The serial killer, Michel Fornert, died at the age of 79, after sowing terror for years in his country and in neighboring Belgium as well.
According to “Agence France Presse,” the death of the man nicknamed “The Ardennes,” dashed the hopes of many families of the missing to see him appear before the court.
[A LA UNE A 18H] Le tueur en série Michel Fourniret, est décédé aujourd’hui à l’âge de 79 ans. La mort de celui qui était surnommé l'"ogre des Ardennes" réduit à néant les espoirs de plusieurs familles de disparues de le voir comparaître devant la justice.#AFP 1/5 pic.twitter.com/QbUpRrG2yg
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) May 10, 2021
Last year, the French authorities sought to uncover the circumstances of a 17-year-old crime in which a nine-year-old girl was victim, as forensic experts in France began the process of searching for the remains of the girl after Michel Fournier, nicknamed “the Ardennes monster”, finally confessed to killing her.
Experts locked down Fournier’s home in northern France, where Estelle Mouzan disappeared on her way home from school in January 2003.
Fournier was sentenced to life imprisonment in May 2008 for the murders of 7 girls and young women committed between 1987 and 2001. He was also charged with the disappearance of Muzan last November after his ex-wife renounced the excuse of his absence.
Fournieri has confessed to the kidnapping, rape and murder of his victims, sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, and was convicted of assaulting three girls.
For the first time, investigators considered Fournier as a suspect in the disappearance of Mozan in 2006 after they found a picture of Mozan on his computer, but no DNA evidence was found to link him to the case, and Fournier confirmed for years that he was in a house in southern Belgium near the French border in The day the girl disappeared.
But his ex-wife Monique Olivier, who is serving a life sentence with no parole 28 years ago for her role in some kidnappings and murders, told investigators in November of last year that a phone call he claimed he made from that house the day the girl disappeared. It was rented by her at his request, whereas in March 2020, Fournieri confessed to killing Muzan without revealing the location of the body.
Source: AFP