Self-confessed French serial killer Michel Fourniret spoke out voluntarily for the first time in his trial, defending his co-accused wife.

   CHARLEVILLE-MEZIERES, France, April 9, 2008 - Self-confessed French serial killer Michel Fourniret spoke out voluntarily Tuesday for the first time in his trial for a string of rapes and murders, defending his co-accused wife.
   Fourniret, who has refused to answer questions in court since the start of
the trial on March 27, demanding it be held behind closed doors, spoke up to
defend his wife, Monique Olivier, jointly accused of one of the murders.
   "I think Monique Olivier is not lying," he said, referring to Oliver's
statements in which she denied giving injections to Fabienne Leroy, a
20-year-old student whom Fourniret is accused of raping and killing.
   "She was physically present, but morally absent" from the killing, said, 66, after asking to be allowed to respond to a question posed to Oliver, 59.
   "Her spirit was ten thousand of kilometers away from it. She did not give any injections."
   Fourniret, 65, is being tried for the rape and murder of six young women and teenage girls in France and one in Belgium, who were aged between 12 and 21 and were either strangled, stabbed with a screwdriver or shot.
   Olivier, 59, is on trial for one of the same murders and complicity in four
of the others.
   Fourniret was charged earlier this month in two other cases which do not
feature in the current trial -- the 1990 murder of British student Joanna
Parrish and the 1988 killing of Frenchwoman Marie-Angele Domece.
   "You can't ask to be forgiven for the unforgivable," he said Monday.

AFP