brichet. Driving to the police station to do so, his car went off the road and he died, in a rather suspicious way. Then, there’s the fact Houdemont’s wife, Monique Cherton, had apparently been in contact with Marc Dutroux’s wife, Michelle Martin, in a religious community they both frequented. Cherton’s dad and Dutroux’s dad apparently also knew each other back in their colonial Congo days24. And then there’s the fact Houdemont was seen by someone with Michel Nihoul at a supermarket… I’m grasping at straws here, and I certainly can’t prove that any of this is anything but purely a coincidence, but it’s interesting to note that the same names always pop up when there’s pedophilia happening somewhere in the south of Belgium. The possibility of Marc Dutroux and Michel Fourniret having known each other is extremely slim, but I wouldn’t say it’s non-existent. 1980s Belgium is a small world…
In 1990, Fourniret decides to sell the Sautou castle. No reason invoked. Were bodies already piling up in the backyard? Did he fear drawing attention? No explanation is given. Could be he just wanted his money back. Nevertheless, in February of 1990, Fourniret and his family also leave behind their everyday home in Floing near the Belgian border. No follow-up adress is given. Until November, Fourniret lays down. He’s accused of assaulting one of the ex-husbands of Monique Olivier. Fourniret kidnaps 13-year-old Natacha Danais, rapes her and then kills her. Her body is found three days later, on November 24th, on a beach near Nantes, where Fourniret appeared in court on the 21st for that assault charge.
In 1991, Michel Fourniret buys a property in Belgium, in Sart-Custinne. Fourniret definitely lays down and no one even notices his presence. In 1993, in Givet, at a French-Belgian border patrol post, weapons are stolen. 2 revolvers and a shotgun. These would be later found at his Sart-Custinne house, upon Fourniret’s arrest. They were used in a kidnapping attempt in Brussels in 1994. That same year, Fourniret hired a 16-year-old baby-sitter for Selim, 5. She was strangled and probably killed but her body was never found. Her identity was never established, her name was never given and the investigators could never figure who she was25. Another girl who has simply vanished from existence because of the Ogre of the Ardennes.
At the end of August 1993, the disappearance of a young girl in the Netherlands would lead Dutch investigators to question Michel Fourniret’s possible involvement. As well as… Marc Dutroux. Let me explain. On August 31, Tanja Groen, 18 years old, was leaving a uni party in Maastricht, near the Belgian border, when she disappeared without leaving a trace. She was going back to her little village, Gronsveld, a few kilometers away. Her body and her bike were never found. There never was any lead26. Dutch investigators did reach out to Belgian investigators for more information about Michel Fourniret when they started digging around for a body in 2004. Nothing ever came of it. But what’s interesting is that the Dutch also then 20 years later asked for DNA comparison between what was found in the Tanja Groen case and the DNA traces from the Dutroux case. This was in April 202427. The Dutch police lab has yet to come out with a statement confirming or denying any DNA match.
In 1994, Fourniret attempts to kidnap a woman in Brussels by using one of the guns he stole from the French border police but gets noticed by a security guard, drops his gun, and escapes. In January of 1995, Fourniret once again uses a gun to assault a woman working as a dog groomer in Jambes, near Namur. He was also wearing a hood. He tried to rape her before the woman begged and said she was pregnant and had complications - something which was false. He then hit her, stole the cash from the cash register, and escaped once again. That same year, the gendarmerie of Namur had noticed the couple and reported their signaling during a… gendarmerie meeting about the Dutroux affair. “The Brichet case : a couple with a van attracts children, often resulting in murder”28. This is the infamous meeting where the gendarmerie evoked the possibility of Marc Dutroux being the culprit behind the recent child kidnappings, but nothing was done about it nor were other services besides the gendarmerie made aware of the existence of said meeting and its content.
In 1996, Fourniret sells one of his properties, a house in Floing, France. He also tried selling one of the weapons he stole from the police but lost his temper in a deal, leading to the French gendarmerie intervening. The weapon was positively identified as stolen. Fourniret said he found it. His house was even searched but the cops didn’t find anything. They could have established links with the kidnapping attempt in Brussels to the very least. One reason that might explain why this house search didn’t turn up anything is one of the gendarmes who participated in it. The one and only Mr. Gérard Vanesse. If you have forgotten, that is Michel Nihoul’s gendarmerie handler29. The same one that let Nihoul get away with ecstasy pills he would later use as payment to order Laetitia Delhez’s kidnapping by Marc Dutroux and Michel Lelièvre… I wish I was kidding. Belgium’s a really small country, isn’t it?
In the wake of the Dutroux affair, a new investigating cell for the Elizabeth Brichet missing case was established. Fourniret is suspected of many kidnappings, like the one of Marion Wagon in November of 1996, but there’s no proof. He loses his own son Nicolas in a freak accident in 1997 : he was crushed in a wood chipper machine, Fargo (1996) style.
The activity stops for a while until Fourniret picks it up in 2000. In February, he keeps harassing and stalking a 14 years old girl at a local train station in Gedinnes, Belgium. He tries to grab her, but she manages to run away at the last second. She filed a complaint but the police never found him despite the signaling matching his exact description. Later that year, in May, Céline Saison, 18 was kidnapped in Charleville-Mézières, in France. She was walking across a bridge. He grabbed her, ripped her clothes off, raped her, killed her, and then hid the body under the passenger seat with a blanket on top. He drove around with the body for hours, at some point even noticing the cops getting to work after she was reported missing… The cops didn’t want to believe she was kidnapped, they thought she had run away. They spent the crucial first 48 hours doing not much except riding around trying to see if she was somewhere. Fourniret was never even a suspect. Céline’s body was found in July, across the border in Belgium, in some woods.
In May of 2001, Mananya Thumpong, 13, was kidnapped in Sedan, France. A month earlier, in April, a woman had been almost abducted a few kilometers away, even reported her attacker and the first letters and numbers of his license plate : BMP-967. That’s Michel Fourniret’s van30. He was heard by the police. He said he tried to help her and was misunderstood. The police believe them. Why ? Fourniret has no criminal record. He was rehabilitated in 1989. There’s not even a trace of it happening because when he moved from France to Belgium, the Belgian authorities didn’t ask for a copy of his criminal record believing he didn’t have one, thus making him 100% clean. How is it that criminals like Marc Dutroux and Michel Fourniret seem to have a guardian angel when it comes to committing unspeakable acts and suffering no consequences in Belgium? To get back to Mananya, the cops first thought of a runaway, again, messing up the investigation. Her body was found in 2002, in a forest in France.
In August of 2002, Fourniret tries to kidnap an unidentified 9 years old girl. He doesn’t tie her up hard enough. She manages to escape, and she gets back to her parents. They file a report. Nothing comes of it… He doesn’t know it yet, but the way he keeps slipping up will be the only reason Fourniret gets arrested. He gets hired as a school supervisor in the little Belgian village where he lives, Sart-Custinne. He never did anything out of the ordinary at the school, but it’s scary to see how close to children he could get. In January of 2003, Estelle Mouzin, 9, was kidnapped. She’s a big part of the Fourniret case because he was the prime suspect for years but unlike other kidnappings, he never admitted to it, until a year before his death. Her body was never found. There were many suspects and many theories. It’s possible something different happened with Estelle that made Fourniret reluctant to admit it was him. Fourniret finally admitted to having kidnapped and raped her in 2020, but he passed before the verdict could apply in 2023. His wife Monique Olivier was found guilty of 3 murders, including the one of Estelle Mouzin31.
In June of 2003, Michel Fourniret kidnapps a 13-year-old girl in Ciney, Belgium. She’s named Marie-Ascension Sangwe. He ties her up in his car. While he’s driving, the girl manages to untie herself, opens the door, and run away without Fourniret noticing. By the time he does, it’s too late. Marie-Ascension gets noticed by a woman who immediately calls the cop. She gives an extensive description of her kidnapper and the woman who helped her remember the license plate of Fourniret. On June 27 2003, Michel Fourniret is arrested by Belgian police32. He’s 61 years old at this point. Monique Olivier would only admit to being part of his crimes a full year later, in June of 2004. She will be the one who’s mostly going to speak up about the crimes, forcing Fourniret to admit to most of them.
Aftermath
After his arrest, the Belgian and French police forces would collaborate together on the Fourniret case. There’s house and backyard searches. Every piece of Fourniret’s past is looked upon. The population was still in shock from the Dutroux case, which had not even been to trial yet. After hairs were found in Fourniret’s van, it was established he had killed Mananya Thumpong and Céline Saison. Then followed the intensive questioning. Monique Olivier in particular is very different during questioning than when she is discussing with Michel Fourniret, so they put all the pressure on her. She started accusing him of 6 murders, and then with time, Fourniret himself admitted 11 victims : Isabelle Laville, Farida Hammiche, Marie-Angèle Domèce, Fabienne Leroy, Jeanne-Marie Desramault, Élisabeth Brichet, Joanna Parrish, Natacha Danais, Céline Saison, Mananya Thumpong, and Estelle Mouzin.
The trial of Michel Fourniret and Monique Olivier was set in 2008. Fourniret was mute for most of it. It lasted three months, from March to May. They were both given a life sentence of imprisonment.
The most curious period of Fourniret’s life is when he sold the castle to move to Belgium. From 1991 to 2000, there’s no recorded murder or kidnapping he’s accused of. What happened during that time period? Did he had to lay down, avoid flying too close to the sun so he doesn’t get arrested? Interestingly enough, Dutroux would pick up pace in the 90s right as Fourniret settled in Belgium and lost his, before Fourniret started again while Dutroux was locked up after being arrested. It’s like a tango.
It felt weird writing about this case because of how familiar it feels despite me not knowing too much about it. It feels uncanny because of how closely it resembles the Dutroux affair. The couple working together, the first arrest, the unpunished crime spree despite being a condemned criminal, the victims in Belgium, the police fuckups… Outside of France and Belgium, I feel like Michel Fourniret is even less known than Marc Dutroux is. Maybe it’s the lack of proof pointing to a larger pedophile network, because in my opinion, the crimes are as gruesome as the stuff in the Dutroux case. I didn’t want to bloat the piece too much so I figured out laying down the basics and giving a larger context of the events would be nice. Now that we’ve laid the rough edges of the case, there’s a few more theories and rabbit holes I’d like to explore. Because if you’ve read this so far, the Fourniret case seems pretty straight forward : he killed and raped girls, he was a pedophile, he got locked up, and that’s it. But let’s linger on some of the details…
Digging down
I’m going to list some of the curious details that I came across in the case, expanding on them, and I’m going to bring up some stuff that I haven’t mentioned yet.
First obvious point is the fact that Michel Fourniret’s criminal record was erased. He had a criminal history going back to the 1960s for assault on a minor. He was rehabilitated after his first prison sentence, in which he stood accused of sexually abusing minors again. I think it’s clear he was already a repeating offender. Why give him the benefit of the doubt? This decision would get him away from all police radars from 1987 to 2003.
The young Mananya Thumpong who was kidnapped and killed by Michel Fourniret in Sedan, France, was then found in the woods of Nollevaux, Belgium, in 2002. One curious detail is that the site where her body was discovered was a hundred meters away from where the prosecutor working on the Marc Dutroux case, Michel Bourlet, lived33. I couldn’t pinpoint the exact location where Mananya’s body was found but I found the address of where Bourlet was residing at the time, an old mill he turned into a cottage he was renting out to tourists with the help of his wife. Should we see this as some kind of sign? By 2002, the Dutroux case had made all sorts of headlines, so it’s impossible for Fourniret to not have heard about it. But it’s also very likely he didn’t know that this was where Michel Bourlet spent his days. Bourlet was the prosecutor on the cases of the two girls Fourniret killed whose bodies were found in Belgium, Mananya Thumpong and Céline Saison. He was very frustrated they didn’t get to arrest him before he killed again34 :
There was the failure to arrest Fourniret before he reoffended. […] This Fourniret case really hits home with me. We didn’t succeed, and it still sticks in my craw because Fourniret wasn’t the unknown man we thought he was. But we are given nothing, neither in 2000, nor in 2001 before Mananya’s abduction, nor in 2003. […] There are still lessons to be learned from the Fourniret case. This still bothers me.
About Michel Fourniret’s military past35. In 2004, a letter he was about to send was discovered and read by the prison staff. In it, he accuses himself of being the murderer of Robert Boulin36, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing’s former Minister of Labour. He was found dead on October 30 1979, on what most people assume was a contract hit. The family believed he was killed because his body was battered and the water was too shallow for him to properly drown. Why would Fourniret accuse himself of murdering such an important state figure? To get attention on him? It’s unclear. Remember Monique Olivier’s ex-husband who worked for the French secret police, the DST? Here’s what he had to say about Fourniret to the police :
In my opinion, Fourniret definitely fits the profile of a killer, not just of children. He is perfectly capable of carrying out “contracts”. […] Fourniret had a long reach! He was a shady character, a member of a clandestine organization, but above all a coward who never attacked head-on. His true signature was a bullet to the back of the head, and by surprise!
Was this man, André Michaut, hinting at Michel Fourniret being some sort of contract killer? Disposing of people simply for the money. Fourniret even swore he would kill him to Monique Olivier, and tried to a few times, including lighting up Michaut’s painting’s workshop. Selim Fourniret, Michel’s son, met with journalist Oli Porri Santoro to write a book, Le fils de l’ogre, The Ogre’s son in English. He opens up about his dad’s past in Algeria37 :
The turning point came during the Algerian War. He was part of the Air Commandos, special units tasked with hunting down Algerian fighters. I’m not afraid to say it. It was the French state that armed Michel. He became the torturer we know on the battlefield. In the end, they released him back into society, without any follow-up, as if nothing had happened. We see the result! Yet we know that the soldiers in his unit were taught specific killing techniques. They want us to believe that Michel’s first murder was committed in December 1987, but for me, that’s false! That doesn’t even take into account the victims he left behind in Algeria, who will never appear on his grim record.
I agree with Selim and I think it’s fair to say that Michel Fourniret’s past as a military man in Algeria is what made him a killer, and that what the crime spree that followed was helped by the fact he knew how to kill people.
About Michel Fourniret’s castle, the Sautou castle. How and why did a man, who’s used to live in rundown houses being reconstructed and in trailers, acquires a castle to live in with his family? The truth is a little bit more complicated. It seems that Fourniret did not exactly live inside the castle, but rather in the small houses around. Monique Olivier’s son, William Michaut, talks about visiting the castle when he was young38 :
At Sautou Castle, I went two or three times. I only slept there one night. It was in the outbuilding to the side, with Fourniret, my mother, and their son. What struck me most while I was there was how restricted our movements were by Fourniret. I never went inside the castle. Access was blocked. He had expressly forbidden me from entering. The entire interior of the castle was closed off, supposedly for renovations. He spent his time tinkering around. As a result, we all lived crammed together in the caretaker’s house, including my mother, Selim, and Michel. [...] To dissuade us from entering the castle, Fourniret had claimed there was a hornet infestation on the top floor. A deadly danger, invented... In retrospect, knowing what was found in the woods surrounding the park, one doesn’t dare imagine what he was doing up there. [...] With hindsight, I finally realized what was surely inside the castle, something we couldn’t see... An above-ground cemetery. It was a games room, if you know what I mean... Who knows what would have happened to me if I had ever discovered his secret?
Sign at the entrance to the castle grounds : “Domaine du Sautou, private property, no access.” A chilling account. It’s hard to know exactly what went on inside the castle but it sure is curious that you would buy one for an enormous amount of money and then cheap out on the renovations and try to do it all by yourself. Especially when Fourniret is supposedly sitting on all this gold he acquired. There’s always the possibility he was using it for something else, whether it’s to hide corpses or to bring people around. There’s one curious police report about Monique Olivier regarding that :
People were seen coming and going near the castle, and it’s possible that some people live there permanently. Monique Olivier was seen buying food and various alcoholic beverages in fairly large quantities.
Why would there be a police report about Fourniret and Olivier’s activities at the castle when they only lived there for a few years and weren’t accused of anything, you ask me? Well, get this : the castle and the couple were under surveillance by the French foreign intelligence service DGSE39, the country’s equivalent to the CIA or the MI6. Fourniret was suspected of being “a terrorist” because of his acquaintances in prison with Jean-Pierre Hellegouarch. In a note, they’re described as “wealthy sympathizers of the dissolved Action Directe40 group”. Just like Dutroux was under surveillance in Charleroi and still managing to kidnap young girls, Fourniret managed to do the same under the nose of the DGSE, while burying bodies on the property that was under surveillance. Quite the marvelous feat. One cannot also not think about what inviting people over to a castle owned by a pedophile could mean. We’ve heard similar stories in the Belgian X Files. Cue the Château des Amerois : Joel Gerard and Théo Vandyck from Brussels’s gendarmerie were interviewing Nathalie Waeterschoot, a woman who had suffered abuse to the hands of a pedophile network when she was a teen. She describes being brought over to castles in the Brabant provinces, Walloon and Flemish. And then, she mentions a “castle in the Ardennes”… And she’s not the only one who does so. If you’ve ever read about the Dutroux affair, you know that there was an investigation overlapping the case and going beyond Marc Dutroux, taking in testimonies from people who were abused as children by groups of adults, before 1996 and the Dutroux case. It’s the basis of the pedophile network theory. It’s referred to as les dossiers X or de X dossiers in French and Dutch, “the X files” in English. But we’re not talking about aliens at all here. Each time a witness stepped forward and the gendarmes in the investigation cell ended up interviewing them, they were referred to as “X” plus a number attributed to them. Anyway, the most famous X witness, Regina Louf aka X1, spoke of hunt parties extensively, and specifically in the Ardennes or near the Luxembourg region41. So did X2, who heard children screaming for their life in the woods surrounding a castle where she was brought to be abused. So did X3 and X4. The Amerois castle was supposed to be one of the properties where these hunts took place42. The castle of Sautou and the Castle of the Amerois are a 30-minute car drive away from each other.
Google maps screenshot of the driving distance between the Château des Amerois and the Château de Sautou And then finally, there’s the accusations of Michel Fourniret being a freemason, or at the very least, obsessed with the occult surrounding the secret society. Selim Fourniret says :
Michel openly boasted about being a Freemason. He talked about it very often.
Selim was invited on a French talk show to talk about his book in 2020. He mentioned the fact that his father said he was a freemason. The day after, a Belgian freemason blog publicly denied that Michel Fourniret was ever a freemason.
A rumor has been circulating for the past few days that serial killer Michel Fourniret was initiated into the Grand Orient of France, specifically the lodge “Les Frères Unis Inséparables” (The United Inseparable Brothers), located on Rue Cadet in Paris. This rumor gained traction following claims by independent journalist Oli Porri Santoro. I asked the Grand Master of the Grand Orient, Jean-Philippe Hubsch, if he could confirm or deny this information, and after consulting the lodge and the Order’s records, he has just replied: “No, Michel Fourniret was never initiated into the Grand Orient of France. However, what is true, and what partly explains this rumor, is that he did apply to join this lodge, but the lodge did not follow up.” A clear response that should put an end to this fake news.
Despite this, it’s very clear to Selim and those around Michel Fourniret that he was obsessed by the freemasons. One of his former neighbors in Belgium, Gaetan E., speaks up about it :
He was very interested in Freemasonry. Yes, indeed! He was completely obsessed with it! He even attended conferences on the subject. He was involved in it. He took great pleasure in all of it. I sensed he was very drawn to that sphere of power. Could he have tried to find support through Freemasonry?
In letters he sent to his son and other people, Fourniret always signs with a masonic symbol, ∴, a therefore sign but used as “the three dots”, an abbreviation indicator in freemasonry43. More symbolism is even found in the letters he wrote, but it’s all sort of gibberish to me, as I’m not a specialist in freemasonry. I’m intrigued at the possibility he would be part of it though, and I don’t want to be one of those guys who claims that freemasons are the Illuminati or some sort of Luciferian cabal out to rule the world, but they play a large part in local power in countries like France and Belgium, and Fourniret being part of one of these lodges surely would explain some things. You wanna know something funny? The man who originally built the Sautou Castle in 1870 was Georges Corneau, a local politician. And it just so happens that Corneau was the Master of the Grand Orient de France grand lodge, from 1913 to 192044. He designed the castle as a “hunting pavilion”. And then there’s the fact Corneau was involved with setting up a local holiday camp for children, nearby in the Ardennes, throughout the 1920s. They were mostly welcoming poor and disabled children. Nothing wrong with that, is there? It seems like a great idea to give these poor children some fresh air. And yet you can’t help but think for the worst. That Sautou castle out in the Ardennes might have some very dark history.
Portrait of Georges Corneau
The Ogre of the Ardennes
This is where I’ll leave you for now. I hope I managed to stay interesting enough throughout the whole thing, it’s kind of a huge one again. I feel like people need to know about Fourniret more, and hopefully this will do. How do you explain that a few dozen of kilometers away from each other, two pedophiles were operating at the same time for decades without ever being caught? You don’t. There’s nothing that could explain this. Why then and there? Are the Ardennes forest an haunted place? Was this something that was always meant to happen? You can’t help but notice that the southern frontier of Belgium was (still is) a hub for every kind of trafficking that existed in Europe. In under 2 hours, you could go from the Netherlands to France through Belgium. And then on you went to Germany, Italy, or Spain. I think this fact can explain a lot of things. But it doesn’t explain why it always seems that the police had no interest in solving missing children cases in the 80s and 90s, whether in France or Belgium. It reminds me of weaponized incompetence. They weren’t built to deal with all of that, it was too complicated, you see. Meanwhile, if you simply dig up a little, you would have seen that Fourniret had been doing this since the 1960s. And that he went to jail for it already. How many kids could have been saved if the cops didn’t think they were runaways for the first week of the investigation?
Michel Fourniret somehow has an even darker presence than Dutroux to me. Dutroux is self-victimizating, he loves complaining about how we all made him this way and this is the price we have to pay for it. He wasn’t born evil, we made him evil. And then Fourniret, for him, it’s like he embraced the darkness. He was confident about what he did. He did it for longer than Dutroux. For a quarter of a century, he was the monster haunting the Ardennes forest. Maybe in a few decades, he’ll be the one remembered as the Ogre of the Ardennes in popular folklore stories.
Michel Fourniret died on May 10th 2021 in Paris. He was 79 years old. There were more victims of his we’ll never know about. He was investigated as the author of up to 50 cold cases scattered across Europe in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
As always, thank you for reading. Please feel free to comment if you have any remarks or questions. Let me know what you thought of it.
IRC_NIC
All books and articles excerpts translated by myself.
AFP. “Retour sur le calvaire d’Elisabeth Brichet” La Libre, April 13 2008.
Created in 1992, the NPO had the goals of helping parents in need whenever a child went missing, as many did in Belgium in the early 1990s. The name Marc et Corine comes from the names of Marc Kistemann and Corine Malmendier who were kidnapped, raped, and killed by 3 people. The NPO was founded by their dads. (Wikipedia)
Michelle Martin’s role in the Dutroux affair was minimized by the Dutroux trial, but she had been a recurrent accomplice in Dutroux’s first crime wave, and she let Julie and Mélissa die of starvation in their house after Dutroux was arrested in late 1995. Meanwhile, as you’ll see later in this article, Monique Olivier was established as an accomplice and perpetrator of some of the crimes committed by Fourniret.
See Calvaire’s trailer :
Stéphane Bourgoin and others. (2008) Les clés de l’affaire Fourniret. Comprendre et lutter contre le crime en série, Saint-Malo : Pascal Galodé, p. 87.
See A-F. So. “A la guerre d’Algérie” La Dernière Heure, July 9th 2024.
For this entire paragraph, see Stéphane Bourgoin and others. (2008) Les clés de l’affaire Fourniret. Comprendre et lutter contre le crime en série, Saint-Malo : Pascal Galodé, pp. 88-90.
Ibid, pp. 113-115.
“The pieds-noirs (French : 'black feet') are an ethno-cultural group of people of French and other European descent who were born in Algeria during the period of French colonial rule from 1830 to 1962. Many of them departed for mainland France during and after the war by which Algeria gained its independence in 1962.” (Wikipedia)
“The Direction de la surveillance du territoire ('Directorate of Territorial Surveillance') was a directorate of the French National Police operating as a domestic intelligence agency. It was responsible for counterespionage, counterterrorism and more generally the security of France against foreign threats and interference. It was created in 1944 with its headquarters situated at 7 rue Nélaton in Paris.” (Wikipedia)
Stéphane Bourgoin and others. (2008) Les clés de l’affaire Fourniret. Comprendre et lutter contre le crime en série, Saint-Malo : Pascal Galodé, p. 117.
Ibid, p. 118.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Serge M., an older man who was acquainted with a 16 years old Marc Dutroux who had just left the parental home, told stories of Dutroux being an underage prostitute for men. Dutroux lived with him for a time, but also at a local hotel that served as a prostitution hub.
“At the age of sixteen and a half, when he decided to leave home, it was to this man that Dutroux turned. After staying in a café run by a friend, he naturally went to live with this Michel [AKA Serge M., Michel is a suggested name to keep anonymous] from April to August 1974. After these five months, Dutroux moved out on his own, but Michel continued to pursue him. He even told investigators that the homosexual relationship continued “in exchange for payment to Marc Dutroux”. But that’s not all, as this same Michel indicated that two other men were also pursuing Dutroux. And Michel specified that Dutroux only agreed to grant his favors for the money he was paid. This information sheds new light on Dutroux’s personality.”
See M. Ka. “Dutroux: un passé homosexuel” La Dernière Heure, January 20th 2024.
For the following paragraph, see Stéphane Bourgoin and others. (2008) Les clés de l’affaire Fourniret. Comprendre et lutter contre le crime en série, Saint-Malo : Pascal Galodé, pp. 92-93. and Yves Bordenave. “Procès Fourniret : le calvaire planifié d’Isabelle Laville, la “honte” de Monique Olivier” Le Monde, April 3 2008.
"Born in Pontivy (Morbihan) in 1943, Jean-Pierre Hellegouarch became a coppersmith and, above all, a far-left thug. His two armed robberies in Spain in 1967 were deemed “political” under Franco’s regime and earned him a death sentence—commuted to forty years in prison. Hellegouarch eventually escaped from Burgos prison in 1979 with Basque activists. He found refuge in Val-de-Marne, where he fell in love with Farida Hammiche, the daughter of an Algerian factory worker from Vitry-sur-Seine. In the early 1980s, the Breton man supplied weapons to his Basque friends, sold them to members of Action directe, continued his hold-ups, and participated in drug trafficking and scams. He was arrested in 1983 for several offenses and ended up in Fleury-Mérogis prison in the spring of 1984, in Michel Fourniret’s cell. In late 1987, he received a letter from Fourniret, who, having just been released, gave him his address in the Yonne region and offered to do him a favor. Hellegouarch—still incarcerated—asked Fourniret to help Farida unearth a treasure buried in a cemetery. He then found himself widowed and swindled by the serial killer. Today, he has filed a civil suit against the Fournirets for the heinous murder of his wife.”
See Patricia Tourancheau. “Le Magot. Jean-Pierre Hellegouarch” Les Jours, October 20 2018.
“The Gang des postiches (French: Hairpiece Gang) was a team of bank robbers that operated in Paris between 1981 and 1986, robbing around thirty banks.
They would enter the bank dressed in common clothing and wearing false mustaches, beards, and wigs (from which they got their name). After entering the bank, they would separate into two groups, the first responsible for taking hostages, while the second went about acquiring cash and emptying safe deposit boxes (which were not under surveillance during opening hours).
It is estimated that the total value of their activities may have exceeded 30 million euro.” [Wikipedia]
Stéphane Bourgoin and others. (2008) Les clés de l’affaire Fourniret. Comprendre et lutter contre le crime en série, Saint-Malo : Pascal Galodé, pp. 94-95.
“The Mourmelon disappearances case is a French criminal case whose slow pace and uncertainties during the investigation, between 1982 and 2003, left a lasting impression. It concerns the disappearance in the 1980s of eight young men, mostly conscripts, who had hitchhiked near the Mourmelon military camp in the Marne region. The discovery in 1988 in Saône-et-Loire of the kidnapping and rape of a Hungarian hitchhiker led investigators to the only identified suspect, Chief Warrant Officer Pierre Chanal.” [Wikipedia]
Stéphane Bourgoin and others. (2008) Les clés de l’affaire Fourniret. Comprendre et lutter contre le crime en série, Saint-Malo : Pascal Galodé, p. 98.
R.P. “Fourniret serait sans lien avec Dutroux” La Libre, July 1 2004.
See the excellent documentary “Marc Dutroux and the dead witnesses”, based on the book by investigative journalist Douglas De Coninck.
Douglas De Coninck. (2004) 30 témoins morts, Wavre : Éditions Mols.
R.P. “Dutroux et Brichet, affaires liées ?” La Libre, July 6 2003.
Stéphane Bourgoin and others. (2008) Les clés de l’affaire Fourniret. Comprendre et lutter contre le crime en série, Saint-Malo : Pascal Galodé, p. 101.
See “Disappearance of Tanja Groen” [Wikipedia]
Rédaction. “Des traces d’ADN de l’affaire Dutroux comparées avec celles de la disparition de Tanja Groen aux Pays-Bas” 7 sur 7, April 29 2024.
Stéphane Bourgoin and others. (2008) Les clés de l’affaire Fourniret. Comprendre et lutter contre le crime en série, Saint-Malo : Pascal Galodé, p. 103.
René-Philippe Dawant. (1997) Marc Dutroux. Le dossier, Bruxelles : Éditions Luc Pire, p. 97.
Stéphane Bourgoin and others. (2008) Les clés de l’affaire Fourniret. Comprendre et lutter contre le crime en série, Saint-Malo : Pascal Galodé, p. 107.
Rédaction. “Michel Fourniret a enlevé, violé et tué Estelle Mouzin, l’ADN partiel de la fillette retrouvé sur un matelas” 7 sur 7, August 21 2020.
Stéphane Bourgoin and others. (2008) Les clés de l’affaire Fourniret. Comprendre et lutter contre le crime en série, Saint-Malo : Pascal Galodé, p. 109.
Oli Porri Santoro. “Fourniret - qui se cache derrière l’ogre des Ardennes ?” L’Envers des Affaires n°1, April 7 2021, pp. 55-58.
Belga. “Michel Bourlet: On aurait pu arrêter Fourniret plus tôt” RTBF, February 24 2010.
Oli Porri Santoro. “Fourniret - qui se cache derrière l’ogre des Ardennes ?” L’Envers des Affaires n°1, April 7 2021, pp. 63-65.
“Robert Boulin (20 July 1920 – 30 October 1979) was a French politician who served as Minister of Labour in the French Cabinet and was at the centre of a major real-estate scandal that ended only with his death in mysterious circumstances.
In 1979, when he was being tipped as a successor to the unpopular Raymond Barre as Prime Minister of France, the satirical and investigative weekly Le Canard enchaîné began to publish a series of articles that it said revealed Boulin had taken undue advantage of his position to obtain favourable terms on a series of real estate deals in the French Riviera.
The paper printed photographs of letters on official ministry letterhead that purported to show that Boulin had tried to get government representatives in the region to authorize construction of 26 houses in an area where buildings were barred for environmental reasons, and that Boulin tried to get Henri Tournet, the property developer at the center of the scandal, promoted to the Legion of Honor.”
Oli Porri Santoro. “Fourniret - qui se cache derrière l’ogre des Ardennes ?” L’Envers des Affaires n°1, April 7 2021, p. 63.
Oli Porri Santoro. “Fourniret - qui se cache derrière l’ogre des Ardennes ?” L’Envers des Affaires n°1, April 7 2021, pp. 52-55.
“The Directorate General for External Security (French: Direction générale de la Sécurité extérieure, DGSE) is France‘s foreign intelligence agency, equivalent to the British MI6 and the American CIA, established on 27 November 1943. The DGSE safeguards French national security through intelligence gathering and conducting paramilitary and counterintelligence operations abroad, as well as economic espionage.” [Wikipedia]
Action Directe was a French far-left militant organization which originated in the anti-Franco struggle and the autonomous movement, and was responsible for deadly attacks in France between 1979 and 1987. The French government banned the group. During its existence members murdered 12 people and wounded a further 26. It associated at various times with the Red Brigades (Italy), Red Army Faction (West Germany), Prima Linea (Italy), Armed Nuclei for Popular Autonomy (France), Communist Combatant Cells, Lebanese Armed Revolutionary Factions, Irish National Liberation Army, and others. [Wikipedia]
Douglas De Coninck, Annemie Bulté and Marie-Jeanne Van Heeswyck. (1999) Les dossiers X. Ce que la Belgique ne devait pas savoir sur l’affaire Dutroux, Bruxelles : Éditions EPO, p. 113 & p. 224
Nicolas Jean and Lavachery Frédéric. (2001) Dossier Pédophilie. Le scandale de l’affaire Dutroux, Paris : Flammarion, pp. 259-261.
“Three dots (∴) also known as “tripunctual abbreviation” or “triple dot” is a symbol used all over the world in Freemasonry for abbreviations, signatures, and symbolic representation. The dots are typically arranged in a triangular pattern and carry multiple layers of meaning within Masonic tradition.” [Wikipedia]
Oli Porri Santoro. “Fourniret - qui se cache derrière l’ogre des Ardennes ?” L’Envers des Affaires n°1, April 7 2021, pp. 74-76.
Great job... really enjoyed it. It's such a dark and mysterious world.. Belgium in that time. I'm so interested in what was up with that castle of his... please let me know if you find more info. Keep up the work.. I'll be reading.