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CRIME

Serial killer ‘confesses’ to killing British student Joanna Parrish in France

A French serial killer dubbed the Ogre of the Ardennes has confessed to the murder of British student Joanna Parrish in 1990, the victim’s family’s lawyer has said.

Published: 16 February 2018 19:31 CET
Serial killer 'confesses' to killing British student Joanna Parrish in France
Serial killer Michel Fourniret

Michel Fourniret has finally admitted what was long suspected – that he killed the 20-year-old when the language student was on a university placement in France in 1990, lawyer Didier Seban said.

Fourniret, who is in prison for a series of other murders, also admitted to killing an 18-year-old mentally disabled woman, Marie-Ange Domece, in 1988 in the same region of Burgundy.

Her body has never been found. Ms Parrish’s naked body was found in the Yonne River near the town of Auxerre.

The killer made the confessions during fresh interrogations by investigating magistrates this week and last, the lawyer said, adding that he had been summoned to be informed of the new twist in the long-running case.

“This is the end of a very long battle,” Mr Seban told France Info radio station.

“We fought hard to prevent this case being closed,” he said.

Fourniret had been charged with the abduction and murder of the two young women in 2008 but the case was dismissed by an appeal court in 2011.

Fourniret was convicted in 2008 for the murder of seven girls and young women in France and Belgium and was sentenced to life in prison.

His wife, Monique Olivier  –  whose submissive relationship with Fourniret drew comparisons with Gloucester serial killers Fred and Rose West  –  was found guilty of one of the murders and assisting three others.

Fourniret is now likely to be tried for the murder of Ms Parrish and Domece.

Ms Parrish, who studied French and Spanish at Leeds University, was coming to the end of a year teaching English at a lycee in Auxerre when she was killed on May 17 1990.

She was abducted after placing an advertisement in a local newspaper offering English lessons.

Her body was later found in River Yonne near to where she lived. An autopsy showed that she had been raped, beaten and strangled before her body was dumped in the river.

Her parents, Roger and Pauline, were long convinced that their daughter had been murdered by Fourniret.

They attended the 2008 trial that saw him convicted of the seven murders.

The couple have been critical of the French investigation.

Reporters and police were allegedly allowed to enter the crime scene where their daughter’s body was found, possibly destroying vital evidence. DNA evidence and files went missing and police were accused of not properly following up various leads.

 

CRIME

Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors

French police have tracked three suspects in last week's defacement of the Paris Holocaust memorial across the border into Belgium, prosecutors said.

Published: 22 May 2024 16:32 CEST
Suspects in Paris Holocaust memorial defacement fled abroad: prosecutors

The suspects were caught on security footage as they moved through Paris before “departing for Belgium from the Bercy bus station” in southeast Paris, prosecutors said.

Investigators added that the suspects’ “reservations had been made from Bulgaria”.

An investigation was launched after the memorial was vandalised with anti-Semitic image on the anniversary of the first major round-up of French Jews under the Nazis in 1941.

On May 14, red hands were found daubed on the Wall of the Righteous at the Paris Holocaust memorial, which lists 3,900 people honoured for saving Jews during the Nazi occupation of France in World War Two.

Prosecutors are investigating damage to a protected historical building for national, ethnic, racial or religious motives.

Similar tags were found elsewhere in the Marais district of central Paris, historically a centre of French Jewish life.

The hands echoed imagery used earlier this month by students demonstrating for a ceasefire in Israel’s campaign against the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

Their discovery prompted a new wave of outrage over anti-Semitism.

“The Wall of the Righteous at the Shoah (Holocaust) Memorial was vandalised overnight,” Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo said in a statement, calling it an “unspeakable act”.

It was “despicable” to target the Holocaust Memorial, Yonathan Arfi, president of the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) wrote on X, formerly Twitter, calling the act a, “hateful rallying cry against Jews”.

French President Emmanuel Macron condemned the act as one of “odious anti-Semitism”.

The vandalism “damages the memory” both of those who saved Jews in the Holocaust and the victims, he wrote on X.

“The (French) Republic, as always, will remain steadfast in the face of odious anti-Semitism,” he added.

Around 10 other spots, including schools and nurseries, around the historic Marais district home to many Jews were similarly tagged, central Paris district mayor Ariel Weil told AFP.

France has the largest Jewish population of any country outside Israel and the United States, as well as Europe’s largest Muslim community.

The country has been on high alert for anti-Semitic acts since Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel and the state’s campaign of reprisals in Gaza in the months since.

In February, a French source told AFP that Paris’s internal security service believed Russia’s FSB security service was behind an October graffiti campaign tagging stars of David on Paris buildings.

A Moldovan couple was arrested in the case.

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