Fourniret and Olivier facing life in prison.

The Times Online reports on the summing up of the prosecution in the Fourniret/Olivier trial in Charleville-Mézières in the French Ardennes.

Times Online 23/05/08

French state prosecutor Francis Nachbar, called for Michel Fourniret to be given a whole life sentence, meaning that he would never be released from prison. Nachbar said he felt physically sick after investigating the case and having to go through the details of the horrendous crimes.

"A serial killer and his wife formed the cruellest criminals France has known as they tracked down virgins in a “terrifying, nauseous and abject” frenzy of murders, a court has been told.
Michel Fourniret, 65, and Monique Olivier, 59, were “monsters” who had plumbed the depths of evil to capture, rape and kill their victims, a French state prosecutor said as he called for them to be jailed for life."

"“I just can't bear these horrors any more,” he said. “You make me want to vomit!”

Monique Olivier has repeated throughout the trial, in which she is charged with complicity in several murders and direct involvement in others, that she was totally under her husband's control and terrified of him. Yet she never took advantage of any of her husband's absences to rush to the police. She could have taken her son and asked for protection. Surely, Fourniret would have been arrested immediately and placed in custody if Monique Olivier had gone to the police? Francis Nachbar, as well as some of the lawyers for the victims' families, has not believed Olivier's pleas about being dominated by Fourniret.

" The prosecutor went on to dismiss Ms Olivier's claims that she was under her husband's spell and played a secondary role in the killings. “You were the one who created the conditions for the murderous frenzy, in order to satisfy your most primitive fantasies,” Mr Nachbar said. He described her as “criminal muse” who had inspired her husband to ever more horrific killings."

Nachbar has called for Olivier to be sentenced to 30 years before being considered for parole. He described Fourniret as, "a “necrophilious monster” whose brain was consumed by vanity and the belief that he was all-powerful," alluding to the evidence that Fourniret had raped one of his victims post-mortem. The defence will sum up next week and the jury will retire to reach a verdict on the seven murders of young women and teenagers, attempted abductions and rapes, for which Fourniret is on trial with his wife as accomplice and co-perpetrator in at least two of the murders. Fourniret was finally caught by the police when one of his victims managed to escape from his van, was picked up by a passing motorist and managed to get the van's registration number.