‘Fourniret link’ to new body

2 November 2004

BRUSSELS – The body of a woman found in the Meuse river in the 1980s could turn out to be yet another victim of French serial killer Michel Fourniret, it was reported on Tuesday.

On Tuesday, investigators in Verdun, in the East of France, said that a woman was found in the Meuse river in March 1989, the year Fourniret was living in the area.

They said an inquiry had been opened into the case.

However, Verdun’s public prosecutor Fabrice Belargent said so far the police had no evidence that Fourniret had killed the woman.

When the woman was fished out of the river she was given only a basic autopsy and neither her identity nor the cause of her death were established.

She was described as being aged between 20 and 40 years old.

“We know nevertheless that Michel Fourniret was living in the region at that period and that he had been sentenced twice at Verdun at the end of the 1980s for two attacks on two young women,” said Belargent.

Fourniret, a 63-year-old carpenter, has already confessed to nine murders in France and in Belgium, including seven murders of young women.

His estranged wife Monique Oliver, who aided him in kidnapping his victims, says he also killed a 10th victim, a young girl the couple hired as an au pair.

[Copyright Expatica 2004]

 Subject: Belgian news