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9 July 2004
BRUSSELS – Austrian and German police said on Friday that they wanted to look into possible links between unsolved murders in their countries and Michel Fourniret, the confessed French serial killer currently being held in Belgium.
Germany’s federal crime office, the BKA, has passed questions about several unsolved murders to its Belgian counterparts because it wants to see whether Fourniret has any connection to the crimes, the Belga news agency and France’s AFP reported on Friday.
A BKA spokesman said there was “no definite suspicion,” that the French former carpenter had committed the murders but he added that crimes occurred on Germany’s borders with either France or Belgium.
Fourniret lived in Belgium but has already confessed to several killings in France.
Austrian police also said on Friday that they wanted to investigate possible links between Fourniret and the disappearance of a 10-year-old girl, Natascha Kampushch, in Vienna in 1998.
The news that the Austrians and Germans have joined investigations into Fourniret’s suspected crimes means that police forces from six European countries are now working on the case.
The biggest investigations are taking place in France and Belgium but Dutch and Danish police are also following up possible links between Fourniret and crimes committed in their countries.
Belgian Justice Minister Laurette Onkelinkx said on Friday that an extra eight people had been assigned to the full-time investigation team looking into Fourniret’s suspected crimes.
The news means that the ‘Fourniret team’ now has eleven members instead of the original three.
Belgian prosecutors confirmed on Wednesday that they had reopened a dozen unsolved murder cases, which they believe the self confessed child murderer could have been linked to.
French investigators are for their part looking into 30 unsolved cases of murders and disappearances that they think Fourniret may have had a hand in.
On Thursday the mother of one of the girls Fourniret has confessed to killing visited the site where police last weekend dug up her daughter’s remains.
Marie-Noelle Brichet travelled from her home in Belgium to the Chateau de Satou at Donchery in the French Ardennes to see for herself the place where her daughter had been buried.
Elisabeth Brichet disappeared near to the Belgian city of Namur in 1989.
She was 12.
Police also found the body of another of Fourniret’s victims at the Chateau de Satou.
She was Jeanne-Marie Desramault, a 22 year old French woman who also disappeared in 1999.
[Copyright Expatica 2004]
Subject: Belgian news