The Arrest

With no investigatory task force after them, it is possible that the couple would never have been arrested if it was not for the escape of one of their victims. In 2003, Fourniret tried to adduct a 13 year old girl. He boasted to her that Marc Dutroux, the then recently apprehended Belgian paedophile and serial killer, was no match for him. But she managed to escape by biting her way through the ropes binding her wrists and jumping out of the van at some traffic lights. Before she fled, she noted his registration.

The police questioned both Fourniret and Olivier. But they didn’t realise they were interviewing the French equivalent of Fred and Rose West. It was only Olivier’s mistaken belief that the police knew more than they did that caused her to confess in the hope that her sentence would be reduced.

The first murder she confessed to resembled that of Leeds university student, Joanna Parish, who disappeared in Burgundy in 1990. Confronted with her confession, Fourniret confessed to many murders, but not this one.